The emotional imprint of what we unconsciously learned from our parents is always stronger than what we learn consciously. This is reproduced automatically whenever we are in emotions, and we are always in emotions, because we always have stress. Alexander Gordon’s conversation with the psychotherapist Olga Troitskaya. www.psychologos.ru
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Psychotherapy naturally transmits, as its message, the notion «I am small, the world is big.»
Everyone has their own professional deformation. If for years a policeman has only thieves, swindlers and prostitutes before his eyes, his views on people sometimes imperceptibly for him become less rosy. If a psychotherapist comes to those who cannot cope with life’s difficulties on their own, who are unable to find mutual understanding with others, who find it difficult to control themselves and their states, who are not used to making responsible decisions, this gradually forms the professional vision of a psychotherapist.
The psychotherapist usually makes efforts to increase the patient’s confidence in his own abilities, however, he proceeds from the undeclared presupposition (premise) that in reality one cannot expect much from the patient. People come to an appointment not in the most resourceful state, in feelings, usually they cannot even clearly formulate their request — they come in the position of the Victim … To set serious tasks for such a patient to transform the world or change others is impossible and professionally inadequate in a psychotherapeutic vision. The only thing that can be oriented to the patient is to put things in order in oneself, achieve inner harmony, and adapt to the world. To use a metaphor, for a psychotherapist, the world is usually big and strong, and a person (at least who came to see him) is smaller and weaker in relation to the world. See →
Such views can be characteristic of both a psychotherapist and a “man from the street” who has been imbued with such views and beliefs.
If the client already believes that he is small in front of the big unconscious, it can be difficult to convince him, there is always a temptation to work with him in a psychotherapeutic way. Similarly, in the other direction: a client who believes in his own strength, in the strength of his consciousness and reason, will grunt skeptically when talking about the unconscious. Similarly, if a psychologist himself believes in the power of the mind, he will be convincing in developmental psychology. If he does not believe in the mind and believes in the unconscious, he will only be a psychotherapist.