We are talking about the professional deformation of specialists involved in psychological counseling and psychotherapy, that is, about some negative consequences associated with their professional activities and expressed in subjective or objective changes in their personality and character.
I want to immediately separate the concept of professional deformation from the so-called «combustion syndrome». Both of these conditions are associated with the work of a consultant in a psychological service. The difference lies in the fact that it is customary to talk about the “burnout syndrome” in the context of professional activity, and professional deformation refers mainly to life outside of work. Using the conditional opposition «Professional — Man», you can more clearly represent the difference between these two phenomena.
“I as a professional” is a part of the personality that is responsible for the performance of professional duties as a carrier of the knowledge, ethical attitudes and principles necessary for this; is most evident in professional activities. “I as a person” is a more central (“my own”) part of the personality, which includes some ordinary ideas about life and about myself, everyday attitudes and principles; mainly manifests itself in the so-called «private life». Using these definitions, the «burnout syndrome» can be represented as the loss of the controlling role of the «professional self» and the introduction of the «human self» into the area of professional competence. At work, specialists “humanly” get tired and irritated. Professional deformation, on the contrary, seems to be an expansion of the dominance of the «I professional» in the field of activity of the «I am human». Coming home, a person continues to behave like a specialist.
Two components can be assumed in professional deformation:
1. Initial inclinations.
Even before contact with his future work, a person already has character traits and personality traits inherent in representatives of this profession. They can be recognized by their owner, accepted as desirable and cause a sense of pride (for example, a desire to help people) or, on the contrary, be unconscious, suppressed and hidden (for example, an interest in the privacy of other people).
2. Actually professional deformation.
Professional activity develops these personal characteristics, outlines and highlights them in relief. Sometimes (in the case of repressed and unacceptable traits), professional activity justifies them, gives them the right to exist and manifest. Undoubtedly, the initial inclinations influence the choice of the appropriate profession. They represent a “favorable” background, the ground on which the profession subsequently develops its deforming activity. Such a deformation begins already during study, when students’ everyday attitudes and stereotypes are destroyed and a professional picture of the world is formed. What’s wrong with that? Indeed, thanks to study and further work, a person’s personality is transformed, he acquires a lot of communication skills, begins to better understand himself. These apparently positive changes are described by the expression «personal growth», and they are not discussed here. We are interested in professional deformation, that is, something negative, “breaking” the personality.
Let us note some of these relatively negative consequences that reveal themselves in everyday life and relate mainly to the subjective sphere of a person — the sphere of attitude towards oneself, surrounding people and life in general.
EXPLANATION OF LIFE PROBLEMS BY PSYCHOLOGICAL REASONS. If something happens in a person’s life, a person always finds some psychological reason to explain this fact. It is possible that psychological causes do play some role in the fact that some event occurred (for example, someone caught a cold), but here we are talking about hyperinterpretation, that is, over-emphasizing the psychological factor in explaining a wide variety of events.
ACQUISITION OF SKILLS IN RATIONALIZING YOUR PROBLEMS. Mastering the psychological and psychotherapeutic conceptual apparatus and terminology provides great opportunities for constructing justifications for all occasions. In contrast to the previous paragraph, where there is an «inflating» of the psychological factor, here we are talking about composing «reasonable grounds» for one’s actions and convenient (soothing) explanations for the behavior of other people.
IMPOSITIONING, SPONTANEOUS SELF-OBSERVATION. Knowledge gleaned from numerous books that describe any norm (physiological, psychological, mental, etc.) or other idealized variants of being, urge a person to constantly “monitor” his behavior, speech, thoughts, emotions for the purpose of self-diagnosis and “timely self-correction” «.
THE OPPRESSION OF PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES AND SKILLS. Almost every specialist psychologist, even being outside of work, feels a special responsibility for the psychological state of the people around him. If a person knows how to help another, and he has such a physical opportunity, he begins to hear an imperative inside himself: “You must stop all your affairs and come to the rescue!” If for some reason he cannot do this, then his head is filled with self-accusations, humiliating assessments and self-justifications. This point also includes the statement: “I am obliged to behave in such a way as not to injure others,” which is usually ardently supported by others: “You are a psychologist — you must …”
COMPLEX «SHOEMAKER WITHOUT BOOTS». An ancient expression prescribes: Medice, cura te ipsum — «To the doctor, heal yourself.» Doctors no longer pay attention to this, but for psychologists and psychotherapists, self-improvement is at the forefront of self-education. At the official level, this manifests itself as “obligatory personal therapy,” on the personal level, in the form of individual requirements for oneself, such as: “Everything should be fine with me. I have to be able to deal with conflicts and unpleasant emotions. Otherwise, what kind of a psychologist am I then, what right do I have to advise other people.
SEARCH FOR PEOPLE IN NEED OF PSYCHOLOGICAL HELP. Professional skills are not always oppressive and are a hindrance in personal life. Sometimes a person feels pleasure from his “experience”, from overflowing with knowledge on how to help people, and looks for reasons to show them in practice, for example, in distributing advice. In connection with this point, I recall a fragment from a children’s poem by Barto: “The orderlies are not lucky: there is cotton wool, there is iodine, there are not enough trifles — there are no wounds, no bruises … Finally, a job was found for the Red Cross! Finally someone got hurt. Nurses, in place!. »
LOSS OF THE ABILITY TO BE SURPRISED. During his work, a practical psychologist meets thousands of different everyday situations, communicates with a huge number of very different people. A normal reaction is to master this flow of information: limiting perception, building typologies, etc. This leaves an imprint both on professional activity and on the personal life of a specialist. Encountering something new on his life path, a person is rarely surprised by this, since this is not new for him, he has already met with this or something similar to this. He observes life through a coordinate grid of classifications.
PROFESSIONAL CYNISM. The abundance of difficult life situations that a practical psychologist encounters develops the ability to “non-involvement” in their experience, or rather, the ability to relate to them detachedly. Such an outside view frees these situations from emotional burden and allows you to perform various manipulations with them, for example, place them in a different context, fill them with other emotional content (sometimes very funny). Some believe that this is cynicism, implying something unacceptable for a «well-mannered person», others believe that this is a defensive reaction, and others consider it an effective social strategy that makes it easier to relate to life.
Of course, my thoughts about professional deformation do not pretend to be objective, they are not supported by any experimental research. This is just an attempt to outline a topic that requires a more careful and serious approach.