Psychottabych

“Well, you’re a psychologist,” they tell me, “you should help!” And they look at me like Volka ibn Alyosha at an eccentric old man who is supposed to work a miracle. And it is desirable that it is pleasant, fast and inexpensive – you don’t need to carry stones, and you don’t need expensive equipment.

This expectation is wonderful in itself – there are so many feelings and experiences behind it. Like a tincture of fear and mistrust on hope and faith. In fact, who am I to the patient – a stranger who took up a dubious job all day long listening to other people’s misfortunes? What can be expected from me? Can I be trusted? It is much easier – at least not so scary – to see in me a kind of Psychottabych, who crawled out of the jar of the psychological department, where they teach to make people happy. This mixture of conflicting feelings is manifested by confusion, embarrassment, demonstrative insolence, either together, then apart, or alternately. I confess that every time I meet a new patient, I experience something similar, only in my own way – what did the patient come with, will we have a job to do, will I not push jambs, will I be able to help? I try to hide all this behind the usual professional mask – sometimes successfully, sometimes not very well: “You were like an indifferent lump, and I thought that I came to you in vain”, or “You yourself were worried, and the first thought was: how can he help me ?”, or “It was warm and calm,” – I can hear about the same thing later. Thus, from the meeting of simple human reactions, the therapeutic relationship begins.

They have two important aspects.

Alexander Badkhen definitely said about one thing: this is a unique relationship in the sense that they do not occur in any other area of ​​uXNUMXbuXNUMXblife. Grandmother-grandfather, mom-dad, brother-sister, wife-husband, friends-girlfriends can sometimes help, but relationships with them are always relationships of people with their own interests, which can converge or diverge, we can help each other in them friend, but we also look after our own interests. The psychotherapist does not wedge his own interests into the work and is neutral in this sense. He accepts the patient as he is, without judgment by the standards of morality or everyday life. He is not for himself or society – he is only for you, and your good for him is above the rest of the good. These are the conditions that make the psychotherapeutic relationship safe and allow the other side of the relationship to unfold.

I would call it research. In it, the psychotherapist does not explore you in the way that, say, a doctor with a patient or a chemist with a substance in a test tube does, but you yourself explore your life with him. The focus of this study is not so-called objective things like “went, did, said”, but your meanings, meanings and experiences of these things or, in other words, the living spiritual reality of life. This reality has its own logic, which does not coincide with the logic of reason and worldly rules. Some things in this logic of experience turn out to be the engines of success and help in life, while others, on the contrary, look like weeds, interfere with being yourself, bring pain, and give rise to problems. There is no Ariadne’s thread in the logic of reason that can lead to the root of evil – the experience from which the weed has grown. Sitting in front of a psychotherapist, you do not know or do not dare to know about this root of what torments you today. Research in therapy is like a trip with a stalker to the Zone – to the realm of so much uncertainty lurking in itself, where your role and opportunities are in no way less than that of a guide. Neither he nor you yourself know which way and where you will come. This can be frightening and repulsive, which is why it is said that psychotherapy requires courage.

But in the end, you come to this root and can face your once unfinished experience in order to complete it and thereby stop it from sprouting into your life. This happens as an insight, an insight that is impossible to follow, but the result of which is relief, liberation from a painful problem. This is the miracle for which you have come. And the psychottabych who committed it is you yourself. And the therapist will not be offended if you share the honor of performing a miracle with him.