Looking through a short part of the work, it can be very categorizing — this is a healthy psychology or psychotherapy, it becomes clearer when you already see the direction, the goal — the target of the work.
Is Active Listening Necessary for Psychotherapy? No, it could be anything. If active listening is used so that a person speaks out and frees the soul from undigested experiences, this is more like psychotherapy. If active listening is used by the manager to make it easier for the employee to tell everything that he knows, this is part of the work process and has nothing to do with psychotherapy.
There is a means, and there is an end, which is also a target. You can work with something sick, meaning the relief of general ill health — this is psychotherapy. You can work with something healthy to reduce general unhealthiness — this is also psychotherapy. You can work with something healthy for the sake of developing strength, vigor, knowledge and skills — this is a healthy psychology. For the same reason, I can work with something sick (I remember things that are sick for me in order to raise all my strength, infuriate myself and win competitions) — this is a healthy psychology, although it is not obvious that it is the most effective.
In psychotherapy, the target is the sick, the sick as something that prevents the patient (client) from fully living and developing. This can be direct work with a sick part in a person’s soul, work with internal obstacles that prevent him from living and developing, and this can be work with a healthy part of the soul – to the extent that this work can help eliminate the sick spiritual principle.
Therefore, to say that psychotherapy works only with the sick part, only with problems and pain, is wrong. Most effective psychotherapists work with the healthy part of the soul, but, we repeat, as long as the psychotherapist remains a psychotherapist, his target remains the sick.
In healthy psychology, the target is healthy, that which is a source of full life and development for a person.
Analysis of a specific case
Pavel Zygmantovich
On the topic of your recent article on healthy psychology, I hasten to share — I found a curious, in my opinion, description of client experience. The author of the description is a psychotherapist undergoing personal psychotherapy. I was most interested in this passage: “And I am very grateful to my therapist for the fact that he did not support my injury, but first of all my adaptive functions. Shed no tears with me, stopped me when I fell into an experience, saying: «It looks like you got into an injury, let’s get out of there.» He supported not suffering, memories of trauma (although he gave them a place), but a thirst for life, an interest in the world, a desire for development. Because supporting a person in a traumatic experience is a futile exercise, because trauma cannot be cured, you can only learn to live with its consequences. Here I see a combination of the position you criticize about the “initial trauma” (I immediately apologize if I misunderstand your criticism) and the strategy you support to rely on the healthy part of the personality. Those. the therapist sort of works with the sick, but through healthy manifestations. What do you think about this? Is this what you stand up for? Is it psychotherapy or already development?
N.I. Kozlov
Thank you for the good question. I don’t know a good answer, I think with you.
It is very possible that it would be more correct to call this specialist a psychologist, and not a «therapist», and it is quite possible that in this case there was not psychotherapy at all, but work within the framework of healthy psychology. Well, the boy skinned his knee, dad tells him «Don’t whine!» Dad here is not a doctor, but dad.
Is this example an example of developmental psychology? Not at all sure. So far, I have a hypothesis that the therapist (or allegedly the therapist) maintained an interest in the world and the desire for development while the person was suffering from trauma. And as soon as the injury stopped hurting, I think the therapeutic process stopped. Is it true that someone here was going to develop?!
By the way, pay attention to the belief «trauma cannot be cured, you can only learn to live with its consequences.»
I’ll be glad to be proven wrong.