Understand or act

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Someone screwed up on the table. You can take a rag and wipe the table, or you can instead think about where it came from. The first is reasonable, the second is stupid.​​​​​​​​There are always people who do not like to create problems from scratch and are ready to act immediately, but there are those who, instead of doing what is necessary right away, start for a long time analyze and understand.

Understand or act — two conflicting strategies.

Theoretically, everything is clear: first you need to understand, and then — to act. In practice, finding the right balance is very difficult, and the choice of strategy is influenced by both theoretical concepts and the type of personality of the client or psychologist-therapist.

As for the personality type, there are people who get stuck on “figuring it out” and do not move to action in any way (transitioning to action with a serious delay and not for long). Let’s call them «brakes». On the contrary, there are reverse examples, when people are in a hurry to act without understanding what is really needed … They are called “hurried”.

The «brakes» include such personality types as anxious-responsible and asthenic type. Hasty is an «excited optimist» (hyperthym), sometimes paranoid, who cannot just sit and wait, who always needs to do something. See →

It happens that the request “I want to understand myself” hides another request, for example, relieve me of the alarm.

This very often characterizes girls: if a girl “figures out”, she usually feels better. That is, the real request was to «remove anxiety», and the tool used was «give a soothing explanation».

But more often, the query “I want to understand myself” combines several typical desires: the desire to be in the center of attention, the desire to feel sorry for myself, the desire to find something that explains my failures — and, ultimately, the desire to solve my problems, nothing for this not really doing. Clients who ask this question usually assume that they need to understand something about themselves, after which their life will improve. They seem to be attracted by a magnet to this childhood dream: to find the Golden Key, which will open the Magic Door for them. Find an Explanation that will solve all their problems for them. See →

The choice of strategy to «understand» or «act» in working with clients depends not only on the type of personality, but also on the concept that the psychologist adheres to. Observing the work of psychologists, it is easy to classify them into two camps: those that explain more, and those that push to action. If a psychologist pays more attention to explaining and understanding the causes of clients’ problems, he gravitates more towards psychotherapy, and next to him there will be people who are more interested in understanding than acting (see →).

For them, the importance of understanding is great. “Why are you going to listen to this, it’s not clear what to do with this?” “I will listen to understand.” Understanding helps acceptance, soothes, brings peace to the soul.

If a psychologist, in working with a client or participants, pays more attention to what the participants will do, sets more tasks for them, pushes them to action — such work is more likely not psychotherapeutic, but in the format of healthy psychology. See →

Let’s look at examples of how this or that format of psychological work differs.

A person is drawn to object

Suppose a person is constantly drawn to object. It is possible, and sometimes necessary, to ask the question: what is behind this? Most likely, the answer will be: a habit or a living unconscious (internal benefits, unconscious drives) … Something that exists for something, to satisfy some deep needs. Question: deal with the causes or just master the Total YES?

The psychotherapist is convinced that until we deal with our living unconscious, a person will not be able to relearn, he is rather weak, and these blocks and obstacles are great. The psychologist-trainer rather believes that it is more productive to study, to move forward, and not to understand what is easy to dig into.

There is an army, an army of a million, the enemy is defeated, but intelligence reports that two partisans remained in the rear. Will we stop the army or will these partisans self-destruct over time?

The army that stops to deal with every partisan stuck in the rear is soon defeated. While strong, go ahead. Focus on education, not therapy. If you are intelligent and energetic, you can do it. All healthy people do well. Are you sick?

Here the coach has herpes on his lip — should he cancel trainings, go for treatment? Well no. It gets in the way a little, but you can ignore it.

Open gestures

If a person was closed, but begins to make open gestures: what awaits him? — Unknown. If he has remained inside his former ideas and beliefs, if he still has no doubt that people cannot be trusted, then gestures will only be deception and self-deception. If he wants to abandon his closeness, he is looking for new relationships with people, then his gestures at first will not be completely congruent to him, they will not be his — but only for a while. Either a month or six months will pass, and his open gestures will become sincere and natural. Man has changed.

Consultation example

— Nikolai Ivanovich, tell me, please, very often people begin to take an active position in life, boldly make their decisions after the roasted rooster has pecked. What is this mechanism, why is this happening? See deal with reasons or do