— Nikolai Ivanovich, when will you start serious work?
Igor came to Moscow Sinton from another city. The class of the World of the Soul group had just ended, everyone was warm and cheerful, the people were noisy and enjoyed playing Tusiki Mutusiki … Igor continued:
— Good for you: you have an extremely wonderful composition of the group. Our groups are more difficult, but the psychologists who come to us work very seriously with us: they help us to realize our problems, childhood fears, neuroses…
— That’s right, Igor, I have a wonderful group. But he is remarkable precisely because I worked with these people differently than those psychologists who come to you.
— But as?
— This, Igor, is a big conversation. I’ll start from afar.
What is psychological help?
Of course people need help. But how?
For example, a child fell into a ditch — what is done first? It is obvious that it is necessary to pull it out of there and lubricate the broken knees with brilliant green.
Children of all ages must be pulled out of the life ditches by social workers. This is called social assistance and rehabilitation.
The situation is more complicated — you see that some (not dependent on you) moments push the child onto a slippery path, and the most unpleasant thing is that after a while he tends to go there himself, because there you can wallow in the mud completely freely and, by the way, completely luxuriously wallow in the mud of others.
Moreover, he will do this if he does not really know the path other than the slippery one and feels extremely insecure in a different environment.
What to do then? Well, it is advisable to hold such a child by the hand for some time, lead it strictly where it is necessary and fence it off from seductive places, and fence it off reliably and decisively, because there is no more fun entertainment for a child than jumping over those leaky fences that stupid adults built for him.
So, this activity is carried out on a public scale by juvenile inspectors, and the official name of their work is the prevention of antisocial behavior.
There is no sadder story in the world than this, where the bandits are children …
Makarenko’s experiment on the melting down of difficult teenagers is unique and, it seems, is no longer reproducible in our time. Anton Semenych began the educational process in the colony by placing his pupils in ruins and offering everyone who wanted to survive. With his difficult, he did not arrange pleasant leisure, but work for survival. Only this one is real! — the work put everyone in their place, separated those who knew how to work from talkers, nevertheless nailing the difficult to a healthy core and merging everyone into a single team.
The search, creation and strengthening of a healthy core — this was already the work of Anton Semenych. And he fulfilled it.
It was difficult in the colony, but around it it turned out to be even more difficult (devastation after the civil war), so there was especially nowhere to run, plus there were, just in case, nearby, always ready to help create a responsible atmosphere, the GPU officers in charge of the colony …
Remember these four components: the outside is even worse, work, a healthy core, armed guards. Actually, any gang of thieves works according to the same pedagogical system: inside it is hard work, outside the conditions are alien and unacceptable to you, the core is formed, and the thieves have their own GPU and put things in order effectively, using the same methods. The technique is universal.
So: when in our time the difficult ones are sent to summer camps, not staffed by police and filled with leisure activities predisposing to baldness, then even the youngest ones soon find themselves in a situation of gangster raspberry, and the attendants — in the role of hostages. Estimate the educational effect yourself.
However, the municipal authorities and employees of the committees on family and youth affairs have their own view of what is happening, namely, at the end of the summer they put satisfied ticks: summer recreational and educational activities have been carried out and covered so many children. Thus, these responsible persons will never be left without work — if only because after their work the number of difficult ones for some reason does not decrease.
And the number of raspberry lovers is increasing.
However, we digress a bit.
Where is our child and what happened to him? But: our child has crooked legs and slightly slanting eyes, so he is constantly blown off the normal road. What will the experts write? Naturally, health-improving gymnastics and correct vision.
In the field of mental life, the same actions are called «psychological correction.»
And here is another curious specimen: a child who seems to be quite healthy, but instead of walking along the road with everyone, he looks sadly at his feet and can’t find a place for himself … What will we do as good mothers? We will support under the arms, we will open our eyes, we will sing a peppy song, we will introduce him to places of interest to him.
It’s called social adaptation. Now one of the most promising areas for hungry psychologists, they almost always give money for this.
And here is our main character: the child walks along with everyone, but somehow hobbles and his eyes are sad. What’s the matter? A superficial examination reveals hardened sores, bruises and dislocations, a closer look reveals shortness of breath and heart failure.
What is shown to him? That’s right, treatment in the clinic, and the treatment of the soul is normal psychotherapy. However, in order not to collide head-on with doctors, psychiatrists and generally sound more worthy, psychologists call this work “personal growth groups”.
Well, there is logic in this — the twisted ones unbend, in neurotics the process of decomposition is suspended.
In these psychotherapeutic – excuse me, in personal growth groups, work is carried out with emphatic caution, people are taught that they are in contact with something very important, almost sacred – namely, with a soul that is so vulnerable and in which there are so many painful places. The first and most important thing that is learned in such groups is to find sore spots in the souls of others and, naturally, in their own, and having found them, work. Work is a very important concept, here it means: to look for the underlying causes of your sores, nesting in the dark fears of a difficult childhood, and sometimes not even yours. During the entire time of mental digging, you can’t poke into sore spots, but you can only stroke them and surround them with warmth.
The child coughed, his mother put on two caps, a sheepskin coat and put him in a warm bed.
If you like, professional patients are made of people at psychotherapeutic trainings.
When they began to conduct psychological trainings (such) with vigorous, lively counselors of the Eaglet, they began to walk more slowly, as if hypnotized, to constantly listen to their feelings, find a deep psychological justification for them and painfully react to attempts to direct them directly. In short, a year later, so that the counselors could again be allowed to see the children, in Orlyonok they began to look for other psychologists who could eliminate the consequences of the work of the previous ones.
So, about children — people who come to Sinton, I initially educate in a different way. Sinton least of all reminds me of a warm polyclinic, it is rather a vigorous stadium, although no one here sets the task of preparing champions. Here, in the Club, for classes, people come who want to get smart loads under the guidance of a fun and knowledgeable coach. Of course, the trainer will not allow a person with a dislocation or a sick person to train and send him to the doctor, but he will not listen to the sour whining “Oh, it’s hard for me” from everyone else.
Hard? Great, is that what you wanted?
And I call this kind of work serious work, even if during the lesson people would run and play glorious Tusiki Mutusiki. Here is a conversation I had with Igor.