Contents
The University of Practical Psychology, in order to realize its lofty goals, must provide not only high technologies of the educational process, but also have clear worldview guidelines. These guidelines for us are determined by the synton approach developed by the main staff of its teachers, and we understand our worldview base and mission as follows.
Practice must be scientific
It is easy to build any theories about a person and the laws of his life, if you do not define the concepts that you use, replace logical coherence with the attractiveness of the story, and replace evidence with illustrations that remind you that something similar happens in life sometimes. In live communication, this is enough, but practical psychology should be not only the art of the magic of speech, but also a science. The University of Practical Psychology should be based on a scientific approach and form a scientific approach in practical psychology.
Of course, these are very serious requirements. In life, feelings can be good, but in science we rely on reason, logic and facts. In the scientific worldview, any constructions have a strict and coherent structure, are built from clear conceptual bricks, each brick must be based on another brick, and any detail of theoretical constructions must be tested for strength. There is no place for mysticism in science; at the basis of scientific theories there can be no ideas about the Higher Forces arbitrarily interfering in earthly life.
Today, practical psychology is filled with mysticism, spells and esotericism: the science of secret knowledge. Esotericists will tell you truths that are open only to them, and mystics are sure that with good contact with the Higher Forces, they will make the tram go in the opposite direction at the right time.
The University of Practical Psychology will see to it that psychologists carry into Russian culture not medieval spells or belief in spirits, but a well-constructed, practical science.
Science must be practical
We need science, but science must be practical. A scientific theory is worthless if it is not clear what to do with it, if it has no practical way out. Now, when the already established psychological practice overtakes theory, academic psychology must come out of its crystal castle and begin to explore and comprehend those fields that are already bearing fruit through the efforts of practicing psychologists. Psychology textbooks should reflect not only what fellow scientists think, but also what fellow practitioners have been successfully doing for many years. New psychology textbooks must be written in human language, as William James and Sigmund Freud, Abraham Maslow and Viktor Frankl wrote.
In psychology, the soul must appear, the focus of psychologists can and should be such topics as the mission and meaning of life, faith and hope, joy, responsibility, conscience. That’s life. If practical psychology does not deal with these topics, it is out of life.
The Combination of Male and Female Approaches in Practical Psychology
Girls are brought up as women, boys as men. Male and female is not sex, it is gender. If the world has created both a man and a woman, then both worlds must be respected. Unfortunately, modern academic science is built almost exclusively on the male model, and modern practical psychology is built almost exclusively on the female model.
Women’s conversations about feelings men do not like and do not really understand. If we want men to understand psychologists, we must learn to speak not only the language of women, but also the language of men, the language of actions, the language of behavior.
The feminine approach is softness and flexibility, the masculine approach is directness and strength. And it is not true that directness and force give rise only to protests and psychotrauma, in capable hands they create discipline and respect for reasonable demands.
Women love to talk and understand themselves. Men value action and the transformation of the outside world. It is necessary to understand oneself, but the most effective psychotherapy is reality therapy, when people stop delving into themselves, feel sorry for themselves and start doing business.
Love is not only understanding, feeling, warmth and unconditional acceptance according to the female model. We must remember that love in an adult male language is also demanding, specific scenarios, agreements and discipline. If we do not learn to combine this, men and women will no longer understand each other.
Kindness is not only in helping the weak and treating the sick, but also in respect for the strong and healthy, in creating for them real prospects for growth and development.
We value reason, because all the best in the world is created by thinking people. If someone’s head prevents him from living, then the way out is not to turn off the head and live with feelings, but for the head to start working properly and be where it should be, above all other organs. Feelings make the body alive, the mind directs the feelings, and a person must control his mind, understand his feelings and be friends with his body. Only in this case a person becomes a person, that is, a responsible subject of will.
Psychotherapy must be balanced by developmental psychology
Practical psychology grew out of psychotherapy, out of the practice of helping problem people who couldn’t cope with the challenges of life. Working with fears, resentment, mental pain, loss of oneself, psychotherapeutic assistance in fact, today, is the main content of the work of a practical psychologist. The main body of psychological tests reliably measures personal weaknesses and human pathology, helplessly stopping before a personality that is not just healthy, but developed and built.
Practical psychology today is not only primarily psychotherapy, but psychotherapy is almost always with a female face. 80% of the contingent of requests to psychologists are women. First of all, women also go to study as psychologists, and it is the female approach that today is predominant in the established psychological practice. And if the masculine approach is characterized by certainty and decisiveness, then the feminine approach is characterized by a blurred position and caution.
A person needs to be talked to, a person needs help, a person needs to be understood, a person needs to be warmed up … The feminine approach to psychotherapy is characterized by the conviction that attempts to intervene, influence only exacerbate problems, and instead of fighting, accept the best that happened. General position «I’m small, the world is big.»
We believe that people are not helpless. that people can set goals and achieve them successfully, overcoming difficulties. The male approach is less conversational, it is more pronounced in the behavioral, cognitive-behavioral approach: erroneous behavior is a consequence of incorrect learning. It is necessary not only to warm and heal, but equally to teach.
When healthy people are seen as sick, healthy people become sick sooner or later. Going deeper into problems and speaking the language of problems, we only multiply problems. Healthy people live not with problems, but with goals and objectives. Personal development is not only work with mental pain and resentment, not the treatment of the soul, it is the setting of development goals, the development of skills, the development of skills, exercises and trainings. Personal development is first and foremost learning.
Public orientation
Society is not an environment hostile to the individual, but a natural and main tool for the development of the individual. Society is not an abstract category from boring textbooks, it is you and me, these are our friends, these are our children and our parents. Public interests are not a fiction that forces a person to take care of someone else, but the main personal value of a developed personality. The consumer society is a reality, but it is not appropriate for psychologists to educate only consumers. A practical psychologist is not only a psychologist, but also a teacher, reminding people that each of us should be useful to other people, producing therapy with the meaning of creative, socially significant activity.
Cooperation
The collaborative approach in modern practical psychology is clearly lacking. Dear fellow psychologists, everyone works on their own, different approaches in NLP are not friendly with each other, NLP and psychoanalysis snort at each other, humanistic psychology scolds the behavioral approach … We think this is both strange and unacceptable. Psychologists are one of the best representatives of high Russian culture, and in order to preserve and develop culture, it is necessary to look for ways of understanding and cooperation. If psychologists cannot understand each other and agree among themselves on cooperation, what can they seriously teach other people?
Big tasks can only be successfully solved together. Building the scientific foundations of practical psychology, combining the efforts of various psychological schools and trends is a huge task, but only along this path will we create a psychology that will really work for the revival of Russia.