Professional Fairy Tales, Or What A Psychologist Needs To Remember

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Recently I chatted with a colleague about life, children and clients. She congratulated me on the next release of the book "Fairy stories through the eyes of a psychotherapist", co-authored with Gennady Maleichuk. And somehow we jumped to the topic of how favorite children's fairy tales affect life

“Look at my oldest daughter,” a colleague said with a laugh. - Cooking food, cleaning, washing dishes - in fact, running a household in our huge family. And he never murmurs. Once for three days it fell out - everyone howled: there is no food, there is a mountain of dishes in the sink, no one can find anything, there is a mess everywhere … Do you know what her favorite fairy tale was in her childhood? Guess!

I, of course, shrugged my shoulders - how should I know! What a fortune teller I am:)

“Fedorin’s grief,” said a colleague triumphantly. - I asked him to read it a hundred times a day. And here it is happiness - washes and washes, brings and brings order to the house.

Of course, we laughed, and later I wondered - does our favorite children's fairy tale affect our professional behavior? And since a colleague was nearby, and only last week my graduate student defended her dissertation, which is why my brain still continues to work in terms of "hypotheses", "evidence" and "factors", I asked what fairy tale she was in childhood loved most.

-Polish tale "The Apprentice of Death", - instantly answered a colleague. - The idea is this - the guy saved Death itself, and she taught him the craft of a doctor and gave him the ability to heal those who have it at their feet, warning that if it is at the head of a person has no chance. But he violated her order several times, "outwitting" her - he changed the places of the headboard and legs. So he saved three people.

Then death took him to a cave and showed that each person has his own candle. When it burns out, his life ends. Extending the life of others, he does it at his own expense - his candle of life is shortened … And the flame of his candle barely hesitated - he gave part of his life forces to the saved people. He only needed to pour the wax back - and his life would go on, but these people would die. And the guy refused, saying to death that he did not regret anything, and if he had one more life, he would have gone the same way. Death touched his eyes, and they closed forever …

This story shook me to a shiver. It described our professional activities very metaphorically and strongly. After all, the hours spent with clients, adding up to weeks, months and years - this is our life. We spend it next to those who entrusted us with their misfortune, their pain, their fear, shame, doubts. And we try to help the Other, sometimes forgetting that time is the only irreplaceable resource, that not everyone can be helped and that sometimes we need someone to take us to a cave and show us the “candle of our life”.

Why am I thinking about this? Because many colleagues work selflessly, forgetting about themselves. I hear stories of psychologists from Ukraine helping the families of the ATO servicemen. I see colleagues from Belarus working 50-60-70 hours a week. I am amazed at my colleagues from Russia, who travel and fly in different cities and towns, who have forgotten what it means to “sleep in your bed”. And it would be easy to reduce everything to greed and lack of development, lack of personal therapy and supervision … But many of them work for a penny. Their work can be safely called altruistic - therefore there are cases where there is no other way to explain the helping motivation.

I do not pretend to generalize. All psychologists are different. I just think, reflect and share it with you. Because I really like structured colleagues with good boundaries, calm and dispassionate, having answers to every question. And at the same time, I really love my colleagues, who are ready to help not only friends, but also the client at any time of the day (… she is in a serious crisis, and I allowed her to call at any time, if necessary), are ready to reduce the price (… I understand that this is about borders, but he is a boy, he is 19 years old, and I am ready to help him for a nominal fee), they generously share their knowledge (… yes, this seminar was just insanely expensive, but I will gladly share the materials with you) …

Our profession rests on both. Some are “law enforcers”: they observe borders, defend rules, create rituals. Others are passionate, ardent, believe in their mission, ready, like missionaries, to take psychotherapy to Africa and Asia, to help those who are looking for help. I also recall Erich Fromm, who tried to make psychotherapy available not only to the rich, and Freud, who disinterestedly helped impoverished patients, and Marie Bonaparte, who bought Freud from the Nazis … Nobody asked them for anything. They, like the Apprentice of Death from a Polish fairy tale, consider it their professional duty.

I started thinking about our profession when I got to the hospital. It was so difficult for me to stop, because I promised my colleagues … I promised clients … I promised listeners … graduate students … graduate students … graduate students … But then I turned off - and life goes on. Yes, there are difficulties due to my absence, but everything is moving, all processes are taking place, despite my "disconnection". And I understand that many of my worries were in vain - everyone copes without me. This is the time to feel sad and think about myself - something that I so diligently avoid. The beautiful Melanie Klein with her depressive position gives hope, because only in the experience of sadness, depression and loneliness a person has a chance to change his life. And it is sometimes easier for a psychologist to live "on the edge of someone else's nest", reliving the stories of clients, empathizing, sympathizing, helping - so as not to experience their own pain, vulnerability, loneliness and uselessness. And that when we sacrifice something - time, strength, energy, finances - it is important that we do it consciously, abandoning the idea of omnipotence. When you do not because you have to, but because you cannot do otherwise. And when you can stop to think about the meanings, values, your own and someone else's life.

It's about sad things. To quickly jump out of such reflections, I started a survey on FB, trying to find out from fellow psychologists who loved which fairy tale in childhood. I think that every fairy tale is multifaceted and multifunctional - it has a main character and several key characters. When the first hundred answered (one could mention several favorite fairy tales), the top lined up as follows:

• 8 votes out of 100 were collected by "The Wizard from the City" and "Cinderella" with variations of the story (Three nuts for Cinderella);
• 7 out of 100 scored "The Snow Queen";
• 6 out of 100 for "Three stories about a baby and Carlson";
• 5 out of 100 - Beauty and the Beast;
• 4 out of 100 - from "Pippi Long Stocking", "Little Mermaid" and "Flower-Seven-Flower";
• 3 out of 100 scored "Buratino", "Scarlet Flower", "Kolobok" and "Dunno";
• 2 out of 100 each - Aibolit, Twelve Months, Thumbelina, Dwarf Nose, Little Humpbacked Horse, Little Havroshechka, Niels's Journey with Wild Geese, The Princess and the Pea, Ronya's daughter of a robber”,“Flame”,“Sleeping Beauty”;
• 1 mention out of 100 - "The Bremen Town Musicians", "Vasilisa the Beautiful", "The Ugly Duckling", "Wild Swans", "Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors", "Puss in Boots", "Mowgli", "Frost", "The Tale of the Lost time "," The Tale of Ivan Tsarevich, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf "," The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish "," Finist Clear Falcon ".

Of course, these are the tales of the post-Soviet and Slavic space. We read what was available, what was approved and what we liked. "Leaders" is a domestic retelling of "The Wizard of Oz" with changes and additions - "The Wizard of the Emerald City" by A. Volkov and "Cinderella" with changes and additions.

The journey of the girl Ellie to the great Goodwin is one of the variations of the hero's journey with magical assistants, as a result of which he acquires a new identity. If we consider Ellie as a therapist, we will notice that she herself is suffering, insecure, but finding the strength to go further with her new friends - clients to the goal - the Wizard of the Emerald City. Only the goal turns out to be fictitious, the Wizard is fake, which is quite consistent with reality. Clients come for wisdom, courage and brains, and then find out that they were looking for friendship, love and reliable affection. In the metaphor of this fairy tale, Ellie the psychologist is the one who was "carried" into the territory of clients by a hurricane. And only relying on herself, on her resources (magic shoes!), Ellie can return home without staying forever in the "Land of Oz". "Traps" for a psychologist:

"How did I end up here?" (what kind of wind brought me into this profession),

"What can I, I'm just … (a little girl, a novice psychologist, an insecure professional)", "What do I want?" (return home - or stay forever in the Magic Land, dissolve in clients, start playing other people's games, fight in other people's wars), "How can I deal with this?" (narcissistically, relying only on oneself, or using the resources of clients and the environment).

Cinderella is the second most popular fairy tale. Comments are superfluous. The therapist-Cinderella diligently washes the “client's therapeutic field”, is empathic, kind, selfless. But do not forget about her second pole - the eyes of the sisters were pecked out by Cinderella's helper birds. So the "traps" for the therapist - lover of this fairy tale are obvious: suppression of natural auto-expression, outbursts of rage (sometimes at the client, and sometimes at home, and it is not clear which is worse - the client "without a peephole" or his own family), suppressed "normative" envy, insults … Gennady Maleichuk and I analyzed this tale in some detail.

Let me emphasize: it can be interpreted in different ways. But it is obvious that the Cinderella therapist has no time to study (she is poor and busy all the time), she does not have a professional support group (she is very lonely, her mother has died, and her father's figure is weak, that is, Cinderella cannot rely on either her therapist or supervisor), it looks bad (and according to S. Strong's research, attractiveness is a necessary condition for reducing the client's resistance). So be aware, be aware and be aware!

Well, and the third tale that closes our top three is "The Snow Queen". Gerda therapist is somewhat similar to Cinderella, only she saves a very specific and familiar person. Such a therapist, going on a "journey", relies on the thesis of O. Kernberg: "No diagnosis - no patient." First you need to establish contact, understand who is in front of you, and then make a decision: whether your client is a patient, whether there are enough competencies, strength and desire …

Gerda therapist knows about the difficulties and dangers that lie in wait for her on therapeutic paths and paths, knows how to find a way out of this situation through her authenticity, empathy, responsibility and courage and ability to take risks. She grows and matures on a therapeutic journey. Cons - for the "heroic rescue" of freezing boys forgets about himself, and the price for this, as I wrote at the beginning, is usually quite high.

This is how he is, a domestic psychologist-psychotherapist: a little confused and scared, but active, like Ellie; zealous and prone to codependency and holiness, like Cinderella, but capable of inflicting pain due to previous suppression of their rejected reactions; selfless, responsible and courageous, but very sacrificial, like Gerda.