Is "Psychologist" A Fake Profession? Dedicated To The Day Of The Psychologist

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

Yesterday we celebrated the professional holiday "Day of the Psychologist". I forget about him all the time, because when I was still studying to be a psychologist, he was celebrated on another day. I finished work at the beginning of the eleventh evening, sat down to leaf through the FB feed, add congratulations to colleagues, was gathering my thoughts to write answers to congratulations from former clients, when suddenly one after another an article about the differences between a psychologist and a psychotherapist began to flash in the feed, beautifully and, as it were competently devaluing the profession of a psychologist. For the modern Internet, articles about who are good psychologists and who are bad are commonplace. Conventionally, we can say this: "as the teachers taught me, this is good, as they taught me to a colleague, there is no time to figure it out, so it's bad" … Well, it is obvious that my Teachers could not teach me something wrong and, accordingly, everything that is back to me cannot be good. Therefore, the article did not surprise me. But it hurt exactly that she was re-educated by psychologists. And it became unclear to me.

Why did a person spend 7 years of his life on some kind of vague theoretical profession, which is good only for giving lectures and suddenly what is more serious to send people to "real specialists" - psychotherapists? Psychocorrection suddenly became synonymous with psychotherapy, to which the psychologist supposedly has no right, private practice is something from the realm of fantasy, if you are not a psychotherapist (what will you practice if you are not a psychotherapist?), Supervision is also something magical, etc. d..

But then I began to remember how we studied and realized that the idea of the worthlessness of a psychologist is cultivated by the teachers themselves at the university. From the third course, some of them say, “you’re studying, you’ve already passed half the way, you’re not leaving, you graduate from 30 to 90 people a year and where will you go next? Who needs you with your psychology diplomas? have you seen somewhere living psychologists besides their teachers? Are you going to feed your family with something or go straight to the market? Well, okay, don't worry. Here we have a kind of course from a higher institution, everything is like in cultural America, there is a hare in it a duck, an egg, and in the egg the diploma of a psychotherapist "X". It doesn't matter how you studied and for whom, you just go through a series of transformations and you are already a psychotherapist with a fee in euros. " It will take 10 years after graduation and you will find out that this will neither increase your clients, nor will you receive a license, because there is no such unit, if you are not a doctor, not a single serious institution abroad recognizes you as a specialist, you will most likely be disappointed in the very direction, because as in any profession there will always be more questions than answers, etc. But that’s all later. Now remember that while you are a psychologist, you are nothing, a clerical rat and a theorist. If you want to achieve something, then only through a school of psychotherapy, and hang a psychologist's diploma on the wall, suddenly a check and you just seem to be an official specialist)

But do you know what I'll tell you in confidence? They said the same thing in honey. And in our Polytechnic they say so, and in the Institute of International Relations, and in the yurk - I learned. It's just that each profession has its own path of "initiation", someone needs to please the scientific supervisor, someone needs to pull up cases in the courts, someone to work at factories for free, etc. In any profession, by the end of the training, it is important to decide where you are going next and agree about the place of the potential employer. Nobody will put the finished work in your hands.

And then my colleagues come to work. Successful, interesting, but with a complex "under". Because they already have, of course, "eleven" diplomas about such and such schools, courses and subcourses, but does this give them the right to the secret? And other colleagues write like "I understand that you have been engaged in psychosomatics for 17 years, have conducted a number of studies and all that, but excuse me, your articles are in the nature of a claim to expertise, yuck."Come on, are you kidding? While the third, waving the crust of a certain institution that no one has heard of in the world except its graduates and founders, become "exotic" psychotherapists (because such a model allows you not to have either a psychological or medical education, but to be called a psychotherapist, and is not legally regulated in any way), and disseminate information that is not just not helpful, but frankly harmful. Because if you are "just a psychologist" no one "will buy" you. And vice versa, if you know something somewhere, feel free to call yourself a psychologist, because even real psychologists with diplomas do not really mean anything if they are not psychotherapists (if you don’t believe it, read the Internet).

So, 14 years ago, when I came to work at the school, the director asked me "what are you going to do?" I, stocked up with Rogov's handbook, answered "well, different, but what did the previous psychologist do?" “I don’t know, look in the papers,” said the director and simply gave the key to the office. I went through the same psychotherapeutic training a little earlier than I became a psychologist, but in reality it only helped me not to get scared when I don't know what to say. From everything it became clear that no one knows who a psychologist is and why he is needed at school. And some of the teachers immediately turned me on with the words "I myself am a psychologist here, I do not need your services" (well, in fact, this is also a consequence, because for the majority to this day "psychologist" is a common noun). But it soon became clear that the school subscribes to a journal of a practical psychologist without fail, in which there were various consulting cases, training programs, methods, forms, standards, and even imagine references to the current legislation on psychological service at school.

My work completely changed when I was summoned to the district, as it turned out that the psychologist does not obey the director of the school, but the psychological service - the older psychologist (and so on along the pyramid), and he does not work as it should, but according to the program specially approved by psychologists of psychologists, which includes work with parents and students and teachers. And this is not just about unnecessary testing or formal counseling for anyone, but also about the obligatory conduct of various trainings, the formation of skills, the analysis of difficult cases, correctional classes, personal consultations and parents and children and teachers, diagnostics and diagnostic conclusions, etc. it turned out that psychologists from different schools take turns receiving colleagues (a kind of Balint groups) where they present their work and achievements, share experience, best practices and just drink tea with cookies and communicate. So once we even went to a school located outside the city, and, oh Gods, it turned out that “our” psychologists also work in the villages, and the chief psychologist knows their problem families and current situations. And all this is regulated by functional responsibilities and regulations, and each psychologist reports on the results of the work, etc.

Do you understand? That is, not so long ago at the institute they told us that you are nobody and nowhere, but at work it turned out that the psychologist has everything in order to conduct normal practice. And the legal time for self-study (then it was 20 hours out of 40), and the salary of the psychologist at that time was higher than that of the most clogged teacher, and practice and supervision and the possibility of personal "therapy" (there was a schedule in the district when you can come for a personal consultation). And all this is intensive and with a certain degree of responsibility. The more I talked with my colleagues, the more I learned that this is how different government services work. Of course, each has its own characteristics, but each has its own structure and rules.

Psychologists undergo special multilevel training to work in the Ministry of Taxes and Duties, on the helpline, and crisis psychologists. The training of some military psychologists is simply incomparable with any NLP and hypnosis courses. A separate "caste" is a child or family psychologist, an organizational psychologist is all are not self-names, these are the professions behind which there is a special training program at the institute (the qualification level prescribed in the diploma), the legislative framework and the assigned functional duties, the professions whose work is regulated and constantly improved. Medical psychologists, who, among other things, conduct forensic examination (again according to the protocol, and not at their discretion), clinical psychologists who work in hospitals and many others (not only diagnose and advise, but carry out real and sometimes long-term psychological correction and rehabilitation, have special skills in dealing with trauma and psychological disorders). And so on, you can't list everything right away.

It turns out that without really encountering a profession, we live by the rumors of those people who have not really tried themselves somewhere further than the theory of psychology. But there is such a tricky nuance. If you are just a psychologist, judging by the articles on the Internet, you do not have the right to engage in psychotherapy until you receive a diploma in psychotherapist X. outside the law, you can neither conduct a private practice officially, nor get a job in a state institution to work as a psychotherapist)

But here we also have a stereotype that if a psychologist is a private, then he is "worthy", and if a psychologist is a state, then it means that there was not enough intelligence or money. In fact, the situation is that the further the more "private business" and "chronic nervousness" become synonymous. That is why many promising psychologists and psychotherapists sometimes do not withstand the "race" and leave for quieter positions and positions (imagine today, from our student group, I am the only one who has remained in the profession).

When many of us talk about psychologists, and even more so about psychologists here and abroad, they forget that everything is different everywhere. But legal education is always primary. There is no single ideal educational system in the world, somewhere medicine is better organized, somewhere worse, in each country defense and science follow different rails, but any model has its drawbacks. And abroad there are psychologists and psychotherapists from whom you want to flee and who walk along the edge of lawsuits. I always remind you that whatever your profession, remembering your student group, you can name on average 3-5 really strong students, but everyone will receive a diploma +/- 30. In any profession, we are looking for more prestigious universities, but in any profession a diploma is only the beginning of the path.

People know little about psychologists and partly because they learn more controversial and private information from the network. Therefore, before talking about psychologists with the public, the psychologist himself must begin to value and respect his profession, learn more about colleagues and the peculiarities of their real work. in places, not to mislead people with self-names and pseudo-psychological theories, but to be in the field of the law (including having diplomas confirming qualifications and profile), etc.

Yesterday I was very offended for my colleagues, because I am proud that I am a psychologist, I respect my profession, I appreciate those years that I did not sit at my desk, but spent in training, in experiment, and in teaching psychology according to my qualification level. I'm sorry if others did not have this, but this does not mean that the problem is in psychology, maybe someone just made a mistake in the university, did not know that different psychologists have different qualification programs at the institute, or they were unlucky with the teachers. This can happen in any profession. If a psychologist has studied for 5-7 years and does not understand the depth and strength of his specialty, then where are the guarantees that his training in psychotherapy did not go through the same course? If the psychologist does not understand the importance of his knowledge and skills, where are the guarantees that he does not continue to broadcast the private attitudes of the teacher of school X?

It seems to me that people will not have respect and understanding of the profession of a psychologist until the psychologist himself begins to value and respect his profession.