2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
The responsibilities and obligations of the professional psychologist within the communities are governed by an ethics document. The ethical code of the psychologist includes a clear distribution of the rights and responsibilities of both the therapist and the client. But in this article I would like to touch upon another aspect of obligations and consider them in the plane of the emotional experience of oneself as a specialist working with a fragile substance - the human soul.
I tried to structure and describe this process from my own practical experience. I think each of us who is an expert in this area has gone his own way. Maintaining your authenticity in a variety of psychotherapeutic methods is a rather difficult task.
What obligations does a psychologist take in the process of his formation and in psychological work with people?
The internal work that a specialist does before meeting with a client, in many cases, is associated with the experience of anxiety in front of new psychic material. Anxiety signals to the psychologist that they have made a commitment to do their job well. It is always present, regardless of the professionalism of the psychologist, only its level changes.
Anxiety conveys a signal - can I cope with understanding the client, with my feelings that the client raises in me, understanding what he needs now to change his own life, seeking resources from the client and whether I can provide him with support. These questions allow one to reflect on what allows the psychologist to make commitments and fulfill them.
The art of conversation
The first is the ability to maintain a conversation or the art of conversation. In order for a specialist to establish contact, sincerity and a genuine, lively interest in what the client came with is necessary. The presence of all your attention and the desire for joint research of the client's material is a very important factor of trust that is established between the psychologist and the client. The ability to see the main thing, to concentrate on the "little line at the bottom" is the focus of control, which is necessary for a specialist to isolate the most important. That is, the specialist assumes obligations with all his being to be present next to the client, to be sincere and disposed. Psychologists working at a deep level understand how difficult this is due to their emotional responses and countertransference reactions. That is why a high-quality work of a psychologist is connected with his personal being outside of work. But more on that later.
Comprehension of depth
The next thing that helps a specialist to cope with his / her obligations is to understand the depth of the client's case. With a superficial perception, the psychologist has a risk of categorical and unipolar thinking. But if we begin to comprehend the depth of a situation, interaction or fact from life, look at it from different angles, exploring the necessity of this event, then we keep the most important thing - the integrity of thinking or the balance of the objective and subjective. It is precisely the holding of two poles and the search for the third, which could ease the tension between them, is for the psychologist the comprehension of depth. Any evaluative position forms guilt or accusation in relation to the client and, accordingly, in relation to himself as a specialist. It is in this neutrality of the perception of the situation that the answer is contained, which can be found together with the client.
Combining the two conditions, it can be formulated as follows: I accept the obligation to be close to the client, to observe my being next to him and to be aware of it to the extent that it is now acceptable for me.
I am not next to the client in the event that I begin to assess his life, advise or assert myself, because I do not explore his world and our space of interaction, I do not look for answers, but I take the position that I know everything about the client, I distance myself, I show him lack of interest, not being around him.
If I am genuine, conscious and consistent, I have basic values in the image of a person, for example, non-violence, not harming the life and health of another person, the fundamentality and versatility of thinking, including philosophy, the culture of the country in which I practice, respect and responsibility towards the client, openness, reflexivity and criticality of one's own position, then the undertaken obligations will help a person to cope with the most difficult and dramatic problems of his life.
Intrapersonal processes
The intrapersonal processes of both the specialist and the client are the psychologist's next voluntary commitment. The specialist understands his intrapersonal conflicts to the extent to which he is available at a given time. And his obligation is to understand both his projections and the transference in relation to the client. To fulfill this obligation, the specialist voluntarily undergoes personal work with his psychologist. This important component allows him not to use the client for his own purposes or to satisfy his needs. The supervisor gives the specialist the opportunity to understand the intrapersonal interaction with the client himself. We cannot catch one hundred percent of the messages from the client and we lose sight of something, and it is supervision that is able to return this material to us.
The intrapersonal interaction of the psychologist and the client raises a lot of transference, countertransference reactions, acting out and shows a wide variety of psychological defenses of both participants in psychological work. In such a variety of psychological phenomena and processes, it is important for the psychologist to navigate, to be able to interpret them and return the client to consciousness for subsequent changes that the client brings into his life. Thus, the psychologist performs constant psychological work, strengthening his professional identity and gaining knowledge that serve as a puzzle and make it possible to fulfill the obligations assumed.
The psychologist's own existence is also reflected in his professionalism. The obligations assumed in relation to one's life, health, the fulfillment of universal human values in relation to oneself is also a confirmation of the beingness that the psychologist brings to his office.
CG Jung wrote "every psychotherapist has not only his own method, but is himself such a method" (CG Jung 1945, 198). Integration of one's own life experience, understanding one's own needs, both physiological and emotional, leads the psychologist to experience his own well-being and to deep satisfaction with life. J. Winner in his book "Supervision Supervision" mentions Parsons, who writes: “understanding grows due to the integration of what is learned from the outside, with what acquires meaning from the inside; in this case, the theory in the consulting room will be the theory that analysts themselves have understood on the basis of personal experience."
Thus, a person who has chosen the profession of a psychologist undertakes obligations to be authentic, genuine, truthful and sincere, which allows him to subsequently lead the client to his own authenticity.
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