Speculating In The Unconscious 10 Myths About Psychotherapy

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

Once I rushed to explain and tell everyone, I was a real apologist for psychotherapy (like all neophytes), I was eager to "cure everyone" … Now, when they ask me what I do, I joke with phrases like "I am an artist of the spoken genre." Those who really need me find me anyway

But I still wanted to talk about myths. There are too many of them. There are just myths, there are horror stories … You cannot cover everything. Let it be 10. A good number, like the 10 commandments. Am I Jewish or where?

Myth 1: Demonization. Psychotherapists and psychologists are the evil programmers of our consciousness. Before you have time to look around, they will change all the wiring in your head, and now you are no longer the Swan Princess, but a big crocodile.

Myth 2: Idealization. The therapist is a superman who knows no suffering or doubt. He cannot get divorced, break plates, yell at children, get depressed, make mistakes. Option "light": once this happened to him, but he experienced it all long ago, "worked" and now sparkles with ideally washed consciousness and subconsciousness at the same time.

Myth 3: Psychotherapy is the lot of psychos and weaklings. A normal person has no need for a cerebral. He swims up in the storms of life himself. Well, or does not come up, but drowns, like Chapaev, but always with his head held high.

Myth 4: It is he (she) who needs psychotherapy, not me. I am never tired of being amazed at how many people call me with the noble purpose of “fixing the horse,” especially when it comes to children.

A very fresh call.

- Anna, tell me, do you work with children? My daughter's child is in serious trouble.

Grandmothers very often call with this so that they would be healthy for us.

- No, but I can recommend a specialist for you. What's with your grandson?

- He is completely uncontrollable. Parents are just going crazy, there is no sickness with him.

- How old is he?

- A year and eight months.

A dumb scene …

Myth 5: The therapist is a blank slate. He does not bring any of his emotions, beliefs or opinions into the office. His attitude towards the client is sterile, like a disposable syringe. For this reason, his judgment is neutral, and he, like Heinlein's Impartial Witness, can give you an absolutely objective opinion - a kind of certificate with the seal "it really is."

Myth 6: Psychotherapists are themselves insane. Of course! What normal person willingly learns for many years to delve into other people's problems? True, then what to say about dentists and surgeons? Well, who do you have to be to strive with such persistence to pick someone else's teeth or guts?

Myth 7: Parents are to blame for everything. It is worth going to a psychotherapist for a couple of months - and you will be sure of this completely and irrevocably. Because it will become obvious to you what kind of trauma the semolina porridge inflicted on you, which you, choking, swallowed for two hours, a ball of foil on an elastic band, not bought near the circus, the door to the parent's bedroom that was not closed in time, the deceased pilot dad, who all these years lived in two bus stops, and the shameless fact that you were born without your consent. And what, one wonders, to do with all this good?

Myth 8: The therapy lasts for years and never ends. If you have already fallen into the clutches of the shrink, he will pull money out of you as much as he can until he builds a new house, educates four children in England, buys himself a third Bentley, or squeezes you dry. You will "hook" on him like heroin, and you won't even be able to sneeze without five therapy sessions.

Myth 9: A psychotherapist will solve all my problems. You just need to tell him and relax, then everything will go like clockwork, because I have already done my part of the work - I have come. Then his concern is what to do with my jealous wife, unsuccessful career, scandalous boss, restless child, insomnia and overprotective mother. The responsibility is on him, and I can breathe freely.

Myth 10: Therapy should only be in-person - no Skype. How can you trust the innermost iron box? It's like a drinking binge with non-alcoholic beer, a scandal with the beating of disposable dishes, and an orgy with rubber women. Or Sheckley's story about a machine therapist.

“Um,” said the Regenerator, “the patterns are the same. It should be so.

- What are the patterns?

“You,” the machine told him, “have a classic case of fim-mania, complicated by a strong dwark tendency.

- Really? I felt like I had a murder mania.

“This term has no meaning,” the machine said sternly, “so I dismiss it as meaningless.

R. Sheckley, "Therapy"