Which Direction In Psychology To Choose?

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

“Your opinion as a gestalt therapist is interesting. You have now gone into psychoanalysis. I heard that these two directions are very different, and it is rather difficult to combine them. Do you think you manage to switch? Why did you decide to go into psychoanalysis? What was missing in the gestalt?"

So, let's sort out the question of the subscriber in order.

I left not from the direction, but directly from the person. I wanted to communicate with another therapist, and that moment was fundamentally important for me. I knew my therapist for 10 years, we had 7-8 years of joint therapy, and, in my opinion, we got stuck. I wanted to hear a different opinion in response to my situation, as if to undergo therapy again. Relatively recently, I devoted a year to psychoanalysis, there was no more time, so it became interesting for me to try from the inside.

The second factor that influenced my decision was the setting. When I changed therapist, it was important for me to receive therapy more than once a week, and psychoanalysis provides for 3 sessions a week (I like it and it suits me).

“Doesn't the explanation of the motives of a person's behavior from psychoanalysis and being in contact with him directly at the gestalt session get in the way? How and what attracted you after the gestalt was psychoanalysis?"

I understand for sure that now is the century of integration, all directions are more or less interconnected. In principle, nowhere else is there such a pure direction. Absolutely all areas of psychology and psychotherapy that you now know come from psychoanalysis. The founder is Uncle Freud, everyone else is already following him. Frederick Perls, the founder of gestalt therapy, studied with Freud, then took offense at him and decided to create his own direction, a little mixing the fundamental principles with various Buddhist views (about the here and now, about feeling). In general, however, even teaching gestalt is based on psychoanalysis.

How are other directions different? Psychoanalysis, gestalt, depth psychotherapy, existential psychotherapy are more or less similar to each other. Behavioral approaches, cognitive behavioral therapy, NLP, neurolinguistic programming - these approaches are more focused on action (you are scared - go and do; you are anxious - stop doing, and it will become less anxious). It works for some people, it helps someone. Hypnosis generally occupies a separate niche, although somewhere it intersects with behavioristics (point study). I am inclined to believe, like many of my clients, that both the behavioral approach and hypnosis "fly off" - I still want to deeply understand my psyche, traumas, realize traumatic situations and, at a conscious level, figure out what to do if these experiences arise again. Psychoanalysis, gestalt and depth psychotherapy work very well with retrauma - here we study all aspects of the problem and the reaction of the human psyche as deeply as possible. Here is another example of the connection between directions - one of the founders of the Gestalt approach in the Russian-speaking space, Daniil Khlomov, was a behaviorist in the past.

In our time, everything is so intertwined and intertwined that it is quite difficult to find boundaries. We live in a century of integrated psychology and psychotherapy - every more or less successfully practicing psychotherapist knows at least 2 directions (possibly three). From my own experience, I can say that although I am an opponent of the behaviorist approach, I still periodically give clients “take and do” tasks, and it works very well. That is why it is important to be able to juggle directions.

Which specialist is better to contact, which direction to choose, does it not contradict one another? The answer is simple - how can they contradict if everything came out of psychoanalysis? My opinion is that there are no contradictions even in the esoteric direction or religion, in astrology or Vedic principles! All directions are interconnected, in any genre there is a grain of psychological truth. Many points written in the Bible are quite commensurate with important mental factors. Another thing is how we read it all! Learn to read commensurate with yourself, because even high-quality, deep psychoanalytic literature can be read by passing through your traumatic perception and distorting the information, respectively, having perceived everything not quite so. However, it is rather difficult to say now what is right and wrong - each person should have their own rules.

If you choose a psychotherapist, do not get hung up on the direction, choose a person who appeals to you - you are pleased to listen to him and hear him, you want to open up. There is something in his face or appearance that evokes a response in your soul, you feel that he could feel and hear you. Pay attention to inner moments, your sensory perception. Of course, in the office you may be disappointed - you expected the person to listen to you well, but he talks a lot, but you want the opposite.

Try to voice your desires out loud, it didn't work out - maybe this is not your person. Look further - at least 1-2 introductory consultations are considered the norm. For example, when choosing a psychologist, acquaintances bypassed 3-4 specialists before making a final decision. Yes, on the one hand, these are risks and money - it's not very pleasant that you spent money on 1 consultation, but all this is not just that! First, you want to get a great therapist. Secondly, you nevertheless spoke out, told something about yourself and thereby removed some of the stress from your psyche, and this is also important for your body.