The Effectiveness Of Psycho-corrective Influence

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

At the very beginning of my professional activity as a body-oriented counselor psychologist, I faced the problem of assessing the results of my work by myself and my clients from the point of view of their condition after the completion of the entire process of psychocorrectional work.

As a rule, the client is based on his subjective feelings of the result. He has to deal with a very wide range of reactions. From "kissing hands" ("You are a real magician") to barely concealed irritation or even openly aggressive statements ("I wasted my time and money"). The latter is much less common, but the "aftertaste" from such an ending is much stronger, it makes you repeat the entire course of consultations over and over again in your head in order to find (as it seems) the cause of the mistake or to justify yourself and calm down.

Yes, yes, I know and I am ready to hear a lot of useful suggestions about personal psychotherapy and supervision, but, nevertheless, discussing similar situations with my colleagues, I clearly understand how difficult it is in everyday practice. I’m not talking about professional burnout; thank God, it doesn’t come to that. But the questions of assessing my own effectiveness still stand now, after a certain number of years, accumulated practice and ideas about the personal diversity of clients that have passed through my hands, soul and heart.

The impetus for writing the article was an excerpt from the book by Alyoshina Yu. E. Individual and family psychological counseling. - Ed. 2nd. - M.: Independent firm "Class", 1999. - 208 p. I want to cite this passage in full:

What exactly the psychocorrectional effect consists in, what its effectiveness is connected with, can be described for a very long time. Different schools of psychotherapy and their authors emphasize the importance of various factors in the provision of psychocorrectional effects; a leading role in this is given to catharsis, and a change in personal structures, and the acquisition of meaning, etc. (Freud 3., 1989; Frankl V., 1990, Rogers K., 1959). But, ultimately, the effect of psycho-corrective influence is a mystery, which is impossible to fully understand (and, perhaps, not worth it).

Like this!

Our clients, as a rule, choose the number of meetings themselves, based on their time and material resources. Some allow themselves a single meeting, others take the course. As a rule, term paper shows the greatest efficiency. Quite often, clients go to repeated courses in order to consolidate the result. And quite rarely, clients go for years, having solved their initial problem, and put more and more complex ones. But the majority, having expressed their opinion about the work done in hot pursuit, leave. Sometimes they leave a written review in the mail or on specialized resources such as B17 or Self-Knowledge. Further communication with the client is usually interrupted.

In principle, a person who turns to us for help should be better than he was “before”. If the client happily says that he really did feel better, then we can judge that the expected help was provided. But it also happens that only after a certain time the client realizes that he has begun to better understand his own problem and his actions have become more effective and environmentally friendly for him. It may be such that a person, "meeting" with the true one, experiences far from comfortable sensations, although such work is useful for subsequent changes.

It may happen that the client came not for changes, but for consolation, but was not understood by the consultant. In this case, after a while, such a client will have a feeling of dissatisfaction with the work done.

Psychologists learn about all this only in case of repeated treatment. The lack of reliable criteria for the effectiveness of work is forced to look for confirmation of it in different directions. For me, for example, it was very useful to use in practice the diagnostic computer complex "Lotos", which makes it possible to quickly assess the physical and psycho-emotional state of the client at the beginning of each session and after its completion. A very simple and clear picture of the changes, which is understandable to customers, is displayed on the screen and can be presented in color printout. Accumulating, information on the results of the work allows the client to form an assessment of the effectiveness of the entire course, both immediately after the end of the work and in the more distant future.

Of course, the use of instrumented diagnostics does not solve all problems. Any diagnosis is imperfect. But diagnostics on "Lotus" fits well into the psychotherapeutic process. The client has one more opportunity to draw objective conclusions about the effectiveness of work and about the processes taking place with him.

In other cases, I am helped by the constantly improving "third" position to the psychocorrectional process as a research, invaluable for increasing my own competence and work efficiency. Body-oriented psychotherapy, in my personal opinion, provides the broadest opportunities for self-improvement.

I would very much like to know the opinion of fellow practitioners, is this a problem for you? If so, how do you solve it for yourself? The opinion of clients who have already had experience in psychotherapy is also very interesting.