Bore_psychologist. Important About Important

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

In one collection of "clinical cases of psychology" a case was described, in the foreshortening of which I want to reflect, and also hook a little on the topic of "predictability" of actions, as well as touch on the topic of psychotherapeutic schools.

The described case was about the interaction of a psychotherapist and a client, where the second demonstrated “indicative suicidal behavior” for the sake of manipulating people. If we turn to science studying the laws of social actions and mass behavior of people, as well as the relationship between the individual and society, then statistically this phenomenon is compressed to a small percentage of suicide, where it is almost impossible to commit. The client did not show frustration, dissociation, but quite “predictable” and “normal” behaviors. How did this story end? Suicide.

When a psychotherapist demonstrates a belief in the possibility of predicting the client's actions, behavior or reactions, this obscures his eyes, makes him act thoughtlessly and self-confidently, demonstrating that he knows the person better than he does and this inevitably leads to mistakes, sometimes fatal.

Indeed, there are statistics indicating various phenomena that describe massive, identical elements of behavior in different situations, but this is about “phenomena”, and not specific (particular) cases.

This is probably why existential-humanistic philosophy is closest to me. I know that I do not know and every time I move in a new way, getting to know each other, immersing myself and interacting.

Here I would like to quote D. Bujenthal as a result of the above:

“Each person in front of us is like a great ocean, we splash on the shallows, we wander along the shore, but we dare not, we cannot penetrate its depths or get to distant shores. We do not know where the anomalies are contained in this endless place, every time we are like children who were first brought to the beach. Full awareness of the deeper, more comprehensive, more fundamental role of the subjective means the establishment of an entirely new paradigm - not only in psychology, but also in science; not only in science, but also in human existence; and, perhaps, not only in human being, but in being itself."

All psychotherapists differ from each other in the same way as specialists in any other field, but there is still a huge difference in belonging to their confession. I studied and belong to the existential-humanistic direction, based on the work of such famous psychotherapists (and philosophers) as L. Binswanger, Heidegger, S. Kierkegaard, M. Boss, J. Bujenthal.

This philosophical school implies that each person is unique, and each new meeting is a new acquaintance. I want to repeat a recent thought, when a psychotherapist demonstrates a belief in the possibility of predicting the client's actions, behavior or reactions - this obscures his eyes, makes him act thoughtlessly and self-confidently, demonstrating that he knows a person better than himself and this inevitably leads to mistakes, sometimes fatal …

The school of V. E. Vasilyuk (very similar in philosophy to Bugenthal), namely that understanding psychotherapy is not a question-answer, but a dialogue between two people. A person already reveals all experiences, sensations, desires in what he says. Of course, questions are present, as in any dialogue, but they are not a regular guest and the primary tool that turns interaction into an analogue of interrogation.

Despite the diversity of many psychotherapy schools, they all have their own tools for working with the client. We show different things in our work: co-communion, sympathy, co-experience, at the same time the rigidity of boundaries and softness of acceptance, as well as the right to separateness and attention to the person sitting opposite, and this is only a small part of that “arsenal” what we are using.

Since I have touched on the topic of the client-patient, I would like to write separately that I myself do not really like these two terms. The word "patient" implies an inert object on which the doctor is practicing. And for me this is the most contradictory concept within this modality. But what about the “client”? The word itself is very saturated with commerce, that it is mentioned on every corner - for example, client S. R. U. (for me, it was once a revelation that they shorten that way). If you compromise with yourself, I systematically alternate these two terms, which you can sometimes observe even in my texts.

Sorry for the digression, back to the topic.

When a patient enters the office for the first time (without any previous experience of working with a psychotherapist), it often happens that all this is new to him, threatening, alarming, at such moments a person begins to start “formal communication”, this is a kind of communication that we use when interacting with people of authority, with those who pay attention only to our external side, with those whom we are trying to impress or win favor.

In the psychotherapeutic school, the work of which I adhere to, there are several levels of communication:

▶ Formal communication;

▶ Maintaining contact;

▶ Standard attitude;

▶ Critical circumstances;

▶ Intimacy;

▶ Personal and collective unconscious.

Different levels of communication are important in their own way and to understand, to feel the need to move from one state to another - this is the psychotherapeutic art of our direction. Simply put, the therapist must find the right balance.

So I set myself the pace for future publications on the topic.