Psychotherapist reviews

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

Quite a few people reading from time to time ask themselves the question: does anyone really believe in all these little articles with the headlines "How to attract attention?", "How to learn to talk to your girlfriend?", "How to understand that he / she (underline) loves me? " And what will a professional psychologist say if he reads this nonsense? These people do not even suspect that a number of such articles are published with the blessing of eminent and recognized experienced psychologists. This is how the one that you are holding now, for example.

Question

Deviating reasoning slightly aside: do you know what the Oedipus complex is? I think that quite a few readers will be able to answer this question immediately and without any special problems. Even if intuitively, there is some knowledge in the field of psychology at the level of an average resident of a large city. Where does it come from? From Western (occasionally domestic) films, books and mass media. One of my editor was very fond of repeating the following phrase: "What is not on TV, that does not exist." Accordingly, the image of a psychotherapist that a real psychotherapist is forced to face when people come to see him is taken from there - from television programs, glossy magazines and not at all glossy newspapers. We'll talk about how this unfortunate psychotherapist is portrayed a little later. To begin with, a wonderful story that happened to one wonderful, really smart girl and illustrates the absurdity of the modern world.

She had an admirer - a common thing. And he asked her an equally common question: what was she reading. The girl listed a list of literature on jurisprudence and a couple of her favorite fiction books, and in response received the round eyes of a young man: "Well, you don't read women's magazines? But how do you know how to communicate with friends and seduce men?" The girl was embarrassed, because she did not know what to answer this question: she somehow managed to communicate with her friends and seduce men without the advice of ladies' literature. However, this situation clearly shows what role the media play in the life of ordinary people, about whom the publications themselves very often forget, subconsciously believing that readers are either much stupider than the authors, or think the same way, which means they will not believe in such nonsense. And the market for popular psychology is thriving, and psychotherapists are forced to disentangle it.

Who writes psychological articles most often? Certainly not psychologists. At best, students of psychological faculties, for whom this is some kind of part-time job. Moreover, editors often demand to write in such a way that even a third-grade student understands, and the volume does not exceed two sheets. It is quite simple to clearly explain to what extent the development of a psychological topic is crushed in such a case. But for this I will ask the reader to stand up and execute a few commands. Feet shoulder width apart. Hands along the body. Now, please jump. Fifteen minutes. Jump, jump, don't hesitate. Especially lazy people can simply strain their imaginations. Well, how? Nothing but hatred of the author and muscle pain will work in this case. But if we imagine that we have a gym, where the team is engaged twice a week with a good coach, and fifteen minutes of jumping is just a small part of the warm-up, and everything else is other exercises plus half an hour of playing, then it becomes clear that after six months the reader better or worse, but learn to play basketball. The author of a psychological article does not have a gym and no balls - he only has jumps. And at best, the advice of a coach. And as a trainer - a psychotherapist.

Let's continue the analogy:

You are a good coach. You are sitting at home in an armchair, drinking tea, and a journalist suddenly calls you and asks: "How can you make a super sportsman out of a frail sixth grader in half an hour? In two or three sentences, please." At best, the coach will choke on tea from such impudence and send the impudent away. But they call psychotherapists. And they ask: "Could you explain in two or three words how to forgive mom?" A good psychologist can write a book on this topic. Or two. Or at least a large scientific article. But not two or three sentences. However, he understands that the article will be published anyway, only without his comment it will be much more illiterate. And he is trying to rebuild his thinking at the level of a third grader in order to explain in two or three words how to forgive mom. Or how to resolve a conflict with a fifteen-year-old son. Or how to overcome depression after being fired.

Of course, any practicing psychologist understands that this article alone will not change anything. However, in their sum, they, to one degree or another, increase the psychological culture of society. If we again use the metaphor, then the reader, although he will not fall into the ring, will still throw the ball, and not gnaw, which is already a great progress. Now, in a romance novel, some simple Maria or Anna can throw to her blue-eyed lover that she is not his mother, even if he does not try to turn her subtle personality into the likeness of his mother. This means that there is already an understanding in the world, albeit a vague one: a man can treat a woman in a certain way only because he would like to treat or treat his own mother in the same way. Accordingly, there is some chance: if a problem arises, the person will not start it up to the crisis stage, but will go to a psychologist, about whom he read something somewhere, and will try to find a reasonable way out. More or less a reasonable way out.

Now many people accuse society of becoming cruel: a woman is capable of killing her child and throwing it into a trash can, children do not care about their parents. However, no one even thinks that there was no description of such cases before, due to the fact that it never occurred to anyone to be horrified by this. Women simply did not feed the child if they did not have a husband, and waited for him to die. Likewise, a hundred years ago, no wife would have thought to be indignant at her husband beating her: that was the norm. Thus, the society did not become more violent. On the contrary, it has become more reflective, it now has more responsibility for its actions. That is why psychotherapy appeared and began to develop a little more than a century ago. At first in the most educated circles, but gradually reaching more and more people. And psychotherapists are doing everything in their power to improve the psychological culture of people. It doesn't make their job easier, but it does give them some hope. How many can be helped by one specialist? Ten? Hundred? And how many people are suffering simply because in Russia there is still an opinion: if you go to a psychoanalyst, it means that you are sick, because the system of seeking psychological help has not yet been formed? Thousands? Tens of thousands? An outsider cannot understand this, but someone who sees desperate, lonely people every day becomes simply scared of how much he cannot do.

In Russia, they have always believed in the power of the printed word, and even psychotherapists are not deprived of this belief. And so they still make readers jump for fifteen minutes, giving useful advice, hoping that at least someone will make it to the gym and try to learn how to play a team game called life.