Author's Note: This is an excerpt from the article "Gratitude and Gifting in the Therapeutic Relationship." The article was published in full in the journal "EXISTENTIA: psychology and psychotherapy" 3/2010 pp. 248-258 I found the most important and essential words about gratitude for me in the works of the Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin. He writes: “...in order to find the path to renewal, deepening and inspiration of its culture, humanity must learn to give thanks and build its spiritual life on gratitude. To be grateful means to appreciate what is given; see your natural and spiritual wealth; extract from your inner world what is contained in it. To create, create and improve, and not to own, dispose of and enjoy. Every moment, as it were, tests us whether we are ripe for gratitude and whether we know how to give thanks. Gifts are given to us not for life's use or abuse, but for study, interpretation, amazement and joy. And these are the gifts that we could accept: space, time, living matter, mental abilities, spiritual powers. What is gratitude? This is the response of a living, loving heart to a benefit shown to it. It responds with love to love, joy to kindness. This joy flares up on its own, freely, naturally, and leads with love - free and sincere. A person accepts a gift - and rejoices not only in the gift received, but also in the kindness of the giver. His love and His being and, finally, the fact that this kindness awakens love in the soul of the most gifted. A gift is a ray that requires response radiation. He appeals immediately to both the heart and the will. The will makes decisions; she wants to respond and begins to act; and this action renews life with love and kindness. When a person sees the inexhaustible gifts of God before him, then very soon a feeling arises in him that he will never be able to fully respond to this inexhaustible goodness... therefore those who, having spent their lives in contemplation and thanksgiving, they end it with the prayer: “Lord forgive me that I did not have enough love and joy to love you above all and rejoice in your creations”...Gratitude is, to a greater extent, a “yes” answer to reality, what's happening, life. This answer is a person’s acceptance of those events, people, conditions, sometimes difficult, that were sent to him. Feeling gratitude is typical for someone who has worked hard, suffered, knows differences, and values ​​life. What is the place of gratitude in therapy? A common point of view is that gratitude is present at the last stage of therapy, being one of the indicators of its effectiveness. Agreeing with her, I would like to suggest focusing on the quality of gratitude - ingratitude not only as a characteristic of the result, but considering it as the essence that, manifesting itself in one form or another and to a degree, accompanies the therapeutic relationship constantly from the very beginning to its completion. In my opinion, the therapeutic relationship itself is a place where both the client and the therapist have the opportunity to become more grateful. The therapist needs to have an understanding of his ability to be grateful. This idea is formed, among other things, through one’s personal therapy and supervision. Giving is believed to be a moral behavior characteristic of the helping professions. But this ability alone is not enough. The ability to give unselfishly is mirrored with the ability to gratefully receive. If there is no ability to accept, gratitude, among other things, one can doubt the selflessness of the helper. When the therapist is deprived or limited in the ability to receive with gratitude, this also limits his ability to help the client. In my opinion, from the very first meeting, in the perspective of understanding the client, it is important to keep a series of questions, trying to answer them: how grateful or ungrateful is the client entering therapy to this moment; what, in my opinion, are the prospects for the development of this quality in him. Most often, at the moment of coming to the therapist, the client is separated fromyour feeling of gratitude. It is difficult for him to accept the situation in which he now lives; he is in conflict with people, at odds with himself; experiences more feelings that can be summarized with the word “no” - irritation, anger, resentment, anger, etc. The client may be incapable of gratitude situationally, at a given period of life. A negative perception of the world in general may be more characteristic of his character. Indeed, the ability to experience and express gratitude is associated with the most powerful experience early in life, in relationships with parents. Among the most ungrateful clients are those whose experiences include a lack of parental care and attention, and those who can be called spoiled or overprotective. It is difficult for both of them to be grateful and accepting. The client's history and the context of his life will gradually take their place in therapy. Much will become clearer, something will change. In therapy itself, it is very important to explore the theme of how the client is able to give and receive. “Being an adult means giving. We all, sooner or later, turn from someone who receives to someone who gives.” The client can go a long way with the therapist before he matures and grows into the ability to share and give. A lot has to happen, a lot has to be introduced first and foremost by the therapist, so that an atmosphere of trust arises, necessary for the processes of change. At the beginning of therapy, for me, from the point of view of the grace of the situation, it is important to assess the client’s motivation. A potentially more ungrateful customer is one with weak or conflicting motivations. Society views therapy differently. Among our clients there are also those who, a priori, partially have negative beliefs about therapy. “Will they help, is it a waste of money, you have to deal with your difficulties yourself,” such questions and assumptions from clients make therapy a dubious matter for them, and not at all good. And yet, with such an ambivalent attitude towards therapy, they are in our office. For me, in the case of such an ambiguous choice of the client to “come”, it is important to notice this ambivalence. Then stay together with the client in it for a certain time, sufficient for the client to stay or leave, realizing his own choice. It is natural to be ungrateful for “gifts” that are not needed. The difference in the client’s and therapist’s ideas about therapeutic goals, the depth and duration of therapy makes therapy not a good thing, but rather a very dubious one, causing quite natural resistance from the client. Even with the “noble” motivation of the therapist, it is precisely such cases that they say that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Colleagues are self-ironic about cases where therapists are more active than clients in their work, explaining them with a “desire to do good.” It makes sense to openly accept the client’s resistance. Resistance, among other things, may indicate some kind of professional incompetence, mistakes or shortcomings in therapy. Sometimes resistance accompanies situations that can be summarized with the phrases “not the time”, “not the place”. It indicates a discrepancy, small points of contact between the world of the client and this therapist. In any case, a resistant client can sometimes be perceived by therapists as ungrateful. The difficulty of a person who often comes to us is that he does not know how to accept help, cannot be in a relationship, most often becoming “ungrateful”. Accepting the client’s resistance and “ungratefulness” means seeing discrepancies and discrepancies with the client. See, stop to try to walk through the space of disagreement. It is important to use this difference in order to create real relationships in therapy through work “here-and-now” openly and adequately to the situation. Philosopher Vladimir Yankevich draws our attention to gratitude as a phenomenon that belongs to secondary categories. “Gratitude is born under the condition that there is both a benefactor and a benefactor, and only under this condition...” As for existential therapy,».