How does psychotherapy work? Balakhonskaya G.V. Audio version of the article here https://www.b17.ru/media/82213/Hello, my dear readers! Today I will propose a topic about psychotherapy. Or rather, I will continue :) I have already written on this topic more than once. But the topic is so capacious that you can look at it from different positions and see it differently :) The word “psychotherapy,” I think, is well-known to many. And the meanings... Well, it’s a well-known fact that everyone puts their own meaning into any word :) And this too :) Which, in fact, is natural. Each person is unique:) By the way, the topic about meanings and their uniqueness in the interpretation of each person is also interesting:) Well, I won’t talk about everything at once. So, about psychotherapy...What is it? Who and what is understood by this concept? I will suggest this meaning. Well, maybe one of them :)) And you, friends, maybe add yours in the comments. Psychotherapy consists of two words and literally translates as treatment of the soul. But what does it mean? After all, psychotherapy, although therapy, is not exactly treatment in the literal sense of the word. Because what is treatment? Treatment is when a person suffering from some kind of ailment comes to the doctor for treatment. Giving the doctor responsibility for his own treatment and hoping for the correct actions of the doctor. And the doctor begins to treat him. What does this mean? This means that the suffering person puts himself under the power of the doctor. And I am ready to follow all his professional medical instructions. For him, in this situation, the doctor seems to become the main person responsible. Well, take the medications that the doctor tells him to take. Do the procedures that the doctor prescribes, and so on. In general, he puts himself in the hands of the doctor and completely obeys his recommendations, because the doctor is now responsible for his health. And the doctor is responsible for the result of treatment. He controls the process. And the patient in such a situation naturally obeys. Because a doctor is a specialist who has professional knowledge of how the human body functions and how to help him regain health. And - he commands. Well, figuratively speaking, the doctor is the main one for the duration of treatment, and the patient is a subordinate. And how carefully the patient will listen and follow the doctor’s instructions directly affects the success of the treatment. In general, if we really simplify it to the extreme, the patient becomes the object of the doctor’s manipulations during the treatment :)) Well, if we say it with an element of joke. That is the doctor is the subject, the patient is the object. It is clear, of course, that there are different doctors. But I brought up such a conditionally idealized version :) But psychotherapy, although it is therapy, is not in the literal sense that I described above. Because here the treatment happens completely differently. Although, of course, there are situations when consultations and medicinal actions of a psychiatrist are needed. Life is like this... It happens in different ways. But when it is medical treatment, the patient relies on a psychiatrist. And one hundred percent of the responsibility for treatment lies with the doctor. And when it is psychotherapy in the psychological sense, then the point is that two people meet, in general, on equal terms. Yes, one of them has professional knowledge of how the human psyche works. But he will not, out of his professional knowledge, impose a certain pattern of behavior on the other. Which corresponds to his ideas of what another needs to do for complete happiness :) Helping the client will consist in helping him understand within himself his resource capabilities to solve the problem that he has. And note, friends, that this is not a patient, and the client. That is, a completely different semantic emphasis. Because the patient is a helpless pain-sufferer, but the client is collaborating as equals. That is, psychotherapy in the psychological, not the medical sense, is the cooperation of two people. Who together solve the problem posed and formulated in words. And the responsibility for solving this problem is already divided between the two. Relatively speaking, fifty-fifty. Two people, as it were, are organized into a team. This is also called a special term. +7 (916) 614-83-92