I have been in psychology for quite a long time, almost 14 years. I have had a private practice since 2005, taught psychology at school, conducted trainings for teenagers and parents, and have a number of proprietary programs. Many years ago, after completing the “Fundamentals of Ceramics” course, I noticed that working with clay is very psychological. In the process of consulting children and their parents, I began to offer to work on their problem areas through working with clay. For example, to work with aggression, I suggest kneading clay on the floor or wall. After some time, the person’s condition changes. Aggression and anger can be transformed into making crafts - predatory animals, which is a very environmentally friendly way of showing such emotions. When working with fears and phobias, you can use clay, for example, offering to mold your fear in the form of a real figure or an abstract object. In addition, when working with a bodily symptom, I use this natural material, offering to mold the symptom to understand the cause of its appearance. At the beginning of my practice, there was an interesting case when working with clay served as a turning point in the therapy of a client with the problem of anorexia-bulimia (food addiction). The girl was about 15-16 years old, I’ll call her Inna. She was brought by her mother, who had been visiting doctors with her daughter. She came on the recommendation of my client and did not particularly believe in the help of a psychologist. The client herself was a very attractive girl, but she did not accept her appearance at all, and rejected the advances of boys, considering herself “scary.” But she had a dream - to go to study at a modeling agency, rather for herself, to learn how to be feminine. When I started working with Inna, I realized that there was no special desire to get rid of the disease, rather it was the desire of her relatives. The work progressed slowly, there was too much resistance - after all, it was beneficial for her to artificially induce vomiting after eating large quantities of food. Her “model” slender figure should not gain weight, plus a protest against her mother’s control. In this case, the daughter’s life, her behavior and feelings served only as a means to serve the mother’s needs. Mother was a major official with a tough, overwhelming ego. She had her own ideas, expectations of what her daughter should be like. As an “obedient daughter”, Inna regularly came to the sessions, the work was mainly aimed at creating trust between us and raising self-esteem. Finally, for several sessions in a row, our work focused on her illness. And then I offered to sculpt her symptom from clay. The client was a creative girl - she wrote poetry and painted. The goal of such work is to separate yourself from the disease and understand its causes. With pleasure, I picked up the clay and sculpted an abstraction that resembled a predatory cephalopod with tentacles. She began to tell how the tentacles captured her and absorbed her, preventing her from resisting the disease. In some ways, this cephalopod resembled the image of the mother, but this was just my hidden interpretation. I asked her a lot of questions at this meeting. What functions does the symptom block, which ones does it support, what psychological need underlies it, what changes does the disease make in social contacts, what are the secondary benefits, what are the rituals of treatment, what awaits the client if she gets rid of bulimia, etc. and so on. At the end of the session, the girl realized that she still wanted to get well rather than get sick. There were more days without nausea, Inna had a boyfriend, she began doing makeup, buying clothes that she liked. Thus, working with clay was a turning point in therapy. It is a pity that the desire for “freedom from the symptom” did not have the best effect on the client’s family system. She was something of an “identified patient” in the family. The girl became more independent and whole. Mom was not happy with this situation. She stopped giving Inna money for a psychologist. Our work is never finished. But I consoled myself with the fact that: 8 903 136 82 01