From the author: Reflections on the beginning and peak of psychotherapy, which should serve as a condition and guideline for deep work with every person seeking help. Psychotherapy has the potential of a special art that can motivate and accompany a person on the path of deep transforming your way of existence. The potential lies in the ability to practice psychotherapy as a holistic form of care, with the whole person at the center. And this is not something new and unknown. Classic of medicine S.P. Botkin pointed out the need to treat the patient, not the disease. This phrase is textbook, but remains unconscious in the modern space of medical and psychological care, or rather not fully realized. The problem lies in the very understanding of how a help situation should develop. The usual approach is associated with the identification of the “disease”. A person discovers symptoms of some kind of trouble and brings them to a specialist. He expects him to be able to recognize what is happening in him, what it is called and how to deal with it. A paradoxical situation arises. On the one hand, a person identifies the problem and himself, assuming that he is sick, and on the other, he alienates those painful manifestations that he has discovered in himself. He wants to get rid of them. And if so, then he is not inclined to look for a connection between himself and the disease. Symptom medicine arises. Help begins with complaints and ends with their disappearance. The nature of the disease is considered to be a certain pathogenic origin. It is considered identical with the cause of the disease. For example, the influenza virus is said to be the cause of this respiratory infection. But in reality, viruses are not enough. A sum of factors is necessary - the organism that becomes ill must be a suitable target for the virus. With psychological problems in the field of causation, the situation is obviously more complicated. There are symptoms here too. The names of the processes in which these symptoms are revealed are also well known - depression, panic attacks, increased aggressiveness, neurasthenia, etc. But any name is just a word. And behind the words are those who pronounce them, there are two of them - the one who helps and the one who asked for help. So it looks like we got it all mixed up from the start. Psychotherapy does not begin with a symptom, but with one person coming to another for help. This is an important note. When I realize a psychological problem in myself, it’s as if I split my mind and look at myself from the outside. I need an understanding of the painfulness of what is happening to me. Consequently, I alienate part of my psyche, throw it away. And this fragment causes suffering. There is no peace in me. I am lost. And the soul demands to share the pain. Here it is worth looking for the arche of psychotherapy. The very miracle of one person turning to another for help to talk about what is happening in the innermost depths of his soul tells us a lot. In order to improve my relationship with myself, it is important for me to be in the space of a relationship with someone who can be in harmony with me. And first he must listen. Moreover, listening not in order to answer - this will be an interruption of relationships, alienation, but then in order to hear. Empathy—one person's feeling for another's situation—becomes the beginning of a healing relationship. I can find my lost self in the personality of the psychotherapist. Hence, probably, Freud's interest in transference in the process of helping as a phenomenon that will help return what is alienated. However, empathy is more than just a psychological mirror. It also means the ability of a psychotherapist, with empathy, to accept a person’s inner world without censorship. This opens the way for him to accept himself. Yes, I have problems. Yes, there is no peace in my soul. Yes, there are many indicators in which I am bad. All these “yes” mean a truce in the war with oneself. War makes no sense where there is a need to build and nurture. And resolving psychological problems is a peaceful feat. There is no point in searching for who is to blame. What's more important is what's wrong with thisdo. And agreement with yourself is the first step to finding peace of mind. It is like permission given to oneself to return to the house of one’s own mind, abandoned during the obsession with fear of symptoms. And when I return, I stop hating the mess, the paralyzing anger softens, I begin to gradually put things in their places. The next step, accordingly, is support. I deliberately avoided the words “sick” and “patient” in the previous paragraph. They are able to cancel all internal work and deprive the activity of a person in need of help. They place resources outside the individual and give responsibility to another. If I am sick, then there is no point in understanding myself. It only makes sense to throw out trash. But if “garbage” is a part of you, who are you going to throw out? At this point the therapist faces two temptations. The first is the temptation of authority; they are ready to believe you, trust you, and listen to your every word. You can revel in your own importance in the atmosphere of the patient's inferiority. The second temptation is the impulse to “do good,” to tell people how to live in order to improve a person’s life as quickly as possible. Both temptations must be overcome. We must remain equal, even if I am a trained specialist. I just learned to understand people's problems based on the concepts of my method. But I’m not an expert in the client’s life, he lived it for many years, and I know him for a few hours. I'm just giving a point of support. To fall out of healthy professional humility is to become a useless psychotherapist. And hence, even the wisest phrases about what needs to be done, coming from the outside, may turn out to be useless for the client. And even if I perform something on him, like a magician, it will not be a contribution to his healing, but to the collection of superstitions. Psychotherapy turns from art into magic. Although, this is a rude phrase. Psychotherapy simply ceases to differ from the usual medical model, in which the patient demonstrates symptoms to the doctor, and he must find a cure for them. But it must be different, otherwise it will cease to be a treatment of the soul and will get bogged down in either mechanistic materialism or magical fetishism. In the case of the psychic space, both of these options are substitutions. What can I do to help? Oh, but the hardest job is to be yourself. Rogers described this quality with the word “congruity,” saying that the external and internal must coincide. A similar Latin word, “authenticity,” calls for naturalness. The instrument of my work is my personality, and not some fictitious one. And if now my personality is not suitable to be the kind that can be shown to a client, this means that at the moment I myself need therapy. And this is an important part of the professional training and improvement of any psychotherapist - to be treated. And if I am healthy enough, then I will be able to build a healthy relationship with the client. I will become his companion in his changes. I will be an interlocutor offering my knowledge to help decipher the meaning of symptoms and move from symptom to cause - conflicts between different elements of the psyche. It is impossible to unravel the tangle of difficulties in my head with someone else's hand. My task is to remain in dialogue. Only for the client his feelings are the reality in which he lives. Therefore, I will focus on his pace, believe his reality, but as a dialogue partner, I am able to share how the client is reflected in my inner world. These experiences of mine are a conventional model of how any person feels with him. Only they do not share their experiences with him without judgment; they react rather than reflect on his personality. And my reflection will become a tuning fork for his efforts to adjust himself to a new way. Together we are able to localize its difficulties, describe them fully and accurately, outline a plan for solving problems and achieve its implementation. As a result, we will get more than getting rid of a symptom - eliminating the mechanism of its occurrence. And this can be called psychotherapy itself, in contrast to its origin -…