When you look into the abyss, the Abyss looks into you... F. Nietzsche Anyone who has worked with depressed clients knows well this strange feeling that periodically “covers” when it seems that time is “creeping” , alarmingly slow”, the session lasts forever (but in fact only 15 minutes have passed). When no other therapeutic interventions come to mind, and if they do, you don’t believe that they can change anything. When, together with a client, you slowly sink to the “bottom of the black pool” of depression, and you no longer want to “surface”... You feel nothing but hopelessness and fatigue... The first time is scary, but if you think about it, how could it be otherwise? ?The basis of our profession is empathy (compassion for the emotional state of another person). The client and therapist create and share one common “field”, “transitional space”, the merging of “two realities into one”. And in countertransference, at some point we inevitably become “immersed” in the client’s experience. In this case, into the experience of despair and helplessness of a depressed client, “tasting” his inner world from the inside. In a space where there is “nothing” (and, it seems, there is no need) to breathe... Where time has stopped, where any changes are stamped with a “seal of prohibition”, the psyche is plunged into suspended animation, the whole space is “narrowed” to the limits of the object of love, which cannot be returned , nor lose. Where it is better to stop wanting than to face disappointment over and over again, that what is desired and what is available is further and further away from each other... Where it is impossible to talk about what is forever lost (or never experienced)... Where it seems that we are “falling” into an abyss where there is no movement except endless rotation in a circle... And I want to finally give up... And “finally lie to the bottom”... Depression is “contagious”, like a virus. This means that close people surrounded by a depressed person are included and, one way or another, at some point “immersed in his whirlpool of depression.” The pattern of their actions is clear and predictable: As a rule, at first they try to force him to be more active: “ Come on, it's not that bad. Let's go somewhere, do something, whatever you want. Get a hold of yourself. And you will feel better.” But the truth is that a depressed person does not have the strength to want anything at the moment. His inner world “resonates” with Brodsky’s text: “Don’t leave the room, don’t make a mistake. Why do you need the sun if you smoke Shipka? Everything outside the door is meaningless, especially the cry of happiness. Just go to the restroom and come back right away. Oh, don’t leave the room, don’t call the engine. Because the space is made of a corridor and ends with a counter. And if a live darling comes in with her mouth open, drive her out without undressing. Don’t leave the room; consider yourself blown. What's more interesting in the world than a wall and a chair? Why leave from there, where you will return in the evening the same as you were, especially mutilated?... Don’t leave the room. Oh, let only the room guess what you look like. And in general, incognito ergo sum, as the substance noticed in the form in the hearts. Don't leave the room! On the street, tea, not France. Don't be a fool! Be what others were not. Don't leave the room! That is, give free rein to the furniture, blend your face with the wallpaper. Lock yourself up and barricade yourself with a closet from chronos, space, eros, race, virus...”... And even if someone manages to “move a depressed person from his place”, get him out of the house, he will simply function in “autopilot” mode, being “deep inside himself” and dreaming of being left alone, and feeling only despair, including “new despair” from the fact that he again does not meet the expectations of those around him, who are trying so hard to “breathe life into him”... After what -then even the most “persistent” give up and retreat... A depressed person perceives this as another rejection, and plunges even deeper into the “pool of depression.” The therapist, like anyone else, becomes part of the “field”, takes part in its creation and feels it on himself. He cannot distance himself from depressive experiencesthe client, without withdrawing from contact, from the relationship as a whole. “The whirlpool of depression occurs within the therapeutic relationship here and now, the client and therapist “are depressed together.” In a distorted process at the border of contact through disconnection from the constantly created structure “between” that connects people with the world and life” (Ya. Rubal). Ya. Rubal described the traditional “trajectory of the joint experience of depression” between the therapist and the client: “Sharing of depressive experience. The therapists' experiences are similar to those of clients: They feel the symptoms of depression themselves, as if they had fallen into depression along with the clients: sadness, anxiety, emptiness, fear for the client, and fear of their joint failure to think clearly and concentrate on a bodily level. – numbness, heaviness, weakness and exhaustion. “Overloaded” with a feeling of hopelessness. Turning to oneself. The intensity of the therapists’ depressive experiences increases until they reach a turning point where they cease to resonate with the experiences of the clients. They turn to themselves, begin to turn to. own resources. Striving for symptom change. The therapist takes an “expert role” (more detached), actively trying to help the client solve his problems. His experiences become polar in relation to the experiences of his clients. He uses techniques and recommendations, makes many suggestions on how the client can change his life for the better, but, in essence, he does this not so much for the client, but for himself. Interpretations allow the therapist to “save” himself, rehabilitate himself, return activity, get rid of the unbearable feeling of his own powerlessness. Distancing from depressive experience. As a rule, the efforts of therapists to change the lives of clients and get rid of symptoms of depression, attempts to inspire, “instill optimism” lead nowhere. Clients do not change according to their therapists' expectations. They remain immersed in feelings of emptiness and hopelessness. Therapists get angry (at clients or themselves) and even at times consider ending therapy or sending their depressed clients to another therapist. Addressing the client. Therapists are forced to accept the reality: therapy in general (“or mine in particular”) is not helping. They abandon the position of “change expert” and the idea of ​​their own omnipotence (“I can help anyone”). Instead, they just (is it just that?) stay close. This is the moment when it is important to be able to be present with a person without demands and expectations. Focus on relationships. Instead of focusing on symptoms, the therapist addresses relationships. This position requires humility: “Yes, perhaps nothing will get better, we will not find any concrete solution. I'm powerless to help. But we have a relationship, we have contact. This means that in this space there is not only death, but also life..." When we approach the client at this stage, we feel and see not only depression, but also the Person himself." A "Meeting" occurs. A true Meeting that changes both. Both the client and the therapist. Changes come when we stop striving for them... Yes, working with depressed clients is difficult, if only because it is difficult to work with a person who does not have words to describe his experiences or their reasons (especially if. he does not understand them and cannot name them). What makes long-term and severe depression is not so much the loss as the inability to name, recognize and describe the pain that he experiences, just as a baby who does not have his mother near him cannot talk about it. He simply cries. And he becomes silent when he realizes that “cry, don’t cry” - nothing changes. Our role at this moment is to become a supporting missing Other, to help create a space for the Meeting, to help find words, to help endure the unbearable, to name the unnameable. This is difficult work that is almost impossible to do alone (both for the client and, often for us) - therefore, we often work with depressed clients in collaboration with a psychiatrist(or at least after consultation with him), and, as a rule, under supervision, based on personal therapy). Our job is to walk with the client through the desert of loneliness and abandonment, so that at the end of the journey the client is surprised to realize that he is still alive. Empathy creates a new experience. Our main task is constancy (setting), “containing” feelings, “mirroring” and helping to organize a coherent coherent narrative. Everything that at one time was possibly not “done” or “incomplete” by the mother. “Psychoanalysis (therapy) is a theater on the stage of which our entire mental repertoire is performed. In these plays, the characters of the internal characters undergo many changes, dialogues are rewritten, and the roles are handed out anew. The analysands discover their inner reality and find their inner truth as they speak to the constituent parts of their selves and all the people who played an important role in their lives. Scores are settled with hated and loved figures from the past, these figures are at the disposal of the analysand in all his aspects, good and bad, and do not dispose of it, the analysand is now ready to reconsider everything that he received from the people who raised him, and everything that he did with this inheritance...” (Joyce McDougall. Theater of the Soul. Illusion and Truth in Psychoanalytic stage).In the therapy of depression, a period of disappointment and despair inevitably sets in (both the client and the therapist himself), which must be endured - after all, according to the laws of the genre, we are alternately doomed to play the role of that very “good” and “bad” breast that Klein wrote about when faced with with reproaches (that nothing changes), that we do not understand the client “beyond words”, we do not “guess” and cannot satisfy all his needs, we cannot stay with him forever. That we are imperfect ((not) ideal). And the client’s depressive position is already a success, evidence of maturity, the realization that he understands that we (therapists) are us, both “good” and “bad”. Whole. Different. And he is he - (“good” and “bad”). Holistic. Different. Separate. But the client’s depressive position is never achieved in isolation; it must also be with the therapist. He must be able to accept his imperfection and the fact that he is not omnipotent, be able to experience sadness that not everything turns out the way he would like. To be able to accept that the inevitable disappointment and anger of the client, that not everything is fixable, and therapy does not bring relief - these are the experiences of a baby torn from the mother's breast, which we have all experienced... The way out = is to accept the loss of the “infant paradise”, the reality that “mother won’t come” - and you are left alone in this world, and you can only rely on yourself and those contacts that you were able to create yourself. But, accepting the difference between fantasy and reality - oh, how not easy... A therapist will never replace a client’s mother, especially , if in reality he never had a good mother (or had an overprotective mother who was never ready to let go). But, in therapy it is possible to construct a positive internal object. And, if this can be done, then the client develops not only the ability to build warm relationships with the therapist :), but also with other people. However, for this, usually, it is necessary to walk not only “on the edge of the death of infantile initial omnipotence”, and the absence ( presence) of someone who infinitely understands and accepts, but also to look into the “abyss” - the very depth of what constitutes our existential essence - loneliness and lack. It hurts...But life can only return through a reverse immersion in pain... ...The mythical Persephone managed to return to her Mother (Demeter) only by descending into hell, tasting pomegranate seeds, which in Greek mythology has many meanings, in particular , this is a symbol of immortality, the return of spring; hopes for resurrection, rebirth. And, becoming oneself, when the careless Kore symbolically dies, and the queen of the underworld - Persephone - is born. The depressive position (“descent into hell” of existential loneliness) is what our mental life is without.