From the author: The other day I was lucky enough to meet with my mother, and she is also my consulting psychologist. Over a cup of coffee, we discussed, as usual, work, new books, projects for the year, etc. And word by word the conversation turned to such a sore topic - the goal and meaning of psychotherapy. In my previous article about schema therapy and adaptation to life https://www.b17.ru/article/83376/, I expressed the idea that the ultimate goal of the work should be something more than a person’s adaptation to difficult circumstances and solving momentary problems. My mother and I began to discuss this article and further discussed it to the category of sustainable personal happiness of the client, as a good result of psychological assistance. And then they started discussing the conditions for achieving it. The more we discussed this issue using examples from our practice, the more I realized that we were talking about a personality model that I had never seen anywhere before. It is this model that I would like to show and describe to you today. We proceeded from the fact that personality is not something static, it is not some object that can be easily considered, rather it is a directed process of social bio-psychic life activity, consisting of a huge number of stories filled with their own internal logic. Our personality model represents a “cross-section” of this process, is based on experience and serves primarily the purpose of simplifying the understanding of the meaning and essence of psychotherapy. In total, we identified 5 elements, 5 “layers” of personality, with which we work during a psychotherapeutic session. - “Core”, containing values, beliefs and convictions that serve as the foundation for the true meaning of a person’s life. - “Inner Child” or “Essential part”, containing the reasons that a person somehow relates to something and makes some choices. Desires, expectations and feelings live here. - “Ego”, the part that directly makes decisions and builds relationships based on rational and irrational criteria. It consists of psychological defense mechanisms and other strategies for protecting and realizing the aspirations of the essential part. - “Activity”. This includes the “What”, as well as the “Why”, “For what purpose” and “How” a person does in his life. - “Lifeworld”. This is the “habitat” of the individual, his model of the world within which each thing has its own meaning relative to the individual. In the life world, one can distinguish a zone of “influence”, in which a person can change something through his actions, and a zone of “concerns”, in which this is impossible. External reality (in the diagram, located outside the personality) - all that reality that is still outside life world of the individual. With the harmonious existence of a person, his life world begins to expand, because unresolved problems within the life world end, but the strength and meaning to continue to act remains. As you can see, we included both activity and the life world in the personality model. We did this not only because many luminaries point to their fundamental unity, but first of all, because work with them in psychotherapeutic sessions also happens. According to our conclusion, happiness is like being in a state of flow, where there is strength for everything, the personality develops harmoniously and all genuine aspirations are realized; this is achieved when communication is established between the core of the personality and reality. With this approach, all the problems that we have to deal with in our work arise from the mismatch of the layers standing between the core and reality. The harmonious model of a person’s existence, thus, represents the realization of his values ​​in reality. The layers are coordinated, problems are solved and an interested attitude towards reality is gradually formed. There is, a kind of exit from the labyrinth, and the reasons for the impossibility of this implementation can exist both on each of the layers and between them. Example of problem and solution design:.