agree with much of what you said.
But.
The fact is that in my work I pay more attention to the psychotherapy itself. Morality and ethics, which occupy a special place in your skill of a psychologist, are secondary for me. In your case there is, probably, a complex of your individuality, which includes certain features of personality and character, isn’t it?
– Of course, Jean Batist, – Anastasia decided to clarify the issue. – One day I was getting hired by an outstanding scientist. He had developed a unique method, which allowed identifying a personality profile. We talked in the office, where I had been invited, and then we stepped out for a smoke. He briefly informed me on the results of my testing.
– It is quite curious. Your level of intelligence and responsibility are diametrically opposite to the level of conformity and anxiety. Plus accentuations. You have extremely high peaks on the schizoid and paranoiac scale. – After that he folded his hands in a pose of a smoking thinker and waited intently. I transformed my answer into a common language form:
– Yes, certainly, intelligent, extremely responsible, absolutely indifferent to a public opinion, atrophied sense of fear. Now about accentuations. Creativity is over-the-top, I can synthesize anything and everything. When I see a goal, I am turning into a self-guided warhead and move towards the goal in the multidimensional space, which excludes any obstacles as a phenomenon.
We simultaneously flipped the ashes off our cigarettes into a freshly washed ashtray. And I got the job. 4 years later I had defended my thesis on accentuants in psychological development of successful people, as well as proved that to be successful, one would need the same qualities that I had got. I had found these qualities in the group of respondents, consisted of more than 3 thousand successful people.
This had become one of my funniest entertainments with the social medium.
The social medium never understood that.
But for me its opinion was deeply indifferent. Having bent the system till the required curvature, I managed to defend my thesis using my intellect. Unlike most of the other candidates for a degree, who did not have enough intellect. But they had a status and financial resources, which provided opportunities for getting a diploma of a scientific degree.
People played a huge role in my life. I was very lucky with my teachers. They managed to stand up for my defence of the thesis. For that I am grateful for life to my thesis advisers as well as to certain scientists of the department, who are of really great spirit, heart and morality.
Coming back to traumas, I would like to say that the highest award to a psychologist for his way of life is a well-being of clients. When I manage to get a day off, there is a habitual joke among my friends: “So what, have you operated everybody again?” It means that somebody has got something cut off, something sewed on, rehabilitation went well. Because the psychologist, who works with traumas, has to be a surgeon. And then a person gets out of trauma-prison to freedom with a clean conscience and untainted mind.
Also important is what the one, who cut off and sew on, has once gone through. It is my profound conviction that working with trauma is similar to diving or mounting climbing. It is difficult to teach how to dive or how to climb a mountain being a theorist. Of course, it is possible to give a lot of statistically average recommendations. But trauma is a specific experience of going through. It is a special type of therapy where theory is not enough. Often it looks as follows:
– What did not kill me, will not kill you as well. You came for this, you wanted to hear this, didn’t you? – I usually ask in different forms a person who came to see me on a recommendation. And the person realizes, that if somebody has already gone through this situation, it means that he also has a chance.
Probably a work with a psychological trauma and its consequences can be acknowledged as a surgery in its essence. An existential psychosurgery. When a specialist has his or her own experience of diving and mountain climbing, the therapy process obtains a shade of guidance. The guide’s image participates in the professional dissociation of a psychologist-surgeon as a fragile fabric, woven from a subjective objectivity, embroidered with gold threads of unconditional love.
This I would like to clarify, so that you do not get any illusions.
In their lives psychologists-surgeons are strongly pronounced misanthropes.
And I am no exception.
I sincerely do not like mankind as a species. It is hard to imagine a more stupid, deceitful and unholy expression of life. But the Supreme Being is merciful, and more often I work with the exceptions. And I help them.
Others – I do not help.
Yes, yes, Jean Batist, do not be surprised.
I choose with whom to work and with whom not.
But the main point has to be clarified. I do not blame. But I do not accept.
This is my second principle.
And this, in my opinion, is the basis of success and quality in work.
For example, I refuse to help a person if he is a pedophile. Or a sadist. Or evokes my rejection for any other reason. This is what happens when you walk past an open manhole, and you know for sure that the key word is “past”.
I refuse to help those. Politely but categorically. Because I have my own values, which I collected throughout my whole life. And now I construct any therapy building on this particular foundation.
For the sake of a successful therapy.
For making a person free.
For securing the psychologist.
The deep part of the foundation consists of a sense of respect. It is necessary to respect a patient.
It is more complicated with regards to the surface of the foundation. Psychologists should work on the border of the vectors of moral and ethical perceptions. Of their own, as well as of their clients’ perceptions. Figuratively, in the case of a psychologist it is like a huge mirror-like hand fan reflecting a rainbow. Reflected in this mirror-like hand fan are thousands of shades of morality and ethics acceptable for them. And the client has only one perception. Well, sometimes there may be several shades. Because clients do not need more. They have their life, experience, education, conditions that determine their existence. And if the client’s view of the world is reflected in the huge mirror-like hand fan of the psychologist, then the therapy will be successful.
In other case – it is just a business.
Or a fraud.
Or a crime.
Or a mental disorder of the specialist.
But not a psychotherapy, which, in my opinion, means a soul’s rehabilitation. Do you understand what I am talking about?
Anastasia looked at Jean Batist and once again reflected the inner light coming from the depths of his heart. He smiled back.
– Jean, what do you think of psychotherapy as a psychiatrist?
– Anastasia,
