Andrey Ermoshin - Things in The Body

Dialectical method

Laying the foundations of “psychological’ psychotherapy, Freud made a remarkable move towards greater interaction with the patient in the identification, interpretation and subsequent processing of their condition. However, there were “remnants’ of the old “hypnotic’ period of development of psychotherapy: the patient passively lay on the couch, the analyst was separated from them.

Jung was much more inclined to the ’dialectical method’. «If I, as a psychotherapist, feel an authority towards the patient and, in accordance with this, claim to know something about their personality and be able to make the right conclusions about it, then I, thereby, sign my own non-criticality, because I find myself untenable in assessing the person opposing me. 9 9 C. G. Jung. Psychology of transfer: Collection of articles. – M.: Refl-Buk, K.: Wackler, 1997, p. 30. 10 Ibid., pp. 34—35. »

Here is his description of the features of the «dialectical mode of action, i.e. the position avoiding any methods’:

«The therapist is no longer an active subject, but a witness of the individual development process. (…) The analyst here is not a superior, competent, judge and advisor, but a participant in the dialectical process as well as (now) the so-called patient. (…) In the relations «doctor-patient’, two mental systems are mutually correlated, and therefore any sufficiently deep penetration into the psychotherapeutic process will inevitably lead to the conclusion that due to the individual originality of the participants, the «doctor-patient’ attitude should be a dialectical process. (…) It is clear that more complex, spiritually higher standing natures cannot be helped with complacent advice, suggestions and attempts to appeal to a particular system. In such cases, the doctor is better to remove the armor of methods and theories and rely only on the fact that his personality is strong enough to serve the patient as a point of reference and support. At the same time, it is necessary to seriously weigh the probability that the patient’s personality may surpass the doctor in mind, spirituality, breadth and depth… in all such cases, the doctor should leave open the individual path of healing, and then the healing will not lead to a change in personality, but will coincide with the process of individuation, i.e. the patient will become who is in essence 10 10 Ibid., pp. 34—35. ».

On the North American continent, Carl Rogers and other humanist psychologists have proclaimed confidence in the client’s own abilities for personal growth.

Significant development of this principle is in the NLP, offering to refrain from meaningful instructions and limited only to formal.

Following the client’s process is a fundamental principle of process-oriented psychology.

The risk of affirmations

Reflecting on the danger of affirmations, and even more on suggestion (in particular, in the process of psychoanalysis), V. T. Kondrashenko and D. I. Donskoy note: “There are certain difficulties in the use of suggestion. One of them is that the patient gets used to this regressive form of support and uses it as a prosthesis. The second difficulty arises if the suggestion is used without its subsequent realization. In this case, the suggestion of the analyst is not analyzed and, as a result, the patient may develop a new neurotic symptom complex. Most often this happens when the interpretation is presented to the patient as a dogma. 11 11 Kondrashenko, V. T., Donskoy D. I. General psychotherapy: Textbook. allowance-2nd ed. – Meganewton.: Higher. SHK., 1997, p. 239. ”

Thus, suggestion, struggling with one complex, can give rise to another.

To sum up the above, there is a tendency to increasingly trust the capabilities of a person undergoing treatment in determining the process of psychotherapy. The principle of interaction , rather than impact , is becoming clear. A two-way process occurs when two people come in contact, although one is called a therapist and the other is a patient. There is a search for a solution to the problem when combining efforts. To achieve success, the therapist does not need to play a Superman, all knowing and able to do everything for the patient.

A person is a self-organizing system with sufficient resources. All they may need is some assistance in the use of those resources. This is the principle of psychocatalysis which is contrary to the principles of doing something for the patient, whether interpreting their condition or the selecting more useful areas of activity for them.

Somatopsychotherapy (I will try to show) implements this principle to the greatest extent possible. The instrument of «doing’ are questions . But before we talk about them, we will pay attention to some more general problems related to the self-training of a psychotherapist.

Pitfalls

“The clinic drives a psychotherapist,” said prominent Russian therapist S. Konstorum. "…The philosophy of human life… directs the life of the therapist and forms the spirit of their therapy,” K. G. Jung stated with him in unison.

What can prevent us from the realization of these truly golden principles? There are probably reasons for possible failures in their implementation, depending on the patient, but we will analyze what depends on the therapist. «Physician, heal yourself first» (the Church. – Slavic) is a long-known principle. Before you start healing others, follow the advice of the Delphic Oracle «get to know yourself.» (And change yourself – A.E.)

The merit of the introduction of the principle of preliminary and parallel analysis of the analyst themselves belongs to Jung. The need for this was also recognized by Freud.

A somatopsychotherapist, no less than the psychoanalyst or the Gestalt therapist, needs to study their own state, to know the tendencies of their reaction and the nature of their character.

Tendencies of character

In accordance with your personal character: mainly schizoid, cycloid or epileptoid – you may need to track tendencies for: complication, self-admiration, domination and for commanding .

The presence of asthenic traits in the nature of the therapist can lead to the development of the patient’s parasitic traits.

Neurotic complexes

It is obvious that the psychotherapists’ own traumatic experience and the presence of their unresolved life issues can complicate the process of psychotherapy. It is discussed in detail in different literature, and I will not dwell on this further.

Cultural stereotypes

Having accepted the fact that psychotherapy is not an area of self-affirmation for the power-loving, nor an area of self-gratification for the sweet-loving. It is also neither an area where excessively smart people feed their pride (nor an area of self-torture for a “good’ one), nor indeed, a sphere for solving neurotic problems of the psychotherapist, let us pay attention to the following:

Even if we assume that a «perfectly balanced’ person, who has undergone a long personal psychoanalysis or other thorough therapy, is engaged as a psychotherapy practitioner, that is to say, this person is pure in the sense of the absence of any tendencies to solve their own psychological problems when in contact with the patient; this «ideal’ psychotherapist still risks falling into «activism’.

It is difficult for a doctor to trust the «uneducated’ mind of a patient. They are used to being an expert, a specialist. They know the terminology to denote the patient’s different states. They are competent to prescribe and cancel medications, discharge the patient to work or leave home. They are responsible for the life of the patients almost more than the patients themselves.