The client’s picture of the world and his mental health Everyone has their own specific image of the world and the people around them, and the person behaves as if these images are the truth, and not the objects they represent (E. Bern )Good contact with reality is a condition for adaptation to it and the most important criterion for mental health. This thesis is an axiom in many contact-oriented psychotherapeutic areas. However, in the concept of contact, two realities “meet” - objective and subjective, the world and its image. The world and the perception of the world are non-identical concepts. In the process of perceiving the world, each person creates his own idea of ​​the world, a subjective, individual picture of the world, which to varying degrees can be adequate to the objective world. The picture of the world is a complex mental formation that is formed from early childhood so that a person can navigate and survive in the present world; it is a multi-layered structure that stores all the knowledge about the structure of the surrounding world in the form of ideas and/or images, “laid” in accordance with a certain “architecture.” Usually a person thinks that there is a “single, independent and eternal world”; in fact, “there are as many worlds as there are people and cultures.” Heidegger’s work “The Time of the World Picture” was important in the development of understanding of this phenomenon. The picture of the world, in his opinion, is like another, “second” world, built by man for himself and placed between himself and the “real world”. It can be argued that the picture of the world of each person, despite the similarity with the pictures of the world of other people, is always different. Good contact with reality as a condition of mental health becomes possible in the absence of contradictions between the objective world and its image - the subjective world or the picture of the world. The main structural The components of the picture of the world are the picture of another person (the image of the other) and the picture of the Self (the image of the Self). A mentally healthy person has good contact with reality, his picture of the world (subjective reality) generally corresponds to objective reality (fits like a puzzle). This manifests itself in the fact that mentally healthy (“normal”) people are able to agree with each other about what reality is. Their subjective picture of the world is characterized by both the qualities of community (separation from other people) and specificity, individuality. A mentally healthy person is generally satisfied with life, accepts it as a given and does not create illusions about it. The further we go to the right on the “mental health - mental illness” scale, the more we can observe the discrepancy between the individual (subjective) picture of the world (picture of the Self, picture of the Other) generally accepted (shared, objective). Let's consider how this manifests itself in clients with different mental organization of personality. We will adhere to a psychoanalytic approach in psychodiagnostics of the level of mental health and, following Nancy McWilliams, we will distinguish three levels of mental organization of the personality: neurotic, borderline, psychotic. Neurotic client In the picture of the world of a neurotically organized personality, we already see a hypertrophied image of another person. For him, the opinion, assessment, attitude, judgment of Others become dominant. His picture of the world as a whole is centered on something else. He looks closely, listens to what they will say, how they will look, what Others will think, how his Self will be reflected in their mirrors? His self-esteem directly depends on the assessment of other people and is therefore unstable. He is strongly influenced by other people and depends on them. Due to the hypertrophied significance of the other, his image is heavily invested in expectations and, as a result, is projectively distorted. When in contact with another, a neurotic meets not with a real person, but with his idealized image. It is not surprising that such “meetings” often end in disappointment. Purposetherapy in the case of a neurotically organized personality - lead the client to his own Self, carefully and respectfully examining, listening to the sound hidden behind the deafening chorus of voices of Other Selves, the genuine, unique, barely audible voice of the client's Self. Only by hearing, realizing and accepting his own Self can the client hope for a genuine Meeting with the Other. The leading tasks here will be to increase self-esteem and sensitivity to one’s self-needs and one’s own psychological boundaries. Among the therapeutic methods in working with a neurotic client, one can distinguish a combination of frustration and support. Through frustration, it is possible to “shatter” the rigid picture of the neurotic client’s world filled with social introjects. The support of a psychotherapist creates conditions for the opportunity to take risks and gain new experiences. Borderline clientContact with the reality of a person with a borderline structure is already significantly distorted. The images of his Self and Others are polar – from idealization to devaluation. The real world and its subjective picture “do not fit” well with each other. The idealization of the world leads, when in contact with the real world, to its devaluation - hence the obsessive need of the borderline personality to change the real world. He actively projects internal fears onto the external world and, in an effort to cope with anxiety, attacks it. A psychopath obsessively tries to remake, change external reality (let us remember, for example, revolutionaries who are fanatically trying to “destroy the old world and build a new one”). The most striking feature of the borderline personality’s picture of the world is the devaluation of the Other up to its complete devaluation. Unlike the neurotic person, who is centered on the Other, the borderline personality is self-centered - there is only me, others are only means for me. Unlike neurotic clients, for whom the appearance of oneself in relationships and learning to care for oneself is the most important strategy of psychotherapy, the goal of therapy for borderline clients is the appearance in the relationship of the Other as a different, valuable, living person with his own joys, sorrows, experiences, values, pains... This becomes possible thanks to the development of empathy skills in the borderline client, which destroys his egocentric position. The main method of working with a borderline personality will be work at the boundary of contact, which involves the therapist presenting his feelings, experiences, and values. If in the case of a neurotic client the psychotherapist shakes the rigid picture of the world, then with a borderline client he creates conditions for the appearance and birth of a new structural component in it - the picture of another person. The psychotic client And the situation with contact with objective reality is very bad for a psychotic. Its borders with the world are permeable on both sides. Their own horrors are actively projected onto the real world, which, attributed to the outside world, burst into the consciousness of the psychotic. Everything that a psychotic feels subjectively is perceived by him objectively. In this regard, psychotics are the greatest idealists - their picture of the world has few points of contact with the real world. The world of a psychotic is always individual, we do not share it with the worlds of other people. Psychotherapy of a psychotic client does not pursue such radical goals as in the case of therapy of a neurotic and borderline client. In this case, the psychotherapist does not have the goal of shaking the client’s worldview or changing it. The goal of psychotherapy for a psychotic client is to strengthen and stabilize his fragile picture of the world, to equip him with clear, consistent rules-supports by which the social world functions. Frustration and work on the boundary of contact (in the case of working with a borderline client), which are adequate in the case of psychotherapy of a neurotic client, will not only be useless, but also dangerous. Thus, we see that for clients located at different levels of personality organization, there are not only a picture of the world characteristic of each level, but also specific goals and methods of working with them. Knowing this allows the psychotherapist to organize adequate contact when working with the client. Consultation and