From the author: “Tales of Psychotherapy” are living stories from the lives of psychologists that demonstrate something about psychology. Psychologists may be famous or not, but I still prefer stories with famous psychologists. And the knowledge extracted from these “fairy tales” should be intelligible, understandable, and not require special training in psychology. This story was told by Rollo May in his book “The Courage to Create.”*** One summer I was traveling with a group of artists in Central Europe. We observed and sketched everyday scenes. While in Vienna, we were all invited to a private lecture by Alfred Adler, whom I had met earlier while taking part in his summer course. During the lecture, which was given in a small salon, Adler touched on the compensatory theory of creativity, according to which people develop science, art and other areas of culture in order to compensate for their shortcomings. As an illustration, the example of an oyster is often cited, which creates a pearl to hide a grain of sand that has fallen into the shell. One of the many examples given by Adler at the time was Beethoven's deafness. This was supposed to show how an individual, gifted with enormous creative abilities, compensates for the imperfections and shortcomings of his body in the act of creativity. In addition, Adler believed that civilization is the result of man's relatively weak position in a hostile natural environment, as well as his lack of sufficiently strong claws and teeth necessary in the animal world. At the end of the lecture, Adler, completely forgetting that he was addressing artists, looked around the room and said: “Since only a couple of you wear glasses, I conclude that you are not interested in art.” ***Rollo May tells this story in the context of examining various existing theories of creativity. But I want to draw attention to another aspect. Alfred Adler is a great psychologist and thinker, a man who was good with reflection. And the seemingly ridiculous mistake he made is very revealing. This story perfectly demonstrates how we (both me and you) easily and imperceptibly replace reality with our ideas about it. Adler had his compensation theory, which prevented him from seeing reality. Each of us has a set of such theories... And somewhere out there, at arm’s length, there is a reality unknown to us. Other “Tales about Psychotherapy»