The story of one separation symptom I continue the topic of separation raised in my previous articles. A young woman, let’s call her Inna, asked for help. Inna talks about her difficult relationship with her mother. Mom, according to the client, is a powerful, dominant woman. Despite the fact that my client is already married and has two children, her mother actively interferes in her life - controls, teaches, instructs, criticizes, and devalues. Inna sometimes tries to resist such interference from her mother in her personal life, but for the most part she tolerates it. As a result, there is a tense, unspoken relationship between the client and her mother. The relationship looks like an emotionally dependent relationship with a dominant mother and a passive daughter. It has always been this way. Mom raised Inna alone, her father was expelled from the family - he drank. Being powerful and dominant, my mother was strict, categorical and demanding. Inna has always been an exemplary and obedient child. Even her teenage years passed without a crisis. Inna graduated from university, got married, gave birth to children, but still feels like a little girl in her relationship with her mother. Behind the client’s complaints, one can read a deeper theme – the problem of unfinished separation from her mother. Recently, the order in the house in which Inna lives has become a stumbling block in her relationship with her mother. Inna's mother is a very neat woman and she regularly scolds her daughter for the fact that, in her mother's opinion, her house is a mess. She comes to Inna’s house once a week on Saturdays to visit her grandchildren and leaves each time with the words that “she won’t set foot here again,” since she cannot stand “all this mess and all this dirt.” Inna understands with her head and somewhere she even agrees with her mother’s claims; she herself would like to be a more careful housewife, but she can’t help herself. The situation repeats itself constantly, every time my mother visits, but nothing changes. The inability to somehow solve this problem brought her to me. Let's try to look at this problematic situation from a psychological point of view, as a symptom of a relationship. When analyzing a symptom, it is very important to understand its positive aspect: why does it arise? Why does the client need it now? In this case, it is necessary to determine the function that he performs for the client in her relationship with her mother. We will proceed from the following therapeutic axiom: if, despite the fact that, despite the fact that it is obviously an undesirable phenomenon of relationships, a symptom still stubbornly persists, it means that the client needs it for some reason. Let’s try to look at it as a phenomenon of incomplete separation of the client from his mother. Let’s return to the relationship between Inna and her mother. Mom, as I mentioned, is a domineering woman. She, despite the fact that her daughter has long grown up and become an adult, constantly tries to interfere in her life. Mom constantly attacks Inna’s personal boundaries, tries to continue to dominate her self, to indicate how she should live. Having been psychologically suppressed by her mother since childhood, Inna continues to remain emotionally dependent on her. Her healthy aggression, necessary to separate from her mother, was suppressed by fear of her overbearing mother. Being in fear of her mother, Inna cannot directly defend the right to her life and to the manifestations of her self. In this current situation, the psychological meaning of her symptom becomes clear. A mess in the house becomes the only way for Inna to designate, manifest and demonstrate her self in her relationship with her mother. Through him, she seems to be saying to her mother: “Mom, of course you are powerful, but in this place you can’t do anything with me! I will determine the order in my house myself, I am the mistress here. You may not like it, but here you are powerless to do anything. The power here belongs to me!” And the big and strong mother turns out to be helpless in this place. So, through the symptom of a relationship, Inna, albeit implicitly and indirectly, returns the right to her self. Being now unable to openly,=94602