The psychotherapist’s picture of the world, or why the client has a chance The world as an image and representation. The world and the perception of the world are not 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 expression “how many people - so many worlds” is about this. Consequently, it can be argued that each person’s picture of the world, despite its similarity with the pictures of the world of other people, is always different. Similarity and difference are two important qualities of the picture of the world. The first quality (similarity) is a condition for mental health (mentally healthy people can, despite differences in their perception of the world, negotiate, creating a divided, negotiated picture of the world, unlike people suffering from psychosis, for example, schizophrenics). The second quality (difference) creates the opportunity for the individuality of each person. The condition for individuality or subjectivity in the perception of the world is knowledge and experience. You can even say that we see the world not with our eyes, but with our brains - a substance where experience and knowledge are imprinted. The eyes are only an instrument of perception. Professional worlds. Any professional activity contains its own professional knowledge, which, in the process of assimilation, becomes the experience of each person (skills and skills) who acquires a particular profession, thereby forming their own special professional picture of the world. The process of assigning a profession creates new constructs in a person’s mind related to the content of the profession and its subject, changing the usual picture of the world, adding to it a professional perception of the world. The profession of a psychotherapist is no exception here. Consequently, we can talk about a psychotherapeutic picture of the world, which is present in the picture of the world of a particular psychotherapist. Structurally, the picture of the world includes the following three components: the image of the world, the image of oneself, the image of another. The listed components are also known as the concept of the world, the concept of I or self-concept and the concept of the other. The originality of the psychotherapeutic picture of the world. The originality of the profession of a psychotherapist lies, first of all, in the special attitude towards another person, who is actually the object of his professional activity. The uniqueness of the object of professional influence of the psychotherapist, who is also the subject, creates that special specificity of the professional vision of the world of the psychotherapist. Indeed, a person – a client of a psychotherapist, being the object of the psychotherapist’s professional influence, does not cease to be a person, a subject, and this cannot be ignored. First of all, the uniqueness of the psychotherapist’s professional picture of the world lies in a special professional position in relation to the client. Peculiarities of the professional position of the psychotherapist in relation to the client. The psychotherapist’s client, as noted above, being the object of his professional activity, remains, nevertheless, a person. This “human component” of professional influence presupposes the presence of a special, sensitive, caring attitude towards the client. This is manifested in the need for the presence in the work of a psychotherapist of the following mandatory rules/guidelines in relation to the client.• Careful attitude towards the client’s secret;• Trust in the client’s history;• Understanding the client;• Non-judgmental attitude towards the client. Let us dwell in more detail on each of the above highlighted professional rules .Client's secret. Maintaining the client's secret is the most important rule of the professional position of a psychotherapist and, in general, a condition for the possibility of psychotherapy as such. In order for psychotherapy to take place as a whole, the client needs to open up, “bare his soul,” “undress” (by analogy with the procedure for exposing the body with a somatic doctor). It is not surprising that at this point the client often has many stopping feelings - embarrassment, shame, fear... ForIn order to have the opportunity to cope with these feelings, the psychotherapist needs to be very careful and careful in relation to the “phenomena of the soul” presented to him by the client. The client must develop a strong confidence that his spiritual secrets will be dealt with professionally - they will remain within the confines of this office. Otherwise, trust will not be formed between the client and the psychotherapist, without which the alliance and psychotherapy in general are impossible. Trust in the client. Trust is the basic condition of any interpersonal relationship, especially psychotherapeutic relationships. The psychotherapist needs to be very attentive and sensitive to everything that the client presents and tells him. The ability to trust the “truth of the soul” of the client is an important and necessary professional quality of a psychotherapist. The well-known professional attitude of a psychotherapist: “Everything that the client says about himself is true” creates the condition for the possibility of hearing this very truth of the client’s soul. Such a trusting position towards the client is a specific component of the professional world of a psychotherapist, fundamentally different from the everyday picture of the world in which “others lie.” On this occasion, the famous psychotherapist Irvin Yalom wrote that a psychotherapist as a person is easy to deceive, since he is used to believing clients, and therefore all people. But for a psychotherapist as a professional, the presence of a trusting relationship with his clients is inevitable, otherwise, as well as in the condition of not keeping the client’s secret, this trust in the client in the psychotherapist and psychotherapy simply will not be formed. Understanding the client. There is no need to prove the thesis about the importance of understanding the client psychotherapist in his professional activities. Let's consider how this becomes possible. In the process of training, the future professional develops a psychological picture of the world, an important component of which is knowledge/ideas about personality (personality model), the mechanisms of its development in normal and pathological conditions, ideas about normal and pathological conditions. Over time, the student develops a professional perception of the object of his activity. Knowledge about what kind of person is, how his development occurs, become those constructs of the professional world that organize the psychological vision of a person and are the first necessary condition for understanding another person. For the therapist, they act as one of the conditions that create the possibility of understanding the client. The second condition for understanding the client is empathy or an empathic position in relation to him. The most famous definition of empathy belongs to the humanistic psychotherapist K. Rogers and is as follows: “Empathy is the ability to step into the shoes of another, to perceive the internal coordinate system of another from within, as if the therapist were this other, but without losing the “as if” condition.” " Irwin Yalom, already quoted earlier, also spoke metaphorically about empathy as the ability to look at the world from the client’s window. The empathetic position of the therapist allows him to put himself in the client’s place, to look at the problem through his eyes, which opens up the possibility of sympathy and better understanding of the latter. Despite the constant declarations of the importance of empathy as a professionally important quality of a psychologist/psychotherapist, it is not always possible to talk about its presence in the professional arsenal. To develop empathic understanding, knowledge alone is not enough; it can only be learned through specially selected exercises, as a result of which it is possible to gain the experience of “touching” another person. Moreover, such training is possible only on the condition that empathy is initially present in the personality structure of the future psychotherapist; exercises will only help to develop it. Thus, due to this, persons with a borderline level of personality disorder - psychopathic, asocial and narcissistic - are professionally unsuitable for training in psychotherapy. Non-judgmental attitude towards the client. This is importantcomponent of a psychotherapist’s professional picture of the world is one of the most difficult to form in training. Like empathy, a non-judgmental attitude cannot be learned by simply reading books. However, without this attitude towards the client, psychotherapy is simply impossible, although counseling is possible. A client, going to see a psychotherapist, experiences many different feelings, among which the main ones are shame and fear. Both of these feelings belong to the category of social, that is, they arise and “live” in the presence of another. The psychotherapist is such a frightening and shaming other in the client’s mind - he is expected to make diagnoses, confirm his “abnormality”, there are fears that the psychotherapist will not understand, will not accept, will not adequately evaluate... The level of psychological culture of the modern consumer of psychological services, unfortunately, at the moment does not allow us to expect a different attitude towards the psychotherapist, which places additional demands on the psychotherapist to create a “territory of trust”. In the process of psychotherapy, fear is mainly “stopped” by the psychotherapist’s understanding of the client and trust in him. Shame becomes bearable thanks to acceptance and a non-judgmental attitude towards the client. And here high demands are placed on the personality of the psychotherapist. Perhaps, it is precisely this non-judgmental attitude and acceptance of the client that is spoken of in the well-known statement that “the main instrument of psychotherapy is the personality of the psychotherapist.” The psychotherapist’s non-judgmental attitude and acceptance of the client is a property of the psychotherapeutic picture of the world of the psychotherapist, his concept of the other, which is characterized by tolerance for the otherness of the other as otherwise. Everyday human consciousness is largely characterized by evaluativeness; evaluation is firmly ingrained into the perception of every person almost from the moment of his birth. The appearance of evaluation in the field of psychotherapeutic relationships instantly destroys contact, making this kind of relationship impossible. The client, as noted above, when going to therapy, is most afraid of being assessed, while at the same time secretly hoping that at least the psychotherapist will be able to understand him and treat him non-judgmentally. Presenting your problems to the psychotherapist, “baring your soul,” creates a situation of increased sensitivity of the client to assessment, obliging the therapist to treat his professional reactions with special care and caution. How is it possible to expand the boundaries of acceptance of another? How to get rid of evaluativeness and moralizing in the client’s perception? This especially applies to those cases when the client goes far beyond the boundaries of the universal, ethical, and, often, medical idea of ​​norm and normality? How to treat an alcoholic, a psychopath, or a client with a non-traditional sexual orientation without judgment? Such clients are called borderline clients, and it is they, and not clients of the neurotic register, for whom it is easy to show sympathy and empathy, who are a challenge to the psychotherapist’s tolerance. The therapist’s non-judgmental attitude and acceptance of the client are largely made possible through understanding. To understand means to allow another person to be in accordance with his internal potentials, meanings, his essence (M. Boss). Understanding, as mentioned above, is formed through knowledge and empathy. The easiest way to understand another person is if you yourself have gone through something similar in your life and have similar experiences. This way, a “former” alcoholic will better understand and accept an addicted client (it is no coincidence that groups of anonymous alcoholics are led by “old” members of this society), a person who has experienced mental trauma will not have problems with empathy for a client in a similar situation, etc. People who have experienced similar emotional experiences from within their own souls are able to understand a person who comes to them with a similar problematic experience. Consequently, the richer the “soul experience” of the psychotherapist, the more sensitive his “main instrument” will be, the simpler and more effective he will be in working with