Serious psychological problems. How to solve psychological problems if there is no money for a psychologist? Aggression as a socio-psychological problem

Good evening. You are tormented by the question of how to identify a psychological problem, which, judging by the psychosomatics you presented, is taking place. Please, here is the answer to your question, read and determine under what conditions you have a psychological problem and what it is))) Little professional advice- Answer your questions honestly. These questions play a significant role in giving you the correct diagnosis.

A little methodology so that you understand what we are talking about. Any somatic disease “is a process of interaction of a pathogenic influence with an organism capable of appropriately perceiving this influence.” That is, every person in one case or another has certain predispositions to inherit a psychosomatic disease, which, in turn, depends on the environmental conditions in which the person lives. The cause of any psychosomatic disease is exogenous and endogenous conditions, which make it possible to call some psychological diseases polyetiological. So.

1. Tell me why you talked about the situation in the present tense? Now you have peace and quiet - God's grace, but before, what happened before? What was your situation before? Psychological illnesses, you know, could be provoked either by a traumatic situation, or by somatic diseases, etc.

2. Tell me, what type of GNI do you have? To answer you professionally, we need to know it. As an example, people with a strong type of higher nervous activity, who are stress-resistant, after a sharp shake-up, can easily develop neuroses.

3.Tell me, how emotional are you? Is your emotionality low or high, what is its cyclicality and metabolic shifts, etc.?

4. Tell me, why didn’t you talk about how the competitive career struggle went, how emotional overload was experienced, etc.? This is also an essential condition for the emergence of psychosomatics.

5. Tell me, why didn’t you tell us about the peculiarities of your health? For example, you may have vascular pathology or residual consequences of a traumatic brain injury, individual intolerance to meteorological factors and solar splashes, etc.

Remember, psychomatics is a programmed pathogenetic process that includes: physiological (including reflex), biochemical, electrophysiological, mental reactions and structural changes in organs and tissues. The body responds to a wide variety of different pathogenic causes with a limited set of reactions. The choice of reaction, its direction, quality, measure - all this is determined by the capabilities of the individual’s organism itself.

And one more thing. Familiarize yourself with the main periods of psychosomatic illness: prodromal - the period of the most early symptoms, manifest - the period of the height of the disease, the period of reverse development and reduction of symptoms and attenuation of the activity of the disease process. Might come in handy.

And in conclusion. As a clear example, the time of appearance of psychosomatics in depression

I hope everything has become clear and understandable to you - in order to give you a professional answer that suits you, we need to know, at a minimum, the answers to the questions that I asked you. One more question for the end. How would you react to a client who came to your office and demanded that you immediately demonstrate your professionalism, and what would you do in this situation?

Wisdom to you. Lydia.

P.S. Dear client, our experts spent their time and their lore to answer your question. Please show your good manners: choose the best answer and mark the answers of the other experts.

Nowadays there is a huge amount of literature freely available on the Internet, the study of which can really help in solving many problems and changing oneself. These are books and teaching aids, and even whole training courses, designed for independent passage, which can provide answers to many questions. You need to find the direction of self-help that is closest to a particular person.

Popular authors offering help in solving various kinds of problems include Louise Hay, Liz Burbo, Sergei Kovalev, John Kehoe, Vladimir Levy, Valery Sinelnikov and many others. Each author offers his own view on the causes of difficulties in all areas of life and gives ways to resolve them. You just need to make an effort to study them.

Audio and video lectures

Along with books on the Internet, it is possible to obtain unique information through audio and. Lectures, seminars and trainings are posted on the websites of many organizations involved in counseling, psychological and spiritual assistance. Studying them can also help you understand yourself and resolve various personal difficulties. These are lectures and seminars by Oleg Torsunov, Ruslan Narushevich, Sergei Lazarev, Olga Valyaeva, Andrei Kurpatov, etc.

Watching inspiring films.

Inspiring films tell about the hero's journey in the full sense of the word and through this they set you up for success, teach you how to overcome difficult situations, and motivate you to move forward. If you enter in search engines: “inspiring films” - you will receive links to sites and forums with a list of similar films.

Spiritual help

Help others

This way of helping others changes a person’s thinking and allows him to get rid of the victim position. If, even in your difficult situation, you find the strength and opportunity to help those who are even more difficult, then your success will be more significant.

As we have just seen, there are many available ways not to be alone with your problem and begin to take real steps to resolve it, even if you do not have money for psychological consultation.

A psychological problem is always associated with the impossibility of satisfying one or another strong desire (drive, need, motive) of a person. Otherwise, there can be no problem; any task exists only if there is motivation to solve it. But unlike problems of economic, scientific, everyday, etc., the reason for the impossibility of achieving the desired and its very desire are in the psyche of the individual himself , in his inner world. Therefore, economic, scientific and other problems can be solved by external means aimed at overcoming obstacles to the satisfaction of desire, and a psychological problem can only be solved by internal means, sometimes including the renunciation of the primary desire. It is desire that is the needle that “pierces the butterfly” (see above) and deprives it of subjectivity. “If a bride leaves for someone else, then who knows who is lucky,” - this could be sung (these are the words of a famous Finnish song) only by someone who somehow took out the “needle” and got rid of the problem and the suffering associated with it. “So don’t let anyone get you!” - the words of a person who could not solve the problem, and not only experienced excruciating suffering, but also committed an insane and cruel act in the heat of passion.

The frustration model can be used as a basic example of a psychological problem. Frustration (from Latin frustratio - deception, futile expectation) occurs when the satisfaction of a need, a strong desire, encounters an insurmountable obstacle. The state of frustration is accompanied by depression, apathy, irritability, despair and other forms of suffering. With frustration, activity becomes disorganized and its effectiveness is significantly reduced. In the case of very strong and prolonged frustrations, mental “illnesses” may begin.

Figure 1 shows a schematic representation of 4 variants of a frustrating situation, including a person, his aspiration, an obstacle and a goal. In all four cases, the circle means some object desired or rejected by the individual, the vertical rectangle means an obstacle, and the arrow means the individual's desire. The main situation is considered when a person strives to achieve a practically unattainable goal, and situations when a person does not strive for something, but pushes something away from himself, or simultaneously strives for something and pushes it away, or strives for two incompatible goals.

The obstacle can be objectively insurmountable, for example, if the frustration is caused by the death of a loved one, or subjectively insurmountable, like the case when the monkey put its hand into a trap made of a hollowed out pumpkin, grabbed the bait and can no longer remove it from there because the fist is wider than the hole , but she doesn’t think of unclenching it. Regardless of this, there can only be one solution - to “unclench your fist,” although for most “naive” clients this is precisely what seems completely impossible and undesirable. Most people believe that it is necessary to somehow overcome the obstacle to achieving what they want; moreover, unfortunately, in most schools of therapy it is not realized that it is necessary and possible to work with the original desire.

This state in all cases is a dead end and, when strong feelings are actualized, leads to various secondary effects: the construction of a system of psychological defenses, neurotic reactions, psychosomatic symptoms, the development of neurosis, etc.

Regardless of the objectivity or subjectivity of the obstacle, such as psychological suffering (depression, phobia, neuroses, etc.), we are always dealing with a person’s strong desire and an obstacle that is insurmountable for him. Therefore, in all cases, the solution to a psychological problem has one thing in common: it is necessary to weaken (or completely eliminate) the strong desire that keeps a person in slavish dependence , as mentioned above, the monkey must unclench its paw. Only in this case can new behavior options be found that bring success in a given situation. Buddha also said: “Have no desires - you will not have suffering!”

The paradox of such a solution (everyone would like to satisfy a desire) is based on the nature of psychological problems. As mentioned above, economic, political, scientific problems are solved in an external (objective) way with respect to the individual, then psychological problems can only be solved intrapersonally , since the cause of a psychological problem is in the psyche of the person himself. This reason is rooted in a person’s psychological dependence on the object of his desire. There are billions of different objects in the world, but only a few “make” a person suffer, and only because he wants to achieve them.

That's why The goal of psychotherapy is to help the client change , rather than helping him change the outside world. Of course, in each specific case it is necessary to decide: what change will be the most adequate, most consistent with the environment? human life, what emotional fixation must be eliminated. For example, if a person suffers because he cannot survive a loss, then it is necessary to help him say “goodbye,” no matter how difficult it is, to his loss. If he suffers because he cannot achieve happiness due to the conviction of his imaginary inferiority (she is in in this case plays the role of an obstacle), then one should relieve him of the feeling of inferiority. For example, fear may be an obstacle that prevents a young man from communicating with a girl or successfully passing an exam. In this case, it is certainly not love for a girl or the desire to study that needs to be eliminated, but fear, which keeps a person in psychological slavery. A subjective barrier is usually also the result of inadequate emotional fixation. That's why the goal, of course, is not a general and complete deliverance from desires, but deliverance from suffering. As a result of correctly carried out work, a person always has a feeling of liberation and return to open world new opportunities, his ability to satisfy his reasonable needs only increases.

Let us repeat: the essence of psychological work in all cases is to save the individual from the dependence on an object or an inadequate barrier that causes him suffering. In different schools and traditions of psychotherapy, this goal is achieved by different means. But in all cases, a person must become freer than he was, become more a subject of his life than he was.

Let us emphasize that it is not always necessary to eliminate precisely the original desire; in many cases it is necessary to help the individual overcome an obstacle that may be completely illusory. But even in this case, the main task is for him to be able to let go of the barrier to which he is emotionally attached, so to speak, “unclench his paw.”

Example.

I had to work for a very long time with one girl who was depressed because she believed that her personal happiness was impossible because her body was very ugly (which was not true). A subjective barrier to intimacy was created in childhood, when her father rejected her attempts to touch him and expressed negative opinions about her physique. In order to get rid of depression, she needed to give up on such a fatherly attitude, which was difficult to do because she loved him. However, we managed to achieve this, the depression passed and she met her boyfriend...

In addition to frustration, the following variants of problems can be identified: stress, conflict and crisis (see Vasilyuk. F.V., “Psychology of Experience,” 1984), but they can be reduced to the primary model. It’s just that in case of frustration the problem is caused by a contradiction between what is desired and what is available, in case of stress - a strong non-specific influence, in case of conflict - a contradiction (interpersonal or intrapersonal), in case of a crisis - a sharp change in life circumstances. All these cases have much in common and one way or another lead to one of the four problem models given above.

However, very often, instead of liberation from addiction and problem solving Every person, being in one of these situations, demonstrates some type of unconstructive behavior. Eight types of such behavior can be listed, although there are many more.

1. The first and most common reaction to frustration is aggression . Aggression can be directed at an obstacle, at a target, at oneself, but very often at strangers or objects. Aggression, with rare exceptions, is not constructive in the sense of solving a problem, and more often than not aggravates the situation.

But in some cases it can be used as a method of reducing internal stress. Thus, in some Japanese enterprises, a worker can beat a plastic copy of his boss with a stick and thereby alleviate his frustration. Some methods of psychotherapy (see “Body Therapy”) specifically provoke a person to release aggression in a safe form.

2. Another option - repression (or suppression), which is expressed in suppressing one’s desires, displacing them into the subconscious, naturally, this does not lead to liberation from addiction. On the contrary, as Freud noted, repressed desires become even stronger and, in addition, elude conscious control. In a therapeutic sense, there is nothing positive in suppression, but in social terms it is hardly possible for a society and a person to develop in a way where there is no need to suppress or at least restrain some of one’s impulses (aggressive, sexual, etc.).

3. Escapism (or avoidance) is a reaction to avoid a traumatic situation, and sometimes other situations that cause associations with the main problem. This type of behavior, of course, “saves nerves,” but naturally does not help to find a solution, gain true independence and freedom, and sometimes creates additional difficulties. For example, a boy or girl, having experienced failure in love, sometimes begins to avoid such relationships, which leads to the development of a set of other emotional problems.

4. Regression - this is the use of behavior characteristic of more early stages development, its primitivization. For example, in stressful situation people often assume the womb position: bringing their knees up to their chin and hugging them with their arms. Thus, they seem to return to that stage of development where they felt completely protected and calm. This helps to overcome a difficult moment in life, reduce the impact of stress, but does not solve the problem itself; moreover, often this behavior allows a person to relieve himself of responsibility for solving his own problems” thanks to the habitual position of “small”.

5. Rationalization - this is an attempt to explain, somehow justify one’s behavior in some far-fetched way, while the true motives are not realized. Rationalization also allows you to remove responsibility from yourself, transfer it to circumstances, other people, etc. People always try to explain and justify their behavior, but rarely does anyone try to change it. A genuine understanding of true motives always brings relief and leads to positive changes in behavior, while rationalization always leads to maintaining the previous situation and serves to hide from oneself the true reasons for one’s actions.

6. Sublimation - switching a person’s activity from the primary problem, where he failed, to another type of activity, where success is achieved, even if imaginary. For example, a problem that cannot be solved in reality can be solved in fantasies and dreams. A person “looks not where he has lost, but where there is light.” Sometimes sublimation serves as a powerful source of creativity, but more often it leads to a fruitless waste of energy and leads away from genuine personal growth.

7. Projection - this is the transfer of one’s own unconscious motives of behavior to the explanations of another person, so an aggressive person is inclined to accuse other people of being aggressive towards him, what in everyday life is called “judges people by oneself.” It is clear that projection leads away from solving problems,

8. Autism - this is the self-isolation of the personality, its fencing off from communication and active activity. It is very difficult to get out of this condition, since the person does not make contact, especially if the contact affects a sore area. This is essentially a refusal to see at all how things are, to do something, etc.

So, the eight methods of behavior listed above allow you to “change the situation without changing anything”, do not lead to solving the problem and gaining subjectivity, and retain the main attachment, which gives rise to suffering and pathological behavior.

It is the irresistible force of attachment to a goal (or stimulus) that makes a person a “de facto” object in relation to a certain situation, that is, determined, not understanding himself, not changing, not creative, having no perspective and monofunctional.

On the contrary, its weakening allows a person’s subjectivity to manifest itself, that is, his activity, self-understanding (awareness), the ability to change, creativity and self-improvement, the creation of his own perspective and multidimensionality,

Therefore, all methods that make it possible to weaken a person’s slavish, pathological dependence on some object, thought, image or state are psychotherapeutic in their action and meaning. All methods that increase addiction or replace one addiction with another, stronger one, should be recognized as harmful and anti-therapeutic. For example, such a common practice of “sewing” a pill into an alcoholic, which can lead to death when drinking alcohol, is not essentially a treatment, since it does not relieve a person of addiction, but creates an additional addiction - the fear of death. This is all the more anti-therapeutic because (as new data show) alcoholism is usually caused by the individual’s hidden suicidal intention, that is, an embedded pill gives him a chance to easily carry out his intention, which often happens. However, the level of development of our medicine, as well as the level of intellectual and moral development of the majority of alcoholics in our country, make the use of such methods inevitable.

The same can be said about coding, when a person is “sewn into the brain with a hypnotic formula” that acts in the same way as the medicine described above. We can only be happy for those whom this helped, but let us explain this idea with an example.

Example.

A woman weighing 457 kg died in America. Once she managed to lose 200 kg of weight, but then she could not stand it and again began to constantly chew her favorite pork sandwiches. Before her death, she admitted that constantly chewing sandwiches saved her from memories of how she was brutally raped in her youth.

Now let's say that this woman took a coding course and was taught an aversion to fatty, high-calorie foods. What should she do now?! Mental suffering is not healed, it must be forgotten. It is clear that the solution can be suicide, drugs, alcohol... Genuine therapy should free a person from this long-standing pain and then she (or he) will not need to destroy herself either by overeating, or alcohol, or in any other way.

Therefore, the main methods adopted in modern psychotherapy are always aimed at liberating one or another quality of subjectivity. Therefore, they use certain methods of awakening initiative, the ability to make decisions and implement them, methods of expanding awareness of the problem situation and, above all, their own own desires, techniques for changing the usual way of behavior and thinking, techniques that stimulate creativity and self-development, techniques for creating the meaning of life, techniques for working with the holistic gestalt of human life, methods for developing authenticity, subjectivity as such.

The problem can be of varying levels of complexity, which depends primarily on the intensity of those internal energy flows (emotions) that “break” against internal barriers, as well as different types - depending on specific unrealized aspirations and specific methods of painful adaptation to this situation.

In psychiatry, there is a detailed classification of various mental disorders (see, for example) and the psychotherapist must be familiar with it to a certain extent. However, this classification does not consider mental disorders as manifestations of one or another psychological problem and separates ordinary psychological difficulties from “diseases” with an impenetrable wall. The purpose of this diagram: to offer some kind of “periodic” table of psychological problems, including so-called “diseases”.

Here we will propose a fairly conditional model that allows us to combine all psychological problems into one general scheme in terms of their depth and complexity. I would like to apologize in advance to the experts for such a simplified model, but it is necessary in order to highlight some general trend. All problems are located according to this model on different difficulty levels from the point of view of the difficulty of solving them and from the point of view of the depth of their rooting in the individual. At each level there are different types of psychological problems, for example, at the level of neuroses there are the most different types neuroses (see Fig. 2), but their level of complexity is approximately the same, since with neuroses one or another sphere of interaction with the world is disrupted, but the personality structure is not distorted as in psychopathy, and the adequacy of the perception of reality is not impaired as in psychosis.

Above the norm

Norm Behavioral Emotional Neuroses Psychopathy

maladjustment disorders

The first level can be called supernormal level.

This is the level that, according to A. Maslow (see “Humanistic psychotherapy”), self-actualizing individuals reach; as he believed, they are no more than 1% of the total number of people, but they are the leading force of humanity. “Ordinary” people can also reach this level, but quickly return to their previous state. At this level, a person often experiences inspiration, insight, and happiness. A person’s consciousness at this level is especially clear; creative ideas constantly come to him. These people act flexibly, spontaneously, sincerely and effectively. Most people who lived at this level proved themselves to be genuine geniuses in one field or another, although at times they could lower their level and not perform at their best.

Such people do not have neuroses and they endure psychological trauma very easily. They are characterized by ease, lack of stereotyping, lack of emotional and physical tension. One could say that there are no problems at this level, but of course this is not the case. For the most part, these are problems of creative realization in the world, because it is very difficult, or problems of comprehending the spiritual side of life. In order to understand the problems of these people, you need to be at this level yourself at least occasionally.

Second level - normal level .

This is the level at which everything is also going very well. The so-called “normal” person is well adapted to the social environment, copes quite successfully with work and family responsibilities, as well as with difficulties and troubles. His mind is clear emotional state mostly comfortable, although the level of happiness and inspiration that a person usually experiences at the supernormal level is rarely achievable here (in fact, at these moments he goes to highest level). Reacts quite flexibly to changing situations, is not tense, but there is no constant feeling of lightness, flight, or inspiration.

The types of problems that a “normal” person faces are also quite normal: difficulties in adapting to changed situations, difficulties in learning, in performing complex work, difficulties in developing creativity, developing abilities, etc.

A few words about the concept of norm. Although defining a norm in science is still a very problematic task, two main approaches to this definition can be distinguished. The first is that all those properties of an individual that are on average inherent in a given population or group are recognized as the norm. An individual whose characteristic deviates too much from the average will be considered abnormal.

The second approach is intuitively used by psychiatry and ordinary people in everyday life. The norm is everything that is not not the norm . That is, if everyone is convinced that two plus two is four, then a person who claims that two plus two is five will be considered abnormal or not quite normal.

If a person engages in strange behavior that is inexplicable from the point of view of the majority, displays inappropriate emotions and beliefs, and fails to cope with difficulties that almost everyone copes with, a suspicion arises that he deviates from the norm. Everything else is recognized as the norm and is considered the properties and abilities of the vast majority. Therefore, everything that does not correspond to the obvious, to what almost everyone agrees, to the universal is considered abnormal. The last definition is the most simply used, that is, operational, and we mainly use it. However, one must understand that it sometimes forces one to recognize as abnormal a person of genius who contradicts the evidence, but the latter is distinguished by wisdom, insight, and logic, and his conclusions are confirmed by practice.

Third level - level of behavioral maladjustment.

At this level, which can also be called the level of neurotic reactions, a person is not quite well adapted to certain areas of life. At times he cannot cope with fairly simple life situations, reacts inadequately to difficulties, and has problems in communication. His consciousness is less clear and more narrowed, especially in the sense of self-awareness, than at the previous level, the logic of reasoning is sometimes violated, and he often experiences negative emotions and tension.

The problems he faces usually relate to relationships with other people, difficulties at work and in school, uncertain behavior, outbursts of inappropriate emotional reactions, etc. “Normal” people can sometimes go to this level, as they say, anyone can “freak out,” but it quickly passes. People who live at this level constantly show such breakdowns very often.

Fourth level - level of emotional disturbances.

At this level, the individual experiences temporary but very serious neurotic states: depressive states, outbursts of anger, despair, feelings of guilt, sadness, etc. All the signs discussed above intensify (during such states): consciousness becomes even less clear and more narrowed, flexibility of thinking is lost, internal and bodily tension increases, etc.

Types of problems characteristic of this level: loss of a loved one, disappointment in love, inability to realize important goals, difficult relationships in the family, loss of meaning in life, consequences of (not too severe) stress, fear, etc.

Fifth level - level of neurosis .

This level traditionally refers to the level of diseases, but with a psychological approach we always find an unresolved psychological problem at the heart of this disease. However, modern medicine also considers neuroses to be psychogenic and also reversible diseases.

At this level, neurotic states and reactions become permanent (or they return periodically). These include the following types of problems: obsessive fears (phobias), obsessional neurosis (obsessive-compulsive neurosis), hypochondria, hysteria, anxiety neurosis, anorexia, bulimia, etc. At the same level of complexity we can place psychosomatic diseases, which usually include: asthma, hypertension, stomach ulcers, allergies, headaches and many others. Also, problems such as alcoholism and smoking should be placed at this level of complexity. This also includes the phenomenon of post-traumatic stress.

In all these cases, the “diseases” are based on deep psychological problems, usually associated with the characteristics of child development individual (with the exception of post-traumatic stress). This may be a castration complex (according to Z. Freud), an inferiority complex (according to A. Adler), a non-adaptive life scenario (according to E. Bern) and other psychological factors.

Sixth level - level of psychopathy .

This includes various painful distortions of the individual’s character, that is, here the personality itself is distorted. There are schizoid, hysterical, epileptoid, hyperthymic and other types of psychopathy. This level also includes sexual perversions and manic types of behavior. There are, for example, pathological liars, gamblers, etc. Drug addiction can also be roughly placed at this level of complexity.

The consciousness of such individuals is not so much clouded or narrowed as distorted. Their inner world is dominated by negative emotions: anger, fear, hatred, despair... Sometimes this is not outwardly noticeable, but in a critical situation these emotions break out in a pathological form. Constant voltage manifests itself in a specific muscle shell (see “Body Therapy”). Medicine classifies problems at this level as pathologies. nervous system, and to the peculiarities of upbringing in childhood. Psychologists, of course, here too find primarily psychological reasons, usually rooted in early childhood or even in the prenatal period.

Addicts are characterized by the fact that they escape from their suffering with the help of a drug, artificially (as passive objects) falling into a “supernormal” state, but as soon as the drug wears off, they are thrown back like a “jack on an elastic band” into the previous existence that now seems to them even more terrible.

Seventh level - level of psychosis .

These include: acute psychotic illness, schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis and other psychoses. Epilepsy, which is not formally related to psychosis, as well as multiple personality disorder, should be included at the same level.

Psychoses are characterized primarily by a distorted perception of reality, hence delusions and hallucinations. The individual largely ceases to control his behavior with the help of consciousness and is not aware of his actions. Tension increases incredibly; even in domestic psychiatric textbooks, hypertension (supertension) of muscles in schizophrenics is noted. Negative feelings of incredible strength (hatred, fear, despair, etc.) are suppressed by a huge effort of will, which on the surface can look like emotional dullness.

Problems at this level are defined by medicine exclusively as diseases of the brain. However, there is a number of evidence of the psychological nature of these “diseases”, and cases of their purely psychological healing are also described (see, for example, K. Jung, Grof). However, it is too early to talk about the possibility of psychological correction of these diseases, since these patients cannot adequately perceive psychological influences. The method of mask therapy of our compatriot Nazloyan gives some hope for psychological healing of such diseases.

So, we can trace how psychological problems, depending on the degree of their development, give rise to increasingly severe “diseases” and symptoms that are increasingly difficult to heal. At the same time, psychological correction is quite effective up to the level of psychopathy, from this level psychological correction is very difficult, but at the level of psychosis (with rare exceptions) drug treatment is usually carried out.

However, all of the levels of human problems listed above represent stages of the “fall” of the personality (this does not mean that a person can sequentially move from one stage to another; as a rule, this does not happen), characterized by a deterioration in the following life parameters if one moves sequentially from the “supernorm” to the lower levels up to the level of psychosis:

1. consciousness moves from complete clarity to increasingly narrowed and darkened states;

2. the degree of self-understanding (awareness) and self-regulation also worsens with the transition to each subsequent stage;

3. the emotional state moves from the most joyful and beautiful forms to states that can only be described as “hellish”, the intensity of negative emotions increases with the transition from one stage to another;

4. flexibility of thinking and behavior decreases with the transition from stage to stage up to the most rigid options, the ability to be creative decreases;

5. with the transition from stage to stage, psychological and muscle tension increases from a light and relaxed state at the “supernormal” level to constant muscle overstrain and even catatonia at the level of psychosis;

6. the sense of freedom and autonomy of the individual from complete confidence in oneself, one’s capabilities and rights is reduced to the point of the conviction that you, like a robot, are being commanded by some alien forces.

Thus, all psychological problems can be lined up in one row, which is characterized by a deterioration in certain parameters of mental health (this does not apply, of course, to the period of remission), the most important of them, from our point of view, are emotions and feelings, since they are the system-forming factor of psychological problems, since they correspond to the unrealized aspirations of the individual (see diagram of the structure of psychological problems). The hypothesis is that all levels of problems differ from each other primarily in the degree of fixation of the individual on one or another unrealizable goal. Exactly this fixation gives rise to loss of freedom and autonomy, narrowing of consciousness, loss of flexibility of thinking, negative emotions, often directed at oneself, muscle overexertion, etc., that is, an increasing loss of subjectivity and the acquisition of the qualities of a “suffering object.”

It should be made clear that a “sick” individual cannot suddenly move from one level of problems to another and from one type of problem to another. The structure of the problem determines one or another level and type of “disease”, and in each specific case in the course of psychological analysis this structure can be opened, then psychological impact the therapist will be adequate and healing. In any case, there is in fact no impassable gap between “just problems” and “illnesses”. “Diseases” are just problems that have reached a certain stage of development; depending on this stage, consciousness and self-awareness, thinking, behavior, the emotional sphere, the ability to relax, personal autonomy and others suffer on one scale or another. psychological qualities personality.

Questions for control:

1. What is the structure of psychological problems?

2. What is the essence of a psychotherapeutic solution to a problem?

3. What “solutions” to a psychological problem should be considered non-therapeutic or even anti-therapeutic?

4. What happens in the case of an adequate therapeutic decision in the client’s subjective world?

5. How are these ideas related to the principle of emancipation of the subject?

6. What levels of psychological problems can be distinguished?

7. What psychological qualities deteriorate when moving from one level to another?

8. What types of psychological problems are there? different levels can you name?

Literature on this topic:

1. Blaser A., ​​Heim E., Ringer H., Tommen M. Problem-oriented psychotherapy. - M., 1998.

2. Vasilyuk F. E. Psychology of experience. - M., 1984.

3. Kaplan G.I., Sadok B.J. Clinical psychiatry. - M., 1994.

4. Karvasarsky B.D. Psychotherapy (textbook). - St. Petersburg, 2000.

5. Koenig K. When you need a psychotherapist... M., 1996.

6. Grof S. Journey in search of oneself. -M., 1994.

7. Perls F. Gestalt seminars. -M., 1998.

8. Rogers K.R. Counseling and psychotherapy. - M., 1999.

9. Sweet K. Off the hook. - St. Petersburg, 1997.

10. Stolyarenko L.D. Basics of psychology. Rostov-on-Don, 1997.

11. Jung K.G. Analytical psychology. - St. Petersburg, 1994.

Questions that are important both for science and for every person: Is it possible to count modern Psychology effective? Is she up to the task? Do Psychology and its direct specialists, Psychologists, really help solve problems or not? In general, can we say that Psychology as a science has taken place?

We will analyze and evaluate based on actions and results, and we will try to talk about shortcomings impartially and reasonably.

First, something that should be obvious to every person:

• There have not been fewer people who experience suffering over the past decades, perhaps even more.
• More than 80% of all people are subject to stress, that is, the majority do not have self-management skills and stress resistance. Almost 30% of people constantly live in a pre-stress state.
• The statistics on depression are also not reassuring, also more than 80%. In general, more than 50% of people live without life goals; these are those who systematically experience an unwillingness to live.
• Only a few people can work with themselves and solve their psychological problems; this is less than 1% of all people.
• Approximately 50% of people are not able to build normal human relationships. 4 out of 5 marriages end in divorce and psychological trauma.

Agree that these are sad indicators, they don’t count, so to speak!

Although, it would seem, Psychology should help people solve problems, and as this science develops, people should have fewer and fewer problems. On the contrary, we are observing the opposite trend – an increase and worsening of problems.

One can add to the chronic problems of psychology that, according to statistics, Psychologists themselves suffer from various kinds of psychological problems 2-3 times more than ordinary people. If a psychologist is unable to help himself, this indicates that something is clearly wrong with this science!

Basic problems of Psychology. Cause Analysis

1. Psychology, as a science about the Soul, has a completely materialistic basis. This, in fact, makes it impossible to determine the root causes and explain all spiritual problems, qualities and phenomena of a human being. “The Science of the Soul” officially denies the existence of the soul :)

Think for yourself! Spiritual (not physiological) qualities, principles and characteristics describing the human - tens of thousands of terms, such as: truthfulness and deceit, honor and dishonor, cowardice and courage, responsibility and irresponsibility, dignity and insignificance, love and hatred, kindness and anger, discipline or its absence, will and lack of will, gratitude or lack of gratitude, etc. Values ​​such as Honor, Conscience, Nobility, Mercy, Love, Respect, Devotion, and others - Is all this located somewhere in the body, in meat, in blood, in the brain or bones? Where do all these qualities live in a person? After all, they are absolutely real and determine a person’s Personality, his character, advantages, disadvantages and destiny! What organs in the body are responsible for these human qualities and abilities? No, all this has nothing to do with the body and physiology! These are qualities!

2. Lack of a full-fledged working model of Consciousness, which explains all its phenomena and processes: thoughts, thinking, images and imagination, will, self-control, thousands of qualities, emotions and reactions, memory. On at the moment in Psychology there is no generally accepted unified theory of Consciousness. This makes Psychology completely blind in its field, and therefore ineffective. Read about the energy-information model of Consciousness at.

3. Lack of a complete (model of Personality). Personality structure is necessary so that a person can develop effectively, eliminate his problems, get rid of shortcomings and develop advantages (unleash his potential). If there is no understanding of the structure of the Personality, then the techniques of personality development are introduced blindly, at random. And if the model of the Personality is clear, all the mechanisms that make up the Personality and the connections between them are clear, then effective development techniques can be introduced.

4. Lack of integrity, logic and consistency in knowledge and theories. Psychology now consists of many disparate theories, hypotheses, views and approaches, in which theory is often completely inconsistent with practice. Many psychologists, not knowing how to help a person eliminate this or that problem, teach the client to maneuver. adapt and live with this problem. As in the famous joke, when after visiting a psychologist, a man answers a friend’s question that he never got rid of enuresis, but now he does not have a complex, but is proud of it. Out of hopelessness Psychology teaches not to solve problems, not to get rid of shortcomings, but to live with them.

• About Personality Structure –

5. As a consequence of all of the above - This is the lack of adequate criteria for assessing the Personality and characteristics of a person. From school we know the traditional types of temperament: sanguine, chalerich, phlegmatic and melancholic. But in fact, they don’t give you anything! Great people were both phlegmatic and galeric, melancholic and sanguine! Just like there are good and evil, successful and unsuccessful, happy and unhappy among all character types. Great people who changed history were even disabled, like Roosevelt, for example.

Other indicators that are an order of magnitude more important are the strength of a person, his level of development, which determines the level of his capabilities, and the positivity of a person (the ratio of positive and negative in him).

• About the levels of human development -.
• What is Positivity and who is a positive person?

And these are only the most basic of the problems of Psychology that we have examined. All that remains is to wish Psychology - to let the spiritual sphere into oneself and stop giving up the Soul. Everyone will benefit from this - science will receive its laws, and people will have the opportunity to effectively solve their problems and develop.

Best regards, Vasily Vasilenko

So, if you did everything correctly, then now you have a Client in front of you, ready to work, and at the next stage we need to find out what exactly needs to be worked on?.

Our whole life is the desire for comfort and an attempt to avoid discomfort. This is a key point that is very important to understand. Behind any action there is either a “motivation to” (by doing this I will receive love, approval, pleasure...) or a “motivation from” (by doing this I will be able to avoid shame, guilt, danger...).

To understand this, let's look at some simple psychological problems, for example, phobias. The client is afraid of dogs, so he does not go to the park near his house. That is, his behavior is “motivated from” (to avoid danger, even an imaginary one). When speaking publicly, the Client feels shame and, in order not to feel it, he does not speak.

Let's complicate the problem one step. For example, a woman eats sweets uncontrollably, has gained weight and wants to get rid of it. It would seem that the “motivation to” here is to eat sweets in order to get pleasure, but if you dig deeper, it may turn out that in this way it eats up another, already uncomfortable feeling (resentment, guilt...).

In the end At the heart of any psychological problem is some kind of feeling, most often uncomfortable. It is either a problem itself or has a second level (secondary benefit).

Secondary benefit is what protects the Client from primary discomfort.

For example, a person is afraid of public speaking, but if he still has to perform, then he no longer feels fear, but shame and reacts sharply to laughter from the audience and criticism. Thus, his fear protects him from being ashamed. Fear is a secondary benefit.

Or a person is constantly sick so that relatives look after him, give him attention and thus receive love and respect, because without this he feels loneliness, which is the cause of discomfort. If he were comfortable, there would be no need to get sick.

It is clear that people are not aware of most of the reasons, and in order to find them out, I developed a special diagnostic technique using the Makulov method.

Let's spend it now with you. Remember any uncomfortable situation from the recent past in which you would like to change your reaction. For example, you are afraid of something, or you are offended, or you are ashamed.

1. Mentally find yourself in this situation and remember where in your body the uncomfortable feeling arises? In the chest, in the stomach, in the throat?

For example, you remembered how afraid you were of your boss, and you got a feeling in your chest. For now, we don’t care what that feeling is, we’ll deal with that in the next chapter.

2. Ask yourself: what specifically could happen to make this feeling intensify? What might they say or do to you in this situation?

For example, your boss will tell you: you’re not doing a good job, I’ll fire you.

For example, abandoned and unnecessary.

4. Where is this feeling? Is it there in the chest or has it moved? For example, it shifted to the stomach.

5. Let's find a dominant - of all the people you know, who could do the same (fire/quit) to make you as uncomfortable as possible.

For example, mom.

So, we need to find exactly that very uncomfortable feeling that the Client so diligently avoids. Negative self-determination “what I am like in this situation” is primary and shapes our further reactions.

For example, “I am worthless,” which means that when people treat me as a significant person, I will feel shame, feeling that I am unworthy. Or “I am weak,” which means that I will experience fear of conflict, realizing that I cannot win.

Each of us has just a bunch of similar beliefs, firstly, because our parents grew up in the USSR, and secondly, because it is much easier to manipulate a child than to raise him, respecting him as an individual.

Now I will give you a diagram that the participants of our seminar use for diagnosis, and using it you will diagnose another problem for yourself and write down the results.

You should end up with something like:

Situation “Fear of public speaking”:

1. In the chest.

2. They will laugh.

3. Small.

There may not be a secondary benefit, for example, a boy stuck two fingers into a socket, he got an electric shock, he is afraid of sockets. Detailed diagram diagnostics are given below:

Now you can move on. We divide feelings into different character and by intensity. For example, the same insult in the throat can be stronger or weaker depending on the situation (intensity), but it’s all the same same thing feeling in character. But if you compare the resentment in your throat and the fear in your stomach, they will already be different in character - that is, generally different feelings.

Your task now is to find and write down all the uncomfortable feelings that are different in nature and carry out diagnostics with each one according to the diagram above. In fact, these will be your main psychological problems to work through.

It’s easier to go from the brightest (most uncomfortable) to the least uncomfortable. And further in hypnotherapy we will also follow from what worries us most now, it’s just easier to work.

Only when you have done a complete self-diagnosis and understand what’s what, start doing it to your Clients or just friends. You can give this book to your friend to read, and when you are both in the know, it will simply be easier for you to train.

A correctly carried out diagnosis using V. Makulov’s method usually gives the Client a mini-enlightenment and creates trust, because So no one had yet understood his problems.