Age: 58 years old.
Education: Lomonosov Moscow State University, majoring in psychology; training course in systemic family psychotherapy, Milan School; psychodrama training course at the Scandinavian School of Psychodrama.
Job: Head of the Department of Systemic Family Psychotherapy at the Institute of Practical Psychology and Psychoanalysis, Chairman of the Board of the Society of Family Consultants Psychotherapists (OSKIP).
Regalia and titles: Candidate of Psychological Sciences, author of 54 scientific and popular science articles and two monographs; is a member of the EAP (European Psychotherapeutic Association), IFTA (International Association of Family Therapists).
About the systems approach
Literally a few years after I graduated from the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Western psychologists came to us en masse to bring “the good and the eternal.” And my generation of professionals enthusiastically absorbed everything they could then. But I was most fascinated by the systemic approach and family psychotherapy as one of its options. Why? Quite a random choice - the company was nicer. System theory appeared in the 60s of the 20th century and was based on cybernetic ideas. It believes that a person is a certain element of a variety of social systems, and his behavior is regulated by their dynamics and characteristics. And family is one of them.
The point is to see the family system as a whole, how its members interact with each other. Therefore, I invite everyone to the appointment: mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, and even the nanny, if she lives in the family permanently. In a sense, a person does not have individual problems - they are considered only in the totality of family relationships. For example, parents bring their child to see a child psychologist because he refuses to go to school. They begin a therapeutic course with him, after each session he returns home, and all his efforts are in vain. After all, it’s not just about the child! You start to find out: “What do you think happens at home when you’re at school?” “Mom and dad are quarreling” - “And in front of you?” - “With me - no. And when I’m sick, they never quarrel at all.” And everything becomes obvious. By the way, it was with children's problems that family psychotherapy began - people came for the sake of their children, and then came to their own problems.
Psychology does not stand somewhere apart from social and historical processes. An entire era has changed: it was modern, it became postmodern. I started back in the “classics”, when it was believed that a psychotherapist knows how a family works and what can be done with clients so that they solve their problems. And now directiveness and expertise are becoming a thing of the past. And today we are far from sure that we know everything as it was 20 years ago. On the contrary, sometimes the client understands better what he really needs!
Why psychologists don't like managers
When about 15 years ago, the idea came up to organize the Society of Family Psychotherapists, I was full of illusions. I dreamed that we would be able to promote the profession, invite Western colleagues, create professional standards, and maybe even a law on psychotherapy. I was hoping for great achievements, but it turned out to be “like a trade union.” Here you need to understand who psychotherapists are. These are people who are marginal in their structure; they cannot be enthusiasts of any social movements. The psychologist is a slightly “purple” character, in the sense that he is subdepressive, and this is a professionally approved property.
We spend all our time in a very intense emotional field, because we communicate with people who are suffering, unhappy, and we need to empathize with them, otherwise why are we working at all? Some psychotherapists even have difficulty writing scientific articles. He mostly works in his office with clients and then goes to bed. We recently had a round table about professional deformation, and everyone unanimously confirmed that they want to communicate less, there is almost no social drive.
So, gathering all the psychotherapists with the hope that it would be a living and active organization was stupid on my part. But we somehow manage to exist for quite a long time. The problem is that if a manager comes to the Society, life immediately arises there, but the psychotherapists feel bad! I am glad that for my colleagues the highest value is their direct work, and not meetings. It’s good that there is a place where they can come, discuss their difficult cases, and receive professional support.
About why the formula “mom, dad, me” no longer works
The institution of family is seriously changing. Moreover, both in the world and in Russia (although here, as always, it is a little slower). After all, all formal reasons for marriage disappear! Why is it needed? If we remove the emotional side, then there is no point in getting married. Especially if you imagine an urban bi-career family, when both husband and wife work, they have no children and there is no idea that a child needs both parents. Today, all household chores are outsourced: a nanny sits with the children, a housekeeper cleans the house, we eat in restaurants. This was unimaginable before! The life of the family required the participation of each member; at least two were needed to exist comfortably.
And today new types of families are emerging: homosexual, with adopted children, almost with animals instead of children. Everyone already knows about guest marriages, in which partners meet only on weekends and on vacation. A new phenomenon is the “binuclear family,” when people give birth to children in one marriage, get divorced, then give birth to new ones, and then everyone communicates with each other. They cooperate in raising children and treat ex-husbands and wives in a civilized manner. And, most importantly, everyone is very comfortable! We have become more free in this regard. And this is not bad or good - it’s just a phenomenon that needs to be accepted and studied. What the consequences will be is also still a question.
But it only seems to us that before there was such a standard family (man - woman - children), and now suddenly everything has changed dramatically. In Christian culture this is a monogamous marriage, but in Islam, for example, everything is different: a man can have several wives, with children from each of them. And this is also a family. There is simply a type of family that prevails in a given culture, and any person is a social animal, and therefore follows stereotypes. But now everything is changing quickly, and some part of society is worried about these changes. Firstly, it is generally afraid of change. After all, the point is not that marriage changes its meaning, but that different generations have different meanings and values. The older generation is afraid that the new generation does not reproduce the values that seem important to them. I think the options for families will become increasingly diverse. And this is good, because any increase in diversity is our resource.
About civil marriage and why divorce is not the end of the world
It seems to me completely unimportant whether you have a piece of paper or not. It is unknown how necessary this is. It is always difficult to determine this line: are we together because we want to, or are we together because we have to? From the point of view of family psychotherapy, if you find yourself in the same territory, eat, sleep together, and exchange fluids, then you are a family. Therefore, all these marriage registrations and marriage contracts are only needed when it comes to property. And if you have nothing to share, then why? But here again the stereotypes and fears of the older generation arise. Although, if you really want to pack your suitcase and leave home, it will not matter to you whether there is a stamp in your passport or not.
In my practice, it has happened more than once that a husband or wife decides that they are definitely getting a divorce, and even looked at the option of a new family. And at the same time they come with their spouse to a psychotherapist, claiming that they want to mend a falling apart relationship. Everyone here has their own motives: one is afraid for the spouse they are leaving, the other wants to see if the psychotherapist can help. But I’m not an investigator, my starting position is to believe the client. Infidelity is often hidden. A man cheats on his wife, but does not want to divorce her or leave his mistress. Then he says: “Firstly, nothing happened, and secondly, my wife is crazy if she thinks so.” And under this sauce he takes her to a psychologist. In general, if a person behaves in such a way that he “gets caught,” it means that he wants to say something to his partner. A love letter on the screen of a computer that is turned on often means something. Thus, often the cheating person wants, as paradoxical as it may sound, to strengthen their relationship in marriage. He is trying to bring about some change. And this is better than sitting and both suffering.
There are more divorces. Obviously, this trend leads to the fact that people manage to be in several unions in their lives: they converge, diverge, change partners. And this, in turn, means that the number of people who are never married is growing. But if people feel bad together, divorce itself is not the end of the world. Except in cases where it is conflicting, if one of the spouses is literally destroyed by this event, he considers it a collapse or a shame. Then there remains an injury that you have to work with for a long time.
About childhood
Now, as in the Middle Ages, childhood is disappearing altogether as a social category. The information barrier between generations is collapsing. If previously, for a child to become an adult, he had to learn to read, now he can watch TV and surf the Internet. What the grandmother sees on TV, the granddaughter also sees. What is a child now? It is not clear how to teach him and what, because the idea that the child needs something special has disappeared. In the Middle Ages, as soon as he mastered speech, he immediately became part of the adult community. If you look at paintings, for example, by the artist Pieter Bruegel, there are peasants drinking in a tavern, and children nearby.
Today, at the age of five and at thirty-five, they dress, eat and spend their leisure time the same way. Those same “kids” appear - adult children that everyone talks about. We do not have a general cultural understanding of what raising a child in a family means. Everyone begins their own madness: either the child is simultaneously taught reading, dancing, arithmetic and tennis, or until the age of six they dress him in diapers. The problem is that the principles that helped their parents adapt socially do not work with modern children. You can no longer say, “Look at me and do as I do.” As sociologist Zygmunt Bauman wrote: “Parents are the people who give me pocket money.”
The socialization of children today takes place on the Internet, and not at school, in the yard or in clubs. But adults cannot keep up with the development of all these technologies and can no longer control children. I know a severely mentally retarded boy who easily finds cartoons on his laptop. And perhaps this gap between generations will only grow. I believe that in this situation it is important to maintain emotional ways of communication when parents and children simultaneously experience similar feelings. They watch cartoons together, go to restaurants, and ski. This is a sign of emotional contact, and it is very important. But education from the point of view of “an officer and a citizen” has been completely destroyed. And maybe that’s where he should go.
About “liquid modernity”
The social environment cannot but influence the life of a family: sometimes it is a resource, sometimes a stressor. In our society, unfortunately, the second option works. It seems significant to me that an increasing number of children are leaving at the age of 14-15 to study abroad. This is an atypical phenomenon for our culture; in Russia, children live with their parents for quite a long time. This is not England, where at the age of 18 they are told goodbye. How sad it is if a family considers it lucky to send a child abroad, just to get away from here! They don’t know anything about him: what he eats, where he sleeps, with whom he communicates. So at least he sits with his back to you at the computer, but next to you! And this does not add happiness and harmony to the family. The less social anxiety, the happier the family. It cannot be the only stronghold in which one can escape from the outside world. Although now in Europe such apocalyptic sentiments are in vogue, when people plan to gather in shelters and dream of saving themselves together. But this is more of a fantasy.
People's relationships, including in family life, become more functional: a person most often needs a sexual partner, a companion for traveling, going to the movies, etc. This is what Zygmunt Bauman called “liquid modernity.” Relationships become impersonal. And here, of course, it could not happen without the Internet. It creates the illusion of intimacy - we sleep and eat together on Skype. I ask clients: “What do you like to do together?” And they: “Read each other’s blogs!” So they sit in different rooms.
New standards of behavior are being created on the Internet: emotional, sexual, new types of beauty. For example, young people watch pornography and do not understand that this is not the case in everyday life. That ordinary citizens have sex a little differently. But how can I explain it to him if watching pornography coincided with his personal sexual formation? He has already formed a false idea on an unconscious level. And then couples come to me who cannot fully make love without pornographic stimulation.
But in general, I try to take all these changes calmly, because it is better to accept the course of life than to pretend that nothing is happening. It’s even more interesting to work this way.
Systemic family psychotherapy is one of the areas of the systemic approach. The following types of systemic psychotherapy can be named: classical systemic family psychotherapy (SFT) with such divisions as strategic SST, structural SST, Milanese approach, Murray Bowen approach; post-classical systemic therapy – solution-oriented narrative psychotherapy, short-term psychotherapy, neurolinguistic programming. All of these types of psychotherapy are based on systems theory. Systems theory, or systems theory, is not entirely a psychological theory. Almost simultaneously, systemic ideas developed in cybernetics (N. Wiener, R. Ashby, etc.), in biology (V. Vernadsky, N. Bernstein, K. Lorenz, N. Tinbergen), anthropology (M. Mead) and then penetrated into cultural studies and psychology (G. Bateson, T. Leary, R.A. Wilson, A. Korzybski).
By the first half of the 20th century. a lot of facts accumulated in different fields of knowledge that could not be explained using the theories existing at that time. How are animal population dynamics regulated? Why do those who had typhus not get tuberculosis? Why do different people behave in the same way at certain historical periods? Why was an army of rapists and sadists created in the citadel of European culture, Germany? It became clear that some new way of understanding and analyzing reality was needed. A new methodology was proposed by systems theory.
A system is a certain formation consisting of many interconnected elements that, as a whole, interact with the external environment and implement common functions. The functioning of a system element is secondary to the functioning of the entire system. Everyone knows examples of ecological imbalance, when a change in the number of one animal population leads to a change in the number of another. This happens not because some animals began to reproduce more actively than others, but because in ecosystems all elements are interconnected and any change in one element entails a change in another. The same mechanisms exist in social systems. A striking example was given by G. Bateson in the article “From Versailles to Cybernetics” (2000), where he clearly showed that the events in Germany before and during the Second World War were largely determined by the Treaty of Versailles. A similar picture is observed in family relationships. People's behavior is rarely determined by their free will or their unconscious "movements of the soul", mainly by the laws of functioning of the systems to which they belong - the family, the social atom, the state, culture and civilization.
Systemic family psychotherapy is not associated with the psychological theories on which individual psychotherapy is based. This became clear 40 years ago. In their fundamental work on family psychotherapy, G. Erickson and T. Hogan (1972) argue that their analysis of the literature did not reveal evidence that systemic family psychotherapy “grew” out of any pre-existing theoretical principles in psychotherapy.
It is based on general systems theory.
So, there are some general provisions of the systemic theory that are used in all areas of its application, including in systemic family psychotherapy.
Feedback loops
The discovery of the feedback mechanism is usually attributed to the American mathematician Norbert Wiener. During World War II, at the Pentagon, he developed a theory with the help of which mechanisms for tracking and destroying enemy flying vehicles were created. Information from radar screens about the target's position was used to calculate the corrections necessary to point the guns at the target. Then the effectiveness of these amendments was again assessed using radar, calculations were made again, etc. until the target was destroyed. This process was called a feedback loop. Comparison of information received from radars with the position of a flying target and guidance corrections were carried out in a similar way both when the guidance was carried out by people and when the calculations were made by machines. These feedback mechanisms are used in all types of any purposeful activity: both when a person takes a box of matches from the table, and when the head of a sunflower turns behind the sun (Budinaite, Varga, 2005). The feedback mechanism, based on the example of the physiology of human movements, was described back in 1939 by the domestic scientist N. Bernstein. “In the very early days of studying movements, Bernstein discovered that when repeating the same movement, for example, hitting a chisel with a hammer, the operating point of the hammer hits the chisel very accurately each time, but the path of the hand with the hammer to the point of impact with each blow is somewhat different. then different. And repeating the movement does not make this path the same. N.A. Bernstein called this phenomenon repetition without repetition. This means that with each new blow, the nervous system does not have to accurately repeat the same orders to the muscles. Each new movement is performed under slightly different conditions. Therefore, to achieve the same result, different muscle commands are needed. Movement training does not consist in standardizing commands, not in teaching commands, but in learning each time to quickly find a command that, under the conditions of this particular movement, will lead to the desired motor result... To perform this or that movement, the brain not only sends a specific command to the muscles, but and receives signals from peripheral sensory organs about the results achieved and, based on them, gives new, corrective commands. Thus, a process of constructing movements occurs in which there is not only direct, but also feedback between the brain and the peripheral nervous system” (Feigenberg, 1991).
So feedback is Information about the results of the functioning of the system, entering the same system.
There is negative and positive feedback. In the case of negative feedback, information is used by the system to reduce the deviation of the operating result from some given norm. In the second case, information leads to significant changes, that is, to a loss of stability and balance. A special type of negative feedback, studied in detail in biological and sociotechnical systems, is called homeostasis. Homeostasis is the desire of a system to maintain its essential properties in interaction with the environment, ensuring the survival of the system. Minimizing the influence of the external environment is the work of the law of homeostasis. The system strives to maintain the status quo at every moment of its existence.
A famous example of homeostasis is how the human body maintains blood temperature. As soon as the temperature of the environment changes, the heart rate changes, blood vessels narrow or dilate, the sweating system is triggered, etc. until the blood temperature is restored. If for some reason it is impossible to restore body temperature, a person may die either from hypothermia or overheating. The family system operates in a similar way to maintain, for example, a constant distance between people. Let’s say one of the spouses moves to the periphery of the family system: spends less time with loved ones, and when he is at home, he behaves disinterestedly, uninvolved, either because he works a lot, or has an affair, or for some other reason. Then one of the other family members begins to develop symptomatic behavior, that is, behavior that will require greater participation in family life from the element that has gone to the periphery. In untreated cases, marital conflict is usually sufficient. During conflict, the distance between people decreases. Those in conflict are very focused on each other, absorbed in each other, and experience strong feelings towards each other at the same time. A scandal is distinguished from an act of love only by a sign of emotions - minus and plus. In addition, it is very difficult to make peace without a quarrel. If the estranged spouse does not enter into conflict, when asked to make peace he says: “I didn’t quarrel with anyone,” when asked: “What’s going on?” - answers: “Is something really happening?”, then things are bad. It turns out that this is a neglected case. In order to change the situation, symptomatic behavior is best suited - illness, for example, of children or a spouse. Curing a seriously ill child or spouse requires serious involvement. Symptomatic behavior lasts until a close, familiar distance is restored or the family is destroyed.
The activity of the system is the spread of homeostatic regulation to the external environment, activity aimed at changing and organizing the external environment in accordance with the requirements of the internal structure of the system. To maintain a more or less constant body temperature, a person first of all dresses and builds houses. Let's say he builds from wood. So, trees are falling down. This means that it interferes with the forest ecosystem and changes its external natural environment. For the last three hundred years, the external environment has simply become exhausted from human activity. The family system is also characterized by certain activity. Typically, a family system consists of several subsystems. Formal subsystems - a married couple or a married subsystem and children, a children's subsystem. Each represents a kind of external environment for the other.
A dysfunctional marital subsystem usually uses other subsystems, most often the child’s subsystem, if there are two children, or the child’s body, if there is one child, to stabilize itself” (Budynaite, Varga, 2005). Let me give you an example. A married couple contacted us about their 14-year-old daughter. Vika got in touch with “bad company” on the Internet, communicates with friends on ICQ, by phone, abandoned her lessons, and began to study worse. Father Nikolai noticed this situation when he moved from job to job, began to be at home more and discovered what his daughter was doing during the day. In this regard, he did not get a new job, sat at home and started raising his daughter. His wife Marina also began to worry about Vika, although her ideas about raising a child differed in many ways from Nikolai's ideas. Nikolai asked for help and brought his women to family psychotherapy. During the process of psychotherapy, it turned out that the spouses had been having conflicts for a long time, because Nikolai believes that his wife is influenced too much by her parents. Marina listens to them more than to him. He does not enjoy authority in his family, although, as a rule, he is right. And then it turned out that it was unclear what the daughter was doing. Nikolai began to read his daughter’s correspondence and discovered “obscenity.” In general, Marina is not only a bad wife, but also a bad mother. Marina, the eldest daughter in her parental family, has always been very close to her dad. There was a period when dad lived, as it were, in two houses - outside the city with his wife and two children, and in the city with Marina, who was just finishing school. Marina loves her dad very much and is afraid to upset him; her dad has a weak heart and had a heart attack. And dad loves to lead. Whenever Marina acts on the advice of the pope, contrary to the opinion of Nicholas, many months of conflicts and resentments begin. During psychotherapy sessions, Marina was identified as a person for whom it is equally important to be a good daughter and a good wife. Marina agreed with this. She believes that she leaves for her own family only when the role of a mother is added to the role of a wife, that is, when Vika has problems and she needs to be a very involved and attentive mother. Vika, by the way, clearly understands what is happening and directly says: “It’s better that they scold me together than quarrel with each other.”
"Black box"
At the end of the 1940s, when a new science, cybernetics, was being formed under the leadership of N. Wiener, it was necessary to develop a new conceptual apparatus and tools for analyzing systems. One of these tools was the “black box” proposed by N. Wiener - a model for analyzing systems.
We will describe a somewhat simplified “black box” model applicable to the analysis of open social systems, which include the family.
“In order to describe a family system, it is necessary to define three sets of parameters:
1) a set of factors affecting the family system;
2) a set of reactions of the family system to each of these factors;
3) a set of factors that determine the desired state of the family system" (Ivanov, Shusterman, 2003).
Let's look at the first two sets. “Click a mare on the nose and she’ll wag her tail.” This humorous cybernetic formula describes very well what we are trying to determine. We don’t know how the open “horse” system works, but we know that when given a specific stimulus (“click on the nose”), this system gives a regularly repeated reaction—“wagging its tail.”
The “black box” model in relation to the family has been used by society for a long time. The sayings “Aspen trees don’t produce oranges” and “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” illustrate this well. We don't know what O specifically occurs in the “black box” of the family, but we know that the baby that appears in the family will have family properties and traits.
There is a certain usual set of factors affecting the family system. All of them, in one way or another, structure the time and content of family life and can increase stress and anxiety in the family or calm and reduce tension. It is clear that the reactions of the system are inseparably linked with them.
1. Relatives on the husband's side and on the wife's side. This impact can be organizational (they give material assistance or receive material assistance, help with the housework and with children or need help themselves, require regular visits or not, etc.), and this impact can also be psychological, for example, communication with relatives increases or decreases tension and anxiety in the family.
2. Work, colleagues and bosses. The impact of this factor is varied. Work structures the time all family members spend together (they work a lot but rarely see each other), determines the family’s material standard of living, and in some cases the family’s social circle. All this is accompanied by a certain dynamics of anxiety and tension in the family system. Bonuses, percentages from transactions and sales, a cheerful company of friends and colleagues can reduce stress, drunkenness at work, conflicts, and aggression from superiors bring anxiety to the family. Work can be a way of escaping domestic conflicts, or it can be a bitter duty; it can separate you from your child and your favorite home activities.
3. Kindergarten teachers, school teachers, neighbors, friends. Caregivers and teachers can seriously influence the family's time and well-being. Daily messages about bad behavior, homework that needs to be done as a family are stressors for the family.
In order to use the “black box” model, it is necessary to establish not only the impact factor, but also the space on the boundary of the system where the impact is directed - the input, and also to establish the space on the boundary of the system where the reaction to the impact factor is observed - the output.
Let's say the wife's mother is a stress factor. She demands something and accuses her of something every time she communicates with her daughter. Every time after the shortest conversation with her mother on the phone, the daughter cries, feels guilty and angry. So, the wife in this case is the input through which voltage enters the system. After this, some marital conflict interactions take place in the black box, then the husband gets drunk with friends. A scandal with the mother-in-law at the entrance, drunkenness of the husband at the exit. By the way, this is practically the only situation when a mother-in-law and wife scold a drunkard in peace and harmony.
In relation to open systems, it would be more correct to talk about impacts on the system and states of the system. For example, the birth of a child - its impact on the family system - will inevitably lead to a change in the state of the system. People who performed the functions of spouses in relation to each other begin to perform the functions of parents in relation to a new being - the child and in relation to each other. Sometimes this state of the system lingers for a long time: the children have grown up, but the parents still address each other as “mother”, “father”. Perhaps parenthood is more attractive than marriage. Indeed, making love to a person you call “mother” is not the same as making love to a person you call “wife.”
The factors that determine the desired state of a system are varied. These are some ideas about a good family. Such ideas are formed under the influence of the cultural traditions of society, the social model of the family, family myth, and the current state of the system. For example, in Russia, society has always been kind to single-parent families and complex families (spouses and their children from previous marriages), i.e., family breakdown was not a social tragedy. There are several reasons. Firstly, the bulk of the country's population are descendants of slaves and serfs. The laws of serfdom in Russia were cruel, it was allowed to separate families and sell children and spouses separately. Thus, the low value of family was conveyed. Secondly, the male population was systematically exterminated in wars and repressions, especially in the 20th century. To maintain the population, society welcomed single-parent families and fatherless children. During World War II, the male population of 1923–1924 was practically destroyed in Russia. birth. It should be noted that in Germany, soldiers going on leave were literally encouraged to reproduce and were provided with special folding cradles, which the soldiers left with their young ladies. Such public policy automatically led to a decrease in the role of the father in raising children, to a simplification of the model of male behavior in the family, to the emergence of inadequate demands on men among the female population (either a prince or a pauper: any character with male anatomy) and to the emergence of generations of female families. It should be noted that in Russian literature, with its preaching of goodness, there is no description of a happy and meaningful family life. We can name two works: “Old World Landowners” by Gogol, which describes the tender but empty relationship of spouses, and “What is to be done” by Chernyshevsky, a low-fiction novel about utopian, emotionless family relationships. So, the social value of the family is low, there are no different constructive models of the family. Because of this, the picture of a good life for a particular family usually depends too much on the models of the parent families: either everything is like the parents, or nothing like the parents. Paradoxes happen. For example: in three generations of the client’s family, husbands cheated on their wives. They went to other women, then returned and soon after that they got sick and died. The daughter, a young woman, is getting married. The groom falls in love with someone else, leaves, then returns. He really wants to get married, he has been besieging his client for about a year, trying to convince her that there will be no more betrayal. The client cannot decide whether to marry this man. During the process of psychotherapy, it turns out that trust in the groom will return if he hangs himself in repentance. In this family, the picture of a favorable future is the death or serious illness of the husband.
There is one more principle. Most living systems, and especially human systems, are affected by diverse and multiple environmental factors. The system strives to maintain its stability; for this it has certain mechanisms. Family systems have certain rules or regulations that contain information about how to survive in the face of external influences. These are some so-called desired states of the system. For Russian families, desirable conditions that can be called “reserve for survival” are relevant. The external environment of existence of families has been unsafe and threatening at almost all times. Families developed diverse survival scenarios in response to various external disturbances. The most popular scenarios of the post-war period: stockpiling food supplies, as well as stocks of needles and bed linen. Until the end of the 1950s, many educated families sent their children to study at medical universities, because in the camp (anyone could be imprisoned) a doctor was more likely to survive than a person of another specialty. Many families have different scenarios for financial behavior, for example: not trusting the state with their savings. Some people keep money in a stocking, others keep it abroad. It is clear that the development and implementation of these scenarios by the older generation is reflected in the form of a certain picture of a dangerous world in the minds of the younger generation. Thus, the desired state of the system as a reserve for survival is reproduced from generation to generation.
The reactions of human systems, such as the family or organization, to changes in the environment are recorded in the form of certain prescriptions of the national culture. For example, “Don’t renounce prison or your scrip” - anyone can go to prison or become impoverished and go around the world with a scrip for alms. Anecdotes, proverbs, sayings - these are the well-known cultural prescriptions of norms for responding to external influences. In Russian culture, there are numerous requirements for norms of response to negative environmental influences. The situation is worse with the prescription of norms for responding to positive environmental influences. Families are more likely to break up in a situation of prosperity, prosperity and success than due to fire, inflation, or disease.
“Treat and punish everyone”
Professor of the Institute of Practical Psychology and Psychoanalysis, Head of the Department of Systemic Family Psychotherapy Anna Yakovlevna VARGA - about the dangers of fear, medieval psychology, the Jewish question and professional deformation.
Professor of the Institute of Practical Psychology and Psychoanalysis, Head of the Department of Systemic Family Psychotherapy Anna Yakovlevna VARGA - about the dangers of fear, medieval psychology, the Jewish question and professional deformation.
Why did you become a psychotherapist?It seemed interesting. And the time was like that, and there were lucky coincidences. When I graduated from the Faculty of Psychology, the first psychological consultation had just opened in Moscow. Its leader was Vladimir Viktorovich Stolin, who assembled a team, and I ended up in this team. And I wanted it, well, because it was cool - no one was doing psychotherapy, you know? It was fashionable then. Everyone was running around Moscow, looking for at least a few psychologically thinking psychiatrists, reading books.
And then the borders opened, Western psychotherapists arrived, and they began teaching everyone for free.
And you entered the Faculty of Psychology...
Because I realized that I wouldn’t get into the biology department - I wouldn’t pass chemistry. I went to the psychology department. I thought that I would study animal behavior - I would go to Kurt Ernestovich Fabry. But during the journey Plans have changed. I wasn’t planning on going to psychology department at all. Although, when my grandfather, Academician Evgeniy Samuilovich Varga) and my grandmother still lived in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, my grandfather was very interested in Freud, even attended some of his circles. All Freud's biographers know that he wrote a letter to my grandfather. But when they expected the arrest of the grandfather, the grandmother destroyed everything that could be destroyed. I think this letter was burned too. For many years, the bundle was placed at the door, as they were expected to be arrested every night. So there were all sorts of “signs” about psychology. For example, Alfred Adler treated my grandmother because my grandmother fainted. If she didn’t like something, she would faint. And grandfather was very scared. And when they were still living in Budapest, he took her to Vienna to show Adler. Adler talked to her and said: “You know, the case is incurable” (this meant that it was impossible to cure). And grandma continued to faint when something went wrong with her.
Grandfather never figured it out?
But it’s not clear, this is a series of family myths, beautiful stories about grandparents. My grandfather died when I was 10 years old; I never saw them with adult eyes. And my grandmother died when I was 22. She was a powerful woman. Absolutely without any fear. I admit that fainting was a way of competently resolving conflicts with my grandfather.
Do I understand correctly that my grandfather was Jewish?
All my ancestors are Jews, absolutely all of them.
Did this somehow influence your life?
And my grandfather always believed that the Jewish question was resolved through total assimilation. That is, he believed that there should be no Jews.
No, it didn't. Grandfather was born into a very poor religious family. His mother died, as far as I understand, when he was very young. And he was raised by his older sister, and his own father began to talk to him only after his bar mitzvah. Until he was 13 years old, he didn’t say a word to him - he was still too young, why talk to him. And my grandfather always believed that the Jewish question was resolved through total assimilation. That is, he believed that there should be no Jews. He was generally against parochialism and nationalist ideas. He was a communist.
Did anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union force him to change his views?
I have never heard stories about anti-Semitism. This probably did not happen in the Soviet Union, where my grandfather moved in 1927 or 1928. At least at his level of communication, in his circles. That's Stalin's terror - yes. A lot of relatives suffered. But not because they were Jews, but because they were foreigners, and in general because they took everyone.
You are engaged in systemic family psychotherapy. What caused its occurrence? Do previous approaches no longer seem effective?
Systemic family psychotherapy “grew” from cybernetics. It was cybernetics that began to describe the properties of systems and feedback loops. The impetus, as usual, came from the war—World War II. It was necessary to accurately send a projectile at a flying target, the question was what adjustment the gun should make taking into account the flying aircraft and how it received information about where the aircraft would be. In parallel with this, approximately, were the works of our excellent scientist Bernstein.
He described how purposeful movement is formed. The same feedback mechanisms are what a hand must do to hit a nail with a hammer. Each time this hand strikes at a slightly different angle, depending on the position of the nail in the board. It became clear that the same processes occur between people and social systems have many mechanisms in common with other open systems. People began to understand that it was not a matter of a person’s intrapsychic functioning. Not intro-, but interpsychic functioning is of enormous importance. We began to see how the communication system influences a person. After all, what is feedback? This is information. How do we get information? In communication. People who found themselves in a certain communication system behaved in a similar way. They developed similar tastes, ideas and preferences. This is well known to us, for example, from the architecture of totalitarianism - both in Germany and in the USSR. How could the majority of Germans become cruel soldiers and torturers, and the majority of Soviet people become informers? Gregory Bateson appeared, who, with his wife Margaret Mead, began to engage in the culture of tribes in distant lands where it had previously been impossible to reach. We know all the researchers who were involved in anthropology in the 19th century, because it was a rare opportunity to go, describe and return. And in the 20th century money appeared - you can go, fly in, fly away. A lot of information appeared about different social systems, about different cultures. This information also helped create the basic foundations of family systems theory. That is, many factors played a role.
As for the problems, systemic family therapy began with the fact that people began to work with children in families. Sick. Suffering from schizophrenia, anorexia. And only then did psychotherapy begin to extend to the entire family and specifically to the marital subsystem. And then, people in the 60s were not yet ready to deal with their married life. They were ready to accept help as parents, but they were not ready to accept help as spouses. And only recently has it become in demand.
Wasn’t the surge of interest in psychotherapy and its appearance in general connected with secularization? Maybe earlier religion - “the opium of the people” - performed a function that was partially taken over by psychotherapy?
Religion has neither previously nor now performed psychotherapeutic functions. Previously, there was no need, because those problems that are now seen as psychological were not considered such, but now - because it does not have tools adequate to the psychological problems of people.
You see, if life is “regulated,” for example, by the church, is very stereotypical, and everything has its own “good” and “right,” then most people don’t really need psychotherapy. Psychological problems arise when there is a lot of freedom, a lot of air. All these cases that could now be considered psychotherapeutic - for example, witches, cliques, collective hysteria - were then seen as possession by the devil and were solved in other ways. But let's look at the "specific gravity" - the number of witches per capita - and compare it with the number of people who seek psychological help today. Simply incomparable quantities. If life is outlined, each person is in his own rut.
A medieval man living in a European city understood exactly how he would live. Born into a tailor's family - most likely to be a tailor, get married, have children, etc. No psychological problems. Perhaps there is no psyche in our understanding. So psychological problems are also a sign of the times.
Religion has neither previously nor now performed psychotherapeutic functions. Previously, there was no need, because those problems that are now seen as psychological were not considered such, but now - because it does not have tools adequate to the psychological problems of people.
Can we judge the psychology of medieval people? After all, written sources convey to us only a small part of the voices. Moreover, psychotherapy is based mainly on personal contact?
There's nothing but stories, you know. Even in personal contact, you hear a certain story that the client tells you. And it's still just a narrative. As for what actually happened there, there is nothing “really.” There is - in my opinion, and this is quite a systemic ideology - a constructed reality. Yes, we only know about the Middle Ages what the sources told us. Well, we use them. And there is no point in looking for the “truth”.
So what is the main feature of the systems approach? Looking for a problem outside of man?
Change the system, and the person will change.
You see, a systemic psychotherapist has a different methodology in his head. In psychotherapy there are actually two theories, well, two and a half. One is psychodynamic, which Freud began, and then it developed and is now very widely represented by its various branches. The main idea is that a person has some kind of internal conflict that he needs help to resolve. And how to help is from classical psychoanalysis to Gestalt therapy. There is this half - the learning theory, the behavioral theory: teach a person to act differently, and his psyche will be rebuilt. The idea that I really like is “pray and faith will come.” And the last, new, third is systemic ideology, which says that a person is part of social systems, different, many at the same time, in particular the family, and systemic forces act on him. Systemic laws affect him, and they are more important than his internal structure. Change the system, and the person will change. The system changes due to changes in communications and human behavior. It cannot be said that the systemic therapist does not see the person at all and does not deal with him. His focus group is still people. He just has a different vision and methodology in his head. And the methods of influence are different.
How important is it to consider the cultural and national context in which a family exists? And how justified are all kinds of national stereotypes - say, “Jewish mother”?
You know, it seems to me that this is not a Jewish question. This is a question of a genocided people. The Armenians have the same story. The people who survived the genocide are very kind to their offspring. And as for how much other social systems influence the family, they do, very much. Family is like a nesting doll. She is the smallest nesting doll, then - relatives and/or close social circle, then the organizations in which members of this family work, then - the political situation in the country, the general cultural process and civilization in which all this happens. And any systemic therapist cannot ignore the culture of his time, cannot ignore the dominant discourses in society. He endlessly watches fashionable films and reads fashionable books. It is impossible to help if you do not understand the cultural context.
Migration is one of the very serious stressors for the family system. It usually turns out that the generation of parents is in many ways carriers of the culture of the country of origin, and the children are already adapted to the culture of the country of residence. People from different cultures live in a family. Losing emotional connections is painful, especially for the older generation.
That is, if a child is faced with a choice, he rather strives not to preserve family ties, but to adapt to this new reality?
Yes, and that's better. He must create his own family and help his offspring grow. These vertical connections from parents to children are normal, but frantic attachments from children to parents are bad for children.
Tell us about the transgenerational approach. I heard about him in a somewhat vulgar presentation - myths, generational curses. Does it have anything to do with science?
Let's agree right away that psychotherapy is not a science. And he doesn’t pretend to be at all.
Let's agree right away that psychotherapy is not a science. And he doesn’t pretend to be at all. This is a different type of knowledge - practical knowledge. As for the transgenerational approach, it was created by psychotherapist Murray Bowen. He was a general practitioner by training and worked almost as a surgeon for quite a long time. Only later, after World War II, did he become involved in psychiatry and create this concept. It is completely biological in its core, evolutionary-biological. The point is that, in addition to the information system, there is also an emotional system in which we are also included. The emotional system is more archaic and more universal. This includes, for example, pets. And this emotional system is also structured according to its own laws: people become infected with each other’s emotions, share these emotions - voluntarily or unwittingly. And people in a family are naturally especially sensitive to each other’s emotional experiences, no matter how they treat them. You can be very angry that your mother is again infecting you with her anxiety, but there is practically no way to isolate yourself from this anxiety. It is very difficult. Actually, the transgenerational concept is a story about what happened in the emotional system over generations, because emotions live longer than thoughts. The emotional field of the family is reproduced from generation to generation. Ways of response and norms of feeling are set. For some, expressing anger means closing the door, and for others it means breaking a plate. And people learn this in their families of origin. It lays down the norms for reacting to various kinds of situations, which emotion is appropriate in which situation.
But, in addition, there are all kinds of emotions that only manifest themselves in the family - in action and in full. Because those emotions and manifestations that are practiced in the family usually do not appear anywhere else - this is unique. In a family they sleep, eat, get sick, use the toilet, have sex, give birth to children, quarrel, make peace - that is, there is a very intense emotional interaction and emotional field. Any person, immersing himself in it, begins to live according to the laws of this field. For example, take an anxious family. The biggest source of anxiety and tension is marital relationships. A child appears. A child cannot be free from the emotional field of the family. He will definitely become involved in the emotionally intense, disturbing emotional field that exists between his parents; he cannot help but become involved in it, because he has no alternative - this is his family and his reality. And he begins, for example, to function in such a way as to reduce this tension: he creates problems (gets sick, behaves badly, studies poorly, etc.), then the parents unite and the tension decreases. The child serves the psychological needs of his parents, and this prevents him from developing, living his life, and reduces his level of functioning. Such a child, when he grows up, often creates a similar tense, anxious union, and his children repeat the same story.
Murray Bowen described in detail how the mechanism of intergenerational transmission of emotions and modes of functioning works. In particular, he showed how a successive decline in the level of functioning over several generations leads to the appearance of a child suffering from schizophrenia.
As for generational curses, this is such a vulgarization of concepts. Although, of course, if the fear of men is passed on from generation to generation to girls in the family, then one cannot expect that this girl will easily and naturally get happily married a hundred and fifty times.
What about the “Hellinger arrangement”? Magic?
This is also a systematic approach. Bert Hellinger was a missionary to Africa. And observing how the African community lives, I came to the conclusion that there are very heuristic, good ways to resolve various kinds of family conflicts. He returned from his ministry and created a method of constellations that began to develop. These are like ritual ways of behavior aimed at reviving certain foundations of family life. I don't see anything wrong with this approach. Therapy takes place in a group, a person reproduces his problem situation with the help of other group members, and the arranger helps to arrange, literally and figuratively, the members of this family, whose roles are played by group members, so that the situation is resolved. For example, this helped one of my long-time clients a lot. She had endless miscarriages. She went to the arrangements. And the arranger placed all the women of her family, as far as she could remember, behind her. There was a crowd of women behind her who were telling her something (there are special formulas). It’s hard to say that only this helped - I think it was a lot of things: she was treated, and got happily married, everything came together, but she still had this feeling of strength in her head: that she shouldn’t be afraid to try and shouldn’t be afraid to give birth to a child . Because she realized that she would raise him: behind her were crowds of women who gave birth and raised him. She saw this chain.
Have you ever encountered in your practice that the family histories of your clients were influenced by some past tragic events - say, the Holocaust?
I have never met Holocaust victims as clients. With Jewish families who suffered from anti-Semitism - yes, of course. And, of course, this experience influences. Because this also creates certain emotional stereotypes, and fears, and some presumptions, which may not always be realistic, and the attitude towards oneself is so ambivalent. I think that a person who believes that he is a victim of anti-Semitism is in a neurotic situation because, on the one hand, he is afraid, and on the other hand, he despises and believes that “I am better than them.” And this “us - them” is a harmful division, hostile. Therefore, he constantly spins between “I am a god, I am a worm”: in his environment, “I am a god,” in their environment, “I am a worm.” But, you see, for a systematic approach it does not matter that this is anti-Semitism. This includes any situation in which a person believes that he is in a hostile social environment. The same is true for Russians, whose families suffered from dispossession, from famine, from Stalin’s terror, from sudden deaths. They also have social fears, which are structured in much the same way.
I don’t agree that these are unique events. The Eurocentric consciousness makes them unique because these tragedies took place in Europe. And the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda and the decolonization of Angola are essentially the same genocide. I think people who survived genocide, wherever it was, have similar psychological problems. Close to this are the experiences of people who experienced social terror - forced migration, dispossession. These terrible tragedies of the twentieth century created a special task for the descendants of traumatized people - to adapt to a society that, according to family tradition, they consider hostile and dangerous, but which, perhaps, is no longer so.
Is therapy aimed at ensuring that a person stops perceiving society as hostile?
It doesn't matter. We don't know what's best for him. It is in conversations that it becomes clear what is more functional for him: to escape from here into a friendly society or to stop being afraid. In my experience, the most effective thing is to look for a cure for fear. Because fear, firstly, is experienced very painfully and is harmful to health; and secondly, it leads to side effects - increased aggressiveness, for example. In general, fear is a bad advisor. Apart from immediate fear, when something threatens your life or health or your children, in my opinion, fear is not especially useful anywhere. This is the whole history of the lives of generations who experienced fear and experienced it for good reason, and it is this fear as an attitude that “the world is dangerous, people are evil, and you take care of yourself, because you are under attack,” is very influential. A person may never suffer from anything in his life, everything may turn out normally for him and he has no personal experience of harm, but his grandmother had it, for example. And this person reacts and acts as if there was danger in his life.
Who needs psychotherapists? Judging by the movies, every American has a psychotherapist, and they go to him with the same problems that we share with friends.
I know of only one film - “In Treatment” - where the life of a psychotherapist is shown more or less clinically accurately. And so it is always a profanation.
You see, it is impossible to make popular films that do not profane the profession. “9 Days of One Year” - it shows physics beautifully, right? Laughter. Any popularization is profanation. I know of only one film - “In Treatment” - which more or less clinically accurately depicts the life of a psychotherapist. And so it’s always a profanation. That's why it seems that people go to psychotherapists for all sorts of nonsense. I think it's good when everyone has the opportunity to go to a therapist. And you will use it or not - as you want. This is again a matter of culture. Our ancestors tore their teeth with their hands. And the barbers treated them - they bled. This is the question - what is meant by a good quality of life. There are cases when it is directly indicated that you need to go to a psychotherapist. But this, of course, is not total and not for everyone.
Does it happen that a person becomes dependent on a psychotherapist and cannot do without emotional support and constant outpouring?
It seems that if you went for help, then you have already hung the “I am crazy” sign on your chest, and everyone will now see it.
No, psychotherapy is not about venting. Especially systemic therapy. Systemic therapists try to minimize the information flow. This is again the result of popularization, when it seems that a person comes to a psychotherapist and tells. It's not like that at all. Even psychoanalysis is still not about him sitting and muttering the same thing, and the psychoanalyst, sitting behind him, sleeping, because he has heard it a hundred and fifty times already. It’s a pity if a psychotherapist is only capable of providing emotional support, because this is a trifle. But this is again about social fears and psychophobia, which is generally widespread among us. This is what dictates your question. It seems that if you went for help, then you have already hung the “I am crazy” sign on your chest, and everyone will now see it. What is this about again? About the fact that society is dangerous. You go for help, which means you can’t cope on your own, which means you’re weak, which means they’re about to beat you. Why can’t we talk about either the good or the bad in our society? You can’t brag, because they will envy you and take it away, and you can’t talk about your troubles, because everyone will immediately see that you are weak and will kick you.
Do different approaches to psychotherapy complement each other or conflict? Can we say that some are more effective, others less effective? Or maybe it depends on the specific situation?
Complex issue. You see, the whole world is now searching for valid ways to measure the effectiveness of psychotherapy. Before this, only the client’s self-report really existed. And the client's self-report depends on how he relates to his therapist. If he likes his therapist, which in general it would be good for him to do, and trusts him, then he will say: “Yes, you know, especially your thermometer, doctor, helped.” According to all data, until recently, all psychotherapeutic methods were, on average, equally effective. But now we have the opportunity to look at what is happening at the neuronal level (Neuroscience), scan the brain and see which neuronal connections change as a result of therapy. And, apparently, this will become a way to measure effectiveness. But these are the latest achievements, and one can only dream of en masse driving all clients to brain scans - before the start of a therapeutic project and after.
As for methodology, methodologically, psychoanalysis, for example, and the systems approach are very poorly connected. Of course, everyone dreams of connecting, integrating, combining. In my opinion, no one succeeds, because so far I don’t see a common denominator. Psychoanalysts are very fond of spreading their influence over everything, because they believe in the effectiveness of their work and consider psychoanalysis to be a kind of panacea. But this doesn't convince me.
But at the same time, do you not exclude the possibility that psychoanalysis helps someone?
Certainly! I assure you, a grandmother who spits in your eye can also be very helpful. It's a matter of communication. If communication is successful, it will help. To what extent, for how long, how deep is the next question. If a person believes the grandmother and the grandmother did not disappoint him, the grandmother will help.
That is, effectiveness depends to a greater extent on communication, on the personality of the psychotherapist?
In my opinion, it doesn’t really depend on the personality of the psychotherapist. Generally this is a bad idea. The psychotherapist is a professional. His personality is leveled in the process of his work. We don’t need this personality, we need his skills and abilities. And professional integrity.
How does the profession influence the life of a psychotherapist?
Professional deformation, of course, is very strong. You communicate intensely and are immersed in human suffering. You leave work, but in general you don’t want to communicate. A psychotherapist who works a lot is such a character in life, somewhat subdepressive, living rather secluded, also because he is full of ethical restrictions - you cannot attend any event with your client. If you get caught, you have to leave. So you basically sit and exhale. But, since the personality must be leveled, the psychotherapist himself must receive one or another psychological help from time to time. If something difficult has happened in his life and he is afraid that he will not be able to work well, he definitely goes for supervision. I have to do this. If he does not do this, he should be driven out of the profession. He constantly supervises his difficult cases, that is, he himself is constantly under the influence. He is the client himself, he is the therapist himself. And this is all in one person at the same time. Therefore, yes, there is some kind of professional deformation. My daughter, at some point, when I was just learning and she had already mastered PowerPoint, made me a frame for all my presentations. Each slide began with the words: “Treat and punish everyone.” Then I couldn’t remove it for a long time.
We must leave our professional position in the office and come out with some other, universal one. But if you don’t practice it much, then it’s weak, and your professional identity is so powerful.
Doesn't this interfere with communicating with friends? Can you react like a friend rather than like a therapist?
I flatter myself that yes. That I can respond as a mother, wife, daughter and friend. I really hope so. Trying.
Varga Anna Yakovlevna
Candidate of Psychological Sciences, psychologist, systemic family consultant. Academic director of the Master's program “Systemic family psychotherapy”, Department of Psychology, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Board member of the Society of Family Consultants and Psychotherapists. Member of the International Association of Family Psychotherapists. Member of the Training Committee of the European Association of Family Psychotherapists.
Anna Yakovlevna completed her education at Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, Faculty of Psychology. Trained as a family psychotherapist at the Milan School, trainer and supervisor Hannah Weiner, AFTA Trainer and IFTA President. Studied M. Bowen's theory in Georgetown, Washington, USA, trainers and supervisors: Katherine Baker, Peter Teitelman. She studied psychodrama at the Scandinavian Academy of Psychodrama, coach and supervisor Goran Hochberg.
Awarded by the American Association of Family Psychotherapists AAMFT and the AVANTA Society for the development of V. Satir’s theory in Russia. USA (California, 1993).
Grazhina Leonardovna Budinaite
Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Leading Teacher of the Master's Program "Systemic Family Psychotherapy", Associate Professor of the Department of Child and Family Psychotherapy, Faculty of Consultative and Clinical Psychology, Moscow State University of Psychology and Education.
Practicing psychotherapist - systemic family psychotherapy, M. Bowen's theory of family systems and a number of other approaches. Member of the Society of Family Therapists, member of the International Family Therapy Association (IFTA), member of the EFTA (European Association of Family Therapists) Training Committee. Certified by EAP (European Association of Psychotherapy).
Specialist in the field of postmodern (postclassical approaches) in psychotherapy, including solution-oriented short-term psychotherapy - first publication in this field - 2001.
She worked as a researcher, senior researcher and leading researcher at the Institute for the Study of Childhood, Family and Education of the Russian Academy of Education (until 2015).
Actively published in the media since 2003 - at least 35 original publications (TV channel “Culture”, “Russia-Culture”, “Channel One”, Psychologies magazine, etc.); many years of work in the publication “Happy Parents” (author’s column) and hosting the weekly program “For Family Circumstances” on Radio Culture - 50+ episodes (2009-2011).
Master class “Marital problems - searching for solutions”
Today's challenges of family psychotherapy – what are they?
These are difficult times for family therapy. I will describe two challenges, although there are many more of them now.
Firstly, there are no generally accepted ideas in society about what a healthy, functional family is. Now there are many different types of families: childless families (when spouses deliberately refuse to have children), bi-career families (when both spouses have a career, and children and household chores are outsourced), binuclear families (for both spouses, the current marriage is not the first, there are children from previous marriages and children born in this marriage all live together part of the time or all the time), same-sex families, white marriages (conscious refusal of sexual activity with each other), etc. Many of them live perfectly well. Therefore, psychotherapists have to give up their expert position. They don't know how to live as a family properly. Now we have to invent together with our clients what will be best for them in each specific case. It is clear that this places increased demands on the neutrality of the psychotherapist, his open-mindedness, and also his creative potential.
Secondly, communication technologies have changed, the type of culture has changed, and along with all this, socially constructed childhood is disappearing. In the field of family psychotherapy, this means that there is no single understanding of how to properly raise children. It is not clear what the child needs to be taught, what the family should give the child in general. Therefore, instead of raising a child, now the family most often raises a child: he is fed, watered, dressed, nothing is required of what was required before, for example, help with the housework, he is served, for example, taken to clubs. For a child, parents are the people who give him pocket money. The family hierarchy has changed, and now the child is often at the top. All this increases the child’s general anxiety and neuroticism. Family psychotherapists are faced with the fact that a child has psychological problems, but parents cannot act as a psychological resource and support for him. To return these functions to parents, they first need to change the family hierarchy, “bringing” the child down to where he, as a dependent being, should be. Parents resist this most of all; for them, demands, control, and management of a child mean cruelty towards him. And besides, for parents, this also means abandoning child-centrism, returning to a marriage that has long been collecting dust in the corner, because most of the time is spent serving the child, trying to be friends with him, experiencing insults from his rudeness and fear due to loss of contact.
Varga A.Ya.
