Vasilyuk Fedor Efimovich psychology of experience. Fedor Vasilyuk - psychology of experience

On September 17, 2017, Fedor Efimovich Vasilyuk, doctor, passed away psychological sciences, professor, chief researcher of the laboratory of counseling psychology and psychotherapy PI RAO, head of the department of individual and group psychotherapy Moscow State University of Psychology and Education, President of the Association for Understanding Psychotherapy. Today, on the day of the funeral service and funeral of the servant of God Theodore, the website Pravoslavie.Ru publishes an interview with a psychotherapist given to our portal 3 years ago.

About whether clergy need knowledge of psychotherapy and about the experience of teaching psychotherapy to students - a conversation with Fedor Efimovich Vasilyuk, psychotherapist, Doctor of Psychology, professor, head of the department of individual and group psychotherapy at Moscow City Psychological and Pedagogical University.

Such cases are not so frequent, but, nevertheless, we are pleased when priests find themselves in psychology and psychotherapy classes. In particular, I remember one archpriest near Moscow. He explained his interest in psychology this way: “I’m not going to become professional psychologist, I am a priest. I have a lot of tasks at the parish, school, social ministry, work with children's families, and I need different specialists - and psychologists in particular. I want to understand what they can do, I want to manage this process competently, and that’s why I get such an in-depth education.” Here is one of the motives.

- Why did others need psychotherapy?

I can remember another Moscow priest who is currently undergoing a long-term program. First of all, he would like to deepen and, perhaps, make more precise the way he conducts spiritual conversations with parishioners. It seems to him that in child, family and adult psychotherapy he will find some tools that he can integrate into his priestly ministry and counseling.

- Actually, pastoral counseling and psychotherapy are not the same thing.

Not to analyze and give advice, but to participate in a person’s experience of some kind of misfortune or problem.

This is a double-edged sword, because psychology can sometimes imagine itself to be so self-sufficient, helping as if from itself. But church counseling nevertheless builds this work of help in such a way as to call on the Lord to participate, to participate in this, in overcoming trouble, crisis, in family troubles, etc. This, it seems to me, is a cardinal difference.

- Please tell us about your course that you taught to seminarians.

It ranks overall, based on the highest psychological education, three years - training in “Understanding Psychotherapy”. We proceed from the fact that in psychotherapy we meet a person who is in crisis, in some hopeless situation, in a situation of impossibility, when he cannot do anything about his misfortune, loss, or some kind of betrayal. Nothing can be done, it has come true... Some kind of trouble has happened, but we must live. And what remains for a person? All he can do is survive this situation. To survive means to accomplish such mental work who will rethink some values, her attitudes, her attitude towards life. This work of experiencing is the main one in “Understanding Psychotherapy”, so the psychotherapist’s job then is not to analyze and give advice, recommendations, etc., but to participate in this work of experiencing. And what a psychotherapist does we call “empathy.” This is not only an emotional response, but also intellectual participation, and inclusion in the analysis of his situation. Empathy is everything a therapist does to help a person through their experience. Here main meaning, and the method by which man does this is the method of understanding. With students we mastered basic techniques understanding another person. It turns out that this is not the most simple thing; maybe even the most difficult one is understanding. This is what the course was dedicated to - this alphabet of techniques for understanding another person in trouble.

- And what did you ultimately manage to achieve in such a short course?

Well, I think the students have learned this ABC. Maybe you remember - and I remember - that joy when suddenly for the first time on the street a word is formed from letters that you already know. There were just letters, and now - a word! “Bread”, you read, “Milk”. This is great joy. It seems to me that the students not only mastered these letters, but also learned to read “Bread” and “Milk”. They stood on the first step of such a professional psychological assistance.

- How successfully did they achieve this without having a psychological education?

This had its difficulties, but the seminarians overcame them brilliantly. Of course, a number of concepts require some kind of preparation, reading books. But, nevertheless, the lack of this knowledge in in this case could be compensated for by two things, it seems to me. Firstly, due to logic. After all, the course was taught to graduate seminarians; these were guys with very well-trained thinking. It is important to be able to think well. They have such an organized mind. And second: they are quite sensitive emotionally. It is, in fact, the presence of mind and heart that made it possible to overcome the lack of education in the field of psychology. So I'm happy with the result.

Fedor Efimovich, how do you perceive the difference between seminarians and psychology students at secular universities?

Of course, in universities the lecture does not begin with “Heavenly King...” But this seemingly external difference leaves its mark on inner space communication. Students at mainstream universities seem more open; Seminary students at first were so more reserved, as if their uniforms were buttoned up to all the buttons. Students at regular universities are more emotionally animated, but seminary students... one feels that they have a lot of feelings, emotions, emotional life, but it’s as if nuclear reactor seething, so contained. Both students of secular institutions and seminary students may have a lot of water, but there the water is splashed everywhere, but here it is collected in a well and there is a feeling of greater depth.

- And what affected you the most, perhaps? vivid impression?

It was somewhat of a surprise to me that at the very beginning of the course, many seminarians, who needed to respond to some complaint of a conditional patient, suddenly began to give a small sermon, instructions, explanations of why this happens to people due to sinfulness. There was sometimes such an excess of edification in this, for my taste... But it passed quite quickly. I was amazed at how quickly they went through this path in just a few lessons to allowing themselves more open, free, lively communication in a situation that they would encounter every day when they needed to support someone.

During breaks and after classes, I know that students asked you questions and came up to you. What did they ask?

The questions were very different. One of the students is exactly the case when such discipline does not reach any inhuman limits, and they remain just people, just young boys, and thank God! - so, one of the students asked a question at the lecture, and then, while we were discussing other questions, he fell asleep. And when I came to answer his question, I asked the seminarians sitting nearby to wake him up. They woke him up. He, poor thing, woke up, and I said: “I now answer your question, keep yourself awake for a minute.” I answered and said: “Well, now you can continue to sleep.” The man is tired, apparently. But then he came up with a very personal question. He has some kind of defect, his own speech peculiarity, which he wants to correct as a future priest, because he understands that he needs to preach. And he asked me to advise him of a colleague, a psychologist, who would help him with these speech features fight, cope. That is, these were these kinds of very personal questions, sometimes aimed at helping. There were also: where did it come from and why is it needed? does it not pretend to replace the Church? and the like. Such acute, important, living questions. So thank you very much for the opportunity to teach this course.

Analysis of overcoming critical situations.

M.: Moscow University Publishing House, 1984

Fedor Efimovich Vasilyuk

PSYCHOLOGY OF EXPERIENCE (analysis of overcoming critical situations)

M.: Moscow University Publishing House, 1984. - 200 p.

Brief summary

The monograph is devoted to the study of critical life situations and processes for overcoming them. Situations of stress, frustration, internal conflict and life crisis. To cope with these situations and survive them, a person sometimes needs to go through painful internal work on restoration peace of mind, meaningfulness of life. The establishment and systematization of the basic laws of the process of experiencing is something new that the book brings to the psychology of overcoming critical situations.

The book is intended for psychologists, psychotherapists, philosophers, teachers, and workers in social and psychological services for the population.

Z --------------------- 40-84

© Moscow University Publishing House, 1984.

From the author.

Russian psychology has long ceased to be a purely academic discipline, but it still owes a great debt to practice. In various areas of public life, this debt is being actively repaid - the figure of a psychologist is becoming more and more common in modern factories and medical institutions, in pedagogy and jurisprudence. But the need for psychological help exists not only in social practice, but also in personal and family life, and this need is still completely insufficiently satisfied. On the other hand, psychology itself, especially the so-called “interesting psychology”, which studies the motives, emotions, and personality of a person, cannot continue to develop productively only within the walls of the laboratory, without taking an active part in real human life.

Under the influence of this mutual interest, a new (and long-awaited) period is now opening in the development of domestic practical psychology: literally before our eyes, the sphere of psychological services to the population is emerging - family service, suicidological service with a network of “social-psychological assistance” rooms and crisis hospitals, psychological service of the university etc. .

The specific organizational forms of separating “personal” psychological service into an independent practice are not yet entirely clear, but whatever they may be, the very fact of its appearance poses the task of developing fundamental theoretical foundations for general psychology that could guide this practice.

These foundations themselves must be based on an awareness of the not yet quite familiar professional position occupied by a psychologist who practically works with an individual. If, within the framework of pedagogical, legal, medical and other fields of activity, a psychologist acted as a consultant and assistant to a teacher, doctor or lawyer serving these specialists, then, occupying this position, he becomes a responsible producer of work, directly serving the person who turned to him for help. And if earlier the psychologist saw him through the prism of questions facing other specialists (clarification of the diagnosis, determination of sanity, etc.), or his own theoretical questions, now, as a responsible subject of independent psychological practice, for the first time he professionally encounters not a patient, student, suspect, operator, test subject, etc., but with a person in all the fullness, specificity and intensity of his life problems. This does not mean, of course, that a professional psychologist should act, so to speak, purely “humanly”; the main question is precisely to isolate the actual psychological aspect from these life problems and thereby outline the psychologist’s area of ​​competence.

The fundamental limitation of this zone is set by the fact that the professional activity of a psychologist does not coincide in its direction with the pragmatic or ethical aspiration of the person seeking help, with the orientation of his emotional-volitional attitude into the world: the psychologist cannot directly borrow his professional goals from a set of current goals and desires the patient, and accordingly his professional actions and reactions to the events of the patient’s life cannot be automatically determined by what the patient wants.

This does not mean, of course, that a psychologist should kill sympathy and empathy in himself and once and for all oblige himself to the right to respond to a “cry for help” not as a specialist, but simply as a person, that is, ethically: to give friendly advice, to console , provide practical assistance. These actions lie in a dimension of life where there can be no talk of any professional obligation, just as there can be no talk of ordering or prohibiting a doctor from giving a patient his own blood.

What a psychologist really must, if he wants to be useful to a person as a specialist, is to retain the ability to compassion, which forms the emotional and motivational soil that nourishes him practical activities, learn to subordinate your immediate ethical reactions, which flow directly from compassion, to a positively defined program pathological care, as a surgeon during an operation or a teacher can do in his orbit, Applying this or that educational influence is by no means always pleasant for the student.

But why, in fact, is this ability to subordinate immediate ethical reactions to a professional psychological attitude necessary? Because, firstly, consolation and pity are not quite what (and often not at all) what the patient needs to overcome the crisis. Secondly, because everyday advice, which many patients are greedy for, is for the most part simply useless or even harmful for them, indulging their unconscious desire to relieve themselves of responsibility for their own lives. A pedologist is not at all a specialist in everyday advice; the education he has received does not at all coincide with the acquisition of wisdom, and, therefore, the fact of having a diploma does not give him the moral right to make specific recommendations on what to do in this or that life situation. And one more thing: before turning to a psychologist, the patient usually thought through all possible ways out of a difficult situation and found them unsatisfactory. There is no reason to believe that by discussing his life situation with the patient on the same plane, the psychologist will be able to find a way out that he has not noticed. The very fact of such a discussion supports the patient’s unrealistic hopes that the psychologist can solve life problems for him, and the almost inevitable failure affects the authority of the psychologist, reducing the chances of ultimate success his affairs, not to mention the fact that the patient often experiences unhealthy satisfaction from the “game” he won from the psychologist, described by E. Berne (1) under the title “And you try. - Yes, but...” And finally, the third of possible immediate ethical reactions to the misfortune of another person - practical help to him - cannot be included in the arsenal of professional psychological actions simply because the psychologist, with all his desire, cannot improve his financial or social situation, correct his appearance or return what was lost loved one, i.e., cannot influence the external, existential aspect of his problems.

All these points are very important for the formation of a sober attitude of patients (and the psychologist himself) to the possibilities and tasks of psychological assistance. However main reason, which forces the psychologist to go beyond the immediate ethical response in search of actual psychological means of help, lies in the fact that a person himself and only himself can always survive the events, circumstances and changes in his life that gave rise to the crisis. No one can do this for him, just as the most experienced teacher cannot understand the material being explained for his student.

But the process of experiencing can be controlled to some extent - stimulate it, organize, direct, provide favorable conditions for it, striving to ensure that this process ideally leads to growth and improvement of the individual - or at least does not go pathological or socially unacceptable through (alcoholism, neuroticism, psychopathization, suicide, crime, etc.). Experience, therefore, is the main subject of the efforts of a practical psychologist who helps an individual in a situation of life crisis. And if so, then in order to build a theoretical foundation for this practice, it is quite natural to make the process of experiencing the central subject of general psychological research into the problem of overcoming critical situations.

The reader has probably already noticed that we use the term “experience” not in the sense usual for scientific psychology, as a direct, most often emotional, form of giving the subject the contents of his consciousness, but to designate a special internal activity, internal work, with the help of which a person manages to endure certain (usually difficult) life events and situations, restore lost mental balance, in a word, cope with a critical situation.

Why we considered it possible to use an already “occupied” term to denote the subject of our research, we will answer this question later, in the Introduction. But why do we have to make terminological innovations at all? The point, of course, is not that the area of ​​psychic reality we are studying is terraincognita for psychology and should be named for the first time, but that its existing names - psychological defense, compensation, coping behavior, etc. - do not suit us. since the categories they express record only partial aspects of the holistic problem that we see here, and none of them, therefore, can claim to be general category. On the other hand, a new term is required because we want to immediately, right away, dissociate ourselves from the theoretically limited methodology that dominates the study of this sphere of mental reality, and conduct analysis from the standpoint of a certain psychological concept - the theory of activity of A. N. Leontiev, and there is simply no corresponding concept in its arsenal.

The last circumstance is not accidental. Although many studies within the framework of this theory to one degree or another touch upon the topic of interest to us, no attempt has yet been made to clearly formulate this problem in the most general theoretical terms. The probable reason that the theory of activity has so far only touched upon this sphere of psychic reality in passing is that this theory has paid its main attention to the study of objective-practical activity and mental reflection, and the need for experience arises precisely in such situations that cannot be directly resolved by practical activity, no matter how perfect reflection it may be provided. This cannot be understood in such a way that the category of activity is generally inapplicable to experience and that it, therefore, “by nature” falls out of the general activity-theoretic picture; on the contrary, experience complements this picture, representing in comparison with external practical and cognitive activities special type activity processes, (2) which are specified primarily by their product. The product of the work of experience is always something internal and subjective - mental balance, meaningfulness, tranquility, a new value consciousness, etc., in contrast to the external product of practical activity and internal, but objective (not in the sense of essential truth in content, but in the sense of relevance to external in form) product of cognitive activity (knowledge, image).

So, in the problem of experience, the theory of activity discovers a new dimension for itself. This determined the main goal of the study - from the standpoint of the activity approach, to develop a system of theoretical ideas about the patterns of overcoming critical life situations by a person and thereby expand the boundaries of the general psychological theory of activity, highlighting in it the psychology of experience as a special subject theoretical research and methodological developments.

It is clear that such a goal cannot be achieved empirically, by accumulating already numerous facts. Its achievement involves the use theoretical method. As such, we used Marx’s method of “ascent from the abstract to the concrete.” At a specific methodological level, our theoretical movement was organized by the methodology of categorical-typological analysis, the principles and techniques of which we borrowed from the works and oral presentations of O. I. Genisaretsky. (3)

The goal formulated in this way, the chosen method of achieving it, and the existing historical and scientific conditions determined the following sequence of tasks that were solved in our research.

First, it was necessary to pose the problem of experience in the context of the psychological theory of activity, to systematically introduce the category of experience into this context. The word "enter" may not quite accurately express inner essence this task, because we did not take the category of experience into finished form outside the theory of activity from any other theory, but rather tried to “limit” the extra-scientific, intuitive idea of ​​experience with the concepts and categories of the psychological theory of activity. Such “cutting” is akin to the process of remembering, when we cannot accurately name a certain content, but gradually narrow the search area, determining what it refers to and what it is not.

Only by crystallizing in the body of the “mother” general psychological theory the idea of ​​the object of interest to us and thus obtaining a certain point of support, could we begin to review the ideas about it available in the psychological literature, without the risk of drowning in the abundance of material, getting bogged down in details and missing the main thing. The review is almost completely devoid of historicity; it is constructed strictly systematically. The reader hoping to get acquainted with the original ideas about stress, conflict, frustration and crisis, about psychological protection and compensation, will apparently be disappointed by the withheld review. He will find in the first chapter not a gallery of independent theoretical positions, but rather a construction site where preparations are being made individual elements and entire blocks of a future, in some places already guessed, design.

The purpose of the second, constructive chapter was to take the initial abstractions of the psychological theory of activity and be guided, on the one hand, general idea experiences, and on the other hand, using the data of an analytical review, to deploy these abstractions in the direction of the empiricism that interests us with the aim of its theoretical reproduction in the kind of knowledge that captures the patterns of processes, and not their general characteristics.

“Ascent to the concrete,” of course, does not end with identifying these patterns. The third and final chapter poses the problem of the cultural-historical determination of experience, the development of which should, according to our plan, build a bridge from the general laws of this process, that is, from experience in general, the experience of some abstract individual, to the experience of a specific person living among people in a certain historical era. This chapter contains a hypothesis about the mediation of the process of experiencing by certain structures of social consciousness, also detailed analysis a specific case of experience, made on the material of fiction. This analysis is intended not so much to prove the hypothesis (it is clearly not enough to prove it), but to illustrate it, and at the same time a whole series of provisions of the previous parts of the work.

The author considers it his duty to honor with words of gratitude the blessed memory of A. N. Leontyev, under whose leadership the research began, and also to sincerely thank Professor V. P. Zinchenko, without whose participation and support this book could not have seen the light of day, N. A. Alekseev , L. M. Khairullaev and I. A. Pitlyar for their assistance in the work.

Vasilyuk Fedor Efimovich (September 28, 1953 - September 17, 2017) - Russian psychologist, Doctor of Psychological Sciences.

Dean of the Faculty of Psychological Consulting at the Moscow City Psychological and Pedagogical University.

Head of the Department of Individual and Group Psychotherapy, Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Professor of the Department of Individual and Group Psychotherapy, Faculty of Psychological Counseling, Moscow State University of Psychology and Education.

Books (7)

Basics of psychological counseling

Basics psychological counseling, psychocorrection and psychotherapy. Lecture course.

The training course in the discipline “Fundamentals of psychological counseling, psychocorrection and psychotherapy” (OPKPP) is the main course that provides preparation for the study of special psychotherapeutic disciplines, directions, schools and methods of psychotherapy.

The objective of the course is a systematic review of psychotherapy and counseling as a special scientific and practical area. The course is designed to provide a system of ideas, concepts and categories with which the student can navigate the world of professional psychotherapy.

These are ideas about the place of psychotherapy in modern culture, about the relationship between psychotherapy and psychology; classification of types, models and methods of psychotherapy, characteristics structural elements psychotherapeutic situation; the primary concept of the methodological specificity of psychotherapeutic thinking.

Experience and Prayer

What to do when nothing can be done? In a situation of crisis, at a turning point in fate, a person has to do a lot of mental work - to accept the inevitable, to comprehend what happened, to find new supports for existence.

In order to learn how to provide a person with psychological and spiritual help, it is important to understand what role the processes of experience and prayer play in his search for a way out of the crisis, what their mutual transitions and mutual influences are.

The search for answers to these questions is carried out from the standpoint of general psychological theory, which under construction on the foundation of synergetic anthropology. Humanities specialists and everyone interested in issues of human spirituality.

Survive grief

The experience of grief is perhaps one of the most mysterious manifestations of mental life.

What miraculously Will a person devastated by loss manage to be reborn and fill his world with meaning? How can he, confident that he has forever lost the joy and desire to live, restore his mental balance, feel the colors and taste of life? How is suffering transformed into wisdom?

All of these are not rhetorical figures of admiration for the power of the human spirit, but pressing questions, the specific answers to which must be known, if only because sooner or later we all have to, whether out of professional duty or human duty, console and support grieving people.

Psychology of experience

The monograph is devoted to the study of critical life situations and the processes of overcoming them. Situations of stress, frustration, internal conflict and life crisis.

To cope with these situations and survive them, a person needs to do sometimes painful internal work to restore mental balance and meaningfulness in life. The establishment and systematization of the basic laws of the process of experiencing is something new that the book brings to the psychology of overcoming critical situations.

Digest of articles

The influence of prayer on the semantic work of experience
The gift of discipleship. Conversation by F.E. Vasilyuk with Rimas Kociunas
Dialogue between Carl Rogers and Martin Buber
Confession and psychotherapy
Cross-cultural study of consciousness strategies
Cultural and anthropological conditions for the possibility of psychotherapeutic experience

Psychotherapeutic pain relief technique

Chronotope model of psychotherapy
Prayer - silence - psychotherapy
Prayer and experience in the context of counseling
We forgot that such people exist

On the approaches to synergetic psychotherapy, a history of hopes
New name. New status. New tasks
From experience to prayer
From psychological practice to psychotechnical theory
Understanding psychotherapy - experience in building a psychotechnical system
Psychotherapeutic relief of toothache

Psychotechnical method for studying creative thinking
Conversation about Father Boris Nichiporov
Freedom as a life style (about Vladimir Petrovich Zinchenko)


Types of spiritual coping

Digest of articles

Lifeworld and crisis
Methodological analysis in psychology
Methodological meaning of psychological schism
Model of stratigraphic analysis of consciousness
From practice to theory
Experience and Prayer
Understanding psychotherapy as a psychotechnical system
Psychology of experience
Psychotechnics of choice
Semiotics and technique of empathy
Semiotics of the psychotherapeutic situation and psychotechnics of understanding
Structure and specificity of the theory of understanding psychotherapy
Typology of experiencing different critical situations
Levels of constructing experiences and methods of psychological assistance

FEDOR EFIMOVICH VASILYUK

On September 17, 2017, Fedor Efimovich Vasilyuk, Doctor of Psychology, Professor, Chief Researcher of the Laboratory of Consultative Psychology and Psychotherapy of the PI RAO, Head of the Department of Individual and Group Psychotherapy of the Moscow State University of Psychology and Education, President of the Association of Understanding Psychotherapy, passed away.

Fedor Efimovich was born in 1953 into a family of geologists in Donetsk. Conquest experience mountain peaks on expeditions with his father, a war veteran, he clearly grew in courage to conquer hitherto unclimbed peaks domestic psychology. He is a pioneer of domestic psychological practice: the creator of Russia's first Center for Psychological Counseling and Psychotherapy, Russia's first psychotherapy journal - the Moscow Psychotherapeutic Journal, Russia's first faculty of psychological counseling, the first internationally recognized domestic psychotherapeutic approach - understanding psychotherapy.

F.E. Vasilyuk studied with the best: A.R. Luria, B.V. Zeigarnik, A.N. Leontyev, M.K. Mamardashvili, V.P. Zinchenko and others. Strong influence His life and work were influenced by personal meetings with Carl Rogers, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, and Archimandrite Viktor Mamontov. For many people, meeting Fyodor Efimovich himself was a turning point in life. With all his aspiration to create a living psychology, he was the deepest expert in methodological problems modern psychology and psychotherapy. His monographs and articles have always caused active discussions, many of them have become classics: “The Psychology of Experience” (1984) was translated into many languages, the book “Experience and Prayer” (2005) received the highest rating in the world. Many texts are still not fully understood. More than a hundred articles from his pen testify to the unique gift of the Word - living, sensitive and poetic. He amazingly knew how to see and give a name to the subtle and elusive matters of experience and empathy, revealing their essence, calling a person to genuine life and development.

In addition to all these merits - thousands of students, clients, colleagues, each of whom experienced his participation, faith, creative genius, was inspired by meekness and power, passion and the subtlest sense of humor... He could rightfully be called a Man. Huge number Fyodor Efimovich cherished people in his memory, knew them by name, and treated everyone extremely personally. Wherever he was, every day he lovingly stood before God, offering prayer for the departed and the living. Let us also appreciate and preserve his memory. To continue his and the universal human cause, to continue to learn from him how to be alive and live truly, fearlessly facing trials, lovingly affirming what we believe in.

Human grief is not destructive (forgetting, tearing away, separating), but constructive, it is designed not to scatter, but to collect, not to destroy, but to create - to create memory.

F.E. Vasilyuk. Surviving grief, 1991

Everlasting memory.

Friends, students, colleagues