Rome, 2012.
During university lessons, the teacher, to explain to us what a psychotherapist was, started with a roundup of “it’s not…”
He’s not a friend.
He is not a priest who absolves.
He is not a parent.
He is not an advisor.
It’s not, it’s not, it’s not…
And we’re there wondering “yes, okay, but what is it?”
I imagine who, in this increasingly absurd historical period and in a time of need, after having taken a little’ courage, finds themselves looking for a professional to regain their mental health…
…and looking a little’ into the world of social media and beyond, it makes him wonder …what kind of thing is this?
Because unfortunately we are witnessing so many “it is not…”
For a few years now, we have finally understood that mental health is important and we are witnessing a growing demand: investing in mental health.
But what was and what is the answer?
The psychologist who is caring, gives advice, tells his business, “forgets” the sessions, arrives late. The advertisements with the free sessions. People who are miscalled “customers” as if they were buying a product.
It seems that caring has taken the place of caring.
Will it perhaps have to do with the idea one has of the human being?
Anyone with a broken leg would go to the orthopedist for treatment and walk again… but if the answer is a combination of advice, comfort zones/good parent/friend, and patches that are worse than the hole… the hope of treatment and resolution is gone… leaving room for what?
The difference, however, is that a terrible orthopedist who doesn’t treat my leg, I can change it by finding another…. instead the risk is that all of these “are not”, far from being clinical, give the idea that psychotherapy is simply “paying someone to take on the role of parent present”, attacking (or filling) a hole…which necessarily empties again…creating only dependence and not autonomy.
If only it were cynicism, but just look at the myriad of advertisements where the key word is no longer care, but welcome and the turn unfortunately can be seen from the large number of those (the younger ones) who start using chatbots as their own “therapist”. In the end, he’s compliant, he remembers everything, he’s always there… and not even if he pays!
So, listening and reading, watching reels, interviews, listening to podcasts… that question (unfortunately) seems to come back.
Who is the psychotherapist?
Vienna, late 1700.
An old German doctor, Mesmer, talked about animal magnetism.
It was the idea, in embryo, that in one relationship, one human being could influence another.
A bit’ like when you get sick.
But also a little’ like when you fall in love.
A bit’ like the spells of witches, which in the Middle Ages made the most rational pale and those who saw them as women and not as monsters with brooms fall in love.
Paris, Early 1900.
Minkowsky, a French psychiatrist, wrote that in front of the patient “having an ‘idea of curability is already therapeutic”
If the therapist thinks there’s a cure, you can cure yourself; otherwise, you can’t. It seems simple and obvious. It would be absurd to go to a dentist to treat cavities if he doesn’t think they can be cured.
Yet, precisely certain approaches, advice, techniques…underlie that thinking there. Sometimes it would be enough to ask at the first session “Excuse me, do you take care or do you take care?”
And sometimes it seems that artists, more than professionals, are clear about how a human being is made.
Rome, 70s.
Massimo Fagioli, an Italian psychiatrist, writes the birth theory after discovering the nullification drive. Nonconscious dynamics that, with the illusion of making what hurts us disappear, makes its own emotional dimensions disappear, impoverishing, sometimes to the point of losing, our internal image.
Human beings do not take their identity from others; they have their own internal image from birth, albeit fragile, and what falls ill is unconscious thought.
It’s a revolution.
It’s not genetic, it’s not hereditary, it’s not bad. You get sick in a sick relationship.
And you can heal in a relationship that is therapeutic if it is the care of the unconscious person who has fallen ill.
This gives back a chance to those seeking a cure, whether patient or therapist.
Human beings, over time, have seen those like them get sick, suffer and die. And one step at a time he tried to reject all of this. He invented medicine, he invented vaccines, he invented what his interest in others could make him invent or discover.
And he also invented psychotherapy, to reject the illness of others, seeking a cure.
The psychotherapist is a human being who, with an idea of cure in his head, feels, sees, knows, interprets and rejects the illness of another human being.
…and since the relationship is done by two people and no one is passive… who is the patient?
Gianluca Ambrosini
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