Professional position of a psychologist
In order for qualified psychologists to be released into the world, teachers and already working psychological workers are developing technologies that will help turn ordinary students into professionals in their field. The professional position of a person who presents himself as a psychologist becomes important here.
It includes the personality of the person himself, as well as his professional approach. Thus, here we are talking about a stable system of relationships of the individual to various moments of professional activity. The personality itself is based on values, attitudes, personal and professional meanings.
Here are the requirements for the professionalism and personality of a psychologist:
- A person must accept himself unconditionally in order to gain confidence in his professional abilities;
- A person must take a humanistic approach in his activities, and also expressly be interested in the inner worlds of other people. At the same time, a distance must be maintained between the client and the psychologist in order to avoid emotional burnout and communication burden;
- A person must show interest in his activities and constantly educate himself.
The process of training future psychologists is the stage that introduces them to a new world. The work of a psychologist differs from the demands that society makes in relation to a person. Here you need to balance between your life and the lives of other people, who often complain about their troubles rather than talk about something good. In this case, the professional position of the psychologist plays an important role.
As future specialists were trained, research was carried out, the results of which are noted in this article in the online magazine psytheater.com. Thus, students positively evaluate their professional activities and are enthusiastic about the fact that they will help other people.
There is one drawback here - the lack of psychological practice, which allows you to train your own skills in practice. At the same time, the learning process is structured in such a way that future professionals show high results on the empathy scale.
At the same time, negative changes are also noted as education progresses. A person enters the professional sphere, understanding what he can influence and what he cannot, what he wants to do and what he does not. Thus, some students lose the desire to help others, despite the enthusiasm shown at the beginning of their studies. There is also a tendency to reduce confidence that professional activity depends only on the psychologist.
With each subsequent course, students express their doubts about the necessity of the knowledge they receive. This once again touches on the topic of how effective modern education is in the realities of real life. There are some changes in students' self-assessment. Their views, self-esteem, initiative, and spontaneity change.
In the education of future psychologists, the problem of building a professional position, which includes not only skills and knowledge, but also the personality of the psychologist himself, becomes important. A specialist must be confident in his own abilities, have adequate self-esteem, and solve his own problems so that they do not affect his professional activities. Shortcomings in education do not yet allow us to achieve our goals. Here we need to work on some aspects that will allow students to become real psychologists in the adult world.
Attitudes as psychological positions in communication
Attitude is an unconscious readiness for a certain, habitual action or reaction, formed in the process of life.
In short, an attitude is an acquired patterned reaction. The attitude is determined by a person's past experiences.
A person’s attitudes towards other people and groups, which influence the attitude towards oneself and others, have a very large influence on the process and result of communication.
Canadian-American psychologist and psychiatrist Eric Berne (1910-1970), the creator of transactional analysis, identified four main attitudes as psychological positions in communication (in other words, in transactions).
1. I'm bad - You're bad . People in this position not only rate themselves low, but also perceive those around them as people who are also flawed in one sense or another. This attitude can have negative consequences on the personality, leading to a loss of confidence, cheerfulness, strength and inspiration. People with this attitude are depressed, feel hopeless, are prone to stress, do not show persistence, are accustomed to failure, are not creative enough at work, have poor relationships with others, etc.
2. I am bad - You are good. These people do not like themselves because they consider themselves weak, unlucky, worthless, ugly, not meeting the requirements of others, having many shortcomings, etc. They value others more highly; They believe that others are more significant, smart, free from flaws, lucky, talented and/or beautiful. In short, people in this position look up to those around them. People with this attitude feel hopeless, lack self-confidence, are prone to retreat, are unable to take initiative and leadership, have a low assessment of their role in work, and are susceptible to stress.
3. I am good - You are bad . People with this attitude generally have a positive view of themselves, but they perceive very significant differences between themselves and those around them. They consider most other people to be imperfect or worse than themselves; find that others lack many important qualities, such as intelligence, honesty, morality, attractiveness, intelligence or experience. People of this life position think that they are superior to others and strive to demonstrate this to them and to themselves. They may appear arrogant, cold, arrogant; Such leaders are usually not liked. They look down on others. People with this attitude have inflated self-esteem, are difficult to communicate with, are considered arrogant, suppress others, exaggerate their role in work and their merits.
4. I am good - You are good . People in this position are characterized by a predominantly positive attitude towards themselves and others. They are characterized by self-confidence, responsiveness, calmness, an adequate reaction to a changed situation, friendliness, good relations with others, and the trust of others in them.
From the considered options it is clear that only the position “I am good - you are good” is the position of a self-confident and harmoniously developed person, cultured and with a high level of social intelligence. And this is the position of the winner. Confident people, as a rule, achieve their goals despite any difficulties, help others, and have high resistance to stress.
The four attitudes listed above operate not only in interpersonal relationships, but also in intergroup relationships, as well as in relationships between individuals and groups.
Professional position and status of a psychologist in the educational space
Everyone working in educational institutions solves a common problem - providing training and education for the younger generation. Moreover, each of them plays a specific role and occupies its specific place in the educational process, has its own tasks, goals and methods.
A psychologist is an equal member of the teaching staff and is responsible for this aspect of the pedagogical process, which no one else can provide professionally, namely, for the mental development and psychological health of children and schoolchildren.
In his work, he relies on professional knowledge about recurrent patterns and individual uniqueness of mental development, about the origins of mental activity and the motives of human behavior.
A psychologist, working in any children's educational institution, solves the main problems of practical educational psychology.
1) identify the psychological readiness of children for schooling, together with the teacher, outline a program for adapting them to school;
2) develop and implement, together with teachers and parents, developmental programs taking into account the individual characteristics of children - interests, abilities, inclinations, feelings, hobbies, life plans - as well as developmental tasks at each age stage;
3) keep under special control transitional, turning points in the lives of schoolchildren;
4) carry out diagnostic and correctional work with underachieving and undisciplined schoolchildren;
5) diagnose the intellectual, emotional, volitional and personal characteristics of students that create difficulties in the process of learning and education, and help in their correction;
6) contribute to the creation of a favorable psychological climate, identify and eliminate the causes of violations of interpersonal relationships of students with the teacher, with peers, with parents and other people;
7) advise the school administration, teachers, parents on psychological problems in the education and upbringing of children, on the development of their attention, memory, thinking, character, abilities;
conduct individual and group consultations with students on issues related to educational activities, self-education, self-determination, and problems of relationships with adults and peers;
9) actively participate in career guidance work.
The main types of activities of a practical psychologist in education are largely similar to the types of practical psychological work in other areas, however, they have specificity associated with the characteristics of the objects of psychological work (children, parents, educators, teachers) and the corresponding problems they face. These are psychological education, prevention, counseling, diagnosis, correction and child development.
The requirements for the status of a psychologist are:
· formation of adequate expectations of the teaching staff through their full familiarization with the rights, responsibilities, main directions and forms of work of a psychologist, and the strategy of the psychological service;
· diagnostic communication of a psychologist with all categories of educators and students, presupposing empathy, a non-judgmental attitude, personal behavior, a partnership position and reliance on positive individuals;
· cooperation and interaction with teachers in determining common positions, school plans and programs, their implementation, and analysis of performance results.
The psychologist draws up a work plan independently, but always takes into account the wishes of the institution’s managers, educators, and teachers. It is advisable to coordinate the plan with the employees of the Psychological Center.
A psychologist works with children, educators, teachers, administration of educational institutions, guardianship and police authorities, parents of children and their relatives. At the same time, the main thing is that the interests of the child as an emerging personality are at the center of all his work.
Having identified the child as the main object of his attention, the psychologist exercises general control over the course of their mental development based on ideas about the normative content and periodization of this process. The subject of psychological diagnostics is to determine the psychological status of a child: the characteristics of the development of mental functions, the make-up of his personality, character, and temperament.
A practical psychologist is responsible, first of all, for maintaining the psychological and pedagogical conditions that are most favorable for the mental and personal development of each child at all stages.
The psychologist is called upon to help managers in recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of the individual, creating a favorable psychological microclimate in the team, choosing the optimal style of management and activity, diagnosing the teaching staff, correct selection and placement of personnel, resolving industrial and interpersonal conflicts. In addition to this aspect of management, other aspects of management activities can be optimized with the help of a psychologist, in particular planning, analysis of the practical process, etc.
A special category that psychologists have to deal with are parents. An analysis of school practice shows that working with parents requires a radical restructuring.
A practical educational psychologist is a specialist with a higher education, equal in terms of pay, assignment of rank, duration of leave, pension guarantees, as well as other professional rights and guarantees with the teaching staff of educational institutions, regardless of his specific place of work: educational institutions (kindergartens, schools of various profiles, orphanages, boarding schools, etc.), district, city, regional, regional psychological education centers.
The positions of practical psychologist in educational institutions of various profiles, district, city, regional educational psychological service centers can be filled by specialists with basic psychological education, as well as persons with higher education and who have undergone special retraining in the field of practical child psychology and educational psychological service.
Practical educational psychologists have double subordination: administrative and professional. Administrative management is carried out by psychological service departments of republican, regional, city and district administrations and departments of education, and heads of educational institutions. Professional management is carried out through a network of psychological centers at various levels.
A psychologist’s working time is organized taking into account the norms of practical psychological work with children of different ages and various categories of adults.
The choice of priority areas of work and the ratio of different types of work are determined by the needs of the educational institution and the number of full-time and freelance psychologists it has.
For the work of a psychologist in an educational institution, a special office is allocated, which provides the necessary conditions for carrying out diagnostic, advisory, developmental and correctional work. District, regional, city, regional centers equip workplaces for psychologists and other specialists in accordance with their functional responsibilities.
The design and maintenance of an office in an educational institution is paid to a practical psychologist in accordance with the standards established for subject teachers.
Practical psychologists working in an educational institution, educational psychological service centers keep records of the work carried out and submit reports on administrative and professional lines in accordance with the reporting forms approved by the Ministry of Education. The report of the psychological service of the educational institution is included in the reporting documentation of the institution, and of psychological service centers - in the reports of educational authorities at the appropriate level.
Vladimir Kudryavtsev
)" (Ibid. p. 138).
At the same time, Moustakas proceeds from the dialogical interpretation of the “I – You” relationship, as it is presented in the philosophical concept of Martin Buber. The St. Petersburg publishing house “Rech,” which published the book, considered it possible to give its Russian translation the title “Game Therapy.” It captures only the form of work (and not the only one) to which the author resorts, but not its essence. The original title is much more accurate: 'Psychotherapy with Children. The Living Relationship' – “Psychotherapy with children. Living attitude." Although the publication of the book in Russian can only be welcomed.
K. Moustakas’ system of work is psychotherapy for personal growth. It is opposed to that “mass” (both in terms of the scope of the contingent and the degree of distribution) psychotherapy, which tries to invent and use certain algorithms for situational solutions to everyday human problems. It is not surprising that such a solution is very often fictitious in nature, and these problems become aggravated again: the only guarantee of their removal is the therapist’s feasible assistance to the personal growth of a person, the development of his ability to construct an unusual image of the world and himself and the plastic embodiment of this image in the fabric of everyday life. relationship with reality. The assistance we are talking about does not necessarily require long therapeutic sessions; it can be of the nature of “one-time” impulses. But this is always a subtle, filigree work with an “individual case”, an “episode”**. However, we know of one example of a combination of “mass participation” and focus on such assistance. This is the missionary activity of K. Rogers.
K. Moustakas develops his approach to building work with a child primarily in line with the therapeutic relationship of creative,
in his terminology, like.
He compares it with a therapeutic relationship of a reactive
type.
In the first case, a commonality between the therapist and the child develops, as a new way of relating to the world is formed within the child’s (and adult’s?) consciousness. In the second case, a specific problem of the child is solved. Moustakas does not oppose these types to each other and even points out their complementarity. However, it is clear that the dominant aspect of his own practice is the creative type of therapeutic relationship. In our opinion, there is a clear parallel between the named types and what V.V. Davydov [3] calls, respectively, theoretical and empirical thinking, and
more broadly,
the attitude to reality.
Please note: movement towards a way of relating to the world at a higher level at the same time
acts as a mechanism for resolving unique psychological problems of a person, which may partly be rooted in the archetypal, primordial layers of the “collective unconscious” of culture (C. Jung), the development and “release” of his deep mental potential. These processes do not diverge in time (according to the principle: first a “top position” is formed, and then “deep problems” are solved from its “heights”), but occur through each other. Ascent to the summit is a descent to the cultural and psychological foundations of human existence. This bidirectionality characterizes the chronotope (using the term of A.A. Ukhtomsky and M.M. Bakhtin) of personal growth [6].
The substantive coincidence of the professional and personal position of the psychologist, and hence the fulfillment of the psychological Mission, involves eliminating the gap between academic (fundamental, theoretical-experimental) and applied psychology
(starting from the stage of training psychologists at the university, which E.E. Kravtsova rightly insists on).
As is known, this gap is rooted historically; today it reveals symptoms of the same psychological crisis that L.S. Vygotsky wrote about [1]. All over the world, academic and applied psychology are “otherworldly” spheres of activity for psychologists. Academic and practical psychologists each live “their own lives.” They don't even meet at the same conferences and seminars. And sometimes they have little idea what their “colleagues” are doing. Several years ago I talked with school practical psychologists from Israel and asked them: “Who is your authority in science?” They gave me only two (!) names - Piaget and Bruner. Later I spoke to American psychologists involved in basic research. The conversation accidentally touched on humanistic psychology, C. Rogers. “What are you talking about, this is not science!” they exclaimed. This method of division of labor, when eggs are very meticulously placed in different baskets, entails a critical reduction of the personal world of the psychologist (and not just psychology as a form of knowledge and practice!), within which no professionalism is possible in principle.
We have slightly different traditions, although we are increasingly trying to copy the Western model.
I mean Vygotsky’s textbook thesis: fundamental psychology happens not in classrooms, but in a school classroom, a kindergarten group, and even in a hospital ward. The ability to discover for yourself the meaning and essence of what you study (what you work with) in practice, and to develop on this basis an optimal, strategically thought-out chain of further actions is fundamental science.
Theory is not “general words”, but generalized ways of constructing what is being studied (V.V. Davydov). Such construction was carried out not only by Vygotsky and his school, but also by J. Dewey, and C. Jung, and E. Erikson, and even J. Piaget (not in his famous experiments with children’s thinking, but in clinical conversations in the late 1920s, aimed at recreating the “children’s concept of the world” [11]). Today it is customary to talk about a project approach to a person in psychology, which is seen as a continuation of the logic of the formative experiment (genetic modeling method) of the school of L.S. Vygotsky. Meanwhile, Z. Freud, largely without realizing it, managed to implement it on a global scale of European culture of the 20th century. He invented and instilled in humanity such complexes that it had not experienced before, but after him it began to experience more acutely and stronger than its real problems and pains. Freud brilliantly brought to life the myth he himself created (“project”). And here all the tools that he had at hand served him usefully - ancient mythology, biographies of great people, clinical research materials, and even the experience of analyzing his own neurotic states, and much more. Of course, Freud did not act with his bare hands, but with the help of intermediaries. He transmitted his message not only through the texts he wrote (which were read by a relatively limited circle of people), but also through an army of psychoanalysts (who elevated their craft to one of the “iconic” professions of the century), neurotic artists, writers, etc. The main target was also correctly found - sexuality, one of the most intimate manifestations of the “human in man,” which Catholicism imposed a ban on as something purely carnal, “organistic” (the expression of F.T. Mikhailov) and even bestial. And, by the way, it was Freud (if we clear him of the evaluative cliches of interpreters) who brilliantly showed that libido, in fact, is the same attributive and significant expression of the “human” as thinking, articulate speech, a sense of beauty, conscience... He destroyed one of Catholic myths and his own reigned in his place.
And now, be that as it may, European culture of the 20th century would have been different without Freud.
Besides Freud, I can name only one (less large-scale) precedent of global sociocultural “design” carried out by a psychologist. This is the activity of Timmothy Leary, whose contribution to the development of the youth subculture of the West in the 1960s and 1970s. difficult to overestimate. Leary found few of his own experiments with entering “altered states of consciousness” with the help of LSD and other drugs. And he decided to involve ... the whole young generation in this (in fact, the socio-psychological effects of these experiments interested him in the first place). Like Freud, Leary worked through intermediaries - a circle of people familiar to young people, among whom the bulk were outstanding rock musicians: Bob Dillan, John Lennon and others (Timmy Leary is mentioned in Lennon's song 'Give peace a chance'). To do this, he first tried to become and became an iconic figure... for recognized youth idols (!). Lennon said that Leary was almost a guru for them, communicating with whom they experienced something close to awe. And their creativity (of course, only partially and indirectly) was an instrument for the implementation of Leary’s plan within the boundaries of the youth subculture. He descended from the heights into the depths of the consciousness of the young. As befits a sophisticated psychologist.
According to many, the project approach in psychology extremely sharpens problems that could be called psychoethical. Our position on this issue in general terms is as follows. If a psychologist professionally performs his work, if he firmly “stands in his boots,” no special psychoethical problems, at least by analogy with bioethical ones (consequences of genetic engineering, etc.), do not arise. This reveals the fundamental difference between the professional position of a psychologist and the professional position of a biologist; it lies in their distance from the personal position. In the first case, this distance is the shortest, although it is clearly not a straight line. And personality (not moral codes) is the ultimate ethical authority of a person. The position of a true professional is controlled by his Personality, especially when the “object” of your professional effort is another Personality. Where any other specialist should look into the moral code (sometimes it doesn’t hurt to be familiar with the criminal code), the psychologist listens to himself and to others.
However, biological developments are increasingly affecting the foundation of the phenomenon of the Living, the phenomenon of Life, the meaning-generating core of which is intelligent life. Therefore, the solution to bioethical problems will depend on the degree of convergence between the professional and personal positions of the biologist. It was precisely their divergence, which took on the external form of “scientism,” that led to the fact that the problems of bioethics were the first to be discussed most emotionally not by biologists, but by publicists, philosophers, and other third-party analysts. However, this always happens. Specialists “unconditionally accept” the problems they themselves create, as a rule, the last ones. They know too well and accurately assess the real situation from the heights of their professional position.
*Psychologists-researchers of professional activity, as a rule, limit the consideration of these problems to the concepts of professional (professional-role) and personal position. However, penetration into the psychological nature of this activity and its subject requires expanding the conceptual field. If we imagine a subject of professional activity by analogy with the structure of the geosphere, we get the following picture. On the surface of the sphere there will be a professional role - an external expression of a professional position. The layer of the sphere closest to the surface (“crust”) is formed by this position itself, which passes, as it were, into the “outer mantle.” The “inner mantle” will be the Mission, the “core” - a personal position, which in relation to all these “layers” and “buffer zones” between them always (directly or indirectly) performs a structuring function.
**Nowadays, this culture is clearly demonstrated by my Austrian colleague and comrade, the founder of “psychoanalytic pedagogy” Helmut Figdor [9], [10], whose practice can be considered as a serious alternative to the dominant “flow psychotherapy” in the world.
