The community of people involved in the development of psychological techniques (psychotechnicians) consists of those who develop new procedures and approaches, those who are responsible for training students and graduates in their use, and those who use them in research. But in order to qualitatively develop this topic, you need to understand the terminology and list the main types of these techniques.
Psychological techniques and techniques
Psychotechniques are special techniques and methods that allow you to change a person’s psychological state, achieve personal changes and solve psychological problems. There are several main types (directions) of psychological techniques:
- Processing (auditing, PEAT, etc.).
- Neurolinguistic programming.
- Trance techniques (hypnosis, autogenic training, meditation).
- Jungian techniques for working with the unconscious.
In most cases, psychotechniques mean processing, and it is this process (or rather, its various forms) that is most often used in counseling.
Features of counseling children with a psychologist
The tasks and goals of counseling adults and children are similar, but due to the immaturity and lack of independence of the younger generation, the methods need to be transformed.
Differences when working with children:
- Deviations in development, which serve as the reason for contacting a psychologist, are noticed by teachers or parents, and not by the children themselves. The initiative to seek help, accordingly, also does not come from them.
- The child's psyche changes quickly, so it is important that the corrective effect has a quick effect. Delay can lead to the accumulation of negative consequences.
- Responsibility for the results cannot be placed on the subject, since his self-awareness and mental activity are not fully formed, and his immediate environment has a great influence.
Psychological methods for influencing children are behavioral in nature and based on gaming techniques. The consultant receives a large amount of information from the child’s parents, most often the mother.
Often, working with a child turns into family therapy, since the family plays a significant role in education and upbringing.
Sedona method
The Sedona Method is a unique, simple, powerful, easy-to-learn psychological technique that shows you how to tap into your natural abilities and let go of any painful or unwanted feeling in the present moment.
What makes the Sedona Method a powerful tool? The first thing is that it is a process that you can use anytime, anywhere to improve any area of your life.
Subtleties of Sedona
There are three ways to approach the release process, and they all lead to the same result: releasing your natural ability to let go of any unwanted emotions in place and allow some of the repressed energy in your subconscious to dissipate.
The first way is to let go of the unwanted feeling. The second way is to welcome the feeling, to allow the emotion to simply be. The third way is to dive into the heart of emotions.
You will find that when you work with the Sedona Method, it will give you much more than you bargained for or even dreamed of.
Advantages
As you continue to use the Sedona Method, you will become more adept at using it and the results will accelerate significantly over time. You will quickly reach a point where release becomes second nature.
No matter your circumstances, the Sedona Method will show you how you can achieve wealth and success, improve relationships, find peace and happiness, health and well-being.
This will help you create the life you choose in this moment. This means that you will literally be free to have, be and do whatever you want or desire. This process is backed by tons of scientific research, celebrity endorsements, and the success of hundreds of thousands of people who have achieved amazing results in every area of their lives.
Accurate problem definition
After the psychologist has collected information and facts about the case during a consultation, he immediately begins to form working hypotheses to accurately define the problem. A hypothesis is an attempt by a psychologist to understand a child’s situation. In this case, the psychologist can rely on the experience of previous cases, interpretation of the child’s (adolescent’s) situation, and information about the family structure. Testing working hypotheses is the main content of the psychologist’s work at the third stage of psychological consultation. The psychologist encourages the child (teenager) to look at the situation in a new light.
Adler (individual) psychologists, when individually counseling children (adolescents), use the confrontation method to determine the problem - “Could it be...?” The purpose of direct, targeted confrontation is to test the psychologist’s working hypothesis and reveal to the child (adolescent) his true intention or goal in behavior. This is often enough to really influence behavior. In addition, within the framework of K. it is necessary to carry out various psycho-corrective measures aimed at harmonizing the child’s personality. It is important that the psychologist is authorized to reveal the most secret goals of the child (teenager). During the SIB course, the psychologist carefully observes the appearance of the recognition reaction on the child’s face. A child is almost always interested in hearing the psychologist’s point of view. The most effective way to test a hypothesis is to ask, “Could it be...?” and draw the appropriate conclusion depending on whether the behavior in question is erroneous or not. So, the psychologist asks four questions: “Could it be...?”, one for each incorrect goal. The psychologist may change the opening phrase “Could it be...?” to “I wonder if this is...?” Or something like that. Examples of confrontational questions are:
1) The first goal is attention, “Could it be like this...” “...do you want your mother to always be with you?”; 2) The second goal is power: “Is it possible that...” “...do you want to show mom and dad that you are in charge?”; 3) The third goal is revenge: “Is it possible that...” “...everyone is inconveniencing you, so you just pay them back?”; 4) The fourth goal is feigned incompetence: “Is it possible that...” “...no matter how hard you try, nothing good will come of it, and therefore there is no point in trying?”
The Adler (individual) psychologist strongly recommends that the psychologist reveal the goals to the child (teenager), because by repeating their opinion about the reasons for the misconduct, the parents introduce an element of guilt, and the child stops listening to them.
History of the method
It was created by a psychologist named Lester Levenson after a heart attack in 1952. The doctor sent him home, telling Levenson that he would die at about 42 years of age. After checking to see if he had the pills to end it and take his own life, Levenson sat down and thought about the deep philosophy of all the ideas he had learned in his life and came to the conclusion that they were all powerless at the moment. He noticed that he felt happy when he remembered times in his life that involved loving other people. He focused on this and began to feel better, physically and emotionally. After a few months he felt quite well and eventually came up with a belief system about the negative feelings and allowed them, at least some of them, to pass. Later, this psychological technique for working with memories became known as the Sedona method. Levenson lived another forty-two years without ever seeing a doctor, as he told a group of his students in 1990. Lester contracted abdominal cancer and died in 1994.
After Levenson's death, his movement to "release stress through the release of negative feelings" split into two branches, led by his students Larry Crane and Gail Dwoskin.
Crane is a former agent of Hollywood star Joan Collins, a very self-confident person. He founded his graduate school in Southern California, focused it primarily on developing prosperity consciousness, and called the Sedona Method the “Release Technique,” essentially changing the original name.
Dvoskin is more of a consultant than a guru. He continues the work of his teacher Levenson in Phoenix. Dvoskin later moved his school to Sedona and now trains psychologists. He is the CEO of Sedona Training Associates.
Processing
The basic idea of processing as a psychological technique is that memory is precisely what appears as a result of information processing. Memory is only a by-product of the depth of information processing, and there is no clear distinction between short-term and long-term memory.
Therefore, rather than focusing on the stores/structures involved (i.e., short-term and long-term memory), this theory focuses on memory-related processes.
General processing scheme:
- Remembering a traumatic event and/or unpleasant emotion.
- Focusing on this event and/or emotion, meticulously reproducing them.
- Maximum intensification of unpleasant sensations, feelings and emotions associated with a traumatic event.
- Letting go of all negative feelings and sensations that were previously artificially intensified.
All techniques and methods of psychological counseling within the framework of processing are built on this diagram, and the reader can apply it to himself or develop some of his own methods of work on its basis (if he is a practicing psychologist). The auditing described below is also based on it - a notorious technique of the even more scandalous “Church of Scientology”.
Gathering the necessary information
At the second stage, the psychologist begins to collect information that will help him understand the child and his problems. The psychologist should focus on what worries the child (teenager) most at the moment.
The psychologist collects information about the child’s problem using various methods, the most effective of which is the artistic method, which includes mandatory additional questions based on drawings or creative compositions made by the child from various materials. Artistic techniques also help the psychologist evaluate the effectiveness of K and study the dynamics of the child’s behavior, his relationships with parents, peers and the social environment.
Information about the teenager's problem is collected during an interview. During the interview, the psychologist uses questions and statements based on the age and intellectual potential of the teenager. A teenager's affirmations explain or reveal certain problems and questions, and questions reveal his intrapersonal experience. At the stage of collecting information about the problem, the psychologist formulates a working hypothesis, which significantly determines the essence of the questions asked by the psychologist. Traditionally, in the process of psychological counseling, four groups of issues are distinguished: linear, circular, strategic and reflexive.
The main parameter for distinguishing issues is the continuum of locus of change across the issue. At one end of this continuum there is a predominantly preliminary (diagnostic) goal, and at the other there is an intervention to achieve change in the adolescent or family. The second main axis of differentiation of issues is associated with changes in assumptions about the content of mental phenomena. Then one pole will be predominantly linear (cause-and-effect) goals, and the other will be predominantly circular (systemic) goals. psychological consultation for destructive behavior.
Most interviews in individual psychological counseling of adolescents with behavior disorders usually begin with linear questions that orient the psychologist to the teenager’s situation and help to find out the specific cause of the problem. For example, “How can you explain the problem?”, “Why did this problem arise now?”
Circular questions are based on the circular nature of mental phenomena. They are formulated to assess the chain of interactions before, during, and after an adolescent's problem behavior. The motive behind circular questions is research-enlightenment. It is assumed that one phenomenon is somehow connected with another: “What problem is bothering you now?”, “Who else is worrying about this?”
The purpose of strategic questions is to correct the behavior of a teenager. By asking strategic questions, the psychologist tries to get the teenager to change. The psychologist takes a directive position, but indirectly asks, for example: “What did you decide to do?”, “What decision did you make when your parents withheld your money, cell phone and computer?”
Reflective questions are aimed at exploring the belief system that underlies the problem and contributes to the adolescent’s personal growth. For example, “When did you start thinking this way?”, “Who else knows who reacts to problems this way?” The reflective group also has questions that help separate the problem from the teenager’s personality. These questions orient the teenager to the fact that he can overcome the difficulties he is currently experiencing and give him the determination to overcome them. For example, “How are problems developing between you? "and so on.
For example, a psychologist might ask future-oriented, reflective questions called hypothetical questions: “Do you think your parents might be concerned about your possible use of alcohol or drugs? Are they afraid to even mention their fears because they think it might offend you?”
The language of the psychologist is of great importance when conducting psychological counseling with children and adolescents. It should be remembered that not all phrases and expressions of an adult language can be understood by a child, so it is necessary to take into account the age, gender, social conditions, ethnic origin, cultural and intellectual level of the child.
In the process of K. children and adolescents, it is very important to ask the right question. The ability to ask questions is a necessary professional skill for a psychologist.
Auditing
In the Church of Scientology, auditing is a process in which an auditor receives a person, known as a "preclear", who, under his guidance, gets rid of any negative situations associated with memories. Auditing originated as an integral part of the Dianetics movement and has since become a core practice in Scientology when used in conjunction with the E-Meter. Auditing is defined by the Scientology sect as the application of the processes and procedures of Dianetics or Scientology to improve a person's life and abilities. One formal definition of auditing is the act of asking a person questions that he can understand and answer. Auditing is considered a technical operation which, according to the Church, lifts the burdened person, the "preclear", from the level of spiritual distress to the level of understanding and inner self-realization. This process is intended to enable the individual to purify their soul.
Stages of psychological auditing technique:
- The preclear assumes a comfortable position and, at the auditor's command, recalls the traumatic event.
- The auditor asks the preclear leading questions to help him fully “re-experience” the event through memory and find charged traumatic memory elements (i.e., engrams) in it.
- The preclear gets to the end of the event, after which he either feels better and is released from the engrams, or the process is repeated again until the preclear feels obvious relief.
Other details
According to scientist Eric Roux, auditing is one of the core practices of Scientology. The main purpose of this psychotechnics in the doctrine of Scientology is to rediscover the natural abilities of man, realizing that he is a spiritual being.
In the context of Dianetics or Scientology, auditing is an activity in which an auditor, trained in communications, listens to and gives auditing commands to a subject referred to as a "preclear" or more commonly as a "computer". Although audit sessions are confidential, notes taken by the auditor during the sessions are kept in the sect's archives. Some believe that auditing is a technique of psychological influence and a unique form of directive hypnosis. One way or another, its various modifications are quite successfully used by some practical psychologists.
Scientology makes a distinction between auditors - those who practice auditing - and the public (the public) - those who receive teaching but are not trained to perform the practice on others. Auditors are considered higher ecclesiastical figures in Scientology, as they are seen as more focused on achieving the goals of the religion, or "cleansing the planet" in Scientology terminology.
Basics of Counseling
Psychological consultation is based on the principles of humanistic philosophy and integral perception of personality.
Laws and rules, goals and values of the client’s individual coordinate system, his beliefs and picture of the world are the material with which the consultant psychologist works.
The result confirming the truth of the chosen technique is considered to be: the absence of emotional symptoms of tension and discomfort, the disappearance of psychological difficulties in interpersonal relationships and the activities of the subject who asked for help.
Relationships with others, characteristics of a person’s behavior in the recent past and now, and her immediate mental state serve as sources of data for psychodiagnostics.
Working with a person, a psychologist:
- most often spends a short time with the client - 5-6 meetings;
- influences the subject’s behavior primarily through changing his attitudes toward other people, the nature and forms of relationships with them;
- the purpose of consultations is to eliminate harmful stereotypes of information processing, perception and response that have taken root in thinking;
- the client-consultant relationship represents a conscious interaction when the subject makes independent decisions to change his own personality;
- To carry out his functions of studying a person’s problem area, a psychologist requires an atmosphere of trust.
