From the author: my essay after a small therapeutic group “Do I have a dependence on methods?” There is no existential therapy, there is an existential attitude towards life. Rollo May. During Simon du Plock’s seminar on addictions in Belarus, one of the MIEK graduates asked me: “How do you work with children in an existential direction? Is it possible?" I replied that I work with children in gestalt. And over time (with the help of a small group: “Am I dependent on methods?”), I realized that I had long since begun to slightly lean toward the existential direction (unconsciously, and often forced), while still studying Gestalt therapy . At the session they told us how to work with children using drawings. The technique is good and effective. But here’s the problem: not all children want to speak on behalf of mom, dad, table, square, etc. And not everyone can conclude in the end: what does this all mean in his life. Especially, in most cases, this applies to boys. They often resist any talk about them and awareness. So I had to work not according to the methodology, but with what the child was ready and agreed to. And, oddly enough, the results were: the children stopped being afraid of the teacher, mathematics, the dark..., after a traumatic situation they began to communicate with peers, they became calmer, the boys stopped calling themselves girls... But, despite the fact that in these cases I did not follow it literally according to the methodology, there was still an understanding of what I was doing, in which direction I was moving. Just before entering MIEK, I moved to a new kindergarten, which had been opened several months ago. And there I saw a 5-year-old boy with a bald spot on his head. The teacher, and then the parents, explained to me that Sasha (let’s call the boy that) pulls out his own hair. In addition to self-aggression, he was very bristly and combative towards other children. Emotions, except unconscious anger, were blocked. It was clear that the child had difficulties in relationships with his parents, he was so jealous of their sister that even at first he denied her presence, but discussions and drawings led nowhere. Our classes could be roughly divided into two stages: first, Sasha drew on the topic that I asked him to do, and then he played with me whatever he wanted. Analyzing what was happening, we can say that we did the first part of the lesson for me, and the second for him. Sasha quickly sat down, drew (if only they were left behind, on a given topic), and then said: “Let’s play already.” The first year of his playing were poor, shackled, he was still tight with me and did not trust me enough. And you can say that he almost didn’t trust him. He stopped pulling out his hair, but over the summer, while we weren’t working out, everything returned to normal, although to a lesser extent. In the second year, Sasha became more open, cheerful, he began to show adequate emotions with the children and the teacher, but he drew everything just as quickly for me, not wanting to discuss anything. But we began to play with gusto. The game was the same throughout the whole year: Sasha is Batman or Spider-Man, who saves humanity, his family, and at that time I played villains, members of his family. Often he handed over the role of Batman to me and became the villain himself. At times I asked him questions if I saw that it was somehow connected with his life, for example, if Sasha proposed to blow everything up, I asked: “How can a hero save his family without harming other people who are not guilty of anything?” . During the game, Sasha made contact, answered questions and interacted. By the end of this second year, the boy’s bald spot was completely overgrown, self-aggression had passed, and he found himself in the group. At the graduation party, Sasha simply shone in various roles and games. He was cheerful, active and charming. Our manager simply fell in love with him. But I could not recognize in this cheerful boy the “hedgehog” that I saw him at first.Of course, I’m not going to take the laurels for myself; this is a great merit of the teacher, who in every possible way sought an approach to Sasha, raised his self-esteem and allowed his activity to manifest itself. And, of course, the presence of a positive result does not mean that Sasha will now be all in chocolate, and he does not have any difficulties in behavior or in relationships in the family. But still. The result is obvious, but some worm was crawling inside. And he was crawling for this reason: something was not clear, but how the recovery was going. And in what direction was I moving? Previously, everything was clear: today we will work with relationships in the family (and maybe more than once), tomorrow with fears, the day after tomorrow we will work on dreams. But a false sense of guilt has surfaced, now we will debunk it, we will remove responsibility from the child for the mistakes of the parents. And here it’s somehow incomprehensible: some Batman is saving humanity. Something, of course, is seen and tracked, but it’s difficult to check the box that we have worked on this problem, it’s time to move on to the next one. Thus, leaving the system and using the techniques in the correct order caused anxiety, as if I and my child were walking blindfolded in an unknown direction. The most interesting thing is that the author of the method of working with drawing, child Gestalt therapist Violet Oaklander, if you analyze her book “Windows on the Child’s World,” is not fixated on methods and does not clearly follow them. It starts from the child’s problem and takes into account how much and from what side the child is ready to open up. So why is it that what I perceived positively from Aucklander, in my case, caused anxiety and dissatisfaction. After analyzing this, I came to the following conclusions: I wanted a quick result, so that the child would quickly realize everything and not resist. Everything was just like clockwork: he came, played and left. For the child - a solution to the problem, for the psychologist - satisfaction with the result and balm for the soul: I did it; Why do you need this satisfaction and quick results? Of course, for your self-esteem. Unstable self-esteem - it is always dependent on external influences. What if they say that they couldn’t cope, they fiddled around for a long time, siphoned off money, etc. This is just a blow to your reputation and self-confidence; When you don’t understand what’s happening, nervousness appears about the lack of control over the situation and this leads to fixation, you want to return to the usual, planned, because it’s calmer, but you’re missing out on something what is the child signaling to you now? So, for example, I now have another 5-year-old boy with auto-aggression in my care (A holy place is never empty!) When he gets angry with someone, Misha begins to bite his own hand until it bleeds. There are permanent scars on my arm. He does not depict himself in the drawing of the family, the rest: mom, dad, older brother-student are present. In group classes he does not respond (he is embarrassed by significant problems with sound pronunciation, and last year he spoke very poorly). Mom doesn’t take her to a speech therapist, she brushes it off: “He’ll talk it out some more.” But in the psychologist’s office, Misha is unrecognizable: he chirps, talks about his friends, home, what he likes. The teacher boasts: “After several lessons, Misha stopped biting his hand.” But there is one thing... From lesson to lesson, the child always draws himself on the car. We talk about what is happening there, for example, there are obstacles in the way of the car. Then the questions arise: what are these obstacles? What are they hindering? How to overcome them? But things did not go further than this situation in the drawing with the transition to real life. And at the next lesson, when the child began, at my request, to draw friends, then gave up and again took up his usual drawing, I remembered that when I conducted Louise Duss’s “Fairy Tale” projective test with the boy, Misha had negative feelings towards fairy tales. to my father. And I asked: “Do you have a car at home? Who's driving it? " Misha replied: “Dad drives it.” I stated: “And here you are driving the car.” The boy said that he grew up here, and his dad became old, so now he drives the car. I thought and drew.