G.I. Maleychuk Client of a psychologist/therapist Currently, it is a common opinion that a client is a person who has problems. However, everything is not so simple here. Not every person who has any difficulties can be classified as a client. Even if we accept the fact that every person has problems, then, perhaps, not all of them relate to problems of a psychological level. In turn, among people who have psychological difficulties, not everyone is aware of them as such. We can consider such people as conditional or potential clients. And even if such a person ends up in your office, it is not a fact that he will automatically become your client. There are a number of other conditions, the presence of which will allow you to identify the person in your office as a client. Let's try to highlight these conditions: 1. Voluntariness;2. Recognition of the authorship of your problems; 3. Recognizing your problems as psychological problems;4. Recognition of the fact that psychotherapy helps (the presence of elements of a psychological picture of the world);5. Recognition of a psychologist/psychotherapist as a professional Only the presence of all the above conditions gives us grounds to define a person receiving an appointment with a psychotherapist as a client. How the therapeutic contact develops depends to a large extent on the skill of the psychologist/therapist. Examples of insufficient conditions: 1. Involuntary seeking of psychological help. Situation: Someone else brings (sends) a person to a psychologist (parents - child; spouse - spouse; teacher - student, etc.). Message – “Something is wrong with him... Do something with him)”; 2. Failure of a person to recognize the authorship of his problems. Situation: A person voluntarily comes to see a specialist, but believes that someone else is to blame for his problems (spouse, parent, child, boss...). Message – “If it weren’t for him...”;3. Failure to recognize your problems as psychological problems. Situation: A person voluntarily comes to see a specialist, but believes that the problem he has is caused by non-psychological reasons. Message – “Give me advice, a recipe...”;4. Not recognizing the fact that therapy helps. Situation: A person does not seek psychological help. Message – “Knowing your therapy...”5. Lack of recognition of the psychotherapist as a professional. Situation: A person turns to a specialist for competitive reasons. Message: “I know better...” And one more, in our opinion, important condition: the client must pay for himself... Experience shows that if the client does not pay himself, then he does not accept responsibility for the therapy. Let’s now try to give a working definition client. A client is a person who voluntarily seeks psychological help from a specialist, identifies his problems as psychological problems, recognizes his contributions to their occurrence, and also recognizes the therapist as a specialist who can help solve them.