Five Minutes to Psychologist: What the Therapist Keeps Silent About While Listening to Your Stories

It’s interesting what the therapist actually marks in his notebook—and why the suggestion “let’s be friends” makes him so uneasy? Alexander Zatona analyzes the paradoxes of psychotherapy using examples from real clients’ cases and through his own observations.

Alexander Zatona is a clinical psychologist who works in CBT, ACT, and schema therapy approaches. He runs the channel “Подумать только,” where he talks about scientific psychology and about aspects of modern therapy that usually stay off-screen and are rarely discussed out loud.

Psychotherapy is, in its own way, absurd: once a week, a person pays money to meet face to face with what they have been trying to run from for years. Across the table sits neither a friend, nor a parent, nor a spiritual teacher. Between you there are “therapeutic” relationships: they must be open, accepting, and honest. But the moment you ask what exactly this “honest” specialist records, or admit that you want to communicate in a friendly way, real fear may appear on the therapist’s face.

Four stories from my clients—and from our work together—are devoted to this unusual quality of psychotherapy and to how I myself learned (and, unfortunately, will keep learning for the rest of my life) this strange craft.

If the book seems strange to you—then everything worked out.