On the issue of the cost of psychotherapy The vast majority of our society, representatives of the once progressive humanity based on dialectical materialism, find it very difficult to understand what they have to pay for in the sphere of non-material services, in particular in psychocorrectional and psychotherapeutic practice . The question, of course, is fair and I will still get around to answering it. Let me start with the fact that the client pays not for “blah blah blah”, but for meanings that can only be conveyed through speech. It is worth recalling the works of famous linguists who identified in the structure of communication concepts that are irreducible to each other: speech and language. Language is a generalized system of symbols that reflects cultural and historical experience and provides communication between members of a community. Speech is structured by each individual based on his individuality, which is manifested in symbol formation. Speech is very individual due to its load of symbols peculiar only to a particular person. A simple example: ask several people to define the concept of “happiness”. I wonder what will come of this? Yes, indeed, it is very interesting to listen to people, penetrating into the very depths of the meaning of what the client wants to convey to us, perhaps without realizing it. The psyche is a fiction, an imaginary, consisting of these meanings. And speech allows you to structure internal material, from chaos to create a structure of meanings that determine the conscious existence of a person. The soul of the specialist himself is involved and used as an instrument in the psychotherapeutic process. He takes meanings, processes them and returns them in a modified form. In this regard, I recall an anecdote in which a philosopher, talking with a psychotherapist, asks in the heat of an argument: “So how then does your profession differ from prostitution?” “Well, except for the fact,” the psychotherapist retorts, “that with age their price drops noticeably, but ours only grows!..” Now about who is a professional in the field of providing mental assistance. First of all, this is a specialist with a basic education. But can a university graduate work professionally with clients, providing them with assistance in sometimes difficult situations? Can a medical school graduate perform complex operations without additional internship? The answer is clear - no. You need constant additional education, which is by no means cheap. By the way, a seminar of average duration of 3-4 days on-site in another city (not all cities have the opportunity to get an education) will cost at least 15-20 thousand rubles. The course of training in a certain area of ​​psychotherapy, even by domestic standards, is 144 hours at a minimum and 288 hours on average. It is important for a specialist to take part in training seminars at least 1-2 times a year. In psychodynamic psychotherapy, it is extremely important to undergo your own psychotherapy in order not to solve your problems at the expense of clients. And this happens very often among beginners and untrained specialists. The minimum requirements for training psychotherapists using the symboldrama method are 50 hours of personal therapy and 100 hours of group therapy. The cost, respectively, is on average from 1000 rubles. per hour and 500 rub. per session. In addition, the therapeutic relationship is sometimes so emotionally draining and intense that it is very important to take supervision of your clinical cases from more experienced colleagues. Despite the fact that many of my colleagues supervise me, I myself undergo monthly supervision. The cost of therapy and supervision in large cities and with experienced professionals is from 1.5 to 2 or more thousand rubles. It is worth noting that in order to maintain a high professional level, constant self-education is necessary in the form of reading specialized literature, the price of which, due to its highly specialized focus and small circulation is quite high - from 400 rubles. and higher. The minimum that is spent per month is approximately 1000 rubles. Distinctive.