Advice Is Not Love - Reviews

Patients, 2014

Director: Ella Omelchenko

Cast: Pavel Barshak, Timofey Tribuntsev, Maryana Kirsanova

The plot of the film revolves around the family problems of the young spouses Sergei and Lenochka, who help them resolve: Sergei is a psychoanalyst Bryusov, and Lenochka is an Orthodox priest Father Sergius. The entire film is based on the opposition of different views on how a person can be happy and what place his family should occupy in this happiness.

We must say right away that the film makes an ambiguous impression due to the incorrect presentation of the process of work of both the psychologist and the priest. At the same time, it is rather difficult to understand the reason for such a “cardboard” image of both characters.

If in relation to the psychoanalyst all this can be explained by a tribute to the newly formed fashion - it is no secret that a tendency to portray psychotherapists as such comical useless idlers has begun to be traced in Russian cinema for a long time - then it is completely incomprehensible why the filmmakers put a set of such platitudes into the mouth of the father. that one involuntarily suspects that all this is being done for some higher comic purpose.

And this is how the story turned out about how a professionally "burned out" psychoanalyst turned a poorly working priest into a psychological consultant.

PARADE OF VIOLATIONS

To begin with, it makes no sense to compare the work of a psychotherapist-psychoanalyst and the counselor service of a priest, when both are professionally engaged in their own business, and even less so in principle. Comparison is possible only when they begin to violate the principles of their work. Thus, in the film, the psychoanalyst violates the basic principles of his profession in almost every judgment, working with the client in an absolutely directive manner, giving advice, convincing the client and imposing his point of view on him. At the same time, he also takes on the role of arbiter of destinies. That is, he has all the signs of professional burnout. No wonder at the end of the film he goes into a cruel binge. Perhaps this was the humorous idea of the filmmakers. But the demonstration of this style of work of the psychotherapist suspiciously coincides with the conventional judgments about psychologists as people who can instantly solve all your problems with useful advice and recommendations.

A LITTLE ABOUT ETHICS

The fact is that the basic position of most areas of psychotherapeutic assistance is the requirement "not to impose your values and worldview on the client." A psychotherapist cannot suggest, recommend, advise a person to change his faith or life principles on the pretext that they are “wrong”. In addition, psychological assistance is based on the versatility of a specialist. A professional is able to work with almost any person who requires psychological support, regardless of gender, nationality and religion, and other differences. True, the psychotherapist has the right to choose a client and limit the provision of assistance to a certain range of psychological problems. Therefore, psychologists and psychotherapists, as a rule, have a specialization - family, children, crisis and others. So readers should remember that "normal"if the therapist starts competing with the priest, then something is definitely wrong with the psychotherapist.

WHAT IS POP, SO AND COME

The situation with the clergyman, Father Sergius, is perhaps shown more subtly. Although he, right and left, distributes absolutely stereotyped recommendations that correspond to common ideas about what a clergyman can advise, but they are rather far from the practice of "counseling" adopted by intelligent clergymen. In addition, the priest gets involved in open competition with the psychoanalyst. Father Sergius behaves in his sermons and teachings like a bad psychologist who has ready-made recipes for all occasions. And if life does not fit into the framework of the available advice, so much the worse for life!

The fact is that in the modern world, the work of a priest has turned into one of the professions, into which professionally unfit characters sometimes fall. And in such a delicate matter as belief and service to a cult, one can remarkably learn all the rituals, but with the help of rituals it will not work to “learn” faith. She is primary in relation to everything else in this profession. And the father just does not add up to faith, at least with the level of faith that can lead to faith in other people. It is not for nothing that Bryusov catches the priest on the elementary manifestations of the oedipal conflict, and he gives up his dignity practically without resistance, passing into a more understandable and suitable hypostasis of a psychological consultant.

Helpless souls

Using the example of two other characters - Sergei and Lenochka - it is good to study the modern helpless state of a person in front of the shaft of recommended ways of living life. The realities of life are becoming more complicated, and we began to feel embarrassed to have our own position, to express our opinion, perhaps even more than in totalitarian times. It was just that then silence meant that you did not share the official point of view, and today silence most often indicates the absence of your own opinion as such.

A person is lost not only in the information flow, but also “through life”. And how else, if he is not sure of himself, he knows that everything in this world is complicated, to whose opinion it is not clear to listen to. In addition, you can always find contradictory opinions, and the tradition of the existence of "reliable information" or "correct point of view" is thoroughly eroded. The opinion of any person, even not burdened with relevant knowledge, can be declared not only valuable, but also deserving attention. So it turns out - whoever stuck to what or to whom, believes that. What, in fact, is happening with our heroes.

VICTIMS OF PLURALISM

When they say that modern young people know no less, and often more, the representatives of the previous generation, then the first question I want to ask is - what do they know more about? There is no doubt about gadgets, network technologies, new means of communication and transportation. But in a strange way, they often turn out to be illiterate in completely ordinary matters related to relationships.

At the same time, the presence of not only secondary, but also higher education does not help in any way to navigate life issues. Our schools and universities have long abandoned the task of forming the worldview of their graduates. So it turns out that we live in an information society, where there is access to almost any information. But we completely lack criteria for selecting and evaluating this very information. As a result, a person flounders in it, as in a swamp, and grabs at any more or less harmonious worldview. No wonder the screenwriter Sergei goes to rallies and demonstrations during the period of separation from his wife.

OPINIONS RULE THE WORLD

A separate problem is the general infantilization of young people associated with the absence of a more or less rationalistic, let alone scientific, picture of the world. As a result, the knowledge that a certain phenomenon is natural is not a reason for showing patience and indulgence. The film shows how Sergei tries to communicate with his wife as before, without a discount on her pregnancy. For such people, it is absolutely not important what they say, but who expressed this opinion becomes very important. People are "transplanted" from facts to personalities, so that the expression "opinions rule the world" today can be voiced as "popular opinions rule everything."