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How to predict the success of an interaction? How to set a price and negotiate payment? What to do if a client sabotages the work? To resolve these and many other important issues in any helping profession, a contract is concluded with the client. The essence of the contract: * clarifies the structure of interaction for both the client and the specialist * determines the exact goal and result of the work * agrees on expectations from each other along the entire path, possible difficulties and success criteria, boundaries of responsibility of the client and therapist * shows how psychotherapy will help the client live and what changes can happen around him The most popular irrational expectations of clients from psychotherapy: * solve all problems in life * become happy * learn to live correctly * get something that is not there But psychotherapists can also be overwhelmed by false expectations regarding their clients. Here are some of them: * a feeling of omnipotence and the ability to solve any problem * a fantasy of the ability to successfully remake people * the desire to “do good” without asking Contradictions in expectations give rise to difficult conflict. The main value of a contract is not legal liability, but a conscious and voluntary mutual agreement, an agreed upon understanding. The contract is usually drawn up orally. It may take 15 minutes or even several sessions to make contact. The contract may not take place if there are no necessary conditions, atmosphere and agreement for which people are ready to go all this way, and accordingly, the interaction will end. Psychotherapy has an impact on a person. As changes arise, by mutual agreement, the client’s request and contract may change during the course of work. Or, for example, the atmosphere of interaction has changed, the specialist has violated boundaries, and some crisis of psychotherapy has arisen. The agreements need to be reconsidered. This is called a contract revision. For each type of psychotherapy (individual or group, psychoanalysis or Geshalt, etc.), as well as psychotherapeutic targets, there are different forms of contract, but in general the structure of the agreement looks like this: * client identification - does the person really want to change or has he come to to a psychotherapist, for example, under external influence, with a legal or some other request* defining the problem and forming a therapeutic request (goals and their criteria, what their achievement will look like)* determining the depth of intervention (working with symptoms, personality, social functioning)* choosing a method (explaining to the client your style of work and possible others) * agreeing on the setting (conditions): place, frequency and duration of meetings, cost, etc. * discussing the completion of psychotherapy (inevitable, but obligatory ending): how the client and specialist will understand that we have achieved the goal, and how to draw the line. As a result, it is easier for the client to talk about himself and his problems. He knows why and what will happen, what the result will be, what kind of service he is buying, what its complexity and necessity for him are. Often, concluding a formed contract is an independent psychotherapy and fully satisfies its goals when the client begins to better understand his problems, how they affect his life, his goals and what can help him. In Russia, unfortunately, not everyone considers a contract to be something serious, believing that it is enough to master only the technique of psychotherapy. In the West, they pay much more attention to this and consider it one of the main professional competencies. Any Western textbook on psychotherapy has a chapter on the contract. Let’s say that in Russia the issue of payment is often a very painful one, but there, as a rule, there is no such problem. What is important to you at the beginning of working with a client? I invite you to a free online master class of the Balint supervision group