IJSP Number 5, 2023

101 acting as we were in control over a process which is inherently entropic and too big, complex, and multi-layered so as to be comprehended by a human mind. But what that limited mind can make of it is to place itself on the detached meta-position of the therapist that does not do therapy. 2. They do not practice therapy anymore because they realized (finally) that they deal in the most complex field of all. First of all, every therapist should look at their own problems and, what is even more important, at their own life: sense, general orientation, existential engagement, spiritual development, inner harmony (between the various aspects of the soul) and maybe, if there is time for that too, constantly checking of how congruent one’s own personality is. Is their life screenplay really their own, or is it just a story that they have been told, with the best intentions of course, by someone else (parents, teachers, peer groups, friends, mass-media or social pressure)? In other words, where do we actually live? Is it in reality or in the virtual reality that was implanted in our heads and souls, a reality that is endlessly retold by our narrative self? Alternatively, we can ask if we live in the real reality or in the virtual, fabricated and narrative reality? Although these questions seem to be pretty simple and obvious, their practical implications and ramifications, based on their adoption and appropriation, is not that straight forward. Once we realize the folly that surrounds us, the totally uncontrolled madness of our dynamic city life, at least we, as psychologists and therapists, should turn our attention from the general centrifugal direction towards a more centripetal orientation, usually neglected, minimized, and swept under the carpet of appearances, niceties and civilities of an altruistic coloratura. Although it is not profitable, and even less usual, fashionable or modern, auto -psychotherapy is more needed nowadays than in any other historical period. Such an introverted and introspective movement, actually a psychological volte-face, is the only way to control the generalised folly we are forced to live in by the globalized postmodern neoliberalism. Otherwise, how could a therapist address the madness of others if he or she hasn’t encountered it in themselves? One should come back to the lost or neglected personal level, extracting oneself from those all-encompassing social foams aggressively propagated by the social media. After all, psychology should, or better, has to be personal, addressing the individual, and not social (to disinvest the individual personalities via the statistics of big numbers). It is the individual and not the collective that has to be studied, understood and, if necessary, treated or therapeuticised. Psychology cannot abdicate from its main target: the understanding of the human soul. And that goes through individualised addressability based on personalized approaches which consider the life and existence of a human being and not the average numbers of some nonsensical statistics. And, following that same anthropological logic, the first and most important human being, one that no one should lose out of sight, is evidently oneself. Consequently, the therapist should take care of himself or herself, even more so if he or she is a good psychotherapist – after all, one deserves the best treatment possible.