THERE IS NO PLACE IN PSYCHOLOGY FOR IMPROVISATIONS

 The other day while I was looking for a movie to watch and not finding it, I ended up watching a televised show. The person who ran the show was supposed to provide spiritual guidance to a guest from the audience. On that particular occasion the guest was a woman who had lost her job, had a daughter who had been diagnosed with a severe mental illness, and her unemployment benefits were about to expire. In a few words, should she not find a new job soon she would lose her home and end up living with her daughter in her car. The woman was visibly distraught, and after sharing her story with the audience I wondered what the answer from the host would be. By looking at him I could tell right away that he was totally lost and did not know what to say. Looking studiously at his guest he came up with the following answer: “Let’s look at things from another perspective. Do you think you could look at this situation from the point of view of gratitude?” To say that I was flabbergasted at his reaction is to put it mildly. I know that there is currently a trend about the philosophy of gratitude that I consider very useful because it helps us appreciate what we have that others, especially poorer countries, don’t. This does not mean however that we can give the word gratitude a connotation that it does not have. Gratitude from the Latin gratia means to be thankful, which in this particular case 
was not humanly possible. When seeing her desperate gaze I felt deep compassion for this woman who had come to share such a difficult life burden with someone who did not have the skills to help her.  Let’s remember that since we are not born with skills, they need to be acquired through study and much reading. Unfortunately, unlike many other professions, some people think that psychology is easy to improvise. They probably don’t know what a deep knowledge of human nature they need to have in order to help another human being out of misery. Making use of beautiful-sounding spiritual sayings is definitely not enough. It is also not enough to sit on an elegant chair in front of a TV camera and act as a guru. Had the host being skilled in counseling, this would have been his immediate answer: “What you have been doing until today to find a job has not worked; what about if you try another approach until you find what is there waiting for you.”