Psychotherapy isn’t a game — except when it is…Psihoterapija nije igra, osim kada to jeste...

Just as a good story draws you to follow it from beginning to end, so for me psychotherapy is a process in which the client and I discover the client’s world together — sometimes for the first time even to them. It’s a collaborative process, at times identical to designing a narrative, except that the end product is a different, and I’d dare say better, version of someone’s life. I draw on psychodrama and its humanistic foundation, its approach to a person as a sum of roles — whether chosen or assigned. Alongside action-based techniques, plain conversation is no stranger to me as one way of understanding oneself, together with all the other techniques from more or less related approaches. Psychotherapy seems to carry a permanent “Work in Progress” sign — and, like a work of art, one day it ends because it needs to end. “It’s perfect, because it ends here,” as the old Fremen knife-art has it.Kao što vas dobra priča vodi da je pratite od početka do kraja, tako je i za mene psihoterapija proces u kome klijent i ja zajedno otkrivamo klijentov svet — ponekad po prvi put i njemu samom. To je kolaborativni proces, ponekad identičan dizajniranju naracije, osim što je krajnji proizvod drugačija, usudio bih se reći bolja verzija nečijeg života. Oslanjam se na psihodramu i njenu humanističku osnovu i pristupu čoveku kao zbiru uloga - bilo ličnih, bilo dodeljenih. Pored akcionih tehnika, nije mi stran ni čist razgovor kao jedan od načina za razumevanje sebe, uz sve druge tehnike iz manje ili više srodnih pravaca. Psihoterapija na sebi kao da stalno nosi znak „Radovi u toku“ i koja se, kao i umetničko delo, jednog dana završi jer treba da se završi. „Savršeno je, zato što se završava ovde“, kaže stara umetnost noža od Fremena.

I try to approach every client — whether an individual, a couple, or a group — from a position of curiosity, avoiding any prior knowledge or reliance on experience alone. Although clients have the chance to learn about me by searching the net, YouTube, LinkedIn, I don’t do the same — when you first come to me, I really know nothing about you, and it’s from there that I want to get to know you. Complexity is familiar to me; silence doesn’t bother me, if I sense it serves the process. Sometimes the answers we’re looking for are in that silence — we just have to hear them…Trudim se da svakom klijentu — bilo da je pojedinac, par ili grupa — pristupim iz pozicije radoznalosti, izbegavajući bilo kakva prethodna znanja ili oslanjanje samo na iskustvo. Iako klijenti imaju priliku da saznaju nešto o meni pretražujući net, YouTube, LinkedIn, ja to ne radim - kad prvi put dođete kod mene, zaista ne znam ništa o vama, i iz te pozicije želim da vas upoznam. Kompleksnost mi je bliska, tišina mi ne smeta, ako osećam da koristi procesu. Ponekad se u toj tišini nalaze odgovori koje tražimo — samo treba da ih čujemo…

I’m also a narrative and game designer — I write and create games on all kinds of themes. A similar curiosity drives that act of creation as drives therapy, just from a different chair, and it’s part of why I see the stories we live by as something that can be written again and again, like the “choose your own adventure” kind of game where you may not always be able to start over, but you can choose not to pick the same pages again…Takođe, bavim se i narativnim dizajnom i dizajniranjem igara — pišem i kreiram igre na različite teme. Slična radoznalost vodi taj čin kreacije kao i što vodi terapiju, samo iz druge fotelje, i delom razlog zašto priče po kojima živimo posmatram kao nešto što se može iznova i iznova ispisati, kao „izaberi svoju pustolovinu“ tip igara u kome možda ne možete uvek početi ispočetka, ali možete da ne izaberete iste strane ponovo...