The psychologists you met have all been "cut leeks"
China News Weekly reporter/Du Wei
Published in the 988th issue of China News Weekly on March 22, 2020
I saw Xiao Li on an afternoon in mid-November 2020. This was one of the only two free time periods she had that week.
As an intern consultant of "Simple Psychology", she receives an average of 4 visitors per week, and spends no less than two thousand yuan and two to three days to invest in supervision, case observation, and online and offline training courses. Wait for self-training.
Xiao Li was born in the 1970s and worked as a civil servant for more than 20 years.
She wore a gray trench coat and treated people politely and measuredly, but when she mentioned psychological counseling, the expression on her face became vivid, and there was an uncontrollable excitement.
Xiao Li decided to become a psychologist in 2017.
In April of that year, she participated in a "regression therapy" psychotherapy and counseling workshop organized by Professor Zhu Jianjun of Beijing Forestry University.
In this study, Xiao Li spied on the middle-aged crisis she was facing, and found that she had always wanted freedom, but she had never put it into practice.
She was shocked in her heart and determined to quit her job and do what she liked—becoming a psychotherapist.
Xiao Li's experience epitomizes the growth of many psychological counselors in China.
In the past ten years, due to the surge in demand for public psychological counseling, China's psychological counseling industry has ushered in a spurt of development.
Many people will come into contact with psychological counseling in the role of psychological counselors or enthusiasts. Once they are unable to extricate themselves from the "pit", they will go around in various training classes and suffer from "learning personality disorder" and embark on an endless stream. "The Road to Study".
"Into the pit" and sinking
In the "Regression Therapy" workshop, the teacher asked the students to use "anxiety", "desire", "strategy", "action", "test" and "interpretation" as the key points of a circle in order to draw their own return cycle.
This is an original local therapy that examines whether people's desires and actions are consistent and whether they are lost in themselves.
Xiao Li started with two kinds of anxiety, "fear of not being good enough" and "fear of losing freedom", and drew two circular circles.
Her first circle was drawn perfectly.
From small to large, in order to make herself "better", she continued to work hard to grow into a good daughter, a good wife, and a good mother in the eyes of others.
When drawing the second circle, she found that she took almost zero actions for it, "everyone is stupid".
She wanted to understand why people lived, and then fell into anxiety and depression for more than a week.
Among the more than 30 people who participated in the workshop with her, many of them have changed their career trajectories.
Out of curiosity about people, Xiao Li had the idea of engaging in psychology-related careers since she was a child.
The university failed to apply for the psychology major. After the National Psychological Counselor Vocational Qualification Examination was launched in 2002, Xiao Li obtained the third-level psychological counselor certificate in 2007.
The development of domestic mobile Internet and social media has thoroughly matured the psychological counseling industry.
In 2011, Huang Weiqiang, who had studied psychology, founded the Internet psychology service platform-Yi Psychology after two entrepreneurial failures.
At present, the registered users of the platform have reached 25 million, nearly 100,000 have participated in professional training courses for psychological counselors, and the revenue of a single explosive course has exceeded 4 million yuan.
"The public's cognitive bias and shame on psychology are the biggest bottleneck in the initial development of the psychology market." Huang Weiqiang told China News Weekly, so the company started with content to educate users before developing services.
In 2012, Jian Lili, who was still a psychologist at the Central University of Finance and Economics, received various psychological requests on Douban. Two years later, she founded Simple Psychology.
Through this platform, visitors can choose video or face-to-face consultation.
In the industry, people seeking psychological counseling are collectively referred to as visitors.
Xiao Li worked abroad from 2011 to 2015.
After returning to China in 2015, the widespread use of social platforms such as WeChat made her feel that the psychological counseling industry was booming: training accounts of various psychology masters and institutions continued to emerge, and the courses contained in them were "uncountable". She remembered that there were teachers and teachers at the time. She said, "The spring of the psychological counseling industry is here."
When she decided to become a counselor, she realized that what she had learned before was not enough.
The training content of the national second- and third-level psychological counselor exams is more basic and less practical.
This exam has also been widely criticized because of the wide threshold for passing it, and it has even been called a bad certification by the industry.
But in fact, after passing the Level 2 and Level 3 exams, many students either seek the help of teachers or explore themselves and become psychological counselors. This is "harmful to others and self" in Xiao Li's view, which is unacceptable.
Driven by thirst for knowledge and perfection, she began to go to classes frantically.
She picked up her mobile phone and showed reporters the psychological counseling courses reported in the past three years: Chinese psychotherapy, Chinese Oedipus triangle, a long journey of psychoanalysis, trauma, guilt and guilt throughout your life. Shame|In-depth analysis of the "emotions" in the treatment room... The total number of courses is no less than 10, and the prices range from nearly 1,000 yuan to more than 2,000 yuan.
These are only the online courses she reported on a platform. She also reported various long and short offline courses and workshops such as Zhu Jianjun's "Image Dialogue" therapy.
These courses invest about 5,000 yuan each year.
Most of the online courses are not expensive, "If you need it, buy it!" But she found that these courses only taught her how to understand people from different angles. After finishing learning, she still wouldn't be able to consult.
In 2017, she spent another 30,000 yuan to sign up for the two-year "Psychological Counselor Training Program" course of Simple Psychology.
The courses are relatively systematic. After the class, many of Xiao Li's students chose to use a certain genre as a tool to practice.
But Xiao Li still felt it was not enough.
She explained that taking the psychoanalytic school founded by Freud a hundred years ago as an example, this school has divided into many branches such as self-psychology, classic psychoanalysis, and object relations in the development process.
If she wants to work with a specific genre as a tool, she has to spend at least another two years to further refine her technology.
In 2018, she discovered that the existential humanist school of propositions such as loneliness and freedom "fits" with herself, and bought a course worth 30,000 yuan worth of the International Existence-Humanistic Psychology Institute.
But this course still focuses on telling her how to analyze a person's state, not how to work.
In the past three years, she has invested at least 80,000 yuan in psychological counseling training. "It's like desperately. I have given up all my strength to let myself learn."
There are two main motivations for learning psychological counseling: interested in psychology and solving one's inner confusion.
Because of the two motives, many people slowly "sink" in the learning process, which breeds the idea of becoming a counselor.
In terms of gender, according to a survey of more than 1,200 psychological counselors nationwide by One Psychology, the proportion of women is close to 79%, and the proportion of 30 to 49 years old is nearly 76%, and they mainly live in economically developed cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
Huang Weiqiang, CEO of One Psychology, said that women pay more attention to inner growth. Women with different levels of education in different cities have different ways of solving inner problems. Women with higher education in first-tier cities are more willing to seek help from psychological counselors.
In this line, prospective practitioners like Xiao Li invest a lot of money and time in training themselves.
Liu Qian is a pre-consultant at One Psychology Platform. Like Xiao Li, she also has the characteristic of pursuing perfection.
She has good family conditions and has no pressure to support her family. Her husband is also very supportive of her decision to switch to psychological counseling.
In the past few years, she spent between 50,000 and 80,000 yuan on psychological counseling studies.
According to simple psychological statistics, more than 50% of beginners come from industries such as finance, the Internet, and education, and nearly 50% of beginners have a master's degree or above. High knowledge and better economic conditions are the main characteristics of psychological counseling entrants.
Liu Qian said that she did not invest too much. The classmates she participated in a hypnosis training class spent more than 200,000 yuan on psychological counseling in two or three years.
The longer it takes to "get into the pit", the cost of psychological counselors for self-study is also increasing.
The duration of a psychological consultation is usually 50 minutes or 1 hour.
One psychology found that for consultants with 0-100 hours of consulting experience, the average investment in training costs is 46,000 yuan; for 100-500 hours of consulting experience, the average investment is 84,000 yuan; the number has soared to 24 for more than 5,000 hours of consulting experience. Ten thousand yuan.
Li Songwei, a well-known psychological counselor, analyzed to China News Weekly that he has seen many psychological counseling learners. From the beginning of learning counseling to the actual practice, the time span can be as long as 10 years, or even infinitely long.
He believes that many people dare not start consulting, and instead they always keep themselves as learners, telling themselves "I'm not ready yet, I'm not OK".
He once said to many of his students that he can go to the consultation, and the students will answer: Teacher, tell me where to go to class next.
"Cut the leek" type of institutional training
In June 2019, after seeing a teacher at a psychological counseling institution using hypnosis technology, Liu Qian felt it was amazing.
As a result, she spent more than 9,000 yuan to sign up for a hypnotic technique training class at a Shanghai psychological education institution. In addition to four consecutive weekends of courses, she also included practical links such as hypnosis drills and hypnosis salons.
In the hypnosis salon, Liu Qian has to hypnotize several visitors before graduation.
Back then, Freud's psychoanalysis was born out of hypnosis.
While enrolling in this class, Liu Qian did not resist the temptation, and at the instigation of the institution, she spent more than 4,000 yuan to participate in the training of marriage and family psychologists, including offline courses and 180 online courses.
When it came time to class, Liu Qian found that some online class teachers could not effectively combine actual combat with theory, and some teachers simply followed the text.
After participating in these trainings, Liu Qian was able to obtain a hypnotist certificate and a marriage and family counseling instructor certificate issued by the American Hypnosis Association and the Science Popularization Committee of the Chinese Psychological Society.
But the premise is that you have to pay.
For these two certificates, Liu Qian spent a thousand yuan and a few hundred yuan respectively.
In 2017, the national professional qualification examination for psychological counselors was cancelled.
Li Songwei said that for those who want to enter the industry, this is "good news", which means that the industry threshold has been lifted; but in reality, it is "bad news."
Due to the lack of authoritative certification, many people will have a vague expectation in their hearts, trying to find a threshold or label, "I feel that I have not paid enough money to start working in such a comfortable way."
Many people don't realize that there is no threshold, or imagine a threshold in their minds, and then constantly deny themselves, giving a lot of expensive training, even training for scammers.
In the past three years, as many as 100 types of certificates have been introduced in the industry.
For example, the "Quality Certificate for Basic Training of Psychological Counselors" launched by the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, each year 30,000 people take the certification exam, more than 300 institutions are responsible for training, and more than 1,000 institutions are waiting for approval. The charge is no less than 3,000 yuan.
However, Lin Chun, vice chairman of the Psychological Counselor Working Committee of the Chinese Psychological Association, told China News Weekly that in essence, this is just "entry-level training to popularize mental health knowledge."
The Standards and Research Service Committee under the Chinese Psychological Association also organized examinations and issued the "Psychological Counseling Professional Skills Certificate", but in fact, the Standards Committee is a secondary institution, not an independent legal person, and is not qualified to issue certificates at all.
The certificate is actually a "false certificate."
The marriage and family counseling instructor certificate issued by the Science Popularization Committee of the Chinese Psychological Society is also of this nature.
Another practical consideration of Liu Qian's active participation in the training is that after the training, she will have the opportunity to settle in the psychological consultation platform of the institution.
Around May 2019, she spent more than 3,000 yuan to sign up for the "Sprout Project" jointly created by the psychology platform Know Yourself and Sugar Psychology.
The platform claims that after 6 months of theoretical study and 2 months of internship and psychological counseling hotline, after a comprehensive assessment, they will be awarded the "Excellent Graduate" certificate. The diploma can be used as a certificate for applying for online counselors on the platform. One.
When Liu Qian got her graduation certificate to apply for admission, she was told that the business of Know Yourself was transferred to a private psychiatric hospital.
The hospital requires that as a novice consultant, you must have no less than 300 hours of personal consulting experience with visitors who pay for the visit.
At that time, Liu Qian's consulting hours were less than 50 hours.
"If you want to enter a high-quality platform, it is best to become a student of it first. What is missing, you will be supplied in class." This is the key reason why Xiao Li applied for a two-year systematic course of simple psychology.
Simple Psychology is regarded as the high-end psychological consulting platform in the industry, and its two-year courses include internships.
Xiao Li needs to complete 20 hours of real case consultation before she can be promoted from a trainee consultant to an intern consultant, settle on the platform, and then upgrade to a novice consultant and a mature consultant in turn.
However, if you are a consultant on other platforms and settle in Simple Psychology, your chances of passing the exam will be much lower.
Counselors can also open studios or use social media platforms to solicit visitors.
Lin Fang is a psychological counselor on a psychological counseling platform. He was born in a psychology class and has been in the business for nearly 5 years.
Previously, she tried to recruit some consultants on platforms such as Douban, but because Douban was not a dedicated consulting platform, the effect was not very satisfactory.
The number of consulting hours is not only an important threshold for consultants to enter the platform, but also a key indicator of its "debugging upgrade".
But Jianlili said that the number of consulting hours should not have become a decisive criterion. However, due to the lack of an authoritative and fair evaluation system, the organization can only take on all responsibilities from talent training to entry screening.
The cost of interviewing a consultant can reach two or three thousand yuan. In order to save money, the platform can only use some hard indicators to recruit people. For example, a consultant who is stationed needs to have more than two years of system training, and there are no less than 400 or 1500 hours. Paid consulting experience, etc.
After unsuccessful in entering the above platform, Liu Qian spent nearly 20,000 yuan to sign up for a high-level training course for Psychological Counselor Training. After completing the study, she settled on the pre-counselor platform of Psychological College of One Psychology, and carried out the low price The price consultation, calculated at an average of 9.9 yuan per time, is almost the "cabbage price", but she thinks it is more important to accumulate hours, and entering the platform will also give her a sense of belonging.
In Li Songwei's observations, when a psychological consulting platform becomes larger, more and more consultants want to settle in, and the platform has the right to speak.
In the past few years, newcomers have been pouring into the industry, and there are very few people who really feel that they can do consulting without continuing to learn. The "pools of novice consultants are getting bigger and bigger", and more and more organizations will come to fish in troubled waters. .
An expert from the Chinese Mental Health Association, who did not want to be named, said that some masters who do not even know how to do psychological counseling make money by relying on "story-telling" training. Some people can earn hundreds of thousands or even more with only a few days of training. million dollar.
"Nowadays, some psychologists can live in a decent way. They all rely on psychology enthusiasts or novice consultants to "carry the sedan chair". This industry is so hot because some institutions, trainers, and professors are fooling around. Tell everyone that you can earn a high salary after listening to a few classes, "make everyone feel that this is a gold mine and come to dig." For most people, psychological counseling is not a profiteering industry, in fact, it ultimately makes money. Those institutions and professors.
In Lin Fang’s view, “the driving model for the development of the entire industry is a bit strange” because it is difficult to find better visitor resources and ways to make money. One of the main ways to make money for many domestic training institutions is to cut the "leeks" of novice consultants. .
In other words, the psychological counseling industry is "making one's own money."
Supervision and personal experience
Supervision and personal experience are the "jargon" of the psychological consultation circle.
Liu Qian now participates in three supervisions a week, two group supervisions and one individual supervision.
Personal supervision is one-on-one between supervisors and consultants, and helps them grow by watching the audio recordings of their consultations; while group supervisors are reported by more than ten consultants under the leadership of a supervisor to analyze team members. Case.
Liu Qian said that the types of visitors she personally came into contact with were relatively single, most of them were young people who encountered emotional disorders at work or in interpersonal relationships, and the group supervisor could see various types of cases to help them broaden their thinking.
Supervision sounds very authoritative and mysterious. Li Songwei said, in fact, when a psychological counselor has insufficient experience and abilities in the early stage of his practice, he finds an experienced person to bring him one.
The task of the supervisor is usually completed within one year, after which the consultant can practice independently.
Another situation is that when consultants encounter difficult cases, they can seek help from supervisors.
Qiao Zhihong, secretary of the Party Committee of the Department of Psychology of Beijing Normal University, told China News Weekly that in the United States, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology needs to work full-time under the supervision of a supervisor for one to two years. After that, he can get a psychotherapist license. , Obtaining a license means being able to practice independently.
In the early development of the domestic psychological counseling industry, there were no certain rules regarding supervision, but now, it has been turned into a rigid rule by the organization.
From the beginning of its establishment in 2014, Simple Psychology required the platform consultants to have one-to-one supervision. It was the first platform in China to make this request and clearly stipulated the number of supervision hours.
Jian Lili explained that this is because the development of the domestic psychological counseling industry is uneven.
The higher the level of the consultant, the longer the number of hours required to receive supervision.
After Xiao Li became a simple psychological intern consultant in July 2019, she began to have supervisors.
For 20 hours of case consultation, Xiao Li charges 150 yuan for each case.
But every time she receives a case, she has to accept one-to-one supervision by her supervisor, and she spends about 500 yuan at a time. After 20 hours of consultation, not only can she not make money, but she also loses 7,000 yuan.
But Xiao Li appreciates such strict supervision.
To promote from an intern consultant to a novice consultant, Xiao Li needs to accumulate 400 hours of consulting hours. The internship platform requires one supervision for every 4 cases, and Xiao Li has to receive supervision 100 times in total. Now she finds more favorable prices in the market. The supervision price of 400 yuan/time calculation, she has to spend a total of 40,000 yuan for this.
According to the report of Yi Psychology, 87% of consultants have one-to-one supervision, 93% of consultants have group supervision, and consultants with consultation hours between 1,000 and 5,000 hours and more than 5,000 participate in one-to-one supervision and group supervision. The proportions are almost 100%.
But the question is, to what extent should supervision be required?
"I am very opposed to the establishment of a rule, everyone must supervise for a few years, you have to think clearly about what the supervision is for." Li Songwei said.
During the postgraduate and doctoral studies at Peking University, with the convenience of on-campus teachers, Li Songwei was able to enjoy one-on-one and group supervision for free every week.
Later, during his work, he only sought a supervisor when he encountered two extremely difficult cases.
In addition to a supervisor and group supervisor, Li Songwei is more optimistic about supervision among consultants of the same generation.
Usually, he has a peer supervision team of 4 people. In his opinion, this type of supervision is more economical.
The aforementioned expert from the Chinese Mental Health Association who declined to be named said that there are very few experts with practical experience in China who can do supervision, and the supply exceeds demand. It is difficult to obtain and the cost is high.
"Beijing has a professor as a group supervisor. Each student charges 1,500 yuan an hour, and every time four students work together, it is 6,000 yuan. If you want to make an appointment, you may not get an appointment."
In order to reduce costs for novice consultants, One Psychology also launched an online group supervision of 99 yuan for 100 sessions, which is conducted intensively three to four times a week, with more than 10,000 participants in each session.
Due to the large number of people and the online operation, there is a risk of privacy leakage, which triggers ethical disputes.
Personal experience is actually the counselor receiving psychological counseling.
Jian Lili said half-jokingly, "It may also be due to some kind of narcissism of the counselor, who refuses to admit that I am going for treatment, and I have to call it a personal experience."
According to a report from the One Psychology platform, 94% of consultants of various genres have personal experience, more than 63% of them spend more than 20,000 yuan in personal experience each year, and 18% invest more than 100,000 yuan each year.
But in Li Songwei's view, when there is no evidence that consultants bring personal issues into work and cause chaos at work, it is not necessary for all consultants to have personal experience.
Now, many organizations are one size fits all, adding unnecessary financial pressure to counselors. In many cases, psychological counselors cannot find suitable counselors to experience. "Such a threshold is unnecessary."
In fact, among the many schools of psychological counseling, only a few, such as the psychoanalytic school, require counselors to accept personal experience.
In this regard, Jian Lili explained that because the psychoanalytic school will explore the trauma of the visitor, if the counselor has experienced the same trauma, he may not be able to identify or deliberately avoid this problem during the consultation process.
For example, the client has a strong feeling of jealousy, and the counselor also has this problem, which will be difficult to deal with in the consultation.
In psychological counseling, the personal personality development level of the counselor is very important.
Usually the supervisor will find the problems that arise during the consultation process, and the process of dealing with this problem is a personal experience.
In simple psychology, if you are a mature counselor who provides psychoanalysis, you are required to have at least 300 hours of personal experience.
Xiao Li costs five to six hundred yuan per week for personal experience.
In addition, various supervision and training courses cost at least RMB 2,000 per week.
She charges 300 yuan for each case. Excluding the agency's commission and renting the consultation room, she earns 150 yuan, and receives a total of 600 yuan for 4 cases.
According to data from the One Psychology platform, more than 90% of consultants with consulting experience within 500 hours have an annual income of less than 50,000 yuan; 30.5% of consultants with more than 5,000 hours of consulting experience have an annual income of more than 300,000 yuan.
In addition, 50% of consultants start to break even after they have accumulated 500 to 1,000 hours of consulting experience.
Because the family's financial situation is good, Liu Qian does not plan to make a living from consulting in the next one or two years.
She now uses the humanistic genre as a consulting tool, which is more philosophical. The supervisor has opened a long list of books to her, waiting for her to digest it.
"As long as you enter the psychological consultation, you will find that you have embarked on a very special endless road, you will continue to find yourself, to see more information, but in the process, you are happy and happy."
Liu Qian's son often asks her, when did she learn how to be tall after attending so many training courses?
In her opinion, every training can learn different things, she enjoys the learning process itself, "I think I am an abnormal human, but many people who enter this industry are like this."
(In the text, Xiao Li, Liu Qian, and Lin Fang are pseudonyms, reference materials "Psychological Counseling and Psychotherapy" and "Freud and His Successors")
China News Weekly, Issue 10, 2021
Statement: The publication of the "China News Weekly" manuscript is authorized in writing