Systemic psychotherapy in theory and practice on becoming a psychotherapist

The thesis investigates the process of becoming a psychotherapist in the context of systemic therapy. It outlines philosophical and psychotherapeutic roots of the systemic approach, emphasizing postmodern thinking, in particular poststructuralism, radical and social constructivism and modern biological gnoseology. The work discusses theoretical foundations as well as practical applications of the teaching of the Prague Institute for Systemic Therapy (IST). It covers five main lines of thoughts in systemic thinking - the Milan school of family therapy, strategic therapy by Milton Erickson, brief solution-focused therapy (BSFT), Hamburg school and the narrative approach. The work focuses on defining and delineating the role of the therapist and the client, and their cooperation in the therapeutic dialogue. It emphasizes therapist's self-reflection during the therapeutic process as the primary way of influencing the client, and it discusses models which make the self-reflection more efficient. The art of dialogue is presented as the fundamental skill of a systemic therapist. Last but not least, the work covers an important area of systemic ethics and supervision. The empirical part of the work investigates, using the qualitative based interview, the process of becoming a therapist on a sample of 19..