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as ‘my own,’ through which, as in a mirror, my motivation (volitional intentions), and also
person is clearly shown to me. However, a nar- involves remorse and repentance. It is also as-
ration that has not been perceived and accep- sociated with an awareness of losses and with
ted as personal and does not reflect a personal grieving about them. Querying the motivation
assessment, is not a history, but a biography or of the characters of the story is an essential part
chronicle or, in clinical terms, a fantasy. For an of therapeutic narration.
individual, to restore his own history or to make b) The formation of moral judgment and action
his own history implies becoming the one who by the word. Moral assessment brings to life
narrates and gives his assessment of the events. the reflective thinking about personal values
The person appears only together with and in and distinguishing between good and evil. It is
the context of his personal history, and these important to diagnose and overcome cynicism
two processes work simultaneously. The recon- when it is met in narration or transfer.
struction of history is crucial for the person; c) Resistance to evil strengthens personality.
there is no personhood without a history, and The word raised against any malevolent deed,
there is no ‘impersonal’ history; creating histo- committed in the past or in the present, faced
ry creates personhood. We need the person to inwardly or outwardly, is an efficient moral in-
restore the individual history, interrupted and strument in personal restoration.
divided into fragments of memory by trauma- d) ‘Purification’ of the personality and its relati-
tic experience. The person in therapy strives to onships by the moral word. It unlocks the true
overcome the biographical character of his nar- state of personal nature in its uniqueness. Just
ration. The narration is to be put into a histori- as an icon writer gradually brightens the facial
cal frame, which means being infused by perso- image of the icon and highlights the divine light
nal attitude, the main elements of which are the on the face, so the personal image aspires to re-
moral assessment and the degree of acceptance finement and clarification in psychotherapy, to
– the quantity and quality of love that it is pos- emancipation from ‘dirty spots of sin’, from fal-
sible to find in this individual case. sification of his person made by sin.
e) The development of a ‘moral thesaurus’. With
In psychotherapy we find a personality that the help of the therapist, the names of the moral
cannot express his relation to the processes and intentions will appear in therapy as a part of the
facts of his life, resists making an ethical assess- narration (deceit, greed, selfishness, gratitude,
ment of inner and outer reality, basically refu- concern, humiliation). After making a certain
sing to accept his own history. An unmanifested effort and overcoming their own resistance, pa-
person, who stands apart from his own history, tients give the exact names to volitional actions
who is totally dissolved in a biographical abun- and intentions. All these names residing in the
dance of tragic events, does not possess his own inner moral vocabulary become active in thera-
spirit and cannot express himself in the moral py and thus are enabled to make moral judge-
word. A fragmented personality, whose reality ments they were not able do under the burden
is formed from bits of selfconsciousness, cannot of evil.
strive for the likeness of God, because he does
not live as a person. The person has to become The revival of faithfulness and love.
real. To reveal the reality of the person in psy- This is the logical consequence of the moral
chotherapy, we have to investigate the active word in therapy. The restoration of faithfulness
power of the moral word in the process of the and love are an inevitable consequence of a re-
restoration of personal history. storation by the moral word.
Faithfulness in the psychotherapeutic frame-
The recovery process in psychotherapy is ar- work may be viewed as the devotion to oneself,
ranged around some key points. similar to that which popular psychology often
Restoration of the moral word. calls the ‘love to yourself’. In therapy it deals
a) In regard to personal history, the moral word with the knowledge of inner self, the explora-
refers to a moral assessment of one’s lifestyle, tion of psychic reality, finding ways to being in

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