Anton Kolhonen Blog

Essays by psychologist-psychotherapist Anton Kolhonen on inner work, crisis, development, education, and digital culture.

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Posts found:65

A Russian-language infographic about Ouroboros with a golden serpent, cosmic imagery, and a diagram of descent into the unconscious.

Ouroboros, or What Came Before the Psyche

An analysis of the image of Ouroboros in Jung and Neumann: what the pre-psyche is, how it differs from the Shadow, and why this experience cannot be integrated like an ordinary archetype.

5/16/2026

Notes🕎 Psychotherapy
The day an idea became an object

The day an idea became an object

The day an idea became an object: Anton Kolhonen reflects on psychology, personal experience, and the psychological work behind inner change.

11/17/2025

Notes⚛️ Science and Psychology
GPT agents: the co-evolution of brain and machine

GPT agents: the co-evolution of brain and machine

GPT agents: the co-evolution of brain and machine: Anton Kolhonen reflects on AI, personal experience, and the psychological work behind inner change.

7/26/2025

Notes🤖 AI
Humanity reaches for the stars, but the scariest monsters are inside us

Humanity reaches for the stars, but the scariest monsters are inside us

Humanity reaches for the stars, but the scariest monsters are inside us: Anton Kolhonen reflects on psychology, personal experience, and the psychological work behind inner change.

7/13/2025

Notes⚛️ Science and Psychology
A critically important goal in the age of AI

A critically important goal in the age of AI

A critically important goal in the age of AI: Anton Kolhonen reflects on AI, personal experience, and the psychological work behind inner change.

6/17/2025

Notes🤖 AI
GPT Remote Relay

GPT Remote Relay

A technical note on GPT Remote Relay Bridge: remote OpenAI calls, log handling, fallback logic, and scalable AI infrastructure.

6/2/2025

Notes🤖 AI
A network diagram of correlations between evaluations of good and evil and dark- and light-triad traits.

Psychopathy, good and evil: what we understood today

Psychopathy, good and evil: how personality traits relate to moral evaluation and why acceptance matters for the therapeutic alliance.

4/15/2025

Notes⚛️ Science and Psychology
So what is going on with the bill?

So what is going on with the bill?

A reflection on the Russian psychological-assistance bill as discussed in April 2025: professional boundaries, education, regulation, and the risks of protecting clients through overly rigid gates.

4/5/2025

Notes⚛️ Science and Psychology
Post-traumatic growth and Elon Musk

Post-traumatic growth and Elon Musk

A post about post-traumatic growth and PTSD: an authorial reading of Elon Musk's and Steve Jobs's biographies through adaptation, compensation, and achievement.

4/4/2025

Notes🔂 Patterns
The future of psychology: AI and digital therapists

The future of psychology: AI and digital therapists

The future of psychology: AI and digital therapists: Anton Kolhonen reflects on psychology, personal experience, and the psychological work behind inner change.

3/16/2025

Notes⚛️ Science and Psychology
A speaker holding a sheet of paper addresses a large audience in an assembly hall.

The Psychological Assistance Bill: Bourdieu’s Lesson for Psychologists

The psychological assistance bill through Bourdieu: how the state unifies professions and what that experience can teach psychologists.

3/14/2025

Notes⚛️ Science and Psychology
Two ancient philosophers debate before a crowd near a Greek temple.

Psychology under lock and key: do we need this law?

An authorial analysis of the 2025 version of Russian bill No. 846497-8 on psychological practice, qualifications, and professional boundaries.

3/6/2025

Notes⚛️ Science and Psychology
Anton Kolhonen sits at an office desk and looks toward the camera.

The third year of postgraduate study: a bridge to psychotherapy

A personal essay about the third year of postgraduate study as a bridge to psychotherapy: research, teaching, professional formation, and movement toward practical psychology.

9/3/2024

Notes🕎 Psychotherapy
Four clusters

Four clusters

Four clusters: Anton Kolhonen reflects on psychology, personal experience, and the psychological work behind inner change.

8/20/2024

Notes⚛️ Science and Psychology
Two figures hold their hands near the face of a sun within a circular cosmic composition.

Working with imagery in psychotherapy

A personal record of imagery work in psychotherapy: shifting scenes, symbols, bodily sensations, anger, fear, freedom, and the emergence of new meaning.

6/17/2024

Notes🕎 Psychotherapy
Anton Kolhonen in a white coat stands beside a golden image of a caduceus.

Evil Frees Us from Darkness and Suffering

A post about evil, darkness, and suffering as inner images: how encountering the shadow side can deepen self-understanding and open a path toward genuine liberation.

5/27/2024

Shadow and Light🌓 Dark and Light Side of Personality
The autonomy of habits

The autonomy of habits

A post about the functional autonomy of habits: how old behavior patterns keep guiding a person after the original need has disappeared.

4/12/2024

Notes🔂 Patterns
The humanistic approach

The humanistic approach

The humanistic approach: Anton Kolhonen reflects on humanistic approach, personal experience, and the psychological work behind inner change.

11/15/2023

Notes⚜️ Humanistic Principles
Anton Kolhonen in a light suit standing on a path among trees.

Mistakes Are Necessary for Success

A post about why mistakes are necessary for success: failures help us learn, build resilience, and become part of the path toward results.

10/12/2023

Orientation Toward Overcoming⚛️ Science and Psychology
A person seen from behind touches a fold of skin at the waist.

Social crisis and obesity: research data

A post about the relationship between social crisis, chronic stress, and obesity: research findings, psychological mechanisms, and everyday practices.

9/6/2023

Notes🪡 Skills, Methods, Techniques💆 Massage
A winged figure flies through the clouds on the back of a giant crayfish.

Parable: Icarus and the Crayfish

An authorial parable about Icarus and the crayfish: an image-rich text about risk, setbacks, environmental resistance, and the forces that keep aspiration in balance.

9/2/2023

Notes✴️ Unusual Style✍️ Rhyme and Poetry
Anton Kolhonen in a white shirt holding a jacket over his shoulder.

A New Academic Year

A personal reflection on a new academic year, doctoral studies as a marathon, and discipline, education, and faith as supports for a long academic path.

8/28/2023

Key Milestones✍️ Rhyme and Poetry❗️ Top Ideas
A black-and-white collage of personal indoor snapshots showing a young woman and a young man.

Emotional Amplitude: Four Years Later

Emotional amplitude is a personal account of observing people with “high” and “low” AEP, the price of peak emotions, and loss four years later.

7/25/2023

Personality Types❗️ Top Ideas
A black-and-white portrait of Anton Kolhonen smiling in a white shirt against a black background.

Visual Diet as a Condition for Personal Growth

Visual diet affects character, discipline, and personal brand. An analysis of how the information environment helps develop identity and effectiveness.

3/14/2023

Personality Types⛳️ Effectiveness
A collage showing people exercising, a woman feeling low, and a massage session.

Fitness and Massage for Depression Prevention

Fitness, massage, and depression: what evidence says about physical activity, post-exercise recovery, and the limits of claims for massage.

3/10/2023

Notes🪡 Skills, Methods, Techniques💆 Massage
A black-and-white collage with a road toward a mountain, the psychology symbol, a Russian Kipling quotation, and part of an academic document.

Everyone Has Their Own Road: Stages and Motives of a Postgraduate

A personal postgraduate path in psychology: four stages of development, inner conflicts, and the transition from motivation to a humanistic worldview and teaching.

8/30/2022

Key Milestones🌓 Dark and Light Side of Personality
Another Olympiad

Another Olympiad

Existential training is presented as a practice of overcoming where regular sets develop resilience, discipline, and the ability to grow through difficulties.

4/18/2022

Cadets and guests seated in a crowded assembly hall.

Nostalgia

A poetic text about nostalgia, inner fatigue, and personal reflection where the image of time meets themes of loneliness and self-acceptance.

12/13/2021

Notes🕎 Psychotherapy✍️ Rhyme and Poetry
Anton Kolhonen standing on a beach in Sochi and holding two painted stones.

Sweet Coffee Time☕

A lyrical post about dreams, inner pain, and support in relationships. The text combines a romantic image, vulnerability, and a mindset of overcoming.

11/10/2021

Notes💙 Ideas about Relationships✍️ Rhyme and Poetry
A monochrome surreal scene with an open book, many hands, and human figures among thread-like cliffs.

Liminal Phase

A personal text on liminality, rebellion, and inner transformation through crises, guilt, and self-reflection. A post about moving from chaos to a new life structure.

11/5/2021

Key Milestones❗️ Top Ideas
A bicycle beside a wooden house under construction, seen past a seated person’s legs, with Russian text about choosing a road overlaid above.

Freedom from Smolyanov's Scarecrow

A reflection on fear, greed, and the discipline of attention: how to choose the right thoughts and stay on your path amid temptations and information noise.

8/27/2021

Notes❗️ Top Ideas
Fear of Change

Fear of Change

Fear of change and the anxiety of freedom appear when familiar supports collapse and a person steps into a new life. A post about how defense mechanisms turn into dogmas.

6/27/2021

A light temporary placeholder with abstract wavy lines and the large Russian text “ВРЕМЕННАЯ ЗАСТАВКА.”

Notes from the Underground

Personal notes on the alternation of light and shadow: how ups and downs, loneliness, and fear shape inner resilience.

6/23/2021

Shadow and Light❗️ Top Ideas
The drawn script

The Drawn Script

A look at Berne’s script paradox: how the drive for freedom and struggle can become a trap and call for shadow integration.

4/7/2021

Shadow and Light🔂 Patterns
A surreal desert landscape with a giant face-shaped pyramid, smaller pyramids, golden light, a crescent moon, and a lone figure.

To Each Their Own

A reflection on life script and the inner conflict between mission and the desire for warmth, asking about the cost of choice and an unlived life.

3/8/2021

Shadow and Light🔂 Patterns
Mindset of Overcoming: Character, Body, and Freedom

Mindset of Overcoming: Character, Body, and Freedom

Overcoming is seen as a stable mindset that shapes character and body, where will and freedom are born from the choice between avoidance and growth.

2/9/2021

Orientation Toward Overcoming🌓 Dark and Light Side of Personality
Selfie of Anton Kolhonen in winter clothing by a snow-covered waterfront

In media vita

An essay about living inside a crisis: breakdown and recovery as conditions for personal and social growth, when the search for meaning comes to the foreground.

2/5/2021

Personality Types🌓 Dark and Light Side of Personality
A stylized ceramic horse figurine against a gray background.

Troy (in the boat): Not shit, but me 🐕

A reflection on how consciousness and activity shape a person, while public events become a channel for alienation and tension.

1/26/2021

Notes✴️ Unusual Style
A pale temporary placeholder with black wave lines and the Russian words for temporary cover.

Resignation Is a Choice

Resignation, perseverance, and goals: distinguishing withdrawal, a recovery pause, a change of strategy, burnout, and a condition that calls for help.

1/20/2021

Orientation Toward Overcoming🪡 Skills, Methods, Techniques
A light temporary placeholder with abstract wavy lines and the large Russian text “ВРЕМЕННАЯ ЗАСТАВКА.”

Psychologist's Day. 🧭

Psychologist's Day is a personal reflection on vocation, the image of the specialist, and the romance of the profession through quotes and poetry.

11/22/2020

Notes❗️ Top Ideas
Missing Without a Trace — market relations and humanistic conscience

Missing Without a Trace

Market relations as a threat to humanistic conscience: a text about the normalization of humiliation and the loss of the human in the person.

11/21/2020

Personality Types⚜️ Humanistic Principles
Reverence for Life

Reverence for Life

Reverence for life as a stance: love as a path to knowing oneself and the world, opposed to destruction.

11/6/2020

Notes⚜️ Humanistic Principles
A light temporary placeholder with abstract wavy lines and the large Russian text “ВРЕМЕННАЯ ЗАСТАВКА.”

Narcissus Sat Before the Mirror

A poem about Narcissus who, in the mirror, sees other people’s fates and his own "I", asking questions about meaning, freedom, and acceptance.

11/3/2020

Notes🪞 Narcissism✍️ Rhyme and Poetry
Anton Kolhonen in the FitFashion massage studio

I as a Massage Therapist

A text about the massage therapist's “I‑position” and how massage helps restore a person's physical and mental resources.

10/4/2020

Notes💆 Massage
Anton Kolhonen stands at the entrance to the SPbU Faculty of Psychology beside its university sign.

Admission to the Faculty of Psychology

Admission to the psychology faculty and an inner vow to move through hardship: a personal story about choosing a path, academic goals, and overcoming.

9/13/2020

Key Milestones🌓 Dark and Light Side of Personality
A golden figure of a prospector in a wide-brimmed hat bending over a bowl of gemstones.

Yukon Law

Yukon Law is a concise note about the hero's path, inner firmness, and trials that test resolve.

8/10/2020

Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding the Dark Sides of Our Soul

Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding the Dark Sides of Our Soul

A psychological analysis of the dark side of personality: why “good” people can be cruel and how integrating the Shadow supports development.

8/6/2020

Shadow and Light🌓 Dark and Light Side of Personality
A light temporary placeholder with abstract wave lines and the large Russian text “ВРЕМЕННАЯ ЗАСТАВКА.”

A Diploma Just in Case

A personal text about receiving a diploma, finishing a master's degree, choosing a life path, and the feeling of a transitional period between education and a new professional direction.

7/23/2020

Notes❗️ Top Ideas
A light temporary placeholder image with abstract wave lines, the large Russian text “ВРЕМЕННАЯ ЗАСТАВКА,” the label default.jpg, and a small logo in the upper-right corner.

Oil Painting

A confessional poem about inner conflict, fear of intimacy, and the search for identity through a poetic voice.

6/25/2020

Notes✴️ Unusual Style✍️ Rhyme and Poetry
A white temporary cover card with a gray border and the filename default.jpg.

Ashen Rain

Ashen Rain is a metaphorical dialogue about frustration, need satisfaction, discipline, humanistic psychology, and personal growth.

6/9/2020

Personality Types🔂 Patterns
A stylized female portrait with the eyes covered by black fabric, surrounded by a golden circle, black-and-gold splashes, and geometric forms on a white background.

A Binary View of the World

A philosophical text about the binary nature of the world: light and shadow, order and chaos, and conflict as a source of development for personality, society, and biological processes.

5/22/2020

Personality Types🌓 Dark and Light Side of Personality✴️ Unusual Style⚛️ Science and Psychology
A surreal composition radiating from a human eye, with fragments of reading, rap, war, family, space, DNA, chess, a galaxy, and the Russian words “Жизнь Боль”.

War and Peace: The Heterogeneity of Cognition

A philosophical and psychological text about war and peace in a person, the heterogeneity of cognition, inner conflict, compassion, and the acceptance of diverse life experience.

4/15/2020

Shadow and Light🌓 Dark and Light Side of Personality✴️ Unusual Style
Road to the psychology faculty at Saint Petersburg State University

Road to the Psychology Faculty

A path to the SPbU psychology faculty and work in the lab: EEG research and a personal sense of moving from studies to real practice.

3/6/2020

Notes🛐 On University Education🎓 Thoughts While Studying at Lesgaft
Anton Kolhonen reflected in a gym mirror through a disintegration effect.

Rewriting the Final Draft

A personal essay about inner reassembly in early 2020: the sense of disintegration and the birth of something new, fixed in words and image.

2/9/2020

Notes❗️ Top Ideas
Author-created photomontage with portraits of the author, a red curve tracing the amplitude of emotional states, and contrasting Ψ symbols representing life and death.

Amplitude of Human Passions

A reflection on the duality of human passions, self-sacrifice, and the search for self through images of philosophy, myths, and poetry.

2/3/2020

Key Milestones❗️ Top Ideas
People carry a wounded person on a stretcher; over the image is a quote about the strength required to help another person.

The strength to withstand a blow

Resilience and participation in other people's lives: a selection of quotes about the strength to withstand a blow and human presence in difficult moments.

1/11/2020

Anton Kolhonen, seen from behind, performs a pull-up at a large window.

An Embodied Idea Is an Epigone of Truth

A post about the power of ideas, freedom of thought, and overcoming inner limits through values, discipline, and fidelity to truth.

12/17/2019

Black and white koi form a yin-yang symbol against a red circle and flowering branches.

Love leads us, and need drives us!

Love and need are seen as two different sources of movement: deficit pushes, and surplus leads. The text shows how their combination forms freedom and personal resilience.

11/19/2019

Shadow and Light🌓 Dark and Light Side of Personality
Two silhouettes — Anton Kolhonen and his acquaintance Masha — take a selfie inside an abandoned building on Vasilyevsky Island.

Interpersonal and Interneuronal Connections as a Factor in Human Problems and Evolution

A reflection on how the connection between people helps overcome inner conflicts: the mind is weak, yet communication with another mind becomes a support and a source of development.

4/27/2019

Notes💙 Ideas about Relationships🎓 Thoughts While Studying at Lesgaft
A black-and-white photograph of a muscular shirtless man in a worn industrial interior.

Belief in Your Abilities

A reflection on how self-belief and lived-through defeats shape character and expand life’s amplitude.

12/10/2018

Notes💪 Overcoming🎓 Thoughts While Studying at Lesgaft
A road leading toward a mountain with a solitary silhouette, a Ψ symbol in the center, and a Russian quotation from Rudyard Kipling’s The Explorer on the left.

Decision to Become a Psychologist

The decision to become a psychologist became a turning point: the inner voice and the choice of a path that changed a personal trajectory.

1/27/2018

Key Milestones❗️ Top Ideas
Two white figures work together to move a system of colored gears

Multidisciplinary Approach

Explore how integrating training, wellness practices, and psychology creates a holistic approach to personal and societal health.

11/15/2017

Notes⚜️ Humanistic Principles
Anton Kolhonen and Pavel Zaytsev, wearing matching uniforms and caps, stand side by side with their arms around each other’s shoulders and touch fists.

Can a Person Change?

A reflection on how a person changes habits and worldview through tension, conflict, and environmental influence.

5/1/2017

Notes🔂 Patterns🎓 Thoughts While Studying at Lesgaft
Circular composition of white angels and black demons shrinking toward the edge.

Power and Light, Chaos and Darkness

A poetic text about the opposition of light and darkness, inner conflict, and the search for freedom through love and fear.

6/23/2016

Shadow and Light🌓 Dark and Light Side of Personality
Greg Plitt against a black background beside a large Russian inscription asking, “What do you live for?”

This story is about one person

A story reminding that real success comes when you want it as much as you want to live.

5/16/2016

Orientation Toward Overcoming💪 Overcoming⛳️ Effectiveness