Thinking of a clinical psychologist

At the present stage of development of Russian society, the activity of psychologists is becoming more and more in demand; in the last 2 years, in order to provide society with the necessary specialists, training is carried out not only in the higher education system, but also as part of retraining, which is conducted online for free in accordance with the federal project of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation to promote employment. The purpose of the article is to consider the role, structure and functioning of categorization as the main mechanism of mental activity of clinical psychologists. It presents an attempt to generalize the theoretical concepts of social and general psychology regarding the process of categorization as the main mechanism of thinking of clinical psychologists. The article describes in detail the characteristics of practical thinking, the structure and process of categorization as a mechanism of diagnostic thinking. In addition, it is concluded that intuitive decision-making about the methods of psychological in uence on patients and research approach to the analysis of problems arising during therapeutic interaction, are special cases of categorization and recategorization of situations.