Petros Polychronis

(1951-2021) MD, Child Psychiatrists, he completed his post-doctoral training in Family and Group Therapy with Drs. George and Vasso Vassiliou, founders of the Athenian Institute of Anthropos (AIA) in Greece – the first center to practice family therapy in Europe. He has been the Director of the AIA, where he was a Group and Family Therapist, Senior Trainer and Supervisor.

Umberta Telfener: I will remember forever his eyes every time he could speak about theory. I was staying in the home in Paros of Kyriaki and Petros. One evening they invited me out to dinner, a special occasion: “Lets’ go early – Petros said – so we will not be disturbed by the Paros friends”. In order to speak theory one must be concentrated, I thought, and that is what happened.

Vassilis Charalambopoulos: A middle aged lady calls and wants to book an appointment with Petros . She says she has problems with her marriage that  she wants to discuss, but she doesn’t want to come together with her husband, she would rather be by herself on this first appointment. Petros allows it, he sees her sometime after her call.
The lady comes in ‘’ready’’, with a full agenda, spends 50 min talking about what her husband is not good at doing (anything),  complaining about him and generally talking about him in a negative manner, exposing all his personality defects as she calls them.
Petros spends most of the session listening and by the time she puts a comma to her narrative he says: “Ok I see how he is , but what do you want from me … ?”“I want you to help me save my marriage.”
“With this “teneke”* ??? Why would I do such a crime ..?” 
“But ..you don’t understand he has good sides also.”
“You are right I don’t .. but we have passed one hour , so maybe you can think of these good sides and tell me about them next time …

*Tenekes  is the 5 to 20 liter tank we use to put olive oil in . The expression originates probably 80 years ago and in full is “tenekes kseganotos” meaning a tank that has not been plated therefore it will rust and so it’s worthless . It was used as an expression to describe a man who’s no good, lazy or uneducated.