Jean marie robin articles. Jean-Marie Robin: "I don't attach much importance to my person." Field "organism - environment"

human nature

Each psychotherapeutic school has an explicit (explicit) concept of human nature or, more often, an implicit (implicit) concept. This is what seems interesting to take as a starting point: what is the concept of a person in Gestalt therapy? The authors of the theory of Gestalt therapy, Perls and Goodman, proceed from the concept of "human-animal nature", i.e. they note that human nature is characterized by as many physiological and animal factors as social and cultural ones. Speaking about the nature of man-animal, we are not talking about reducing man to the state of an animal or engaging in naturalism, like Rousseau. On the contrary, we are talking about the need to recognize our primary conditions of existence. In Gestalt therapy theory, nature is presented as a powerful and self-regulating force, and it is postulated that there is some kind of ecological wisdom that consists much more in cooperation with nature than in trying to dominate it. It is also not about ignoring the "ebb and flow" of natural impulses, which would expose the individual to the risk of a neurotic disturbance of awareness of one's own existence, as well as awareness of one's presence in the world.

Field "organism - environment"

First of all, based on the fact that the definition of an animal and its very existence includes its environment (there is no organism without an environment), so the definition of an organism will be rather a definition of what we call "field", the field "organism-environment"; the essence of this field "organism - environment" is integrity. It is on the basis of this inseparable nature of the field that theory, as the basis of the Gestalt therapy method, will have to be comprehended and developed. This environment in question is not a world with indefinite blurry contours, it is not just world, this is my world.

Self-regulation

The idea that the human-animal organism is capable of self-regulation is based on the concept of the "organism-environment" field. If human nature is primarily determined by the concept of the "organism-environment" field, then the contact between the organism and the environment becomes the "primary simplest reality."

In fact, there is not a single function in an animal that does not include contact with an object or environment, if only to ensure survival: it needs to breathe, move, feed itself, hide, reproduce, etc. The theory of the nature of man - animal, therefore, contains the principle of self-regulation, which is called organismic, that is, belonging to the organism, considered in its integrity as a function of the field. Self-regulation will be good if the field is not disturbed by some factors, for example, socio-cultural, or even easier if nothing from outside the field disturbs the process of ongoing contact. The interaction "organism-environment" will proceed well and evenly, starting with the self-regulation itself and for the benefit of this self-regulation of the field.

Contact and contact boundary

Based on this, we believe that psychology should study all the phenomena of contact that connects the organism and the environment. Everything that concerns the organism is the field of physiology in the broadest sense of this concept, biology; everything that concerns the environment will be the domain of sociology, geography, and so on. But everything that concerns the contact between a given organism and its environment: the phenomena that occur at the boundary of the organism with the environment (this is a series of phenomena that Gestalt therapy calls the boundary of contact) - will be the object of psychology. Therefore, psychology can be defined as the study of the totality of phenomena that will occur at this boundary, the boundary of the contact "organism- environment". In other words, this set can be described as follows: the various ways in which physiological mechanisms operate in relation to what is not physiological ( the world), that is, become psychological in the process of contact and through contact.

Physiological functions are carried out within the organism, but they cannot be performed for a very long time without experiencing the need to assimilate something from the environment, if only so that the organism can survive and thereby develop. In order to assimilate something from the environment, it is necessary for the organism to come into contact with it, i.e. so he aspired to something and took would something; it is at this point that the physiological can become psychological, and the conservation functions can become contact.

Contact always presupposes the presence of an external object: according to the Gestaltists, it is generally a delusion to talk about contact with oneself, because it is impossible to "feed on oneself"; it is necessary to go towards the surrounding world and draw from it. The term "contact" will appear throughout the presentation of our method, because, without any doubt, it is a key concept of Gestalt therapy. Contact is an experience, it is an experience of the functioning of the boundary between the organism and the environment.

Contact is the awareness of the field, which is our field, and at the same time it is a motor response that is produced in this field, it is the awareness of the new being assimilated and the expression of our attitude towards it. It is also a rejection of everything that cannot be assimilated. Therefore, any contact is a creative adaptation of the organism and the environment. It is through contact that the organism will establish that it retains its difference, and moreover, by assimilating the environment, it maintains its difference.

creative fixture

I mentioned creative adjustment; this concept indicates an inseparable synthesis of adaptation and creativity. Adaptation is the process of interaction between the needs of the organism and the possibilities of the environment.

Creativity will be associated with the concept of the new: it is the discovery of a new solution, the best solution of all possible, the creation of a new configuration, a new interconnected wholeness, based on the available elements. At the same time, if the adaptation provides a dimension of reality and adaptation, then creativity opens up the dimension of fantasy and the expansion of the possible.

dominance

The last concept necessary to understand the concept of Gestalt therapy about human nature is the idea of ​​Gestalt dominance. This concept requires clarification of the meaning of the word "gestalt". “Gestalt” is a word that we took from the Gestalt psychology of the beginning of the century and which means “form”, “structure”, “configuration” - a figure that forms on the background. To expand the contact, it will be necessary for the figure to separate from the background. I can get in touch now, at this moment, only with what forms the figure, and what forms the figure for me at the moment when I give shape to these lines, is the text that is in front of my eyes. He is a figure that separates for me from the "organism-environment" background. From the room in which I work, to the readers known and unknown to me, in the background of my attention, from the knowledge and experience acquired over the years, this figure creates an instant dominance of the field; this figure stands out from the background, but at the same time remains connected with it. It is this figure, which stands out from the background, but remains connected with it, that we call Gestalt.

Gestalt therapy is a process that aims to accompany or restore our ability to control figures, to build figures in adequate relation to the background.

Acute situation and therapeutic situation

Within this approach, it is already possible to consider how Gestalt therapy will deal with suffering, neurosis, and all the difficulties that lead to psychotherapy and the psychotherapist. Paradoxical as it may seem, the symptom results from creative adjustment!

Take the case of a child who is placed in front of difficult situation, the so-called "acute situation". For example, he will be faced with a formidable parent and will be forced to use all sorts of defenses. He is in an acute situation of great intensity. His reaction of retreat and closeness, the position of the body that he will adopt, the muscular tension or flight reaction that he uses at this moment, is a creative adaptation to the situation that threatens him. But if, over time, the child seeks to repeat this “answer” in a situation where he no longer encounters any of the adults who threaten him, this will mean that he has created a chronic acute situation of low intensity, because there is no longer a real threat looming over him. . Every time he encounters in his daily life an adult who somehow unconsciously reminds him of the very acute situation he once found himself in, he will repeat the parameters of the acute situation, and he will defend himself, as if he were being subjected to threat, forgetting about the "imaginary" nature of this new situation.

He has lost the ability to appreciate the field, he has lost the ability to make creative adjustments to the present situation: what was creative at a certain moment is no longer so.

This is due to the so-called “incomplete situation”: if we are in a contact situation and this contact situation was interrupted for one reason or another, and satisfaction was not achieved, then when certain conditions this situation can be fixed in the form of an unfinished situation.

Forming an unfinished situation means constantly returning and wandering in the present in an attempt to find some kind of completion. It is then possible to define neurosis as the loss of the capacity for creative adjustment and its replacement by a so-called "secondary physiology", a kind of second nature. It is embedded in the skin, in the muscles, embedded in the totality of experiences; the original, natural response pattern is falling into disuse. What can psychotherapy do in dealing with the acute situations faced by this person? We know - and Freud was the first to reveal this - that a person strives to reproduce the suffering and difficulties that he once faced. Our hypothesis is that acute situations which an adult must have experienced in his childhood, for example, and which have since become chronic, are repeated in his "now" and, therefore, will also be repeated in the "now" of the therapeutic situation.

Encountering an acute situation of low intensity, which the client transfers into the session, the psychotherapist will try to introduce him into a new acute situation, which will have the same parameters, the same meaning, but at the same time, on the one hand, conditions of safety and security are created. , on the other hand, "obstacles" to the repetition of the client's neurotic habits in order for the client to mobilize his creative resources so that he can perceive the new that is now emerging.

In a chronic acute situation of low intensity, when the life experience and set of response actions received as a result of some acute situation have lost their adaptive meaning, the therapist will suggest an experiment in which an acute situation of high intensity will be reproduced, but safe enough for the patient thanks to support from the therapist. In this case, the patient will be asked to mobilize all creative resources in order to adapt and develop an answer that is adequate to this situation.

When we talk about the loss of creative adjustment, this does not mean that we are "freezing" a situation or a person: we are considering things in a given situation at a given moment; if they say that the creative device has ceased to function, this is not a generalization, it refers only to a certain situation. In such a situation, a creative adjustment may be functioning, but a moment later it may be broken. It all depends on the individual history of a person and its coincidence with the parameters of the situation of the moment.

Awareness

One of the first working terms we will use is "awareness," the immediate awareness that we call "awareness" in Gestalt therapy. We sometimes use this American term to better indicate its difference from the term "conciousness", another form of awareness, which refers rather to reflective consciousness, to thinking, etc. "Awareness" is a form of consciousness, which the animal also possesses, and which is both motor and sensory, integrating the totality of all field indicators. One could say that this awareness is immediate and implicit knowledge.

The therapist tries to help the person become more and more "consciously aware," to restore the continuity of awareness, minute by minute, of everything that happens. Based on this, how is it possible to help a person regain his abilities of creative adaptation, i.e. get out of fixation, immobility, in order to achieve real contact with the environment?

Construction - destruction of gestalts

Above, we have defined what we mean by gestalt: gestalt refers to the figure that the subject creates in his contact with his environment. The figure is mainly determined by what a person organizes depending on their needs, desires, "appetites" or unfinished situations at the moment. The task of the psychotherapist is to try to support precisely this ability of a person to form figures, to separate figures from the background, to allow them to unfold and make contact, to build up and collapse, because a figure is created in order to be able to arise and disappear.

When I drive a car with my family during vacations, the gestalts I create consist of landscapes, architectural landmarks that capture my attention. If suddenly a danger arises on the way, the gestalt "car control" immediately replaces the previous one, and the road again becomes a figure of contact.

If I see my car's gas readings dangerously close to zero, my interest in the landscape diminishes in favor of my interest in the service station. And when mealtime approaches, these figures are no longer dominant, but the main thing will be the search for a small hotel or just a country road near which you can have a picnic.

Let's take a closer look at this traditional example of hunger. Hunger forms a figure at a certain moment and interrupts all my other sensations and activities, it comes to the fore, and I come into contact with the environment in order to find a solution for its satisfaction. The “hunger” figure will develop, energize me, make me come into contact with the environment where I will take food, and then, as I eat and assimilate food, the “hunger” gestalt will break down and allow me to move on to another gestalt.

A troubled or "neurotic personality" is a person who appears to have lost the ability to build and destroy gestalts. Then this dance, this constant fluctuation, this process of building - breaking down, is held back, especially by immovable, fixed states. Let's look at a little detail of this evolution, this construction - the destruction of gestalts, to be more specific, and also to get acquainted with the tool that will be constantly used by the gestalt therapist. This sequence of construction - the destruction of gestalts (which is sometimes called the "contact cycle", because it describes how the organism contacts the environment) will proceed according to four phases. These four phases are, of course, not really separate from each other. They are described here separately for didactic reasons.

Contact sequence

Precontact

The first phase is called precontact. In this phase, that which constitutes the background, the background, is contained, this is mainly the body, and it is in the body that sensation begins to arise. This feeling is a sign of the most urgent need of the organism, which is developing at the moment. I am using the term "need" here in a very broad sense, i.e. need, impulse, appetite, desire, unfinished situation, what constitutes the essence of the “grain” of the situation, the “it” of the situation. Consequently, the gestalt here will separate from the background in order to begin to form and then “to make contact” with the environment, acquiring more and more clear contours. During this phase, the pre-orientation phase, people may have difficulty building a gestalt with clear contours.

contacting

In the next phase, which is called contacting, this gestalt, this figure, which has separated from the undifferentiated background, will in turn recede into the background in order to saturate the background, to give it energy. Starting from this moment, excitation, energy is mobilized and allows the organism to turn to the environment in order to explore the opportunities provided in order to find the satisfaction of its need there.

In this phase of contact with the environment, a person will produce what in technical terms is defined as identification and rejection, in other words, will perform the function of choosing “yes” or “no”. “Yes, it might suit me. No, that won't work for me." The organism will make a selection and rejection among the resources of the environment in order to satisfy the "it" of the situation.

final contact

The next step in the experience sequence is final contact. At this moment, the environment, in turn, fades into the background and a new figure is formed: this is the selected object.

The subject will establish final contact with him, full contact, at some point there will be a certain degree of indistinguishability between the person and the chosen object. For a short time there is no more figure, no background, no boundaries between subject and object.

In interpersonal relationships, the clearly identified "I" and "You" may be replaced at some point by "We". The "we" of love, orgasm, conflict, horror, or any other contact situation.

Postcontact

The last one is the phase which is called the phase postcontact. In the phase of full contact, the boundary opens in such a way as to let in the object of experience, and in the post-contact phase, the boundary closes on this lived experience, and at this moment the work of assimilation begins. There is no more figure, nothing more relevant remains in the field.

Contact Sequence Example

Let's take an example taken from the banal situation of therapy in a group. Suppose that the actual need of the moment is for this person the need for protection. In the pre-contact phase, he feels his shoulders rise, his head sinks into his shoulders, his gaze is a little distrustful, he feels a number of bodily signs, he feels a psychological and emotional climate in which, little by little and with the help of a therapist, a figure emerges called "need in defense." This already manifested need for protection will awaken an arousal, a surge of energy that will allow the person to turn to the environment to begin seeking that protection they need. He will proceed to identification and rejection, i.e. he will fixate, direct his attention, manipulate his world in such a way as to find the protection he seeks. In this therapy room, for example, the floor lamps offer no protection to him, he will push them away and throw them away, the armchairs will not provide him with protection; on the contrary, another person, who perhaps manifests himself with his warm look, may interest him as a subject capable of giving him what he is looking for. “Choose and discard” is the essence of this phase of contact, when a person is completely turned to the environment. In addition, in this phase, there are most emotions, as a person moves from centering on himself to centering on the resources of the environment. This clash, so to speak, between the resources in it and the resources of the environment, which causes what is called emotion: sadness, joy, anger, rage, fear, etc.

As soon as a person has identified an object among other objects that he selected and discarded (it can also be “You are an object”, as in the above example such an object is a person), he will have the possibility of final contact, i.e. full satisfaction of the manifested need: the need for protection.

There will come a moment when a person will experience complete unity between his need and the resource chosen in the environment. There will be a complete and complete gestalt. The authors of Gestalt Therapy, speaking of the final contact, took as a model the moment of orgasm in the sexual act: there is no more me, there is no more you, there is only a moment of merging, when gradually developing desires have captured the entire field, where the other also occupies all the space, but where there is no more you or me, because there is no more experience of the boundary, there is only We, the temporary We. After the phase of final contact, the boundary closes on this lived experience, the person will assimilate this received experience, and as a result of integration, growth will occur.

But in therapy we see that in life most of us interrupt this sequence. There are interruptions that are intentional, voluntary, and therefore controlled: the moment I am about to perform an action, the phone rings and interrupts me, I can postpone the action and continue it later. I can also make a deliberate, conscious choice to break the sequence. I am not "obliged" to satisfy my desire or my need impulsively and automatically: at any moment I retain the ability to choose. A pathogenic situation is created when I do not choose to interrupt the flow of the experience, but in some way it is interrupted. without my known.

Let us now return to the issue of the acute situation during the therapeutic session. The therapist tries to help the patient become aware of the interruption of contact and, together with him, to see how this interruption manifests itself, what and how can affect this interruption, so that the subject regains the ability to choose, a conscious choice: whether to really make an interruption or act differently. , in other words, so that the subject again gets the opportunity for creative adaptation.

Self in Gestalt Therapy

The "creator" of creative adjustment is an integrative dimension that combines the functions necessary to start the process of creative adjustment in contact - this is what is called "self" in Gestalt therapy.

"Self" in Gestalt therapy is not seen as a fixed, stable entity. This is not a "personality", for example, which is relatively stable, but a set of functions necessary for the implementation of creative adaptation. It is for this reason that they prefer to keep the Anglo-Saxon term "self" rather than use "I", because in the "I" the desire is expressed to be a solid and stable integrity; "self" in English is a qualifying word added to nouns that indicates, in some way, a process in action. "Self" is a process of contact in action, an organism coming into contact with the new and making the necessary creative adjustment.

The gestalt destruction building sequence or contact cycle is a way of describing "self"; a way that allows you to consider "self" in its dynamic manifestation. But it is also possible to describe it structurally, through its components: the particular functions of these substructures are special modalities of the functioning of the “self”, they exist only as abstractions and are separated only for practical and didactic purposes and for the analysis of practice. The three functions that interest us (this does not mean that "self" is limited to these three functions) in the manifestation of creative accommodation are the functions that are called: the "It" function, the "Person" function and the "Ego" function.

Three Self Functions

The It function is the function most concerned with the manifestation of a need: needs, desires, impulses, appetites, unfinished situations. This is basically the only function that appears in the body every minute, and it manifests itself through sensations, although not only. In the It mode, I don't feel responsible for what happens to me. This is happening to me; Yes, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, that's right. I am the one who does, but I don't feel responsible for it.

The “Personality” function, on the contrary, is more stable, since an individual history, lived experience is entered into it, recorded ... It is thanks to the “Personality” function that I am able to answer the question: “Who are you?” This is what I know about myself, what I think about who I am (This does not mean that I am who I am! It is only what I think about my essence, how I present my experience). The "Personality" function expresses the idea, not always conscious, that I have of myself. It is here that experience is fixed in its possible verbal expression.

Both of these functions, simultaneously or separately, will come into contact with the outside world through the "Ego" function, which will make identifications and rejections. These choices will express, exteriorize, actuate the "Personality" function or the "It" function. If, for example, through the function "It" I determine some need, through the function "Ego" I will come into contact with the outside world, make a choice, saying: "This interests me, this does not interest me."

Sometimes there is some competition between the two functions; between the It function and the Personality function. I will give you one example. I like to remember this example because I met him at the very beginning of my career and because it is illustrative in its banality. This happened in one treatment group. A woman in her 40s and 45s said from the first moment they met the group, "I'm afraid of men," and then the group moved on to something else. In some respects, it can be said that "I am someone who is afraid of men" expresses the "Personality" function of this woman.

The next day, the second day of the group's classes, it turned out that at some point, quite by accident, I happened to sit not far from her. And then she loudly exclaims: "Oh, I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid ...". After some surprise on my part, I ask her: “If you want, try to slowly feel what is happening in your body. What are you feeling right now?" Then she begins to describe some sensations to me: “Here I have wet hands, my breathing is like this, I feel tension in that other part of the body.” Then she suddenly stops her description and says to me; "But what I'm telling you has nothing to do with fear!" I shrug, "I don't know anything about it." I support her, and she says to me: “No, this has nothing to do with fear.”

Gradually, she begins to realize that for the past 45 years she has been living with such an idea of ​​herself: “I am the one who is afraid of men”, not paying attention to what really happened to her, which consisted in “it » current moment. The actual "it" could lead her in a completely different direction. Over time, in the course of her work, she was able to discover that this moment of her experience consisted of much more interest, excitement, than fear, but that she lived with this perfectly honest thought about herself, that she was afraid. With such an idea, what was she to do in everyday life? She could establish contacts with people only by submitting to this idea, proving to herself that if she was afraid of men, then she had every reason to be. These contacts were bad, she to some extent created conditions that confirmed her idea of ​​herself.

"Self" through the "Ego" function, or whatever replaces it, will develop, use the information that comes to it from the "Personality" function, in this case the wrong one, and make bad choices and bad rejections; this woman is acting according to this fixed gestalt, according to which "I am the one who...".

Some violations of the "Personality" function can be very subtle. If, for example, I am the father of a family (this is part of my identity, but carried out in a certain context), in relation to some patient or friend, it cannot be that I behave like a father of the family. If, in this other context, I behave like the father of a family, I manifest a violation of the "Personality" function, because I do not use the function of my identity, which is adequate to the situation, because this function would correspond to another situation - when I am with my children.

In the same way, if I behave like a psychotherapist with my children, this is also a violation of the "Personality" function, because the children expect the same from me, which is determined by the situation: that I behave like a father, and not a psychotherapist, i.e. so that through the ego function I make the proper choice.

Various violations of "self" Function "Personality"

This function may be impaired in the sense that the person may have representations of their experience that do not correspond to the reality of that experience. This is what is called a violation of the "Personality" function. If I think of myself that I am a writer, for example, and introduce myself to you as a novelist, you will have the right to tell me; "Oh yes! So what kind of works did you write? "Oh, I haven't written anything by now, but it's in my plans: I do have intentions to devote myself to the novel." This is a violation of the "Personality" function, since at the moment I am not a novelist.

I spent my childhood believing I was a zero in math (Personality function) until the day before my bachelor's exam I told myself that maybe it would be good to use all the cards in my game; Shouldn't I still do some math and see what it can do, as I regularly find myself in a dead end on this subject! I then realized that it was quite possible and that for 15-16 years I lived with the thought that I am nothing in mathematics. It was passed down to me, it was part of my family legacy: from generation to generation "to be a zero in mathematics" and to declare myself "inclined to the liberal arts." This loyalty family traditions represents a violation of the "Personality" function. Each violation of the "Personality" function will interfere with the choice that we will make through the "Ego" function.

Neurosis in some way will manifest itself through a violation of the "Personality" function, through a distortion of the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bwho I am. The child mentioned above, who is afraid of his father's threats, has created in his function "Personality" a self-image according to which, "I am afraid of an adult and an adult is threatening me." He will make choices that will bring out this violation of the "Personality" function: he is not necessarily the one who is afraid, but he has acquired this habit. In neurosis, there will be violations of the "Personality" function that will interfere with full functioning in the "Ego" mode.

"It" function

This function will be characteristically impaired in psychosis. In neurosis, we may lose awareness of our actual "it": our desire, need, appetite, but we do not lose desire and appetite; we may lose awareness of hunger, but we do not lose hunger, whereas a psychotic may lose the sensation of cold, for example, walking out lightly dressed in 15 degrees below zero. He lost the feeling of coldness, the need, the "it" of the situation.

Both of these functions, the It function and the Personality function, may be impaired. What happens if either or both of these functions are impaired, given that these two functions must be involved in contact with the outside world through the "Ego" function? How can the ego function operate if its "sources of information" are disturbed? The ego function will be lost. "Lost" means that the person is making something that looks like a choice but is not really a choice because a person can't help but do that. A person does something, but he could not do otherwise, he obviously lost his freedom, because he cannot take into account his history, what he knows about himself, etc.

The past returns to the present. The answer is outdated, it was successful in its context, it may have been good one more time, but it is no longer relevant and now the answer is a miss, in the proper sense of the word, i.e. it is misdirected.

The work of the psychotherapist in this case will be to help the patient regain the capacity for choice, for it is by means of this capacity that he will again be able to exercise creative adjustment.

So, let's take a closer look at the "Ego" function, one of the forms of "self" functioning. This is a function that allows “self” to simultaneously express what comes to it from the “It” function and from the “Personality” function and to carry out what ensures identification and alienation, choice and rejection in contact with the environment. We have already talked about the sequence of construction-destruction of gestalts and about the phase that consists in the transition to identification and alienation (the phase of contacting, in particular); the function "Ego" is the active form of "self" in it.

Loss of ego function and its consequences

When there is a loss of functioning of the ego mode, various phenomena tend to this empty place, which in their own way are the phenomena of border and contact. The task of the "Ego" function is to ensure the establishment of a boundary between the organism and the environment; the substitute phenomenon of the healthy functioning of the "Ego" mode must also appear as the phenomenon of the boundary. The phenomena that we will consider may be healthy phenomena; but when they are associated with the loss of the functioning of the "Ego", we have before us phenomena "unhealthy", dysfunctional. There are four of them. Some authors add others, but the main mechanisms are: fusion, introjection, projection, retroflection. These technical terms require clarification.

merger

In fusion, there is a situation of "non-contact", "non-boundary" and "unawareness": schematically speaking, nothing comes into existence, there is no distinction between "I" and "not-Self", there is no distinction between figure and ground, and there is no emerging figure. For example, I am in a state of fusion with the French language, I do not separate it from myself when I speak; when I express myself, I do it in French.

This fusion can be seen as healthy, because I can get in touch with the French language as an object and say to myself: “Listen! I used such and such a word, is this the right word? At this very moment, language becomes an object other than me. The mother has a great fusion with the infant, and he has with the mother, in other words, in the experience of the child, the border between "I" and "not-I" is not very distinguishable. Fusion is a basic phenomenon that can signify a "mode of contact" with everything that is not a figure in the field at the moment. When the fusion interrupts the construction of the gestalt, preventing the formation of the figure in precontact, so that everything remains in the background (for something to arise, for the boundary to appear, the object and sensation must be separated, become noticeable), the fusion prevents the figure and the accompanying figure from being emphasized. arousal.

introjection

Then, as the figure begins to emerge, there is excitement and increased energy to enable the organism to come into contact with the environment. The boundary phenomenon that can interrupt this movement when the ego function is lost is introjection. Since this modality is a boundary phenomenon, its essence is to take something from the outside world and bring it inside. The prototype of introjection at the level of vital functions is the method of nutrition: I take something that is “not-I” from the outside world, some object different from me, I introduce it into the body, first it becomes “mine”, and then gradually, through chewing, digestion, assimilation, he will become "I am myself." A "successful" introjection is one that ends in assimilation; in a "failed" introjection, the absorbed object will remain a foreign body inside the body (if I eat some product without chewing it, I will find it identical in the stool, it was not useful to me, but only clogged the stomach).

They talk about “failed”, pathological introjection, when something is simply swallowed: ideas, opinions, “must” and “should not”, which will cause me a kind of heaviness in the stomach, which will determine my existence in the world in “its place” . Introjection can be a means to break contact with the outside world when the subject loses his capacity for identification and rejection, replacing his own desire with the desire of another person. It is the substitution of desire for another desire, in which the excitement becomes too disturbing, that is one of the main signs of the phenomenon of introjection that accompanies the loss of the function of the "Ego".

If a parent tells a child, "Do this or don't do that," the child can only obey, that is, introject the adult's order as a substitute for his own will. If the order is repeated, then the situation can unconsciously turn into an experience: “in life you have to do this and you don’t have to do that.” What is important in this process is not so much the content of what was introjected as the fact that the desire of the other has come to replace one's own. own desire. Since introjection exists in all kinds of human relationships, the challenge is not to lose one's ego function in those relationships, one's ability to exercise identification and rejection in order to remain aware of this ability.

Projection

As the cycle of creative adjustment unfolds further, once the form has already arisen and arousal has begun uninterrupted by the introjection of the desires of the other, then another kind of loss of the capacity to make identification and rejection may appear: projection. This other boundary phenomenon is in its direction the opposite of introjection: something that actually belongs to the subject will be attributed to the environment. In introjection, something belonged to the environment and the subject forced this something to go inside the organism; in projection, he causes something belonging to him to move towards the environment. Usually the subject translates outwards that for which he himself cannot be responsible, for which he does not take responsibility, especially for his emotions and affects. For example, such a person may consider someone else to be very anxious, very restless, or very aggressive because they cannot accept that they themselves are aggressive and restless.

In the therapeutic process we are primarily concerned with the projection of affects, emotions, or in a broader sense of experience, and the difficulty lies in the need for the patient to recover this affect or this emotion that he tries not to be aware of by attributing it to someone else. The content of the projection is often something previously introjected. The projections that we will deal with in therapy will reveal, in particular, the patient's incomplete situations. How, in the present situation, will the subject project past situations, attribute to this situation or to the people present characteristics and emotions that allow him to continue his unfinished situations, his fixed gestalts, his search for satisfaction?

Retroflection

The next phenomenon that can interrupt the construction - the destruction of the gestalt - is retroflection. Retroflection is a term that originated in Gestalt therapy, while projection and introjection are terms common to other scientific disciplines.

Retroflection denotes an experience that begins as contact with the environment, but which returns to the organism itself, i.e. the subject does to himself what is intended or would be intended for the environment: instead of attacking, for example, he will hit himself on the arm; instead of biting, he will bite his nails, etc. What are called psychosomatic illnesses are usually the result of retroflection. More often than not, the subject does not allow himself to show precisely acts of aggression against their true objects, and he turns them against his organism, as if his own organism were the environment. Suicide - highest form retroflection, the subject kills himself instead of killing the one who made him suffer. Thinking is also a form of retroflection: when I think, I am talking to myself, but am I the true addressee of my words? This can be healthy retroflection to the extent that it allows me to prepare for action or communication, but if I only think and do not speak, then retroflection paralyzes action.

A special form of retroflection is manifested in what is called egotism. In egotism, the subject maintains a too impenetrable boundary with the environment. It goes without saying that the boundary is never absolute. Egotism manifests itself through inhibition, through holding oneself at a moment when, in order to achieve final contact, the opposite is necessary. With egotism it is impossible to achieve spontaneity, since the intelligent, measured, "pedantic" nature of the work of orientation and manipulation, which was typical of the previous phases, cannot be discarded.

All these modalities can be either "healthy" or "unhealthy" modalities of contact, depending on whether they promote contact with the environment or not, are flexible or not, are they conscious or not, are they rigid or not, but the main whether they allow the ego functions to be carried out or, on the contrary, they appear to replace the ego function. If there is a loss of ego function, then one of these boundary phenomena appears in its place to "take place": both to signify this loss of ego function and also to create or maintain it. If the “place is taken”, then the function of the “Ego” in the process of this experience can hardly be fully realized.

Thanks to the totality of concepts that we have just outlined, it is possible to imagine the goals of psychotherapy much more clearly. Gestalt therapy enables a person to regain their ability to establish contact and exercise creative adjustment. This presupposes that he will be able to provide the identification and alienation required in his contact with the environment. This means that the function of the "Ego" must be healthy, restored, cleansed to some extent of what prevents it from acting (that is, from projection, retroflection, introjection, fusion, etc.) and harmoniously connected with others. functions in a single "self", which allows a person to be spontaneous and involved in the situation.

Psychoanalysis has set itself the goal of analyzing the psyche, Gestalt therapy proposes to carry out Gestalt therapy, in other words, therapy of the subject's ability to form gestalts and destroy them when they become obsolete. It is a question of discovering the ability to carry out the whole cycle of experience completely, and in order to do this, a person must restore his abilities to choose and reject, which will allow him to make creative adjustment.

Jean-Marie ROBIN

Pre-

That "pre" that is here in front of us, as in pure form participe passé (past participle),

And revered as our prefix of prefixes,

As a prefix is ​​already in the prefix, as the present - présent - is already in présent.

Francis Ponge

Contact is the most significant organizing concept in Gestalt therapy theory. Contact means any movement between a particular organism and its environment, that is, any movement of the field. Thus, contact is a phenomenon prior to any organization of experience: pre-oedipal, pre-objective, pre-conscious, pre-representational, pre-emotional, pre-psychic. Before hardening and becoming a "psychic" sediment, experience was a contact - and it will be so later, because it is in contact and through contact that the psychic can exist and determine the subsequent experience. Pre- is as much an occurrence as it is a structure.

It is on this concept that the paradigm shift, the radical shift that Perls and Goodman undertook with the creation of Gestalt therapy, is built and embodied. Before them, the object and prism of all "psi-" - crazy otherapy, crazy ology, crazy iatry, crazy oanalysis - was exclusively mental. However, from the very first words of their fundamental work, our authors changed the location of experience, since "experience is located on the border between the organism and the environment"[i] . Contacting and being contacted are the actions that take place on the border and due to which the field will begin to differentiate into Self and non-Self.

This concept - undoubtedly due to its apparent simplicity and widespread use - gradually deformed, became little different (or ceased altogether) from the concept of relations, and thus stood at the service of dialogue ethics, the ideology of the meeting, and also served the cause of introducing Gestalt therapy in the forefront of “relational psychotherapies”.

To be sure, the quality of the relationship created between therapist and client and the quality of their therapeutic alliance is - and this is confirmed by numerous studies - the most important, if not the main factor in determining the success of psychotherapy, whatever it may be. However, Gestalt therapy does not focus on priority on the quality of these relationships, because the relationship between the therapist and his patient is no more than an end in itself, and is not a figure, but a means: a means for exploring, for working out and transforming, as far as necessary, the quality of a person’s relationship with that other – related or not related to the human - which surrounds him.

If the red surface and the blue surface are in contact with each other, then the blue line and the red line are the same.

Franz Brentano

Of course, if the red surface and the blue surface are in contact, there is no purple line connecting them, even if the illusion of perception allows you to see this apparent line. Contact is not an experience of reciprocity or reciprocity, since we can be in contact with someone or something, for example, through a glance or memory, while this person or object will not be in contact with us in any way. The definition of reciprocity involves, in fact, the concept of the equivalence of the way in which the action of the first participant on the second, and the second on the first, is carried out.

And yet the word con-tact (literally from Latin "co-touch" - approx. per.) involves some co". Co-touch. And, undoubtedly, it is this "with" that gives rise to some shifts in meaning: there are so many possibilities to be "with". "In my mind I'm still With the film that I watched last week ... "," I'll go for a walk With bike", "I will With you at this difficult moment…”, “I would like to live With you…". The ambiguity here is further enhanced by the etymological reference to touch, to tactility; because touch is the only one of our five senses that implies reciprocity: I can look without being seen, I can listen without being heard ... but if I touch, they touch me. However, even if I admit that when I touch the keyboard, the keyboard touches me at the same time, this has nothing to do with the lived experience. experience- a fundamental dimension in interpersonal contact. I live the experience of contact with the keyboard, the keyboard does not reside experience with me. In other words, contact is equally a form of consciousness, a kind of "knowing with".

If I make physical contact with someone—for example, by pinching his hand—his experience of the (probably painful) contact will be radically different from my own experience. Even if contact is an act that brings into play some "with" and some "between", lived experience cannot be considered as a general one, since "with" does not necessarily entail "the same": in the example given, it is, on the contrary , allows differentiation.

Any contact implies the presence of another, two. It might even be better to say: lived like at two. When some therapists invite their clients to "get in touch with their emotions", it shows that these therapists, in their anthropology or their worldview (weltanschauung ), believe that emotions are located as something separate from them - and implicitly convey this concept to their clients. A real paradox for those who claim to help in combining experience into a single gestalt!

Of course, sometimes this way of expressing it can make sense for the patient, for example, when one or another part of his body is experienced as strange or alien. Perls and Goodman cite a case of pain localized to a certain part of the body in such a way that it is experienced not as "I" but as something that happens to me as if it came from someone "outside"... and didn't belong to me.

However, the therapist's skillful use of his speech can help the client regain his experience, which he can create, expand, or otherwise maintain separation or splitting.

Contact as awareness

Awareness is characterized by contact, sensation, arousal, and gestalt formation.

Perls and Goodman establish the connection between awareness and contact in their introduction to Gestalt Therapy, when they state that "Contact itself is possible without awareness, but contact is necessary to be aware." I am in contact with the floor, with the chair I sit in, with the air I breathe. These forms of contact are sometimes referred to as "physiological" or "physical", as opposed to "psychological" forms involving (sometimes implicitly) awareness and figure building. However, the schemes of such “physiological” contact (I continue to use this dubious term for lack of an opportunity to offer a more adequate option) are not opposed to modalities called “psychological”, and there is a beautiful continuity between one and the other: my way of being in contact with sex is connected by analogy with my roots, my way of breathing is connected with other modalities of my exchange with the outside world through taking and giving. These seemingly different planes can easily be brought closer to each other as strength [v] experience. They should be considered in the continuity of the thickness of experience, and not as separate modalities.

“Thus, the connection with the world in consciousness is the connection of contact. The world exists for consciousness, by virtue of the fact that it is concretely and exclusively what it is not. Consciousness concerns the world in the sense that its partial conversion into nothingness can only have an external character, without a distance between the world and consciousness. The world is neither subjective nor objective: it is a thing in itself, investing in consciousness and in contact with it, just as it goes beyond the world in its non-existence,” wrote J.-P. Sartre.

Non-awareness and non-contact in Gestalt therapy are called mergers (confluences) . This non-awareness is made up of habits and knowledge, evidence assimilated through experience, and introjects. Sometimes the merged experience remains potentially contactable: for example, one can ask about the rationale for choosing one or another spontaneously used word, that is, bring this word into a figure, despite the fact that I am in fusion with my native language. It can be more difficult to contact other experiences, due to repression or other modalities of its fixation.

Figure/Ground Relationship

"Contact […]– it is the formation of a figure of interest that stands out from the background or context: the organism/environment fields.”

This awareness or, as we can say, based on the work of Brentano and, later, Husserl, this intentionality, builds a figure/ground relationship: to do this, it brings to the fore, selects certain possibilities in the field, which, in this way, become significant.

In this way, contact is to strive and build meaning. contact is to build form: “Form is the meeting point of the organism and its environment,” wrote von Weizsäcker back in 1940, and Maldine[x], as a result, was able to assume that the formation of forms creates the existing.

In order to have confidence in a consistent way of using the concept of contact, it would be preferable to systematically add to "contact" not only "with whom or with what" and "in what modalities."

Regarding the question “contact with whom or with what?” I am happy to refer to the introduction from the book by Perls, Hefferlin and Goodman: “And then the critical question arises: who are we in contact with? Someone who looks at contemporary painting may think that he is in contact with the painting, when in fact he is in contact with art criticism from his favorite newspaper. And this raises, among other things, the issue of transference: with whom is my client in contact outside of perceptual and sensory contact?

Of course, the usual ways of contacting are touching, seeing, hearing ... but also remembering, fantasizing, thinking, being excited, talking, singing, writing, dreaming, worrying, and so on and so forth. I can contact a friend by looking at him, calling him, touching him, visiting him, remembering him, imagining him...

We can build on Husserl's principle of noetic and noematic variation in relation to consciousness and apply it to contact. When I make contact with someone—a patient, for example—I am in contact with that person, and that person is in contact with me. We do not have the same "object" of contact, nor the same content, nor the same goal of contact. (The noematic part of the experience: the other as noema).

“Think,” “love,” “hate,” “imagine” are all verbs applied to what the mind does. Walking, breathing, feeling, thinking, hearing, guiding, fantasizing, dreaming - these are contact modalities ( noesis). With the same “object” (for example, another) I can have different types of contact: touch it, listen to it, look at it, remember it, feel it, project it, anticipate it, think about it, love it…

But the modalities of contact can gather around two axes, two basic movements: approaching - or moving away, in other words - integration or differentiation, fusion or separation, connection or separation, belonging or avoidance ... "(contact) pushes and impels to touch and to join [ …]. And the stake in the contact, and its goal will be, in turn, either a meeting - where the separation happened, then the possibility of separation from the union, integrating before the merger, ”wrote Lekesh. It is this same double movement of contact that is introduced in Imre Hermann's bifurcation between "hook" and "leave in search". The same path was continued by Balint in his description of the types of "oknophila" (catch, grab) and "philobat" (leave to search).

Contact inflections

“... the soul is where there is action, that is where the soul is: where there is action.”

Because each situation is new—even if it includes commonalities with situations encountered before—each contact will be both adaptation and creativity. The forms in which creative adaptation can take on in each individual situation are quite numerous, but the forms that interruptions, distortions, inhibitions, fixations of such activity on creative adaptation can take are limited, and it is these inflections of experience that the therapeutic act will focus on.

In order not to talk about the generative ambiguity of the concept of contact interruption, in 1997 I proposed, following Binswanger, to use the term inflections. This term, borrowed from linguistics, means a set of changes that a word form undergoes. If we transfer this definition to the sphere of interest to us, then the variations of modalities, deformations and other fluctuations of contact are not subjected to the disgrace that the idea of ​​interruption can induce. However, when Perls et al. talk about contact interruptions, it is important to remember that they simultaneously believe that “the continuity of the process is not lost”, but that in the cycle of contact, creativity can be interrupted by certain modalities, which means that in some cases, routine actions can become continuation of contact, or the contact may continue through the abbreviated Self ("loss of function-I" Self).

If the contact marks every movement between the object and its environment, that is, every movement of the field, then the contact is an act, not a result. So, it would be more appropriate for us to talk about contacting, since actions are better described by verbs and verbal nouns. Gestalt therapy promotes the culture of the verb more than the culture of the noun, adjective, or adverb.

When I listen to a patient, I listen more readily to verbs in his story, because they describe processes, actions, his contact in accordance with models that can often be considered as his experience as such, and sometimes as a metaphor or metonymy of his experience.

From contact to contact boundary

Appearing - for a single entity or a single being - means going out into openness, appearing between earth and sky, in an interval of space and an interval of time.

The concept of the contact boundary stems from the concept of contact as its direct consequence and is of particular practical interest. However, there is often some confusion between the term "contact boundaries" and the term "boundaries" used in relation to, for example, structural family therapy: limits, contours, etc. It is these boundaries, in their variety, that Erv and Miriam have described. Polster, and they have nothing to do with Perls and Goodman's concept of "contact boundary", but the similarity of terms often creates confusion. The “contact boundary” is a kind of epistemological abstraction, akin to the one that “Self” is. It does not give room for reification, for the transformation of experience into an object, and hence for justification for speaking of "one's own" boundary of contact, as one might speak of one's own boundaries.

When I teach this concept, I sometimes use a Merleau-Ponty analogy when he was trying to explain some difficult concepts.

“Most of the time I am not aware of my hand, because I do not experience any special sensations in it. When I put my hand on an object or on someone's shoulder, through the same action, I feel my hand - and I feel the object or another. Touching this object causes it to exist in my tactile experience, but the same action creates sensations in my hand, and therefore makes it exist. It is the contact as such that simultaneously gives existence to the other and to me, and it, by the same action, differentiates one from the other, me from not-me. The same action, the same act separates AND unites. A contact creates a border, and a border creates a contact. Without contact there is no differentiation; without differentiation, there is no contact, and therefore no experience.”

“Contact is a touch that touches something”, a view is neither an eye nor a visible object, but an “oval of vision”, which means that it connects the eyes with the observed world. This process is analogous to that shown by Husserl when he says that there is no "consciousness" but only "awareness" of something.

Experience might appear to be an intrapsychic object, when in fact it is an event of the contact boundary; moreover, it is a continuous event, since we are always involved in one or another contact.

The consequences of all this are not easy for psychotherapeutic practice. Any client describes much of their experience as intrapsychic suffering: shame, guilt, hatred, abandonment, rejection, anger, conflict, and so on, whereas such an experience should be considered a contact experience. Attention to these manifestations, no longer as solipsistic phenomena, but as phenomena of the boundary of contact, changes the perspective and has an unusually powerful therapeutic effect. If "the contact boundary is a specific organ of direct awareness," then the contact boundary, as an experience, is the primary "place" where therapist and client work together.

Fast

After six decades of Gestalt therapy, marked from the outset by "contact as first experience" - which opens up the possibility of many practical and methodological implications - one can only be surprised at how little the Gestalt community was interested in perfecting this concept, its development and differentiation. . It became an important component in the writings of the Hungarian school of psychoanalysis (Hermann and Balint already mentioned, as well as Spitz, Mahler, and especially Szondi, whose work was continued by Jacques Schott). Today, this concept would benefit even more if it were supplemented with the works of Todorov, Bin Kimura with his concept aida, idea between two Winnicott, Lacan and other psychoanalysts, the works of Merleau-Ponty and Maldine... It would also be important to inscribe the concept of contact in the context of relationships, in particular, therapeutic relationships that are not reduced to contact, just as they are not reduced to transference, projective identification. , interaction or communication, to dialogue or interpersonal communication.

“However, if it is necessary to consider action, undergoing and mixing, then contact must also be considered, because those [things] that cannot come into contact with each other are not capable of acting or undergoing in the proper sense, and those that could not mix before come into some contact. Therefore, three things need to be disassembled: what is contact? what is mixing? what is action?

Aristotle

(translation by T. A. Miller - approx. per.)

Jean-Marie Robin, Gestalt therapist, methodologist. Clinical psychologist.

Founder of the French Institute of Gestalt Therapy.

Bibliography

Aristotle, On Creation and Destruction, Paris, Philosophical Library of Ladrange, 1866 (Book 1, ch. 6, §4)

Balint M. (1959) Regression Paths, Paris, Payo, 1972

Binswanger L. (1947-55) Introduction to Existential Analysis, French translation Paris, Minui publishing house, 1971

Binswanger L. (1947-57) Discourse, trajectory and Freud, French translation Paris, Gallimard, 1970

Brentano F. (1914) About the essence of the continuum in Philosophical studies of space, time and continuum. London: Croom Helm, 1988.

E. Fink, Intentional Analysis and the Problem of Speculative Thought, in Actual problems of phenomenology, Paris, Decle de Brower, 1952,

Glassheim, E. Movement to Freedom in the "Imperial City" by Paul Goodman. PhD thesis, University of New Mexico, 1973

Hermann I. (1943) filial instinct, Paris, Denoel, 1972

Husserl E. (1913), Guiding Ideas for Phenomenology, French translation Paris, Gallimard, TEL, 1985

Kimura B., Tests on Phenomenological Psychopathology, Paris, PUF-Open Psychiatry, 1992

Lekesh in Contact, Schott et al., Contact

Maldine, A. (1990), "The Plane of Contact from the Perspective of the Living and the Existing", in Schott, J. (ed.). Contact, Brussels, DeBoeck-Wesmael.

Perls F. S., Hefferlin R., Goodman P., (1951), Gestalt therapy, French translation Bordeaux, l'exprimerie, 2001

Polster E. and M. (1973), Gestalt, new theoretical perspectives and therapeutic and educational choices. Montreal, Le Jour, 1983

Pong Francis, Lugovaya factory. Les sentiers de la création/Skira, 1971, p. 191

Robin J.-M., (1990) "Contact, first experience", magazine Gestalt, no. 1, French Gestalt Society, republished pp. 64 et seq. in Robin J.-M., , Publishing House Armattan, Paris 1998

Robin J.-M. and Laperonnie B. (1996), Merging, Connected Experience, and Alienated Experience ». Gestalt therapy notebooks No. 0, 1996 and reprinted pp. 105 et seq. in Robin J.-M., Gestalt Therapy: The Construction of the Self, Publishing House Armattan, Paris 1998

Robin J.-M. (1997), "Anxiety and Gestalt Construction", in Gestalt Therapy Notebooks 1, reprinted pp. 125 ff. in Robin J.-M., Gestalt Therapy: The Construction of the Self, Publishing House Armattan, Paris 1998

Robin J.-M., Melnik J., Schak M.-L., Spinelli E. (2007), "Contact and Intrapsychic Perspectives: Gestalt Therapists Answer Questions from Publishers and Ernesto Spinelli", Gestalt Therapy Research, Volume 1, No. 2

Robin J.-M., Is there a future for now? in GORIAUX P.-Y. (under the direction of), Now, Gestalt Therapy Mini-Library, No. 110, IFGT, 2008

Sartre J.-P., Strange War Diaries. Gallimard, Paris 1995, pp. 400ff.

Schott and others Contact, Brussels, DeBoeck-Wesmael, 1990

Todorov T., common life, Paris Say,

Weizsäcker F. von (1940): Structure cycle. Paris, Decley de Brouwer, 1958

"MOSCOW PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC JOURNAL, 1994, No. 3 GESTALT FIGURES* JEAN-MARI ROBIN Editor's Preface The author of this article, Vice-President of the European Association..."

MOSCOW PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC JOURNAL, 1994, No. 3

GESTALT FIGURES*

JEAN-MARI ROBIN

Gestalt Therapy, Director of the French Gestalt Institute, good

familiar to Russian Gestaltists as the leader of a long-term

educational program in Moscow "Improvement in Gestalt therapy". The text of "Gestalt Figures" was first translated and

After some revision of the translation, we decided to publish this article in the NRM for two main reasons:

1. The text refers to early work J.-M. Robin, by the beginning of the 1980s. and, in fact, to the beginning of the intensive development of the Gestalt method in France (as is known, Gestalt first "appeared" in France only in 1972). Since Russia is going through a similar period of development of the Gestalt method today, cross-cultural parallels and differences in the discussion of the Gestalt approach may be of interest to the Russian reader.

2. In this article, in general terms almost all fundamental concepts and principles of Gestalt therapy are discussed: organism/environment, contact boundary, Gestalt concept of "I", cycle of experience, types of resistance: projection, introjection, retroflection, fusion; the goals of therapeutic work are indicated on fragments of practical sessions with clients. In general, this text reflects the author's ideas about Gestalt therapy quite well.

NV Dolgopolov Gestalt therapy is, of course, one of the most significant therapeutic areas that have been developed in * Translated from: Jean-Marie Robine "Form Pour Gestalt", 1991, p.5-22.

J. ROBIN for the last thirty years. Its appearance in Europe is relatively recent, dating back to the 70s, but a number of misconceptions are already spreading around it. One of them, and not least, considers Gestalt therapy as a combination of various complementary methods. Some therapists, including those who profess to be Gestalt therapists, join this movement and use Gestalt techniques along with a whole series of other techniques. Why not? But Gestalt therapy can no longer be likened to a set of methods in the same way that psychoanalysis is likened to free association, or Rogers therapy to reformulation.

Indeed, in the beginning, the popularity of Gestalt therapy was partly due to the fact that some of its methods very quickly began to be used in various therapeutic directions, however, such Gestalt therapists are now rarely found who need these rules and games.

Another of these misconceptions about Gestalt therapy concerns the "shallowness" of the work begun. Reference is made to the concept of "depth", which, judging by the meaning, is a synonym for "duration". Gestalt therapy operates according to a different principle, which does not exclude duration, but refers to a phenomenological process. Thus, attention is really drawn to the "surface of things" and to the person in the world, but the process that has begun does not rely excessively either on the "depth" of what happens in this case, or on the result that the subject will come to. The false notion of "surface" is often combined with another that is about "pushing a button," "quick insight," or even the "guru" of this psychotherapy. This, it seems to me, is due partly to Perls himself, and partly to the French editions. The original works of Perls, in particular the recordings of his seminars, are practically the only available editions in French; and many therapists, at least those who study from books, have failed to realize that the source of these formulations were the sessions that Perls liked to give at the end of his life to give an idea of ​​Gestalt therapy.

Demonstrating an experiment for a quarter of an hour is not therapy, and even if much can be learned from these recordings, we must not forget the context of these experiments and the secondary importance of these sessions.

I would like on a few pages to try to outline Gestalt therapy for you, touching on the circumstances and origins of its emergence, to outline some of its fundamental concepts. There will still be many gaps, I am going for it, as well as for the forcedly limited scope of this work.

Historical Situation Frederick S. Perls, known as Fritz Perls, was born in Berlin in 1893. in a Jewish family. Studied medicine and psychiatry, and,

GESTALT FIGURES

by the way, he worked with Kurt Goldstein, who introduced him to the concept that considers the body as a whole rather than as a conglomeration of separate parts, functioning without connection with each other and more or less autonomous.

In 1927, he settled in Vienna and began to engage in psychoanalysis with W. Reich, Karen Horney, O. Fenichel, Elena Deutsch. He marries Laura Posner, PhD in Gestalt psychology. With the establishment of the Hitler regime, Perls is forced to emigrate and, thanks to the support of Ernst John, travels to South Africa, where he establishes the Institute of Psychoanalysis.

He comes back to Germany in 1936. to a congress on psychoanalysis with the dual purpose of meeting Freud and making a presentation at the congress. His meeting with Freud did not go well, (“Master, I came from South Africa to meet you! – Oh, and when are you leaving?”) He will remember this insult forever. In addition, his message, perceived as insufficiently orthodox, would receive an unfavorable response and initiate his break with psychoanalysis.

The message dealt with the "verbal character of resistance" and contained in embryo what later reappeared in Self, Hunger and Aggression as the first manifestations of the new therapy. The subtitle of the first edition (1942) was "A Revision of Freud's Theory and Method", a subtitle later dropped.

In 1946 with the support of Erich Fromm, he settles in New York and continues his work as a therapist. Together with a small group of like-minded people, including the writer Paul Goodman, he develops what in 1950. would be called "Gestalt therapy" and what could be called existential psychoanalysis or concentration therapy. Then there was a long journey through the desert, which, however, made it possible to deepen and clarify the foundations laid in 1950, and so on until 1964, when Perls settled in Esalen, between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It was, as it were, the first decisive step of Gestalt therapy and at the same time the Esalen Institute, in which until his death in 1970. Perls directed numerous schools and groups.

There is now at least one Gestalt therapy institute in every city in the United States, and the number of Gestalt therapists is as significant as in other therapeutic areas. In Europe, Gestalt therapy is strongly developed in Germany, more and more developed in Belgium and Holland. If it timidly appeared in France in 1972, it is currently1 receiving its true development. Let us clarify that the training of Gestalt therapy is carried out after the basic clinical vocational education within 3-4 years, education is individual, theoretical and practical, and the Article was written in the early 80s. - Ed.

J. ROBIN now many groups work in France with French, Belgian, Canadian and American leaders.

Some Characteristic Features of Gestalt Therapy French, means at the same time - form, structure, configuration. This suggests a holistic system representing a single whole, but a whole distinct from the collection of parts. The holistic concept, which Gestalt fits into, puts this "organismic" unity at the same time on the level of functioning within the system (organism) and on the level of the relationship between a person and the world around him. There is no natural difference between mental activity and physical activity; there is, according to Perls, a difference in the level of activity of the whole personality. Every level of activity, every aspect of an individual's behavior can be seen as a manifestation of any human age. From whatever side you begin to analyze the subject - from the side of his body, dreams, fantasies, behavior, relationships or something else, we will always talk about metonyms2 of real existence, about metonyms that often act as such figures.

It is from this conception of the integrity of the organism that Perls explains his refusal to separate the organism from its environment, internal from external. However, there is a boundary of contact between the individual and his environment, and this boundary is a function that determines the relationship between them. In a healthy individual, this boundary is flexible and allows for a play of contact and retreat. Contact denotes the construction of a gestalt, retreat denotes its completion and destruction. In the neurotic subject, the contact/withdrawal functions are impaired;

the subject is confronted with a heap of gestalts that are not completed, not really formulated or closed.

Theory "I"

“The study of the way in which the individual functions in his environment is the study of what happens at the boundary of contact between the individual and his environment. It is on this border that psychological events are located: our thoughts, our actions, our behavior, our emotions are the form of our experience and the meeting of these events on the border with the outside world ”(F.S. Perls. Introduction to Gestalt).

In Gestalt theory, the self is defined as a complex system of contacts necessary for adaptation in a complex field.

I am on the border of the organism, and the border itself is not isolated from the outside world:

it begins simultaneously in the body and in the surrounding world. I am not some unshakable establishment, it exists then, Metonymy is a kind of figurative expressions (along with a metaphor, an epithet). (Ed. note).

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when there is interaction at the boundary; for example, in touch when touched. This is a contact function in the fleeting present. When experience is at rest or approaches equilibrium, the manifestations of the Self weaken. On the contrary, I is clearly expressed in the phases of energy tension, excitement and at the beginning of gaining experience. It is the Self that is the force that forms the gestalt fields; it is a process of figure/ground differentiation in a contact situation. Outside this process, the I exists only as a possibility. In various systems, characteristic modes of functioning may appear that are only subsystems of the Self: these are Ego, Id and Persona (I, It and Persona).

I refer the reader to the second part of Gestalt Therapy, which develops in depth this theory of the self, which seems to have had a great influence on subsequent work by, for example, Kohut and Winnicott.

In the state of Id, the boundaries of the organism are felt weakly: there is a unity with vital energy. Awareness of the development of the organic process is vague, participation in experience is carried out indirectly, as in a dream, in spontaneity, in a game, in movement, in free associations.

In functioning on the ego level, the organism clearly distinguishes between what it is and what it is not, between inside and outside. The ego selects, differentiates, discards or appropriates those parts of the field that suit it. Then we are creators and actors process, the opposite of what happens in the operation according to Id.

Various combinations and configurations of behavior are created in the continuous interaction between these different modes, depending on circumstances and experience. Violation of functions is manifested in the growth of rigidity, in imbalance, in the inadequacy of the current mode of behavior to the nature of the moment; all this is the result of the beginning of the action of resistance, violations of the functions of the border.

The Cycle of Experience The rhythm of building and breaking down the self-created gestalt is the fundamental process by which therapy works. We also call it the contact/withdrawal cycle, or the experience cycle. We can trace its various stages, which will allow us to become familiar with other key concepts gestalt therapy. This cycle is organized on a scale of needs: the dominant need appears in the foreground, as a figure, in the background. personal experience generally.

The cycle connects effective action, designed to enable the satisfaction of a dominant need or to prepare a connection with the outside world that can satisfy this dominant need.

In the beginning there is a "feeling". It is the feeling that is growing into the "now", it represents what is happening in the body at the moment.

It goes without saying that this phase is inseparable from J. ROBIN of the next phase - "awareness", which, being integral part emerging form, will identify the sensation:

tension, subtle gesture, need, sensory experience, perception, breath, proprioceptive sensations, etc.

There are two words for awareness in English: consciousness and awareness. I am not well versed to feel the cultural charge associated with these two concepts, and the various texts I have been able to review on the subject have only added to my confusion (see below).

For example, "Psychology and the Human Dilemma" by Rollo May). Consciousness - “consciousness”, I think, has a more mental, more intellectual, more left-brained meaning, as we would say now, than “awareness”, which evokes the thought of alertness in an almost animal sense of the word and seems more associated with the right hemisphere. "Consciousness", obviously, with some reservations, is closer to the consciousness of psychoanalysts, and "awareness" to awareness in Zen (but not in recent studies, for example, in the work of the colloquium in Cordova "Science and Consciousness", where there is a desire to modify the dialectics of these two "consciousnesses").

In Gestalt therapy, consciousness is awareness, this is the knowledge of one's Self, this is that alertness, this is attention, this is the stream of consciousness that we explore empirically every second.

This awareness is simultaneously physical, emotional and mental and manifests itself on three levels, corresponding to different strains of the organism/environment field:

- awareness of one's self;

- awareness of the world, the environment;

- awareness of what is between them, i.e., in other words, the zone of imagination, fantasy.

Perls believes that Freud made fundamental contributions at the level of this intermediate zone. Perhaps, in response to this, Perls is trying to develop awareness and direct contact in two zones, the zone of the Self and the zone of the surrounding world. The moment of awareness is followed by "Germi's mobilization" or "arousal" which leads to the beginning of action. This is a particularly significant phase, because it, once attained, is maintained without difficulty. But we are well aware that it is not always enough to be aware in order to develop an activity in order to satisfy the need that creates the figure.

If resistance can appear in any phase of the cycle, as will be discussed later, and if the therapist can be led to introduce "experiments" to identify breaks, then it is in this phase that undoubtedly lies one of the most subtle points. , for it is a matter of putting into action that which the subject is aware of. This is what we call "enactment", launching into action (which has something in common with acting-out only in the idea of ​​an act, action, but

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action, rooted in consciousness, and which strives for contact, i.e. to the actualization of the content or the representation of the content in order to realize it through contact). And then comes "contact", the climax of the passing experience, the paradox of awareness of separation and desire to merge. There is contact only when two figures, previously well differentiated, each delineated by their own boundaries, are united on their periphery by a dynamic bond of fusion, of temporary indifference. The contact is followed by a "retreat", an ebb, a phase of "tasting", the assimilation of experience.

Feeling

–  –  –

The process of creating and destroying a gestalt can take place within one second, one hour, one year or a lifetime, its various phases may be more or less distinct, more or less differentiated, but it exists. It exists, but external and internal events can interfere with the normal development of the process. In this case, the cycle can be interrupted at some of its phases, and then one speaks of an unfinished situation. These unfinished situations will continuously live at the expense of continuing situations, achieving their completeness in the content of the situation of the current moment. It is in this way that a present-focused Gestalt therapist will encounter a past that has been neurotically transferred into the present.

One of the therapist's tasks is to allow these unfinished situations to be expressed within the session in order to restart them at the level of the process and its blockages and allow them to complete. Thus, what creates, in my opinion, a problem for the patient or even traumatizes him, is not so much what happened, what was experienced, it is also not so much subsequent processing or memory built up in memory, but to a much greater extent it is the incomplete nature of the situation, this is what was once not experienced, not said or not done.

I like to see the transition to action (acting-out) as a consequence of an unfinished situation. I think I can make a suggestion of a systematic, regular stopping of the cycle described above between excitement and transition to action. The energy charge did not work, for endogenous or exogenous reasons it easily turns into anxiety, but it is enough to arise in the field of some minimal situation, somewhat reminiscent of repetitive blocked situations, for the accumulated energy to be discharged with violent force in relation to an insignificant stimulus.

Resistance The process of resistance in Gestalt therapy is not quite the same as in other therapeutic systems. In traditional systems, the concept of resistance suggests that a person must achieve some specific goals; any internal interference that interferes with movement towards these goals is called "resistance" and must be eliminated. On the contrary, in Gestalt therapy "resistance is seen not as a wall to be destroyed, but as a creative force on the outskirts of a difficult world"

(Paulster), it is also in the body (reich's influence is felt in this) and is found as a driving force that can act against the system of needs of the individual. It is as much a part of the subject as the impulse it counteracts.

Resistance can be both constructive and pathological.

Take the example of projection: its pathological aspect is manifested in the appropriation of what belongs to me to the other, and then the resistance is what breaks the contact. It, on the other hand, is creative when it allows me to identify someone's emotions, identify liking, and thus create contact. Creative resistance is flexible, responds to the needs of the present, mobilizes energy, creates contact, is able to choose, and is most likely conscious.

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Pathological resistance is rigid, anarchic, reproductive, creates blockages and tensions, avoids contact, controls the individual, and is rather less or completely unconscious.

But in general terms, I will say that resistance is a form of contact with previous experience.

Introjection is a genetically primitive form of functioning of an individual who introjects, passively absorbs everything that he receives from the outside world. It makes no selection, no choice, no assimilation; he swallows everything he comes across.

There is a similarity in structure and mode between psychic introjection and food consumption (this is precisely the theme of Perls' early work in Self, Hunger and Aggression).

Eating behavior is the first manifestation of introjection as a genetic way of communicating with the environment. Psychoanalysis, despite the initial recognition by Ferenczi and Freud of a connection, sometimes even synonymous, between introjection and absorption, nevertheless found it reasonable to distinguish between the two terms.

Psychoanalysis believes that the process of absorption refers to the bodily shell that separates the inside from the outside, while introjection points to a wider tonic possibility, to knowledge of the psychological system, one or another of the links. Absorption, in the Freudian sense, can be considered in Gestalt therapy as one of the first phases in the process of introjection. The individual is always busy introjecting everything that happens around him; he constantly receives images, sounds, messages, smells from the outside world... and this is necessary for him to live, to survive. The difference between passive or pathological introjection and active or creative introjection lies in the destructive capacity of the subject. Passive introjection preserves the structure of absorbed things, creative introjection destroys their structure and assimilates the substance. Besides, Perls only talks about introjection when he raises the question of creative introjection.

Other Gestalt therapists use the term "introjection" indiscriminately to refer to a process, whether it be normal or pathological.

Consider the process from a genetic point of view. At first time infant swallow everything that he is forced to swallow.

The trusting nature of his connection with his mother and his environment will confirm to him that everything that is systematically given to him for absorption always suits him. Little by little, when teething begins, he acquires the ability to bite, that is, an activity that allows partial intervention in relation to the food object that will be served to him.

J. ROBIN He gets the opportunity to notice that the intervention allows him to differentiate the "I" and "not-I" - it becomes necessary to want the "I" to assimilate the "not-I", and, based on this, autonomy and the ability to choose arise ( it suits me, it doesn't suit me).

From the phase of unconditional absorption, the child will reach creative assimilation through experience. The labor of chewing food corresponds to the labor of assimilation required in relation to an object that does not directly correspond to the needs of the organism. I may feel the need for meat, but my body will not tolerate a piece of meat swallowed whole. On the contrary, chewing will make it digestible in such a way that the body system can take advantage of the nutritional capabilities of this piece of meat; what is not absorbed by the body will be discarded. The same thing happens with lived experience: lived experience, learned as it is, is a useless experience. That which is swallowed without being assimilated, i.e.

without being rearranged by my own structure, what is swallowed whole remains "heavy in the stomach," a useless burden. In educational terms, there is a need for the environment to endure or better facilitate the experience of chewing, i.e.

some form of aggression. If the choice is not allowed to the child under the pretext that what I provide him cannot fail to suit him, therefore, must be swallowed, the child can only introject continuously, without the ability to distinguish, without assimilation or with assimilation, which will turn into "immunity to I will give". If the expression of the negative charge of some kind of sensation or some kind of introjection is not possible, then the subject can only disconnect from the sensation, make the absorption process imperceptible.

Most of the elements that are swallowed without chewing are “must” blocks, i.e. blocks of "you have to" that could not be experiential, tested, justified, assimilated. What was indicated to the subject as tasty for him, without giving him the opportunity of selection, remains monolithic and provokes the irresponsibility of the subject in relation to this introject. When an individual wants to make a Gestalt, i.e. global and harmonic configuration, he must begin by selecting and excluding those parts that he does not use and those that fit the "figure" that he composes.

Successful introjection allows what is at first "not-I" to become "mine"; the process is completed when it is not only "mine", but when what is assimilated becomes my "I".

Gestalt therapy firmly insists on the process of introjection. If in the course of therapy the client may be forced to introject elements emanating from his therapist, then one of the tasks of the therapist will be to work out these introjects, to allow the subject to

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study what is useful to him and can be assimilated by him, and what should be discarded. Therapy is not the introjection of a new pattern, however good it may be, that appears to take the place of the old one.

AT general view projection consists in building up in the mind a system of what is perceived ... In other words, it is very difficult to consider perception without projection.

Assimilation of introjection opens up the possibility of creative projections. Passive introjection allows only the projection of resistance. Thus characteristics which are my own, but which I cannot regard as such, are attributed to another. What should be presented as part of the inner world is experienced as belonging to the outer world.

When, having realized all the “shoulds” that constrain him and which we talked about about introjection, the subject seeks to lay responsibility for this on the outside world, for example, on his parents, this turns into a projection.

Thus, it seems that introjection and projection are polar parts of the same problem, two closely related processes. The individual who introjects loses his personal identity by collecting the "crumbs" of the other; the individual who projects, scatters his identity around him.

But projection does not always interfere with contact, because Acquaintance is often the convergence of two projections. Projecting onto another what you know or, as is sometimes pretended, you do not know about yourself is an opportunity to meet the projection that constitutes the human community. Can I "talk" about something other than myself? Does not what I know about myself replace all-round knowledge?

Also, being aware of and in contact with the maximum of the magnitudes that compose me will allow me to be in contact with the maximum of the possibilities that are given to the other, minimizing the distortions attributed to my projections.

Three forms of projection are usually described, corresponding to the three functions it performs:

- a mirror projection, in which the subject finds in another or in the image of another characteristic features that he considers as his own or would like to have them;

- a projection of catharsis, in which the subject ascribes to another or the image of another characteristic features that he refuses, not recognizing them as his own, and from which he is freed by attributing them to another;

- an additional projection in which the subject discovers or ascribes to the other or the image of the other characteristic features that allow him to justify his own.

J. ROBIN There is a combined form of introjection and projection: some kind of introjection, the poorly assimilated projective form of which is turned on the subject; it's a retroflection.

Retroflection contains two types of process:

- the subject does to himself what he would like to do to others;

- the subject does to himself what he would like others to do to him.

Returning to what we said about projection, the first possibility could be called cathartic retroflection, the second mirror retroflection. An additional level of retroflection could then be represented as the level where the subject forbids himself to go any further due to personal obstinacy, and where self-reflection occurs to explain the change in direction of the process. In retroflection, we are faced with a function that was basically oriented towards the external world and the direction of which the subject changes, turning it towards himself. This indicates that once the verb is followed by a reflexive pronoun, we can look for retroflection.

Retroflection decisively interrupts the contact, forces the subject to act, denying the other. In introjection, on the other hand, the existence of the other is indisputable, but can be manifested in a different temporal sequence; introjection often appears as a result of any relationship. I underestimate myself - this is retroflection.

I'm underestimated - it's a projection.

I'm not worth anything - it's introjection.

If the retroflecting individual sees himself engaged in a system of action in a very limited external world, his energy spills over into his own internal world and provides him with a full life of imagination and greater powers of control and introspection.

Psychoanalysis does not attach much importance to the process of retroflection, which it also defines somewhat differently. He speaks of a "turning on one's own personality", which corresponds to a process in which "the drive replaces an independent object with its own personality" and which is inseparable from "turning in the opposite direction". Being directed to the method and to the content, the analysis emphasizes the transition from activity to passivity, like the transition from love to hate.

If we penetrate into the dualism of separate intrapsychic opposites, this process can really be qualified as one of the most primitive defensive processes (as Anna Freud shows). If, on the contrary, the individual is constantly in captivity of his polar sides, he will face the question of choosing in the form of terms: "expression" or "creative retroflection", both of which are positive, but differently oriented; one leading to contact with others, and the other leading to contact with oneself.

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The so-called "psychosomatic" processes are considered, of course, as examples (types) of retroflection, as well as suicidal acts, acts of self-aggression, etc.

In a recent publication (1981) Sylvia Fleming Crocker describes the presence of resistance, which is a combination of projection and retroflection. She calls it proflection. It is a process in which one individual does to another what he would like this other to do to him.

Evasion, or deflection, is the resistance to avoid direct contact with others or to avoid intense contact.

It goes without saying that one could speak of the paradoxical nature of avoidance, for the contact itself can be seen as a way to avoid another contact! But as regards this process, as well as others, one should reconsider it in relation to the various zones of contact and clearly understand what is the place this process when interacting.

If reflection can be represented as a negative resistance, when the subject constantly acts in such a way as to avoid contact with others, as well as with himself, with his feelings, with his emotions, it can also be effective way to achieve the desired goal, even if the goal is contact with others.

If on my way, when I am driving to some city, I come across a blocked section of the road, then if I take a detour, this will allow me to reach the goal and will be more effective than waiting for the possible removal of the barrier.

When the contact is established, there is a moment of unification, the disappearance of the boundaries of the Self: this is a "fusion". It is followed by a "retreat".

There is a pathological fusion, when the subject "hooks" on something that no longer exists.

The fusing action is an illusion action. Merging involves the rejection of differences and dissimilarity. There is a "I" because there is a "YOU". If I do not support the existence of this gap, I will create a WE, the chronic state of which will consist of only one function - to close this gaping gap of otherness. Even in the very close relationship of a married couple, the contact maintains a very keen sense of the other, a sense of unity and difference.

In inseparable situations, the lack of merger is paid for by guilt in the one who has finished fulfilling his "agreement" on the merger, and resentment in the one who continues to fulfill it. The consequences of the latent disturbance appear and a whole series of new resistances appear, especially retroflections appear to fill the gap and try to establish lasting influences.

Merging is a state of non-contact, because it consists in the absence of the boundaries of one's Self. There is a merging, for example, in habits and knowledge, in all reactions that mean my belonging to some J. ROBIN group. Society does not need to constantly discuss everything, it is necessary to have huge confluence zones. In healthy fusion, the potentiality of contact remains, for example, memory is available as such. In a pathological fusion, contact with the memory will not be possible due to rejection.

One can consider intuition as one of the creative forms of fusion to the extent that the process includes the state of indistinguishability between the subject and the surrounding world. I am not able to distinguish between the information coming from the outside world and the one that I receive from my own body. I designate this perception - the proprioception of the organism/environment field - with the term "intuition", precisely when the boundaries are destroyed. Fusion functions just like resistance at a distance, like the fear of losing the other.

Thus, it is necessary to work within the therapeutic framework on the boundaries of one's Self, time and space: this is me, this is you, this is it, this is the moment of our meeting, then the time comes for withdrawal into oneself. It is also work related to the continuum of awareness, as well as contacts with oneself.

Concluding the discussion of the functioning of resistance in connection with the theory of the Self and considering resistance (pathological) as a violation of the contact boundary, we can say that:

– in fusion there is an identity between the organism and the surrounding world;

- in introjection, the object of the surrounding world is in the body;

- in the projection, a part of the body is in the surrounding world;

- in retroflection, a part of the organism makes its surrounding world out of another part of the organism;

- in egotism (resistance, not considered in this article, which corresponds to functioning at the level of I-Ego), there is isolation from the It and from the surrounding world at the same time, or the organism is isolated from the surrounding world (see Winnicott's concept of pseudo-I on this issue) .

Patient's Intentions/Therapist's Intentions Whatever reasons the patient finds for himself, whatever appearance he wants to maintain, he resorts to therapy because he is in an existential crisis, i.e. his psychological needs are not met by his present way of life.

Whatever these vital needs, the mere fact of seeking therapy is the patient's own admission that his needs are not being met. His intention in this case is to find external support from the therapist, which should replace his own methods of support, which turned out to be inadequate.

But he does not come empty-handed. He comes, among other things, with his own methods of action, his own methods of mobilization and

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using the world around you to act in your position.

These actions are intended more to maintain and maintain their inferiority than to free themselves from it. One of the therapist's intentions, then, is to allow him to use this understanding and energy to develop self-support instead of acquiring any support from the outside world.

But, paradoxically, the therapist is not an expert. His main task is to strengthen his client in a sense of responsibility for his act, and he does this during the meeting - the meeting of two human beings here and now - and helps the client to become aware of how the usual ways of contact work, how resistance functions. .

Is it possible, being aware of everything that is happening, to try “something else”? During an ongoing group session led by a therapist assistant (T.2) and myself (T.1), Claire-Marie, a longtime participant, begins to speak. She talks about her illness and the images that take possession of her. She talks about the scene, about some kind of desert where she runs in different directions, she also talks about her constraint, her need to return to her childhood and her need to grow up.

T.1: I'm left with a strange impression: I'm under the impression that you're stating something difficult. I feel like saying, “Okay, I understand what’s going on, but at the moment I don’t feel like I’m involved!”

T.2: I, I started running.. Tiring! You suffocate when you listen. Are you in the desert now?

K-M (crying): This is exactly some kind of trick from the last session that I remember with you: I am embarrassed by my stiffness and I associate it with my father. I don't associate him with a therapist.

T.2: You are galloping! You were in the middle of a conversation with JeanMarie... Can you comprehend the way you start your "running"?

KM:... I don't like that you say "okay"!

T.1: Stay with that feeling. What is "I don't like"?

KM: There is something that stops. I say to myself: ok, ok, that doesn't interest him!

T.1: And what do you think about it?

K-M (sighs, moves his arms, shrinks): I say to myself: “Well, it’s not interesting for him, then I stop ...”

T.1: When I say good, you say good!

KM: What you say is stronger than what I think. If someone expresses doubt about what I say, I doubt most of the time.

J. ROBIN T.1: Would you like to try something else this time?

Can you find the right way to find your place and respond to my “good!” that you can’t stomach?

This passage of interaction brings out many of the characteristic elements of Gestalt therapy, although it is too brief, almost to the point of caricature. First of all, the displacement of the usual relationship between figure and form between content and form. The therapist is more focused on the process than the content. The content remains more or less, depending on the situation, in the background, in the background, and the focus (focus, as the Americans say) is transferred by the therapist to what is happening at the moment, to the form in which it happens, and this is what creates a figure for him: the focus is not on what people do, or even why, but how people do what they do. This can be done in many ways, and this can be guessed from the type of remarks T.1 and T.2, by their style. In this passage, T.1 seems to be more confrontational, completely forgetting the content and using his own feelings to make contact. T.2 may seem more merging in form, but she eventually becomes confrontational: she enters into the client's images, using her words and metaphors to represent everything that is happening here and right now.

Another obvious element is the focus of the Gestalt therapist on the I-Thou contact (including, of course, but not limited to the phenomenon of transference... But this is beyond the scope of this article.) Claire-Marie willingly points out that concerns T.1's remark, and T.2 focuses its intervention on the T.1-Claire-Marie interaction. In addition, she focuses on resistance, preventing Claire-Marie from slipping away, including here also the study of the magnitude of the transfer of this moment (which does not mean that this will not be resumed later). It is also about understanding why Gestalt therapy was supposed to be called "concentration therapy": to concentrate on what is happening, how to narrow the radius of the spotlight after its expansion: "Do you want to stay with this for a minute?", " ...and what do you get from this?", "Can you realize in what way you...". It is the development of awareness (awareness) of both the client and the therapist; the latter must continuously look at a wide range of what is happening: what concerns him, his client, both of them and the context!

Now I would like to present another piece of work. It is much less focused on what happens between therapist and client, but touches on what might be called the integrity of the experience. By the integrity of experience, I mean the following: what happens in the body is nothing but what happens in the emotional plane or in the inner mental world, and vice versa. I spoke of this above in a different way - that the experience of the subject could be started from one or the other

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its aspect (dream, body...), and all these experiences, obviously partial, are also metonyms of the existence of the subject.

Annette remembers what she just felt in her body at some point in the collective free dance. Her predominant sensation was the impression that her legs had been cut off, the consciousness that she did not feel anything in this part of her body. After a moment of exchange of a few words, during which I try to help her identify her sensation, to fix the awareness of her sensation and what is happening (grounding) - a moment that also allows you to establish some contact between us - I suggest that she stand up, just "be" with their feet that feel nothing, and let happen what happens: words, movements, images, etc.

She stands up with her legs quite close together, with her gaze fixed upwards, and begins to sway slightly, shifting the weight of her body from one foot to the other. Her movement is not wide-ranging. She talks about what she feels; her swaying, her impression that her legs are still cut off, the impression that she prevents herself from giving a greater swing to the swaying, the impression that she maintains it within certain limits so as not to risk losing her balance.

This new topic, which emerges (boundaries) seems to me worthy of attention, but it is a deviation from what it was moving towards. In addition, knowing how during this period Annette is able to stop all work as soon as she meets with the least resistance, I decide to remove this possible tension myself: I suggest that she use the help of one of the members of the group to ensure her safety, to accept positions that she will wish to experience the wiggle that comes without worrying about the risk of falling. But then, because the security she asked for doesn't do her any favors, she limits herself just as much. Moreover, she is aware that something important is happening at the level of her feet, in their contact with the ground.

After some time of work in this direction, I formulate a hypothesis for myself (taking into account also previous experience with her) that bodily experience could develop much better if she could attach ideas to it. Then I ask her if she can tell me what is important to her in life at the moment.

Without hesitation, she immediately names Pierre, someone who is important to her, with whom she previously worked in the same institution and who maintained a strong relationship with her after her departure. She adds that their relationship was complicated by service relations. In addition, she adds that there is another thing that is important to her - this is her work, her professional environment.

I write "Pierre" on one sheet of paper, "professional environment" on the other. I put the sheets on the floor and invite her to resume J. ROBIN's experience, again "to be feet", but this time placing each foot on each sheet of paper, being aware of this, allowing what will happen to happen.

She moves both sheets closer, puts both feet on them and begins to sway; very quickly, she begins to sway more and more freely, tears off the floor first one, then the other leg, she takes more and more risks, replacing first one foot, then the other.

Then both legs stop on the sheets, the legs are almost motionless, and the upper body is swaying.

We're talking about what just happened; she describes her feelings, those moments when she felt like her legs were cut off, and those when she did not feel it. I share my impressions with her, talking about what I saw.

She says, but very little:

that she had just understood so much at the level of the change of points of support that she was experiencing. I respect her hinting statement, but I ask her if she had an idea for a way that would allow her to participate fully on the body level. She acts a little hesitantly, then returns to the previous experiment, pushing both sheets 40-50 cm apart. She puts her feet on them, and this time she swings on a grand scale, at great risk, and never for a moment loses her footholds.

She explains that this time she feels her whole body as a whole, that "it circulates well" everywhere and that she understands that it is enough for her to distinguish well, to separate more clearly both of her existential supports, in order to regain the scope of movement, which is really theirs. too much closeness and their too much confusion entails limitations, confusion, blockage for her.

could be played on different levels development of this episode:

for example, the process as I have described it above, or the intention of the therapist, his means of intervention, or also the situation of the experience, which may be a therapeutic moment. For the purposes of this article, I leave the example open.

The person who seeks change by turning to therapy (I quote Beiser) is in conflict with at least two defensive intrapsychic authorities. He constantly oscillates between what he "should be" and what he "wouldn't like to be," never identifying himself with either of these opposites.

The divergence (dichotomy) between the two parts, one of which is trying to change the other, exists within the subject, the therapist must therefore avoid limiting himself to one of these roles, either one or the other, considering them as his own.

The paradoxical theory of change in Gestalt therapy, as outlined by Beiser, can be expressed as follows:

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change comes when the subject becomes what he is, not when he tries to become what he is not.

All living organisms aim to realize their Self as it is in reality, but they find themselves in conflict with expectations and introjects. The therapist then intends not to miss a single statement, a single reaction that would be characteristic of the self.

This paradoxical theory of change and Beiser's exposition of it cannot be understood unless one is familiar with Polar Side Gestalt Therapy. Otherwise, the therapist might be suspected of petty manipulation to bring the client into an identity consistent with the therapist's conclusions. The concept of polarities is familiar to those who know Heraclitus, Tao, yin-yang or, closer to us, Friedländer's work on "creative indifference" or the work of Lupasco. To briefly outline this concept of the polar sides, I consider it interesting to use the concept of the "field" of K. Levin (let's not forget about the predominant influence of Levin in the USA in the 40s and the deep imprint that he left on the level of practice and modern theory, although this succession is not without difficulty).

If we consider the Self as a field, the latter consists of a conglomeration of opposing forces. “The inner real world of a person consists of his polar sides and characteristic features that are in harmony and acceptable to the conscious Self, and those that are schizoid and unacceptable to the Self. Often the concept of one’s Self excludes difficult moments of awareness of the polar sides that are in us” (Zinker). A fully functioning person is a person who is aware of his polarization, who has learned to get used to it, and also to be at the opposite pole, and who has been able to integrate these opposite forces with such flexibility that it allows it to "circulate" along the divergent axis. their polar sides. The pathological personality, on the other hand, is fixated on opposite ends of these axes, and all that remains of its identity is a dark field. If she is not aware of this, this part of the field is no less effective for this and is usually in a state of conflict.

It is from this point of view that the process of "becoming who I am" corresponding to the paradoxical theory of change (and the whole philosophical tradition) can acquire its true meaning and be further developed.

Duane Schultz has undertaken a comparative study of various therapeutic models and has attempted to formulate tentative hypotheses, implicit and explicit, related to the characteristics of healthy functioning. Her perception of Gestalt therapy, although very historical to me, seems appropriate enough for me to present it now, with J. ROBIN so that these images help to more prominently represent the "therapist's intentions".

The personality “grows” in a safe way into the present moment of existence.

She is able to express her impulses and her desires.

Take responsibility for your own existence.

She is in contact with her Self and the world around her.

She is able to express her anger.

It is free from external regulation.

It is driven by the situation and reacts to the situation of the moment.

She does not have the narrow boundaries of her Self.

She is not involved in the pursuit of happiness (which would be putting herself in an unfinished situation continuously).

Answering questions about indicators of therapy completion, Isidor From, one of the first Gestalt therapists closely associated with Goodman, said: “When you both agree with the fact that the patient is aware that he or she is walking around my room, and he or she talks to me – which means no projections, no retroflection, no introjections – then the therapy is complete.”

This sentence, in my opinion, brings together the various basic aspects of gestalt: a contact, to a certain extent independent of "transference", but including "transference", because for me the gestalt therapist is himself fundamentally involved in the process, in its entirety, i.e. with their knowledge, thoughts, fantasies and fantasies, their feelings and emotions... and all this in I-YOU, as Martin Buber could describe it.
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Usually I write some kind of eyeliner that allows me to understand who my hero is and what the conversation will be about. But I think today the name of my hero will say more than any of my introductions - Jean-Marie Robin - clinical psychologist, Gestalt therapist, one of the founders of the European Association for Gestalt Therapy. AT different time was president of the EAGT, director of the French Gestalt Institute, editor and publisher of the French magazine "Gestalt" and "Gestalt Notebook". Author of the books "Gestalt Therapy", "Forms of Gestalt", "The Revealing Self", "Being in the Presence of the Other", which have been translated into Spanish, English and Russian. Gestalt Therapy Instructor different countries both hemispheres, including Russia and Ukraine. One of the leading theorists of Gestalt therapy in the world.

In preparation for the interview, I searched the Russian Internet for information about you. As it turns out, it's practically non-existent. You can find invitations to your seminars, translations of articles, reviews of those who studied with you, but, in general, there is no information about you as a person and about a professional. Why are you so modest that you don’t like to talk about yourself or just no one suggested that you do this?

Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about this, because. I have no idea what information is available about me on the Internet, in Russian or in other languages. And it doesn't bother me too much.

- And why, by the way?

Because I do not attach much importance to my person. Important to me are the ideas that I try to promote. And the more ideas, principles, tools are put into circulation, the more people can learn them, perhaps transform and use them in their own way. It doesn't matter to me that I disappear into history.

But still, if we talk a little more about titles and merits, which of your regalia is the most significant for you? How do you usually introduce yourself?

Gestalt therapist.

- Tell me, you have achieved a lot in Gestalt therapy, are there still some peaks that you aspire to?

There is no top for me. There is always something to learn, where to develop. I think what we call death is just immobilization. Life is movement. Development is movement. For example, in February next year, I will start studying as a student. In New York, to advance in sensitivity to bodily processes in gestalt therapy.

Let's talk a little about Gestalt therapy itself then. When I studied it, I was tormented for a very long time by the question of what is gestalt. What methods and techniques of work are exactly Gestalt. One of my trainers answered this question this way: "Everything that is not psychoanalysis is gestalt." This answer did not satisfy me. It does not satisfy to this day, because I want to put everything on the shelves. And how will you answer this question?

I think that in any case there are common points with psychoanalysis. Moreover, I do not agree with the statement that everything that is not psychoanalysis is gestalt. There is at least something in common in the fact that psychoanalysis gave birth to Gestalt, i.e. Gestalt therapy is a daughter, illegitimate, but a daughter:). During the formation of Gestalt therapy, there were other influences, so it is a product of all these influences and has its own specifics. For Gestalt therapy, the priority is not to work on the psyche, not on what happens inside a person, but work with what occurs when a person contacts the environment. Everything that happens when a person contacts the environment, little by little, becomes the psyche, i.e. the psyche consists of successive contacts. And the specificity of Gestalt therapy is the work in a very subtle and delicate way on contact in a therapeutic situation in order to return movement to everything that was immobilized, immobilized.

It is very popular with us to divide Gestalt therapy into European and American directions, and discuss how they differ from each other. In your opinion, does this difference really exist or is the whole difference only in geography?

There are theoretical differences, there are methodological differences, but these are not fundamental differences between Europe and America. Both in Europe and in America there are different ways. And then, America is very big - we can talk about the US or Mexico or Brazil - it's all America. And all these countries have their own specifics of Gestalt therapy, since each has its own influential people who present Gestalt in their own way. But whatever the differences, there are similarities and there are many of them.

The European Gestalt is blamed for the lack of a clear structure, they say that it looks like a miracle. A miracle is easy to admire, but very difficult to capture and convey.

Structure is everywhere. In fact, I think there are Gestaltists who can talk about what they do and those who have a hard time talking about their work. Also, when you talk about structure, another idea comes to my mind - there is a large number of therapists who practice with a lot of examples. It can give the impression of having structure, but for me it's not therapy, it's exercise. For me, therapy is a process of accompanying the processes of the client, and not a structure that is brought to the surface.

Tell me, what prospects for the development of Gestalt therapy and psychotherapy in general do you see, because I have the impression that everything that we use now was discovered at best 30 years ago, and at worst all 100?

I don't know what Gestalt therapy will become, and I don't know how it will develop. Perhaps it will disappear, it will be absorbed by some other therapies. For example, I am amazed that many modern currents of psychoanalysis, evolving in their theories and methods, begin to say something that Gestalt has known for the past 30 years. Behavioral and cognitive therapies are starting to say some things about emotions, contact - something that is written in Gestalt therapy from the beginning. They absorb Gestalt therapy. But at the same time they do not know that this is Gestalt therapy. Psychoanalysis is still very influential in the world. Cognitive and behavioral therapies are also becoming increasingly powerful, in part because they are being taught at universities. If gestalt therapy is taken over by these 2 vampires, maybe in 10-20 years it will disappear. But this will mean that her ideas are also absorbed ... It's hard to say, I'm not a predictor.

- In your opinion, what explains such conservatism of other trends and such modernism of Gestalt?

Don't know. I think that gradually, unfortunately, psychoanalytic theory is turning into a dogma. She may have become more influential, but at the same time she has lost her dynamism. It is a pity, because I am not an opponent, not an enemy of psychoanalysis, and I am sure that Freud would not like to see his theories turn into dogma.

How can you explain some of the snobbery of psychoanalysts, after all, they consider their theory “the holy of holies”, and everything else, as something petty, not very serious?

In response to this question, you can build a lot of hypotheses, but I would not like to do this.

Okay, but are you not offended by the attitude towards Gestalt therapy and, accordingly, towards Gestalt therapists, as representatives of the “pop culture”, as something of poor quality and not very good?

Yes, it hurts me because it's a defense system against Gestalt Therapy. But there is another truth, that Gestalt therapists must make an effort to become authorities and inspire confidence - to start writing smart and powerful things. And do not put yourself in a position of shame in relation to other theories, dare to assert and defend the strength of your method. Psychoanalysts can write very, very intelligent things, impressive things, but often they don't get results. And Gestalt therapists do not know how to write academic books, as opposed to psychoanalysts, but they know how to work well, effectively. And they get results. It's understandable that it hurts.

Maybe because I studied at MIGIP for me, gestalt and psychodrama are closely related, the question arises, when and why did these theories come into contact, because they were discovered by different people?

Before becoming a Gestalt therapist, I was a psychodramatist. But now I will absolutely not say that I am a psychodramatist, because I consider psychodrama a completely different method that cannot be associated with Gestalt therapy. It does not say that something is better, something is worse. I love psychodrama a lot, but it's just a different work area. And there was a meeting of directions from the very beginning, because Perls met with Moreno and borrowed a number of techniques from him. In Gestalt therapy no roles are played, I remain myself, the client remains himself. I know that some Gestalt therapists associate their work with psychodrama, but I do not agree with this. And what we have in common with psychodrama and perhaps what psychodrama has taught us is the importance of not just talking about the problem, but allowing it to pour into action. It is this idea of ​​transition into action that is the common point.

- And how did you, being a psychodramatist, switch to gestalt?

In the 70s, what was then called new therapies came to Europe ... I was not only a psychodramatist, I also have a Rogerian education and an education in expressive therapy (similar to art therapy) and I went to get acquainted with Gestalt therapy, t .to. read American books on it. Just like how I got acquainted with bio-energy, but immediately felt that it did not interest me. But Gestalt therapy immediately made sense for me, it turned out to be very close to what I was looking for. So I started to study in this direction.

Do you somehow experiment, try to combine elements of all areas that you own in your work? And how can you not mix knowledge and skills?

Can. Obviously, all my education was useful to me, but I practice Gestalt therapy and only it. And if I take some element, for example, of the same psychoanalysis, then all the same I work on the axis of Gestalt therapy and it does not become a piece of psychoanalysis or psychodrama, all together it remains Gestalt therapy.

- In general, mixing styles, eclecticism, is it useful for work?

What do you understand by mixing styles?

- For example, take one exercise from their psychodrama, another from body therapy, etc.

I don't use exercise. Even if I offer a client an exercise, there is always a different context, so it will never be the same exercise. Exercise, if you compare them with clothes, is what is called ready-to-wear. I don't do ready-to-wear, I do private tailoring.

At the end of our meeting, what would you like to say to aspiring Gestalt therapists? Many complain that it is very difficult to start a practice, to overcome the barrier of the first client. What can you recommend to them?

Work. I know therapists who work in big cities, where there are a lot of other therapists, and who get a lot of clients very quickly. I know others who are forced to settle in towns where there are no therapists at all and they have no clients. I also know others who settle in remote villages, on lost islands where there are no clients, but their schedule is scheduled 2 months in advance. It's inexplicable, but it's a fact (smiles).

- By the way, do you remember your first client?

It was a long time ago when I studied psychoanalysis. A professor, a very famous French psychoanalyst, suggested that I take some children to a social center for psychotherapy, to do this work for free. In return, receive individual supervision from him every day. So a boy of 12 years old came to me, he had a lot of worries. At the first meeting, I said something to him, rather intuitively, and I took it for supervision. But my supervisor always told me one thing, “well, why did you tell him this, shut up.” And the further the sessions went, the more often the professor repeated that I was talking too much. It would probably be ideal for him to work in silence (laughs) I very wisely introjected all his advice, but I felt completely uncomfortable with this child. The boy also became more and more afraid, he asked questions, and I remained in silence and silence. He tried every way to get me to talk. But I remained silent. He jumped around the room, reaching for everything he could. Once he grabbed the phone, began to play with the keyboard and accidentally called the rescue service ...

- Apparently, he thought that they would save him faster than you :)

Yes :) I think that day I realized that psychoanalysis is not the method in which I would like to practice.

Thanks to this boy for giving us such a Gestalt therapist :). And thank you very much for this interview.

I thank Anna Bychkova and Inna Didkovskaya for their help in organizing and conducting the interview. Special thanks to Katerina Voronyanskaya for the quality translation.