ganz diversity/diﬀerence/dialogue canberra, university ...€¦ · a post modern world october...

MargheritaSpagnuoloLobb

TheplaceofGestalttherapywithinpsychotherapiesinapostmodernworld

October7th,2016

10°Interna?onalConferenceofGANZ

Diversity/Difference/Dialogue

Canberra,UniversityHouseOctober6-10,2016

Lectureoverview•  Socialdevelopmentand

psychotherapy•  Whatisimportanttodeveloptodayasthecrucialcontribu?onofGT

a)  Theconceptofaggressionb)  Workatthecontact

boundaryc)  Workontheground

MargheritaSpagnuoloLobbPost-GraduateSchoolofPsychotherapy

Is;tutodiGestaltHCCItaly,Siracusa,Palermo,Milanwww.gestal;taly.com

GestaltTherapyRecountedinPost-ModernSociety

Socialdevelopmentandpsychotherapy-1

•  At the beginnings of the psychotherapeutic science: The culture that keeps the nature at bay

Society needed to “normalize” discomfort, associated with impulsive nature (in the case of psychoanalysis), or with a lack of training (in the case of behaviourism). •  The Thirties: the Triumph of Subjectivity the possibility of integration between nature and culture, between impulses and social life •  The Fifties: the Power of Rebellion Society goes through a positive push. The focus on experience (sensory experience in pragmatism and intentionality in phenomenology) and on concreteness of social relations rather than on imaginary inner worlds as proposed by Freud, led psychotherapy to get interested in what works in human relations (the study of normal processes) rather than in what does not work (the study of pathology), in tension towards the future inherent to any behaviour rather than in reasons related to the past. This implied overcoming a series of dicothomies: theory and practise, therapst and client, nature and culture, individual and society, id and superego



Socialdevelopmentandpsychotherapy-2

•  “narcissis;csociety”(1970s-1980s)(Lasch,1978)•  “borderlinesociety”or“technologicals.”(Galimber;,

1999)(1980s-1990s)•  “liquidsociety”(Bauman,2000)(2000s-2010s)•  globaliza?onofcommunica?on,terrorism,environmental

changeandlackof(supportin)primaryrela?onships(2010s-today)

•  Thisdevelopmentofsocialneedsinfluencesboththe

percep?onofpeopleingeneral,theindividualexperienceofconflictandofcoursepsychotherapy.



Between 50es and 70es •  A couple:

•  “I have the right to be free”; “Ties are chocking: they prevent me from fulfilling my potentialities”; “I ask for help to get rid from repressing ties.”

•  A family: •  “Staying together is boring, it implies to restrict my potentialities”;

“Staying together means to sacrifice myself to the other”; “Institutionalized relations are against mature growth: they kill individual freedom”; “To grow implies to be alone, or be free from links.”

•  A group: •  “I look for a group where I can do what I want, where I can be free.” •  Groups can solve the need to grow as individuals.



Between 50es and 70es

Cultural trends •  Need for democracy (both in

political and social settings) •  Need for giving dignity to

individuals •  Need for giving dignity to the ego

(all new psychotherapy approaches are born in these decades)

•  Need for trusting self-regulation and nature (theory of organism and humanistic approaches; new age movements, etc.)

•  Need for discovering the positive aspects of social living =rationality (cognitive therapy) + creativity (gestalt therapy) + mutual support (Rogers)




The answer of the therapist: •  “You have the right to be free, to realize yourself, to

expand your potentialities.”

•  “I am I and you are you…” = supports separation in relationships (fobia of confluence)

•  Supports self-regulation but not the caring for what happens at the contact boundary with the other.



Between 70es and 90es •  A couple: •  “The drug (or work, or lover) is my main link. The other is an optional.” •  (examples of couples who come from drug addiction, or couples of realized

professionals, ecc.) •  “I try to solve the difficulty of staying-with ‘marring’ a substance or a job.” •  A family: •  Caring for children and/or partner are in the background. Welfare is the

figure (the American dream became the European dream..) •  A group: •  Groups are no longer so important for one’s own growth, but an occasion

for confluence (drugs) or feeling free from both work and family problems.




Cultural ground •  The economic “boom” brings to what has been called the technological society,

which considers the machine as an agent to control the instability of human relationships.

•  Children of narcissistic parents, who have been treated as “gods” with no possibilities to make mistakes, are now debating between a grandiose ideal self and a very fragile real self. They are uncertain on themselves and find relaxation from this tremendous stress in artificial paradises (drugs).

•  At the end of this decades, there is an increasing interest in relations: all the sciences and psychotherapy methods address relational theories (GT re-discovers the theory of contact).

•  The maximum in this interest is the discovery of mirror neurons by a group of Parma university, which, giving scientific evidence to the spontaneous mutual intuitive knowledge among humans, supports intuition and empathy in psychotherapy.




The answer of the therapists: •  Trust yourself •  Let’s look at what happens between you and me (GT re-discovers

the concept of contact boundary, a new way to look at what was called transfert and counter-transfert)

•  Perlsian slogan “lose your mind and come to your senses” is revisited into “follow your embodied empathy”, “from you seeing me I can see myself”.


Is;tutodiGestaltHCCItaly,Siracusa,Palermo,Milanwww.gestalt.it

Between 90es and 2010es •  A couple: •  “Sometimes I feel nothing to him/her”; “It’s difficult to fall in love”; “No one can

catch me deeply”; “No-one interests me deeply.” •  It’s difficult to see one another: the field is taken by anxieties and worries. •  A family: •  “To be in contact is stressing. I feel peace when I’m alone in my room chatting with

whoever I want, and as long as I want.” •  Virtual reality is much easier than real reality (see the success of reality shows,

which provide a form of virtual reality). •  “I feel deeply lonely: no one is at home when I’d like to share my experience with

someone.” •  A group: •  “I stay in group as far as it’s useful”: no capacities to experience the beauty of the

being-with. •  “I go to a group when I feel alone and need not to be alone. People around me are

like isolated planets who move around me” ..no emotions, no bounds, no affects. MargheritaSpagnuoloLobb

Post-GraduateSchoolofPsychotherapyIs;tutodiGestaltHCCItaly,Siracusa,Palermo,Milan

www.gestal;taly.com


Cultural ground: theFearofDeathandtheNeedforRootedness •  Huge migration flows create a condition where we are always close to strangers and

makeusfeeluncertainandambivalent:howmuchshouldweopenthedoorstoforeigners?

•  The“doortodoor”terrorismgivesasenseofpowerlessnessandexisten;aldistress:noneofushasthecertaintyofreturninghomealivewhenwegetout.

•  Globalization of communications makes it easy to get anything from anywhere.

•  Lack of caring and welcoming relations (in families and other social agencies) since early time in development (parents, from borderline generation, are not used to taking care of anyone).

•  Caregivers are embarrassed in front of a baby who cries. They trust that google will give a better answer to their children (poor embodied empathy).

•  The phenomenology of daily experiences brings to impossibility to relax (to exhale), Anxiety brings to desensitization, which brings to desensitized body (anxiety is defined in GT as excitement without support of oxygen). MargheritaSpagnuoloLobb

Post-GraduateSchoolofPsychotherapyIs;tutodiGestaltHCCItaly,Siracusa,Palermo,Milan

www.gestal;taly.com


Cultural ground

•  Thegenera;onofthesetwentyisunabletorelyontheintergenera;onaltradi;onforsupportandasenseofrootedness.

•  Tradi;onsareoUenlostandthevillagesquareshavebeenreplacedbythevirtual“squares”ofthesocialnetworks.

•  Thesocialexperienceofyoungpeopletodayis“liquid”:incapableofcontainingtheexcitementoftheencounterwiththeotherandextremelyopentothepossili;esofexchangeofferedbytheglobaliza;onofthecommunica;veflows.




Theanswerofthetherapist•  Supportthephysiologicalprocessofcontact(theidofthe

situa;on,Robine,1977):“Breatheandfeelwhathappensattheboundary”

•  Thetherapistfocusesonthesupportoftheprocessofcontact,whereonces/hehadtodirectaZen;ontothesupportofindividuality,tofavoritsemergenceamongotherindividuali;es

•  Ifpreviously–inthecommonsocialmind–beinghealthyimpliedfindingthereasonsforemerginginthebaZleoflife,todayitmeansexperiencingthewarmthinin;materela;onships,andtheemo;onalandbodilyreac;ontotheother

•  Ingroups,thetherapistsupportstheharmoniousself-regula;onthatcomesaboutwhenonelivesahorizontal(equal)contextinwhichitispossibletobreatheandgivemutualsupport.



a)Theconceptofaggression(andconflict)today

•  Tobuildthesenseofselfinthetherapist/clientcontact-making

•  (morethansuppor;ngindividualpower)



•  Thefeelingofaggressiveness,theposi;vestrengthofsurvivalthatF.Perls(1942)indicatedaswhatsocietyneededtorecognizeinordertosup-portthecrea;vepowerofeveryindividual,hastoberethoughttodayforthelackofgroundintheexperienceofcontact.



Theconceptofaggression

•  Aggressionwaslinkedtothefulfilmentoftheselfandindependencefromauthoritarianfigures.

•  Todayaggressionisexperiencedwithoutconflict,withoutrela;onalinten;onality.



Example of a borderline client

•  (client, to the therapist) “I will never trust you any more, cause you didn’t answer to me when I called you last night, I felt really bad.”

•  (The therapist) “I appreciate your dignity in saying that.”



b)Workatthecontactboundary

•  Tofocusonthedancebetweentherapistandclient(morethanonwhattheclientdoes)

•  Tostayintheplayaspartofthetherapeu;csitua;on(IhadaliZledream..)

•  Theaesthe;crela;onalknowledge(whatwefeelasaresonanceoftheclient’sexperience)

•  Toseethebeautyintheclientssuffering:theundevelopedinten;onalityofcontact



c)Toworkontheground

•  Thefragmented,trauma;zed,disensi;zedexperienceofourclientstodaycallsforacareoftheground,wherepossibili;esofdevelopmentare

•  Insteadof:“whatdoyoufeelwhenyoulookatyourfatheronthechair?”,“whatdoyoufeelwhenyoulookatmenowwhileyouarespeakingofyourfather?”



To support the ground is very important today

•  What we need in our liquid society is to re-own the sure ground, to feel our body and what we feel when our feet are on the ground, to stay with the experience of our senses, not to stand as a figure in front of another figure (child against father, student against teacher, etc.), but to feel that we can rely on the ground where we stand.



Theaesthe;crela;onalknowledge

•  Theexperiencethatwelookforwardinourclientsis:“DoyoutrustthatIcansupportyou?ThatIcanstandyourpain?ThatIcanseeyourtrialstosolvethesitua;on?”

•  Andwecandothiswithtwotools:

•  TheaZunement(mirrorneurons)

•  Theresonance(tobepartofthephenomenologicalfield)



Anexperiment



ganz diversity/diﬀerence/dialogue canberra, university ...€¦ · a post modern world october...

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