Other Mechanisms

Even though resistance is the most usual word, these mechanisms for contact-which may be sane or pathologic according to the intensity with which they are manifested-generally receive different names according to the approach of Gestaltists.

NEUROTIC DISORDERS (Perls)
DEFENSES OF THE EGO (Jacques)
LOSSES OF THE EGO'S FUNCTION (Goodman)
DISORDERS OF THE SELF (Latner)
NEUROTIC MECHANISMS OF A VOIDANCE (Petit)

To the four main mechanisms, some Gestalt authors add others. example:

It is characterised by behaviours of avoidance, of deviation. The person does not involve or commit himself in anything and manipulates to avoid the exterior world. It is a category of Erwin and Miriam Polster.

Proflection This conduct, described by Sylvia Crocker, combines projection with retroflection. It is about doing to another what we would like them to do to us.

Egotism. Paul Goodman ascribed the label "egotism" to the mechanism by which an individual excessively develops a known ego (nationality, religion, profession, etc.) that risks annulling the rest.

Narcissism and hypertrophy of the ego relate to egotism. During a therapeutic process, there will be periods in which the patient manifests these attitudes, derived from the fact that he has begun to take care of himself.

There are therapists that, in Gestalt, consider egotism as a therapeutic tool for a time. That conduct, in a process of awareness, is gradually transformed formed into a transit-according to Jean Marie Robine "from egology to ecology".

It is important to note that in Gestalt therapy resistance is not meant to be beaten or "traversed".

What the therapist does is point it out, so that the patient becomes aware of it. this acquisition of awareness allows adapting the mechanisms to the present situation (here and now). In Gestalt it is not forgotten that, under certain circumstances, "resistance" may operate as a necessary and healthy mechanism of accommodation. What transforms it into a prefixed neurotic mechanism is its appearance at inappropriate times and situations and its manifestation as the sole and rigid response in the cycle of contact and retreat.

All the organisms require an environment to exchange essential substances. We need the physical environment to exchange air, food, etc...We need the social environment to exchange friendship, love, anger...We always have to consider the part of the world in which we as part of us". - Perls

Neurosis, psychosis and health Gestalt considers a healthy state to be one in which an organism (in this case, the person) has an internal equilibrium with the context he is in.

This equilibrium is the Homeostasis. The context, both physical and social, results in transformation. The equilibrium is transformed accordingly. The homeostatic process, says Perls, is one in which the organism maintains its balance, and therefore its health in conditions that may vary. Finally, homeostasis is the process through which the organism satisfies its needs.

So we arrive at the definition of health. It is an equilibrium, the co-ordination of what we are, I say we are and not we have. With we have we introduce a division: we say that we have an organism , we have a body. As if there were an I who possessed that body, that organism. This is not so. We are a body, we are somebody. The question is rather to be than to have. Now then, the environment also forms part of what we are. Wherever we go we take a kind of world along with us".

In normal conditions the organism registers a necessity (thirst, hunger, love, rage, light, company, etc., etc.) and moves into the environment to satisfy it. He comes into contact with the environment, satisfies the necessity and retreats. This is known as Cycle of organic self-regulation, Cycle of experience, Cycle of contact-retreat or Cycle of Gestalt (a Gestalt is completed).

Neurosis appears when the "it" perceives a necessity but the "I" does not give it an appropriate answer. Gestalt says that: that answer is not updated: it is obsolete or anachronistic, responds to behaviours picked up at another time and place in life. The accumulation of these behaviours (of which resistance is an example) gives place to the neurotic disorder. The creative adjustment of the behaviour in consonance to the necessities is lost.

Psychosis is produced when the perception (capturing the world and external stimulus) and the properception (capturing the world and the internal needs) are so disordered that there is no longer any adjustment the subject and the environment. It is "out of reality".

According to the Gestaltists, the self of an individual is integrated in three ways: a) I b) IT and c) PERSONALITY

It: includes the vital needs such as breathing, walking, sleeping, etc. that is to say the automatic acts by which vital needs are satisfied. It: is the active working by which contact with the medium is established, limiting or amplifying it according to one's own responsibility. It manifests starting from the acquisition of awares of needs and desires. Personality is the representation that the subject makes of himself, the image that allows him to recognise himself as responsible for what he feels or does, it integrates the previous livings and experiences and gives the feeling of identity.

How Gestalt Therapy works.

In orthodox therapies the neurosis relates to a trauma that the individual "had' in the past. The objective of the treatment is to solve "that" problem. The whole approach aims at trying to capture that point in the past.

Instead, in the Gestalt Approach, the neurotic has a problem continuing here and now, in the present. The therapeutic objective is to get the patient into awareness about his avoidance mechanisms - that disturb his contact with the environment and the resolution of his necessities-in order to solve his current problem, as well as others that could arise in the future. It matters less if this problem exists "because" something happened in the past, than to notice how the person causes his own difficulties today.

Gestalt Therapy tries to give the patient the means so that he can solve his difficulties here and now. The fundamental tool for that is SELF-SUPPORT. This is strengthened to the extent that the individual becomes aware at all times of his verbal, physical and fantasised actions Each resolved difficulty facilitates the solution of the next and increases self-support;.

For these reasons Gestalt is considered a Here and Now Therapy. It is also Therapy of Contact. The patient is asked to pay attention to what he is doing at this moment, in the session, to be in contact with his gestures, his feelings, his sensations, the tone of his voice and his most urgent thoughts as well.

While he remains in the past, the patient acts and thinks as if he were still "there and then", in those situations and with those characters determining his attitudes and guiding his life. He can talk about that, but the report is not enough to recuperate the living.

The Gestalt therapist invites him to abandon the mere report and transform his thought about the past into actions, into life experiences that may allow him to go through the past once more until he finds out the feelings and actions that were left interrupted. Gestalt does not believe in repressed desires or impulses, but in acts that were left interrupted.

All the steps and techniques of Gestalt Therapy are aimed, it is emphasised, at producing awareness. Gestaltists believe that only when individual becomes aware of what he does, of what happens to him, of how he does it or not, is he able to realise what he IS and how he is.

This marks an important moment of the therapeutic process. Once he shifts to awareness of how he is, the person can accept himself. Acceptance is an essential concept of Gestalt Therapy. Each organism is what it is...

Acceptance as it is understood from the Gestalt approach is not resignation; observing permits the establishment of contact and proves cognition. Accepting that something or someone is what he is the only way of initiating change. And acceptance is, therapeutically, the first step in the consolidation of self-support.

SELF-SUPPORT is the process by which the patient finds his own resources and solutions starting from acquiring awareness of his behaviour mechanisms and the development of his potentials.

This is an essential aspect of Gestalt Therapy. Usually the person who looks for a therapist wants to "change". Therapists who accept this generally establish what Perls called the dichotomy "of the oppressor and the oppressed".

The Gestalt therapist supposes that in the patient two parts are in conflict and the demand to change is the voice of one of these parts.

By Gestalt Therapy techniques and methods-and trying not to get involved in the dispute--the therapist hopes that, through this process, the patient becomes conscious of these aspects in conflict, that he fully experiments with what provokes him, that he identify himself with both parts and integrate them. This acceptance and integration in themselves signify a change.

"Change comes about when you become what you are, not when you try to become what you are not." Arnold R. Beisser ("The paradoxical theory of change")

As the acquisition of awareness and the integration of its parts takes place, the individual leaves the cycle of interrupted actions or unfinished Gestalts that constitute his experience, and begins to discover his possibilities and expand his frontiers. He starts to make good contact with the world, based on his internal supports. He goes from...EXTERNAL SUPPORT...TO SELF-SUPPORT

This is an essential objective of Gestalt therapy: the transition from external support to self-support. This would be, in short, the person's maturity. Thus, by SELF-SUPPORT is understood the capacity that the individual has to take charge of himself, to satisfy his own needs, to move into the awareness that he is what he is in his here and now and finally, to close his own interrupted Gestalts.

The role of the therapist in this process with patient is to accompany. It is important for him to understand prior to rationalisation, to accept and not to feel obliged to act. Also to be in contact, that is to say attentive to what goes on with the patient, with himself (in his mind-body-spirit), in the environment and in the relation between both of them.

The therapist is present and active, but not directive (he does not give instructions or "recipes"). As he encourages the patient to always to talk in the first person, he himself remains attentive to his own sensations ,feelings and thoughts and can even-deliberately-share some of them. Abraham Levitzky, direct disciple of Freud's, pointed out that, in a certain way, Gestalt is also a "therapy centred in the therapist".

You can say that the relationship between the therapist and patient is established, in Gestalt, on three levels:

THE THERAPIST IN EMPATHY WITH THE PATIENT ("in him').
THE THERAPIST IN CONGRUENCE WITH HIMSELF ("in me").
BOTH IN EMPATHY WITHIN AN I/YOU RELATIONSHIP ("between us").

Gestalt Therapy also seeks to prevent the patient from transfering characteristics of his own onto the therapist or from seeing him as a character from his "cast"...

In the same way, it tries to avoid the "positive" identifications (over- protective mother, "good breast", etc.) that lead to a patient's adhesion to the therapist for an unlimited time.

Sonia Nevis of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, designed a questionaire with 12 questions for the therapists in the making. The responses to the questionaire give rise to the following synopsis:

General characteristics of the Gestalt Therapist.

Ability to say things in a precise brief, clear and direct way.

Ability to determine the "here and now' and to remain in the present.

Sensor sensitivity and corporal work.

Contact with own emotions and ability to employ the acquisition of awareness directly and openly with others.

Capacity to discriminate between the phenomenological (observed) data and the interpretation.

Awareness of his own intentions (what he wants to say or do) and the ability to clearly make others see what he wants from them.

To focus on the continuum of the process, to follow the path of experience, to trust that something important will develop and come to its close.

Capacity to be firm and gentle in the same session.

Ability to accept and face emotional situations himself and with others.

Ability to show himself in an attractive manner without imposing a charismatic presence.

Awareness of the transcendental and creative points of his work.