We Only Change When We Leave Contact With Others. There Is No Experience In Contact Itself

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Presence contact is very valuable for the reason that in it a person gains access to experience and is open to the free flow of new phenomena and impressions. However, assimilation does not occur in him. As I have already noted in an earlier work], analyzing the philosophical views of Martin Buber, a new experience is acquired by a person only when he leaves the presence of contact. Therefore, changes, including therapeutically significant ones, are provided by the shuttle "presence contact - exit from it."

Attempts to destroy one of the components of this pair block any possibility of changes in a person's life. So, for example, a person who strives to absolutize public contact for his life may be like a drug addict. He becomes dependent on a new dose of phenomena-impressions, which, just like the previous ones, will not lead to satisfaction due to the lack of place and time for its assimilation into self. Present contact, especially at the beginning of psychotherapy, is used in homeopathic doses. At least in order not to destroy him.

Having met new phenomena in the process of experiencing, a person needs some time outside the presence of contact in order to "digest" them. Otherwise, he risks remaining psychologically hungry. Only outside of presence do we get the opportunity to “get saturated” with new phenomena of the field. Only here they can be integrated into the situation and into new ways of organizing contact in it. I deliberately use the phrase "out of presence contact", and not, for example, "to be alone" or "in the distance or isolation." The assimilation of impressions does not necessarily imply loneliness. Moreover, other people can be very important in this process. You just need time outside of engaging with your whole essence in experience and contact. A space outside of presence is not necessarily a space without people. Although it may be. So, quite often, after a particularly stressful session in terms of experience, I invite clients to be alone for a while, for example, to walk home on foot. At the same time, it is not worth thinking about anything on purpose. Those. I am not suggesting that clients meditate on phenomena that have appeared in the process of in-person contact. Otherwise, I would have facilitated the understanding process, perhaps prematurely. And therefore, most likely would have blocked the assimilation process, and not supported it. I suggest just living out of contact. The experience itself initiates the assimilation process. The arrangement of the phenomenological field is wise.