GOOD TONE RULES IN GESTALT THERAPY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

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

Collection: Gestalt 2001 Recently, while studying and working in Gestalt, I began to get tired quickly. Accordingly, the hypothesis arose that I do not adhere to any Gestalt therapeutic rules or, on the contrary, follow them too strictly. But which ones?

I began to look for these rules in the literature and constantly came across a "double bind".

Gestalt therapy is "inexpressible", it is more intuition than theory, attitudes and rules are incompatible, perspective is important, not technique. The peak of my bewilderment was K. Naranjo's definition of gestalt therapy - as atheoretical empiricism. It reminded me of a Zen saying: "He who knows does not speak, the speaker does not know." Then what is it all about?

This paradox is connected with the fact that, with the light hand of F. Perls, in gestalt therapy, for a long time, a "taboo" was imposed on conceptualization, philosophizing and theorizing, as on "elephant and dog shit". Let us recall the famous call: "Lose your mind and surrender to your feelings." This taboo, as always in life, has led to the formation of one of the important "holes".

In modern gestalt therapy, this is the concentration on the therapeutic process of the cycle-contact between the patient and the psychotherapist, to the detriment of the designation of the conditions and possibilities for the occurrence of this process. And these are the rules of gestalt therapy, peacefully "lying under the cloth." To make things easier for myself, I have chosen psychodynamic psychotherapy as an alternative model, namely the well-described four psychoanalytic rules.

Psychoanalysis - the rule of free association

The fundamental rule of psychoanalysis is the rule of free association. The technique of free association is regarded by many psychoanalysts as the most important achievement of psychoanalysis.

Let me give the floor to 3. Freud: "… the patient must observe the fundamental rule of psychoanalytic technique. This should be communicated to him first. There is one thing before you begin. What you tell me should be different in one respect from ordinary conversation. How as a rule, you try to put a connecting thread through all your reasoning and exclude side thoughts, secondary topics that you may have, so as not to stray too far from the essence. However, now you have to act differently. " And further. "You will be tempted to tell yourself that this or that is irrelevant, or completely unimportant, or meaningless and therefore there is no need to talk about it. You should never succumb to this critical attitude, on the contrary, in spite of it. You must say it precisely because you feel disgust for it. …. So, say whatever does not occur to you. " Freud goes on to use the metaphor of a traveler sitting in a train carriage and talking about everything he sees in the window.

Associations are viewed by psychoanalysis as indicators of the patient's unconsciousness, available for the analyst to interpret. Essentially, Freud is calling for the removal of the superego's control. This is similar to what happens in a dream or a trance, and it is known that dreams were considered by Freud to be the "royal road" to the unconscious, and then: "… when conscious target ideas are discarded, then latent target ideas take control of the current ideas", which ultimately and only allows you to work with the client's unconscious. " In world culture, one can observe many similar examples: "carnivals" in European culture, "Sufi dances" among Muslims, "joint prayers and chants" among Christians, "vipassana" among Buddhists.

Currently, in modern analysis, there are disputes not so much about the rule itself, but about its exact formulation and the degree of rigor in its observance. I will give several modern interpretations.

Stern says the analyst's office is like a submarine's cockpit and asks the patient to look through the periscope. Schafer writes about the following: "I expect you to tell me about yourself on every visit. As you go along, you will notice that you are refraining from saying certain things." And he continues: “Compared to the question“What comes to mind?”Conceptually and technically, the question“What do you think about this? or "What do you associate with this now?"

"With the discovery of free association, treatment by talking was born as a reflection of the spontaneity of the individual and freedom of opinion," write Tome and Kehele.

Associations are the material to which the analyst adds something with his interpretations, on the one hand, supporting a dialogue, and not a monologue, and on the other hand, as Freud wrote: "To share with patients knowledge about one of his constructions." According to Spence, the criterion for success here is: "… that each of the participants contributes to the development of a language that is different from everyday speech."

Previously, it was believed that when the patient is able to freely associate, the goal of treatment is achieved. So it suggests that the criterion for the success of therapy is the client's schizophasia. But modern analysis believes that the client's great inner freedom can manifest itself in different ways. For example, in silence or in action, even in a partial refusal to tell everything (reservatio mentalis). But if at the initial stage of therapy under this reluctance lies the fear of condemnation, then closer to completion, this is an expression of the normal for a healthy person need for self-determination, independence, healthy individualization.

Gestalt therapy - the rule of concentration on the presen

Despite the fact that Gestalt therapy is essentially freedom-loving, nevertheless, to the psychoanalytic instruction to the patient, as for example according to Altman: "You are given the right to say whatever you want here," the Gestalt therapist would add certain restrictions. “I would like you to talk mainly about what is happening to you here and now, what you think, how you feel in a conversation with me,” - with this instruction I begin my first meeting. Thus, I narrow the client's living space, concentrating his attention on the present.

The manifesto of the gestalt therapist in the understanding of K. Naranho sounds as follows: “For the gestalt therapist there is no other reality, except this one, momentary, here and now. Acceptance of who we are here and now gives responsibility for our true being. - this is going into illusion . Just as the rule of free associations is the starting point of the psychoanalyst's interpretation of the client's unconscious material, the rule of concentration on the present is the only possible condition (procedure) of work on the border of contact.

At the same time, at its worst, the rule of free association can lead to forced confession and the desire to receive punishment, just as direct adherence to the rule of concentration on the present can be just a way of avoiding the pain of loss or fear of gain. Levenstein reports a patient who said, "I was going to associate freely, but I'd rather tell you what I really think."

The rule "here and now" is nothing more than the unity of a prescription and a condition that facilitates the patient in the direct expression of his feelings, thoughts, experiences, which alone leads to awareness as the goal of therapy. In this case, the therapist acts both as a creator of conditions and as a figure to which the patient is responsible. For the Gestalt therapist, the content of memories or fantasies does not really matter. Rather, he is interested in what makes the patient choose the past or the future, how this relates to the present content of experiences, what choice the patient avoids, ignoring the "It" function. After all, the free exercise of choice is possible only in the present. Thus, for the Gestalt therapist, the diagnostic symptom will be avoidance of the present, for the psychoanalyst, the failure of free associations.

This rule is supported by three techniques. In the first case, it will be a simple reminder to the patient about the need to express their feelings and thoughts that arise in the field of consciousness. In a more direct form, it is an exercise on the “continuum of awareness”. In the second, according to K. Naranjo, this is a "presentation" of the past or the future as taking place "here and now". Thus, work with dreams in gestalt therapy is also built. Finally, we can draw the patient's attention to the meaning of his story by focusing on transferences as obstacles to the creation of human "I-Thou" relationships.

From the point of view of modern psychoanalysis, being for a client in a "here and now" relationship with a psychotherapist is nothing more than a powerful catalyst for the formation of transference neurosis. The Gestalt therapist, working on the border of contact, uses the emerging transference neurosis for the patient to assimilate his actual need, projected onto the psychotherapist. At the same time, it is also a great opportunity for the therapist's personal growth. Each relationship is a mixture of a real relationship and a transfer phenomenon, since the transfer is based on real characteristics.

It should be noted that F. Perls, with natural enthusiasm for him, spoke about the rule "here and now", not only as a psychotherapeutic condition, but also as a principle of life, allowing one to avoid speculative interpretations of what happened and toxic fears and concerns about the future. This found expression in the metaphor of F. Perls about the shuttle, constantly scurrying back and forth, and depriving us of the opportunity to live our lives. Indeed, in a number of Eastern teachings, the main condition for awakening is the student's ability to remain in the present, to surrender to the stream of actual experiences, to be in constant contact with the only reality of our life - the present. Chan mentor Linzqi Huizhao from Zhenzhui, addressing the congregation, said: "Students of the Way! Dharma (truth, law) does not need special practice (moral and psychological development). ordinary clothes and eat your usual food, and when you get tired - go to bed. A fool will laugh at me, but a clever one will understand!"

But there is another reality - this is the reality of our memories, fantasies, ideas. From the point of view of my inner world, the second hand on the clock opposite and my calmness are no less important to me than my joy or sadness at the meeting with the supervisor. After all, even once you cannot enter the same river. The present is the ever-returning past.

What can blindly follow this rule lead to? What the client presents to the border of contact, outside of relation to the relevance of what is happening in the office, can be regarded by the psychotherapist as having no therapeutic value and be ignored. That is, part of the client's personal experience remains outside the therapy. We deprive the client of the "wild" adherence to this rightness of the opportunity to respond to their experiences and pain. My experience suggests that until there is a response, working with content is not only not useful, but even harmful and very often causes bewilderment and sometimes even aggression in the patient. Example

I remember how an elderly village woman sat at my reception and, looking into the distance, talked about the death of her husband. In the spirit of gestalt therapy, I asked: "Why do you need me?" She resentfully replied: "I just want to tell you." I've got ashamed. Sometimes it's not a bad thing to let the client just tell and just listen to yourself. R. Reznik defines this "simplicity" as a phenomenological approach that manifests itself in "true interest and great respect for the experience of the individual" and refers it to the decisive process in gestalt therapy.

Psychoanalysis - the rule of neutrality

Using the vocabulary of Laplanche and Pontalis, one can learn that the rule of abstinence or neutrality reads as follows: "It is the rule that analytic treatment should be organized in such a way as to ensure that the patient finds as little substitute gratification for his symptoms as possible."

How can you deprive a client of substitute gratification for symptoms? Classical psychoanalysis recommends the psychoanalyst to be neutral in communication with the client. To take, figuratively speaking, "zero social position".

Modern psychoanalysis considers the call for neutrality in the following aspects:

1. When working, you should not look for advantages for yourself

2. To avoid therapeutic ambitions, one should abandon hypnotic techniques.

3. When solving problems of goals, you should not be guided by your own values.

4. In countertransference, the analyst must abandon any hidden gratification of his own instinctual desires.

What is the history of this rule that permeates modern psychotherapy in the formulation of "non-judgmental listening"? Freud came to the rule of abstinence after working with women suffering from hysteria. He faced their desires for a specific love relationship. And here he deliberately took a contradictory position. On the one hand, Freud did not allow himself to rudely deny the woman's claims, naturally if the situation did not go beyond the social framework, on the other hand, and did not follow her desires. This position created, as Freud wrote, "… forces that make it work and bring about change. But we must beware of indulging them with substitutes." Later, namely in 1916, Freud wrote: "The information that is needed for analysis will be given provided that he (the patient) has a special emotional attachment to the doctor; otherwise he will shut up as soon as he notices at least one evidence of indifference." …

How can we combine Freud's repeated rules of neutrality, anonymity of the psychoanalyst and the call for emotional involvement? I think that this reconciliation is theoretically impossible, but practically inevitable. What is the reason for this internal contradiction?

Psychoanalysis was a scientific project aimed at minimizing the experimenter's contribution to a scientific experiment and requiring the analyst to be isolated from the client. This implies the rule of the couch, the absence of non-verbal contact, non-judgmentalism, the prohibition on the emotional response of the psychotherapist, that is, everything that is called neutrality. However, the patient is not Pavlov's dog, but the psychoanalyst is not a fistula and a graduated beaker, which requires a live human participation from the therapist, and this forms attachment in the client and affects the course of the associative process, which was tragic for Freud as a scientist

Modern psychoanalysis recognizes that the rule of neutrality has had an unfavorable development on psychoanalytic technique. It deprived the analyst of sincerity, honesty, and in the end, humanity. Perhaps this rule served as a triggering factor in the development of a humanistic direction in psychotherapy with a special emphasis on equality and dialogue. In 1981, no APA member spoke out in favor of strict analytical neutrality. Analysts now believe that it is permissible to meet the patient's needs to a greater or lesser extent, which contributes to the creation of a therapeutic alliance. It could be approval or reward. It is important that these actions are not mistaken by the client as a sexual symbol.

Gestalt therapy - the rule of presence

While doing a small study on the success factors of psychotherapy, I followed up with several patients asking the question, "What has been the most positive influence on you in the psychotherapy process?" These factors turned out to be the following (literally): non-intervention of the therapist, broadening of the view, faith in the therapist, sincere desire of the therapist to help, ability to listen, attentiveness, sincere interest, re-awareness, feeling, reconciliation with reality, lack of fear in the therapist, trust, self-disclosure. To the question to a group of psychologists: "Who is it like?" - the group replied: "To God." What to do in session with everything "devilish" in us?

The correctness of neutrality in psychoanalysis, which allows the therapist to avoid the "divine and the devil", is opposed by the rule of presence in Gestalt therapy. This is the most significant difference between psychoanalysis and gestalt therapy. The rule of presence is formulated by me as follows: "I allow myself in contact with the client to be not only a psychotherapist, but also a person who has the right to both love and hate." Of course, I do not try to open all my feelings, thoughts and experiences that arise in the office to the client, but I have the right to open the door to my world for him, let him in and see what he will do there.

Example

After a year of working with a patient, I heard for the hundredth time: "Doctor, I feel bad again." My patience came to an end, I lowered my head and thought deeply, after which the patient asked: "What's wrong with you?" - I replied: "I'm sad." And how great was my surprise when I saw a satisfied, even joyful smile on her face and heard the following words: "Do not be upset doctor, everything will be fine." I think this is a stereotypical behavior that she uses throughout her life to gain attention and support, manipulating symptoms, causing bitterness and pain in others. But this interpretation did not relieve me of real sadness, but allowed us to analyze how the patient builds contact, seeking support, and in return receives loneliness.

An important feature of the correctness of presence is not the psychotherapist's ignorance and suppression of his characterological characteristics and relationships, but awareness and use of them on the border of contact. The Gestalt therapist presents his human reactions to the patient as a necessary part of the real world. This allows the patient to see himself through the therapist's world, which is referred to in Gestalt therapy as “integrated feedback”. If the therapist neglects this, he will create distance and deprive himself of the possibility of development and change.

I will give some examples of interventions based on my own feelings. These remarks from the words of the patients were the most memorable in the sessions.

"I don't feel like a man next to you." "I feel helpless and don't know what to say now." "I am angry with you, because I told you a compliment, and you turned away from me and began to say something insignificant." "Now I feel proud and strong, because you are so weak and inexperienced." "I am also afraid".

I understand that these phrases may turn out to be just countertransference, that is, they do not correspond to actual relationships or repeat my past (Greenson R. 1967). Maybe not. This is the whole paradox of "responsibility and spontaneity" of psychotherapeutic interaction in gestalt. If we follow the well-known truth that it is not the method that heals, but the personality of the psychotherapist, then it is Gestalt therapy that allows and even prescribes the therapist, using the rule of presence, to present not only his knowledge and skills, but also himself as a person on the border of contact. And then really gestalt therapy can become gestalt life.

By the way, studying the self-reports of Freud's patients, biographers discovered that he allowed himself to lend money to patients, fed them, and worked on credit. This allowed modern psychoanalysts to claim that Freud was not actually a Freudian. Who do you think he was? Surely …

Psychoanalysis - the rule of the counter question

Throughout the development of psychotherapy, psychotherapists were divided into two camps, the names of which are: hypnologists and psychoanalysts, directive and non-directive, behavioral and humanist-oriented, frustrating and supportive; which can be metaphorically defined as advisers and silent.

This story began in 1918, and maybe much earlier. The rule "never to answer the patient's questions" was formulated by Ferenczi.

“I made it a rule, whenever the patient asked me a question or did not ask me for any information, to answer with a counter-question: what prompted him to this question? With the help of this method, the patient's interest is directed to the source of his curiosity, and when his questions are examined analytically, he almost always forgets to repeat his initial questions, thereby showing that they were actually unimportant and their significance was that they were a means of expression. unconscious.

Thus, Ferenczi believed that counter-questions allow him to quickly get to the unconscious determinants, to the latent meaning contained in the question. The typical stereotypical response of a psychoanalyst to a patient's question, based on Ferenczi's rule, is: "What makes you ask this question?" It is interesting that in life, when we begin to behave in this way, it can lead to disastrous consequences. So what is behind this rule? Psychoanalysts believe:

1. The answer to the question represents an unacceptable gratification of the patient's instincts that interferes with the analytic process. It is assumed that if the analyst answers, there is a danger that the patient will continue to ask questions and eventually the questions will turn into resistance, which was provoked by the analyst himself.

Example.

I remember the case with Dasha. Each time to her question: "What am I sick with?" - I talked in detail about the pathogenesis, etiology and clinic of neuroses. As a result, at a certain stage, each session began with the statement: "Doctor, I feel bad, help me, I do not believe that you said that I can change something myself - this is a disease that flows by itself" - and I again, for the umpteenth time, he began to talk about neuroses. And this game, until I understood it, lasted six months. The result was my explosion: "Okay, take further medications and this will finish psychotherapy" - and only after that there was little progress. This is where my "honest" answers to "honest" client questions have led.

2. If the therapist answers questions concerning his personal life, then this destroys the analyst's therapeutic incognito or reveals his countertransference, disrupting the development of the transference. Sometimes this is true, but this phrase could be continued differently: "… but it can lead to the formation of human relations."

Now let's try to look at this problem from the client's perspective. I come to a person for help, I feel bad and I ask: "What should I do, am I completely confused?" And in response: "How do I know, because you know yourself better than I do," go for a softer version: "Let's think together." One can imagine what a person feels when he has lost his last home. After all, the patient does not know about the "agreement" that exists among the psychotherapeutic community: "Do not give advice, do not answer questions." He thinks in normal everyday categories, where answering a question with a question is a sign of bad form.

X. Kohut put it this way: “To be silent when asked is to be rude, not neutral. It goes without saying that - in special clinical circumstances and after appropriate explanations - there are times during analysis when the analyst will not try respond to pseudo-realistic queries, but instead insist on investigating their transference meaning."

Blanton recalled during his own analysis with Freud that he often asked him about his scientific views. According to Blanton, Freud answers his questions directly, without any interpretation. Obviously, this was not a problem for him.

To conclude this section, I will give an anecdote to show that candidates are particularly strict about this rule. Shortly before the end of his first interview, the candidate tells his first analysand: "If you still have questions, ask them now. From the next session onwards, I will be bound by the principle of abstinence and will no longer be able to answer your questions."

Gestalt therapy - the rule of dialogue

One of the main tasks of gestalt therapy f. Perls is considered "an attempt to transform the therapist from a figure in power to a human being." If we follow the psychoanalytic rule of the counter-question in our work, we create a double standard: the psychotherapist has the right to frustrate the client's questions, but at the same time requires answers to his own.

F. Perls wrote: “It is not easy to understand this discrepancy, but if the therapist resolved the paradox of work simultaneously with support and frustration, his methods of work will find appropriate embodiment. Of course, not only the therapist has the right to ask questions. His questions can be clever and supportive of therapy. They can be annoying and repetitive … We want to clarify the structure of the patient's question, his reason. In this process, we want to get as far as possible to his self. So our technique is to encourage patients to turn questions into assumptions or statements."

Modern gestalt therapy, supporting the call of F. Perls, calls on the therapist to be authentic and completely immerse himself in a close conversation with the client. To answer or not to answer the client's questions, proceeding not from the prescriptions of a particular theory, but from a real therapeutic situation. The main task will be to maintain a dialogue as an opportunity to realize the magic of the meeting of two phenomenologies. And there are no recipes here. Each time the Gestalt therapist is forced to make a decision about the need for support in the form of an answer to a client's question or confrontation in the form of a congress question.

Today, in Gestalt therapy, points of view about the degree of openness of the therapist's phenomenology differ significantly. Thus, R. Reznik believes that if a theory allows the therapist to reveal a small part of his experience, this is not a dialogue. Such therapy cannot be combined with gestalt. S. Ginger, speaking about the attitude of "sympathy", recommends communicating and showing the client what the psychotherapist feels only from the point of view of promoting therapy. For me, the second position is closer. The only exception to this is working with patients with psychotic disorders. The main task is to maintain contact, I'm not afraid of this word, at any cost, because it is often a matter of life and death.

K. Naranjo takes a position close to psychoanalytic: a question is a form of manipulation that does not express the experience of the questioner. Questions divert the content of the therapeutic interaction from the content. He even advises to apply the rule of refusal to questions (especially why questions). However, the true dialogue is in the existential "I-Thou" Buber's sense, and according to R. Reznik it is the basic basis of Gestalt therapy.is not possible without questions, which often hide feelings. Where is the exit?

The technique is to reformulate the question into a statement. For example: "What are you thinking about? It worries me how you feel about me, and I would like to know about it." The second possibility is regardless of whether the therapist answers or not, to convey his attitude to the question: "You are asking, but I will not answer" or: "Your question touched me for a quick, and I am afraid to answer it." The most important thing for a Gestalt therapist is to be free. Each time it is decided to answer or not to answer, based on the context of the dialogue.

I would like to share with a number of my observations. If I work on the border of contact, then it is more preferable to answer the client's questions. Often in this situation, the questions are confrontational and, as it were, test my ability to be sincere and honest. Here the patient modulates a gestalt experiment for the psychotherapist. For me, it is important to move on to its analysis in time. What happened to the client after I answered? You can often hear: "You are the same as everyone else." Or exactly the opposite. This is a great opportunity for the client to become aware of the peculiarities of building contact in real life.

In this case, the psychotherapist also acts as a modeling figure, showing by his own example the ability to be frank, feeling, responsible, and sometimes to resist explicit rudeness, and at the same time as an indicator of transference relations that prevent an existential encounter. When working with internal phenomena (unfinished actions), it is more expedient to use the technique of counter-questioning. At the same time, not forgetting about the excellent opportunity to demonstrate to the client how his unfinished business forms actual experiences, assessments and resistance in the form of questions. Here, of course, there is no place for Freud's "why", but Perlsian "what and how?" Comes into force. My options look like this:

1. What makes you ask about this right now?

2. How does your question relate to what we said before?

3. What worries you?

4. How does your question relate to me?

Thus, in Gestalt therapy, maintaining a dialogue is a way of building an equal relationship. And unlike psychoanalysis, where the psychoanalyst at work acts as a "father figure" endowed with power and responsibility, the gestalt therapist, maintaining a dialogue, shares responsibility between himself and the patient, simulating a situation similar to real life.

In conclusion, I would like to note that one of the tests of Gestalt therapy is that the therapist in the dialogue acts both as a professional and as a "naked human being" (Naranjo K.. 1993) and each time you have to decide whether to answer or be silent, and the result is unpredictable.

Psychoanalysis - the rule of evenly distributed attention

"Just as the telephone receiver converts the electrical vibrations of the telephone network back into sound waves, so the unconscious of the doctor, from the derivatives of the unconscious transmitted to him, is able to reconstruct this unconscious, which determines the patient's free associations," Freud wrote in 1912.

This statement formed the basis of the evenly distributed attention rule. Later this model was also called "mirror theory" or "doctrine of perfect perception". This concept was based on the views of the associative psychology of that era, which argued that reality can be perceived directly and accurately.

Modern research proves that even a child does not perceive the world passively, but constructs it. Not to mention the perception of the psychotherapist with his life experience, inclination to reflection, theories that he adheres to in his work. So Habermas writes: "… that evenly distributed attention as passive listening without prejudice does not exist."And yet, although the modern psychological point of view can be presented as: "Without apperception, there is no perception," the principle of freely distributed attention remains valid.

Why?

1. The rule creates the conditions under which the patient understands and feels that he is being listened to and this is "charming". Who of us is not familiar with the pleasure when you are not just listened to, but heard.

2. The rule allows the analyst to be efficient and attentive for a long time (on average 7 hours a day). It is not at all necessary to strive to understand the client so that the tone becomes, in this case. "It (freely floating attention) saves from tension that cannot be sustained for many hours …" - W. Reich wrote, putting forward the concept of the "third ear". Freud will allow the analyst to plunge into a kind of trance by this rule, which, with a certain experience, is even pleasant. This is evidenced by the recommendations of the "psychoanalytic mystic" Bion, logically reduced to absurdity. He recommends that in order to achieve the state of consciousness necessary for the analysis, one must be deaf, avoid any memorization, the events of a certain session, rummage through the memory. He mutes any impulse to remember something that happened before or interpretations that he made before. Here we see a complete and final victory over countertransference, since Bion does not allow any thoughts, desires, or feelings to enter his thoughts.

3. This rule, when skillfully applied, avoids bias in interpretation. W. Reich wrote: “If we strain our attention to a certain extent, if we begin to choose among the data offered to us and especially grab onto some fragment, then, Freud warns us, we follow our own expectations and inclinations. that we will never find anything other than what we were ready to find."

Thus, the aspiration of orthodox psychoanalysis was to educate a psychoanalyst like a "tabula rasa" This is reflected in the fundamental Reich metaphor of the "third ear" and it is possible to continue the "third eye", which sees, hears and perceives everything with absolutely no bias. But this is absurd, then why such great minds …?

Freud, like every great reformer, was an idealist. He not only wanted, but also considered it possible to realize in psychoanalysis the age-old human need to get rid of illusions in the perception of the world. This is especially well seen in religious and mystical traditions. Let us recall at least the concept of maya - an illusion in ancient Indian philosophy.

In modern psychoanalysis, the presented rule is actively discussed. Since the beginning of the 50s, after Ferenczi's speech, the analyst is likened to Odysseus. He is constantly between the Scylla of demands "… a free play of associations and fantasies, full immersion in his own unconscious (analyst) …" and the Charybdis of necessity "… subject the material presented by him and the patient to a logical examination …". The principle of freely distributed attention, according to Spence, is a myth based on complete openness to the world - instead of restraint: the mystical expectation of fusion and unity between analyst and client, as in Freud's metaphor of the telephone.

Gestalt therapy - the rule of curiosity

While trying to find comments in the gestalt literature about the therapist's mindfulness in session, I came across typical psychoanalytic advice. Let your self wander freely, avoid preliminary assessments and interpretations, follow phenomenology, do not try to view the client's world through the prism of your theoretical lenses and beliefs. All this was absolutely correct, but I was embarrassed by the lack of living human participation. For a long time I could not find a word outside the moral categories, and after discussion with colleagues, I decided that this is, perhaps, still a wonderful Russian word-curiosity. In my opinion, attention in Gestalt therapy is a consequence of my interest in what the patient says or does.

The only book available to me that describes the Gestalt understanding of therapeutic mindfulness is The Gestalt Therapy Workshop by F. Perls, P. Goodman, and R. Hefferlin. The authors share what is commonly called violent focus and truly healthy, organic focus.

On the rare occasions when it occurs, it is called attraction, interest, charm, or involvement.

The substance of healthy concentration is two factors - attention to an object or activity and anxiety about satisfying a need, interest, or desire through the object of attention.

An interesting question is what needs are met by the therapist, thereby maintaining interest in the patient?

If I "must" engage in psychotherapy, then it is good if I manage to turn voluntary concentration into spontaneous concentration and thus attract more and more strength. And if not? Then boredom arises, often irritation, a logical continuation - this is an explosion, but the "white coat" does not allow, and then what is described as psychotherapeutic "burnout" may occur.

My experience is that during therapy, if I called myself to be mindful of the patient, I was abusing myself. Quite often it turned into empty eyes instead of looking, into a struggle between "must" and "want" to sleep, eat, paint, get bored, dance, etc. The solution here was the development of the ability to remain for an indefinite time in a state of emptiness.

As long as the mind is at the level of relativity.

He cannot leave the palaces of darkness.

But if he loses himself in the Void, And he immediately ascends to the throne of enlightenment.

Emperor Wu Liang Dynasty

F. Perls referred to this as "creative indifference" when no decision is made in which direction to move, when there is no preference. This is the "point of preconception". My pause before the start of the action after a while led to the progressive formation of the figure in the background. This formation was accompanied by excitement, often with vegetative manifestations. Everything around him receded into the background, went into the background, curiosity really arose and a "good gestalt" became a "good session". The authors of the workshop describe this process as spontaneous concentration, "B. Reznik designates as inclusiveness." He recommends "admitting in oneself a feeling of awareness of the chaotic meaninglessness of the environment," to be more indulgent towards oneself, not to suppress distractions (background) too harshly, and not to torment oneself with obligation. And yet, spontaneous concentration as a result of curiosity requires a fairly large energy expenditure from the gestalt therapist. The rule of freely distributed attention explains the ability of psychoanalysts to receive 6-7 patients per day.

In addition, awareness, as a sufficient condition for the success of therapy, is also based on the patient's ability to concentrate. F. Perls considered awareness to be a vague double of attention. He wrote that the neurotic literally cannot concentrate, as he constantly tries to pay attention to more than one stimulus. He is unable to organize his behavior, since he has lost the ability to focus on sensations as signs of the body's actual needs. He cannot be involved in what he is doing to complete the gestalt and move on to a new one. At the heart of all these misunderstandings is the inability to surrender to the stream of experiences, to show your organic curiosity. Clinically, this is regarded as distracted attention or even slipping. atactic thinking in psychotic patients.

Indeed, in order to distinguish a figure from the background, one must at least have the ability to remain for some time in a state of attentive uncertainty. Hence the characteristic complaints of neurotic patients about the inability to concentrate, stand in lines, the desire to constantly move. Often, the task of the Gestalt therapist is to technically educate the patient in the ability to listen, see, smell, and touch. In theory, this is called the return of the "id" function. Perls wrote: "He (the patient) himself will know what his real actions, fantasies and playful actions mean, if only we draw his attention to them. He will provide himself with interpretations." No wonder the first name for Gestalt therapy was concentration therapy.

In general, the authors of the workshop recommend "to find a certain context and then, all the time adhering to it, allow the free play of the figure and the background, avoiding gazing at the resistance, but also not giving the patient the opportunity to wander anywhere".

Thus, violent attention forms a meager figure, freely distributed attention is the path to chaos, while the object of spontaneous concentration becomes more and more itself, it is detailed, structured, curious and alive. This leads me as a therapist to a full cycle of contact, as a goal of gestalt therapy.

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To somewhat dispel the seriousness of the above, let me imagine these rules as follows:

1. The client avoids the present, trying not to recognize the power of the intellect of the Gestalt therapist;

2. The Gestalt therapist avoids the present because he is initially freedom-loving;

3. Being in the present is painful for the Gestalt therapist with the inevitability of meeting with the client;

4. Being in the present is just as painful for the client as the inevitable fascination with Gestalt therapy is inevitable.