Very often, clients who come to me for psychotherapy or are just looking for a suitable specialist on the Internet have questions: “What is Gestalt?”, “Who is a Gestalt therapist?” and “What is this Gestalt therapy?” Some clients try to translate this word, but this leads them even more into a dead end, as does trying to find the answer on the Internet. I want to dedicate this note to you, my clients... To those who have already taken their first steps in psychotherapy and to those who are just preparing and gathering strength and, of course, just interested... As many have already guessed, we will talk about Gestalt therapy. And in order not to waste the wonderful time that we spend together on explanations, I bring to your attention a text that quite clearly and clearly explains “who Gestalt is and what it is eaten with,” and for those who are very very interested, I think they will read it to the end))) With faith in you and in anticipation of my clients, Gestalt therapist Elena Buga...In 1970, a seventy-seven-year-old man was dying in a Chicago hospital. His body was entangled in sensor wires and rubber tubes, but one evening the dying man, cutting off connections with the life-prolonging equipment, tried to get up. The nurse watching him said excitedly: “You must lie down!” Then the disobedient patient looked into her eyes, said: “Don’t tell me what to do,” and died. This was Fritz Perls, known throughout the psychological and psychotherapeutic world, a man who for many years fervently professed psychoanalysis and broke with it after a five-minute meeting with Freud that disappointed him. A man who created a whole direction in psychotherapy (Gestalt therapy) based on just two words - “figure” and “ground”, a man who called his autobiography “Inside and outside the trash can”... The way he died was absolutely natural and a logical continuation of his life, and at the same time the most accurate embodiment of his life philosophy, based on the concept of responsibility. He turned out to be one of the few psychologists who clearly formulated his own understanding of mental health, which for him is associated with the concept of “maturity” - this is a person’s ability to get out of a difficult, dead-end situation, relying only on himself. A year before his death, in the preface to one of his books, he wrote: “I am what I am, and at this moment I cannot be anything other than what I am. That's what this book is about. I give you a Gestalt prayer, maybe it will guide you. The prayer of Gestalt therapy is: “I do my thing, and you do yours. I am not in this world to meet your expectations, and you are not in this world to meet mine. You are you and I am me. And if we happen to find each other, that’s wonderful. If not, it can’t be helped.” Background, figure and gestalt After the lyrical mood of the previous paragraphs, it may be very difficult to believe that Gestalt therapy took its beginning from the simplest - at first glance - results of an experimental study in which it was proven that a person is able to distinguish between two flashes of light only in if the time interval between them is at least sixty milliseconds. As a matter of fact, what was important was not the absolute value of this interval, but the fact itself, proven in the experiment, since several very far-reaching conclusions were drawn from it. It became clear that, firstly, parts and the whole are purely relative concepts. Secondly, analysis of the parts cannot lead to an understanding of the whole, since the whole is determined not by the sum of the parts, but by their interaction and interdependence. A separately taken part, accordingly, cannot give any idea of ​​the whole. And, thirdly, from all this, with undeniable logic, the conclusion followed that there is no separation of body and mind, external and internal, man and his environment. And from here to the basic conceptsGestalt therapy was just around the corner. In fact, the German word “gestalt” does not have an exact Russian equivalent, and in the roughest approximation can be translated precisely as “figure,” that is, a specific organization of parts into some kind of independent whole. The human consciousness cannot perceive all the details of the surrounding world with the same concentration of attention. The most important and significant events at the moment occupy a central place in the mind, forming that very figure (or gestalt), and all others recede into the background, becoming the background. If a person suffers from thirst, then a luxurious table laden with delicacies will turn out to be just a background for him for the most significant figure - a steamed glass of plain water. Accordingly, for the above-mentioned gestalt to be complete, all parts included in it must be realized and realized. If the person from our example does not have the opportunity to satisfy his thirst or for some reason he manages not to realize this need, then the gestalt remains incomplete and therefore cannot become the background and give up its dominant place to another need. It is clear that until a thirsty person gets drunk, veal in cranberry sauce and twelve-tiered kulebyaka will not become a figure for him. The magical power of awareness The example with food and drink, of course, is understandable to anyone. But how can we correlate these considerations with the subtlest and most elusive nuances of our emotional problems? It turns out it's exactly the same. Let’s say that in some situation the most powerful and comprehensive emotion for a person was rage, but he was unable or did not dare to express this rage adequately and appropriately. As a result, the need to express it remained unsatisfied, and the gestalt remained incomplete, and the feeling of rage that was not fully lived through will, taking on hidden and insidious forms, pursue the person who refused to recognize it. Persistent and prolonged non-recognition of some of your feelings, desires and relationships can ultimately lead to neurosis. The task of a gestalt therapist is precisely to help the client realize his unfinished gestalts (that is, unsatisfied needs, the awareness of which for one reason or another was blocked at different times), make them as defined as possible and ultimately find their completion. And it turns out that just for this, the client needs to learn to exist here and now, that is, to be aware of all the needs that exist at the moment and focus on them to realize them. Perls, who loved simple and sometimes even shocking formulations, said that the roots of neurosis lie in a person’s tendency to fantasize and be clever when one simply needs to realize the present. As a result, all this means that not a single Gestalt therapist sets himself the task of a painstaking and painful study of the past in search of hidden psychotraumas, like a psychoanalyst. Its purpose is different - to help a person focus on awareness of the present. However, it turns out that this is almost impossible to do if you do not study the so-called defense mechanisms of each individual person. The best defense is... In principle, the concept of defense mechanisms is considered by any psychotherapeutic direction, since a person’s whole life, in essence, consists of difficulties and attempts to protect himself from them. We protect ourselves from the cold by clothing, from enemies by sheltering in a fortress or carrying weapons, from bacteria and viruses by medicine, etc. Naturally, to protect ourselves from various kinds of psychological difficulties, there must be some very specific methods. We can, for example, deny or distort obvious facts if we don’t like them, or we can get sick in order to avoid the need to make some difficult decisions. In general, human sophistication in inventing all kinds of psychological defenses practically knows no bounds. Now, if this ingenuity - yes infor peaceful purposes... You can get used to difficulties, but you can also get used to defenses, that is, to defend yourself even when no one attacks you - say, even in the summer, wear a fur coat or go to bed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Strictly speaking, it is the mechanism of inadequate use of defenses that is the cause of almost all neurotic manifestations of a person. In accordance with Gestalt terminology, defenses that do not correspond to reality have nothing to do with either the internal zone of a person or his external zone - they belong to the middle zone, otherwise called the fantasy zone. This zone turns out to be a reliable buffer that protects a person from existing in a beautiful and risky present. It is chock-full of various unfinished gestalts - unreacted feelings, unrealized needs, unconscious relationships that play the role of a whole pack of dogs in the manger: they are not allowed into real life, and they themselves are not realized. And then the task of a Gestalt therapist can be formulated as accompanying a person from the zone of his fantasies to the zone of “here and now” - that is, to the land of living reality. Along the way, the client and therapist, of course, have to encounter serious obstacles in the form of those very defenses, and the level of professionalism of the therapist is to a large extent determined by his ability to recognize them in person. Gestaltists identify four main types of these monsters. The first of them is called the fusion reaction and indicates that a person using this defense mechanism generally poorly understands where the border between him and the outside world lies, and therefore has difficulty distinguishing his thoughts and feelings from those of others. In life, such a person is capable of painfully and painfully experiencing events that have nothing to do with him, but at the same time he avoids real intimacy even with what he really needs. The second defense mechanism is called retroflection and is characteristic of people who, in critical situations, tend to limit themselves to fighting with themselves instead of fighting to satisfy their own needs. The most typical way of self-realization of such a person can be described as the desire to do for others what he would like to receive for himself. The third type of defense - introjection - consists of appropriating the beliefs, ways of thinking and actions of other people without any critical reflection on them. It is precisely these people who are primarily targeted by commercials proclaiming the merits of certain products. Well, there is no bleach better than “Ace”, and that’s it! However, in this case, a person risks only his shirt and money, but in our inner life everything is much more serious - a person prone to introjection simply refuses to build his life the way he needs, and agrees to do it in someone else’s image and likeness . The fourth defensive option is the opposite of the third and is called projection. It consists of the desire to transfer one’s own mistakes and responsibility for what happens within a person to other people or the environment, as well as to attribute one’s own thoughts, fears or intentions to them. For now, we can sadly state that this method of defense is our national one, and - what’s worst - is absolutely hopeless. After all, as long as I believe that the cause of my misfortunes lies somewhere outside, I am deprived of the opportunity to get what I want, since the world around me does not have the slightest intention of changing in accordance with my expectations. How it all happens Real work with a specialist who professes the described ideology is a very nice process, because unlike prim psychoanalysis, which clearly knows who is the boss and who is the fool, the Gestaltist believes that a psychotherapeutic session is a meeting of two equal people, some kind of existential an event that is equally significant for both its participants. If you decide to turn to a Gestalt therapist, then get ready for the fact that at first he will most likely deal with the simplest things,!”.