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Psychotherapists’ engagement in social context and out of the therapy room
NVAGT Congress, Antwerp, Oct.18th 2015Ivana Vidaković
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Exhibition “The Border is closed’ Belgrade, 2015
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• Ask people for their intentions and needs• Notice the power of media on general public opinion• Engage community resources• Recognise what is missing, what is in the background• Address polarities • New trauma triggers the old one
Immigrants crises, points to be taken:
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Human rights and social responsibility in Gestalt Therapy Training
“… any gestalt psychotherapy training program need to incorporate and underline social, cultural, political and ecological awareness in its curriculum”, EAGT, AGM Krakov 2013
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Social Change Skills(Melnick, 2015)
• Create Shared Awareness• Create Shared Energy• Believe that All Parties are Doing the Best They Can• Intervene and Create Meaningful Dialogue at All Levels
of the System• Have a Powerful Presence• Manage Political Power• Appreciate the Complexity of Sub-Groups• Live Out The Values
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Social healing interventions as ‘… the opening up of relational spaces . . . to promote a joining of energy to achieve collective action around an issue of concern' (Melnick&Nevis, 2009, 2012)
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Gestalt Concepts as Applied to Social Change Intervention
1. Underlying Philosophical perspective:• Holism• Optimism2. Principles of Learning and Change:• Awareness and the Gestalt Cycle of Experience• Multiple Realities and the Management of Energy• Completion of Unfinished Situations• Level of System3. Centrality of Relationship building in Creating Change:• Dialogue and Contact• Presence and Use of Self• Integration of Strategic and Intimate Interactions• Joining in a Superordinate Goal
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Gestalt concepts for SCI – In a search for a hermeneutic orientation
• Field approach and System perspective– Human suffering from the field theory perspective &
as a relational phenomenon– Dealing with Uncertainty
• Relational and Dialogical approach– Humans as connected and co-operative– Balancing needs for independence and relatedness– Responsibility and power as relational phenomena
• Values and Ethics
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Human suffering in the field • Gestalt Therapy gives the meaning of people suffering in a
field perspective - human suffering as an emergent figure expressed by the individuals/groups/ nations, but carried on by the context and the relational field. (Buber, 1993; Salonia, 2001; Spagnuolo Lobb, 2001, 2005; Francesetti, 2008, 2015)
• Those that have less power –children, minorities – often have a higher degree of truth and difficulty in emerging. Becoming aware of the suffering of a relationship is a cure in itself. (Francesetti, 2015)
• This suffering becomes manifest in the individual and can be transformed by the individuals (Philippson, 2009; Francesetti, 2015).
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Cultivate Uncertainty• Gestalt Therapy in times of Anxiety and Uncertainty… The
process of formative contact is an integral part of the broader social context… it must re-act to the relational difficulties of society… the consequence is a sense of uncertainty. Unavoidable uncertainty about the future as screen for projections of fears...(Staemmler, F. 2000)
• There is no certainty of finding work, no certainty of remaining in a relationship, even no certainty of remaining alive - no one is safe from anything. (Spagnuolo Lobb, 2015)
• Uncertainty as a Value –not avoided, accepted uncertainty. The commitment of GT to uncertainty, process and change (Staemmler, 2000)
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Humans as connected and co-operative• Humanistic tradition• People lead by higher motivation, yearning to connect
to the others, make a difference and contribute to some higher purpose. (Wikipedia, Mozilla Fire fox, Linux, etc)
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… change interventions and social healing can be formulated more accurately as a task of supporting pro-social human behaviours, rather than a reparative task of problem diagnosis and remedial action. (Denham-Vaughan, S. 2014)
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• … the tension generated by the two competing cultural drives that get played out in situations around the world: one for inter-dependence and inter-connectedness and the other for increasing autonomy and independence. … balancing these two factors and fostering field conditions that bring out the cooperative aspect in individuals (Melnick &Nevis, 2009)
Balancing needs for independence and relatedness
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How to balance independence and relatedness in the Gestalt psychotherapy training?
• “Belonging independence” (Spagnuolo Lobb, 2015) Training in psychotherapy must guarantee:
Individuated and creative opening up to society.Tolerance for diversity. Opening up for the “differences
and being different”The ability to self-regulate in relations, above all in
conflicts. … putting faith in the conflict, as experience of contact-with-the-different which has in itself the potential for self-regulation.
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Responsibility and Power in relationship• One of the aims of Gestalt therapy: To enable people to take
part in society and be co responsible‐ .Responsibility for the self inevitably includes responsibility for the others who share our world. No self can be separated from its environment.
• Power as 'an experience occurring between or among people and not something lodged in an individual person or group’. (Melnick &Nevis, 2009)
Having empathy and taking care for the vulnerable persons we are caring for parts of our self, regaining our own power and authonomy in response-able connection to the wold. (Clarkson &Cavicchia, 2014)
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Values and Ethics• It is not easy to transmit ethical values in a time of social
corruption like ours. (Spagnuolo Lobb, 2015).
• “A Culture of Growing Indifference” (a crisis of ethics and values, as the effect of long-term impact of economic, sociocultural, and political factors to people’s inner lives) vs. “Gestalt of Hope” (an ethos of solidarity and collective responsibility where the interrelation between personal and social factors, and individual and cultural aspects, will be truly considered in our work within a field perspective)(Ciorna, 1999)
• A crucial issue for gestalt practitioners is ensuring that the outcomes achieved by the projects we work with are those that we ethically subscribe to. (Denham-Vaughan, 2014)
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… it is impossible for anyone to be extremely happy until we are more happy more generally. [Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman, 1951, pp. 250–251].
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In a quest for: Examples of the Application of Human Rights and Social Responsibility issues in Psychotherapy Training programs
Examples of the Application of Gestalt approach in Social Healing and Social Change Interventions
EAGT HR&SR Committee http://www.eagt.org/hrsrcommittee.htm
Ivana [email protected]
