C 2022

Being Present to Absence : Field Theory in Psychopathology and Clinical Practice

FRANCESETTI, Gianni, Michela GECELE and Jan ROUBAL

Basic information

Original name

Being Present to Absence : Field Theory in Psychopathology and Clinical Practice

Authors

FRANCESETTI, Gianni, Michela GECELE and Jan ROUBAL

Edition

1st ed. London, The Relational Heart of Gestalt Therapy : Contemporary Perspectives, p. 44-56, 13 pp. Gestalt Therapy Book Series, 2022

Publisher

Routledge

Other information

Language

English

Type of outcome

Kapitola resp. kapitoly v odborné knize

Field of Study

50100 5.1 Psychology and cognitive sciences

Country of publisher

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Confidentiality degree

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

Publication form

printed version "print"

References:

Organization unit

Faculty of Social Studies

ISBN

978-1-032-18693-1

DOI

Keywords in English

psychotherapy; Gestalt therapy; dialogue; relationship; field theory

Tags

Tags

International impact, Reviewed
Změněno: 27/1/2023 14:02, Mgr. Blanka Farkašová

Abstract

V originále

In this chapter we conceptualize the therapist’s and client’s experience in the session as emerging from the field forces in play. These forces are the intrinsic tensions (in-tentionalities) of the emerging field. In order to orient the reader among the different definitions of ‘field’, we distinguish three theoretical concepts: phenomenal field, phenomenological field and psychopathological field. We propose an understanding of the therapeutic process as a field phenomenon: in this perspective the change is not produced by an intervention of the therapist on the client, neither by a process of collaboration between therapist and client in order to co-create the change. The process of change is rather made by the forces already active in the field and the therapist has just to let them move on without interfering with them, or sometime to support them. The essential part of the therapeutical work is to embody and feel the field forces and to let them work. In this process there are moments when the therapists can feel something out of place, the stranger knocking on the door: in that moment they are lending their flesh to dissociated feelings of the field. In other moments the therapists may discover some forces that are part of the wider social field, acting in both the client and the therapist, the one who is always there: in that moment they can make a step of differentiation from that pressure. The implications on personal and social psychopathology will be discussed, and the consequences on clinical practice will be addressed. In this perspective psychopathology is the emerging absence, and therapy becomes the art of presence.

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