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metanymous в посте Metapractice (оригинал в ЖЖ)
Gestalt assumed that stepping into every experience and fully experiencing it kinesthetically and emotionally was the key to resolution and change. This was particularly useful with grief, in which the feeling of loss results from seeing an image of the dead person at a great distance, or being separated from them in some other way. Stepping into a memory of love and connection with that person results in a full-body sense of presence, replacing the feeling of loss, and eliminating the grief.
Stepping into a part of the person that is alienated, represented as “other” was also very useful for becoming more fully aware of the “shadow self,” sometimes called the “dark side” of the person, as a first step toward integration.
However, fully experiencing all the feelings of a terrifying memory is of no use to someone who has a phobia or a PTSD flashback, because that is what they are already doing. If someone is making poor decisions, it will seldom be useful to step into the bad decision, but it can be very useful to view a series of decisions objectively to discover how the process itself is flawed, in order to improve it.
To summarize, stepping into a memory is sometimes useful, while at other times, stepping out of it to become more objective is much more useful. Both are skills that everyone has, but most people don’t realize that they have them, or that they have a choice about which will be useful in a given context. Often alternating between the two will be most useful, reaping the advantages of each in turn.
Gestalt was a part of the zeitgeist of the 1960’s that advocated paying attention in the here and now, which has been part of a number of very old spiritual traditions, and has been reincarnated recently in a secular form as “mindfulness.” In the context of Gestalt Therapy, paying attention in the present moment was a very useful advance over endlessly talking about the past, which was the most common approach at the time—and which still occupies a large part of most typical therapeutic sessions today. In a Gestalt session, talking about a problem was only a point of departure for acting it out behaviorally, doing something rather than reciting a well-rehearsed lifeless verbal “tape-loop” description.
Whether role-playing and becoming some part of a dream, or talking to a parent or some other person in an “empty chair” dialogue, the nonverbal behavior in the present moment revealed key aspects of the interaction. Although this method was borrowed from Moreno’s psychodrama, a crucial difference was that the client’s enactment emerged entirely from their own inner world of experience, not inevitably distorted by someone else’s attempt to portray it.
As the client shifted between being themselves and the “other,” shifts in their nonverbal behavior revealed vital aspects of their inner conflict. A man might verbally be expressing positive thoughts, but his hand might be clenched in a tight fist. The fist (which he often wasn’t aware of) often indicated anger, or open hands palm up suggested pleading. When Fritz would say, “Give your fist words,” or “What are your hands saying?” these nonverbal expressions added to the richness of the dialogue, and could participate fully in its clarification and eventual resolution.
I can still hear Fritz saying, “Nyah, nyah, nyah” pointing out to a woman with a whining voice that she was implicitly asking someone else to do the work of lifting her out of her “poor me” victim role, provoking her to take charge of her life. And I can also hear him gently saying to someone else, “I hear your voice drenched with tears,” revealing a need to acknowledge and resolve a loss that colored her world a dull and lifeless gray.