Chapter 4 Phenomenolog y and Gestalt Psychotherapy New Challenges Under-the-Radar Pietro Andrea Cavaleri 1. Phenomenolog y and Neurophenomenolog y Phenomenology is born out of an attention towards “that which appears”, towards “phenomenal reality”, towards a world perceived and described “in the first person”, with possibility of intuition of the “second person” perspective (Churchill, 2010). Interest in phenomenology, although in a different way, was already present in Kantian and Hegelian thought, but it was only with Brentano (1874) and Husserl (1910/1980) that it would give rise to a well-defined philosophical movement. Then, at the beginning of the 20th century, the phenomenological perspective would break into the world of psychology as well, almost simultaneously, with Jaspers (1913/1997) ushering in studies of psychopathology and “phenomenological psychiatry”, and with Wertheimer (1912) giving birth to Gestalt psychology, specifically interested in how perceptive experience is organised and takes shape in the human mind.1 Lewin (1951) drew inspiration from the discoveries of Gestalt psychology for the development of his “field theory”, as did Goldstein (1939), with respect to his research in the neurological and neuropsychological area. Laura Perls, for a substantial period of time, worked in Goldstein’s laboratory, where brain-damaged veterans of the First World War were studied, and so did Frederick Perls for a shorter period. Subsequently, Goldstein’s research would constitute the starting reference point for the “phenomenology of perception” theorised by MerleauPonty (1945/1962). Out of this rich and composite terrain would ultimately emerge the “phenomenology of the contact boundary” and the “phenomenol- ogy of the organism/environment field”, developed by the founders of Gestalt therapy (Perls et al., 1951).2 We are dealing with a valuable legacy that to this day constitutes an indispensable reference for anyone who wishes to embark on a Gestalt clinical practice. It is however justified to wonder today, after seventy years, to what extent this phenomenological sensitivity, inherited from the founders, should be maintained intact or instead renewed, and further enriched by input from other sources. In the last few years, an intense debate among Gestalt therapists has developed on how the field concept in particular might be revisited, still staying within a DOI: 10.4324/9781003313335-6 Phenomenolog y and GT: New Challenges Under-the-Radar 71 coherent phenomenological perspective.3 In Staemmler’s view (2006), the field should be understood above all as the totality of subjective experience. Robine (2003) has expressed a similar stance. For him, the field constitutes in its essence a subjective phenomenon, negating the possibility of a shared field. Referring to the neo-phenomenology of Schmitz (1980), Francesetti (2015) describes the field as an atmosphere, as something ephemeral and fleeting, neither subjective nor objective. Of a different opinion is Parlett (1991), who conceives of the field from a triadic perspective, composed of the field of one and that of the other, who, by interacting, co-create a third shared field, able to contain and influence the previous two. Very close to this position is that of Spagnuolo Lobb (2013, 2018). Conceiving the relationship between organism and environment on both the anthropological and socio-political levels, she affirms that the field perspective in Gestalt therapy encourages us to use non-dichotomous thinking (Spagnuolo Lobb, 2013, p. 79). It allows us to think of perception as a “relational product” strictly connected to the fullness of the concentration of the individuals involved at the contact boundary. In this way, they are able to grasp both what is internal and what is external. The fact that the self is considered in a medial position between organism and environment allows full subjectivity to coincide with full presence in objectivity. The more the individual is fully present in the “between”, the more they take part in the field, the more their presence contributes to creating the conditions of the field (ibid., p. 80). It is from the phenomenological field created by the patient’s modality of contact and by the therapist’s response that the possibility emerges of supporting the spontaneous development of the patient’s intentionality of contact (ibid., p. 118). “Perception is not an isolated process; it emerges and is cocreated together with the other and with the environment in general” (Spagnuolo Lobb, 2018, p. 58). Besides this, Wheeler (1991), McConville (2001), and Wollants (2012) have produced a thorough study on the epistemological plane. They have re-proposed with great consistency the need to re-evaluate the “phenomenological roots” that tie Gestalt psychotherapy to the Berlin school, in other words to Gestalt psychology. This intense comparison on field phenomenology, which is of specific Gestalt interest, can be enhanced today by additional developments, which come from the most recent neurobiology of relational trauma and social engagement. A kind of maturity characterises our time because one can speak not only in terms of phenomenology, but also of neurophenomenology. In fact, if phenomenology describes phenomenal reality as such, neurophenomenology presumes to describe its neurobiological processes that make it possible, especially from the perspective of an embodied (cf. Kepner, 1995; Gallese, 2006) and a relational mind (cf. Siegel, 1999), from its origins (cf. Ammaniti and Ferrari, 2020). Of course, neurons are part of natural science, they are not a phenomenological reality. Nevertheless, there is a debate today between those who advocate the “naturalisation” of phenomenology (Gallagher, 2012) and those who oppose it (Giorgi, 1997). In this light, neurophenomenology could be conceived as an integral part of the same Phenomenolog y and GT: New Challenges Under-the-Radar 72 phenomenology, thus making a constant legitimate dialogue between “human sciences” and “natural sciences”, between psychotherapy and neurosciences, outside of a dualism that might be obsolete (cf. Cozolino, 2020). In the second half of the twentieth century, and in these two decades of the new century, there has emerged at breakneck speed a series of discoveries and new acquisitions, in the neuroscientific, psychological, and philosophical realms. They are an important challenge for us to deepen our Gestalt and phenomenological perspective. If we take up this challenge, we will immediately become aware of the fact that, in these last decades, a new “phenomenology of human relations” has arisen, almost “under the radar”. Numerous researchers from multiple disciplines, clinicians from various approaches, and philosophers from diverse orientations have contributed in a different but significant way to this development. It is within this “under-the-radar phenomenology” that we are now trying to compare notes, in the conviction that we will find “nourishing” stimuli and “generative” pathways. 2. Beyond Ever y Dualism: Mind/Body Unity What has always characterised the Gestalt therapy model is a phenomenological perspective contrary to every form of dualism, one which at times re-emerges in clinical practice. This represents a decisive rejection of both the organism/environment dualism and the mind/body dualism. Theorised by Descartes, mind/body dualism has heavily conditioned modern scientific thought and clinical practice right up until today. As we all know, Damasio (1994, 1999, 2010) exposed some time ago “Descartes’ error”. He gave rise to an authoritative field of research, which was able to show, on the neuroscientific level, how much the mind is rooted in the body, from which it emanates in a constant interaction with the world, thus describing a brain that “thinks the body” while it interacts with the environment. His research has substantively highlighted the relevance that emotions assume in decision-making processes, identifying the neuronal areas that are involved. Furthermore, by reasserting MacLean’s triune brain theory in an original way, he has developed a theory of the self, identifying the different cerebral areas from whose interaction “the self comes to mind”. Panksepp (2012), the father of “affective neurosciences”, steered his research in a similar direction. He convincingly reconstructed a sort of “archaeology of the mind” capable of explaining the genesis and the neural mechanisms of the emotions, maintaining their absolute centrality in human relations. The discovery that “mirror neurons” play an important role in the shaping of a mind that is born out of a body in relation to the environment, is due to the work of Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia (2006) and Gallese (2006, 2011), and it is thanks to this that it has become possible to identify a neural system able to “simulate” the reality we perceive as external to us. Thanks to this and to other numerous studies, “neurophenomenology”4 has come into being today. It is able to provide support and neuroscientific crossreferences to phenomenological observation. Unlike seventy years ago, today we Phenomenolog y and GT: New Challenges Under-the-Radar 73 can describe, from a phenomenological perspective, the field that is co-created by therapist and patient, and “in the first person” what “appears” while we expose ourselves to the median dimension of the “between”, but in addition, we can also keep in mind those neurobiological and neurophysiological links involved in the “lived” experience. This “additional” level of consciousness, this “extra element”, allows us to widen our understanding of what is happening “here and now”, of the co-creation in progress, enabling us to express a more accurate observation of the field and of what flows into it, as well as to carry out a more insightful therapeutic intervention (Béjà, 2020). Resorting to a metaphor can, even if only up to a certain point, help us to explain this passage better.5 When we find ourselves in public, during a mari- onette performance, we are completely involved in what we are watching. We see colourful costumes, various characters moving from one side of the stage to the other. They speak and interact with each other. We are captured by their colours, by how they move, and by what they say. But if we leave the audience and go backstage, we become immediately aware of the existence of another perspective, different from the previous one. Reality which at first “appeared” to us in a given way is now revealed to be much more complex, and in some ways, even more fascinating. We meet the artists who, with their voice, their creativity, and their sense of beauty, have brought to life an absorbing performance, able to capture the attention and the fantasy of children and adults. Finally, we are able to better “understand” what we have “experienced” in all its particulars, an experience of which we have been co-protagonists. Understanding in a phenomenological sense the multiple levels of complexity present in a co-created field allows the therapist to simultaneously have different perspectives and reading keys, to implement new tools, to make his/her interventions more insightful, and to demonstrate a better clinical ability. The phenomenological centrality of the experience described in the “first person”, of the “lived” experience, can be supported by neurobiological and neurophysiological components underlying the “lived” ones, which patient and therapist explore in the co-creation of the shared field. 3. Trauma , Dissociation, and Polarity Conflict Where the interaction between personal “life experiences” and neurophysiological processes emerges in all of its complexity is in the experience of trauma. Some neuroscientists have observed and analysed psychic suffering with much attention and sensitivity. For example, Van der Kolk (2014) provides an accurate description of the “experiences” linked to trauma and to the repercussions that these effectuate on the body, the brain, and on the entire nervous system.6 Thanks to his research, it has been possible to grasp the proximity existing between the symptoms produced by war traumas and those caused by relational or affective traumas. Often, in both cases, those traumatised, in order to survive the triggering event, resort to the adaptive strategy of dissociation. Phenomenolog y and GT: New Challenges Under-the-Radar 74 Fisher (2017), in referring to Van der Hart’s “theory of structural dissociation”, recently described the adaptive dynamics of dissociation and has developed a cogent psychotherapeutic model in support of the traumatised person. It is mainly Bromberg (2011) who has dwelled on dissociation as a “relational phenomenon”. In order to articulate and advocate his data, he calls into play in a significant way the studies of Schore (1994) on the right hemisphere. Even though they start from different points of view, both Fisher and Bromberg propose an interpretive and therapeutic model centred on the dissociation of parts of the self, one that is very close to the “polarity conflict” theorised by Gestalt psychotherapy through the contribution not only of Perls and Goodman but also other authoritative writers.7 The founders of the Gestalt approach conceive of mental suffering, that they refer to as “neurosis”, as a “split” between two different parts or polarities, “one part is kept in unawareness, or it is coldly recognised but alienated from con- cern, or both parts are carefully isolated from each other and made to seem irrel- evant to each other, avoiding conflict and maintaining the status quo” (Perls et al., 1951/1994, p. 16). Throughout history, human beings have learned how to defend themselves from their very complexity and from the conflicts that it inspires. We have learned to see in conflict not as an experience, in which different tightly connected polarities “dialogue” amongst each other (et-et), but as a painful wound that forces us to “choose” (aut-aut, either-or) between polarities that appear to be mutually exclusive (cf. Cavaleri, 2020). Out of this, according to the founders, comes the fragmenting of the personality, the “split” between spontaneity and deliberation, between body and mind, between the self and the outside world, between the personal and the social. 4. Neuroception Even Before Perception Porges (2017) is an author of particular significance in the search for “underthe-radar phenomenology”, which runs through contemporary neuroscientific research. Let us try to understand why. Since the beginning, the founders of the Gestalt approach have been interested in two principal themes: the “phenomenology of intentionality” and the “phenomenology of perception” (cf. Cavaleri, 2003, 2013; Spagnuolo Lobb, 2013). With Porges’ research on the vagus nerve and with his thoughts on “neuroception”, a new challenge has emerged for the Gestalt approach. It entails having to confront a new and additional phenomenological perspective: the “phenomenology of neuroception”. Porges maintains, in fact, that almost all of our behaviours are very much guided, before perceptive experience, by neuroceptive experience, which aggressively evades our consciousness, even though it passes through us and involves us completely. Porges (2017) and Dana (2018) produced a first descriptive analysis of what we have called the “phenomenology of neuroception”. What is revealed out of this is the important role that neuroceptive experience plays especially in social Phenomenolog y and GT: New Challenges Under-the-Radar 75 engagement. Neuroception, in fact, is defined as a process by which the nervous system evaluates a risk without resorting to conscious thought, automatically involving brain areas able to evaluate signs of security, but also of danger and threats to life. With these signs detected through neuroception, the physiological state of the organism is automatically modified for the purpose of guaranteeing its survival. However, a defective neuroception can reveal a risk where there isn’t one, or instead, pinpoint elements of safety where risks may appear. The system of social involvement, the system of fight-or-flight and freezing (collapse) depend on the neuroceptive experience and its automatisms. Other than with factors of a genetic nature, neuroceptive dysfunctionality can be linked, among other things, to abuse or neglect, to various kinds of traumas, and to experiences of inadequate co-regulation in childhood. In a Gestalt therapy context, the “aesthetic relational knowing”, theorised by Spagnuolo Lobb (2018), can legitimately be considered an initial and significant contribution towards the development of a “phenomenology of neuroception” in the clinical field (cf. Cavaleri, chap. 7). 5. The Co-created Field and the Co-regulation of Reciprocal Recognition Dissociation as an adaptive strategy to trauma, the interrelationship between neuroceptive dysfunctionality and dysregulated relational experiences constitute today issues of great clinical relevance. The topical nature of these themes directs us towards another field, which we first defined as “under-the-radar phenomenology”. It represents a most recent branch of research and thought that concerns the centrality of recognition in human relations, in particular “reciprocal recognition” as a basic experience of human co-regulation and as an effective model of clinical intervention. Within the context of contemporary thought, Ricoeur and Honneth have studied this issue in depth. In the tradition of phenomenology and with the intent to declare the dominance of reciprocity in relation to the other, Ricoeur (2005) highlights three different modalities with which to trigger pathways to recognition. The first, inspired by Husserl (1932/1988), could be defined as “analogic apperception” and consists of presuming that the other is analogous to me, that the other has a nature common to my own, and therefore I can recognise him through myself and my experience in life. The second, tracing back to Lévinas (1969), consists of giving precedence to the presence of the other and of exhibiting myself to their face, and to what it asks of me. In the third modality, suggested by the same Ricoeur, recognition occurs “between” the protagonists of the exchange; it is the result of the “between” that emerges from their mutuality, from the circularity of their reciprocal exchange. One is never the other. One always remains different from the other. But this does not prevent intimacy in the exchange, which is experienced in the making and the receiving of the gift of recognition. Thus, the mutuality, the reciprocity of the relationship does not become a fusional union, but can Phenomenolog y and GT: New Challenges Under-the-Radar 76 integrate the intimacy with respect, and always presents itself as the continuous exchange of a gift: the recognition of the difference of the other. From a different viewpoint, that of the Frankfurt School, Honneth (1992) claims that every human conflict is not generated so much by the predatory nature of the human being (homo homini lupus), but rather by an innate need for recognition, a need that is rooted in each of us. Human conflict, in all its forms, is interpreted not as a clash between antagonistic interests but rather as a “struggle for recognition”, like an incessant request for one’s own subjectivity, unique and one-of-a-kind, to be cognised and again re-cognised. Benjamin (2017) proceeds along the same lines, but from the point of view of an intersubjective psychoanalytic context. In the wake of Beebe, Stern, and Tronick, she maintains that, just as in the mother/child dyad, in every significant bond as well, the relationship with the other is always marked by a sequence that is repeated: recognition-breakdown-restoration. After every initial “exchange of recognition”, what follows is an inevitable and equally spontaneous “breakdown”, that signals and causes everyone to experience the irreducible difference of the other, his/her distinct subjectivity. But after every breakdown, what ensues is always the need for “repair.” At this point, however, the will to restore the relationship with the other can take on two opposite modalities. In the first, the overture towards the other is characterised by an affectively significant tension, aimed at re-cognising this other as a different subject than oneself, relinquishing every exercise of power or resistance over him/her and his/her diversity. In the second, on the other hand, what emerges is a marked intention to resist the other’s difference and a strong desire to exercise over him/her every possible form of control, reducing this other to an object to subjugate, or to an object upon whom to exert one’s power. The first attitude opens a path towards “repair”, towards realignment, towards reciprocal recognition as a co-created experience, towards the renewal of coregulation after the deleterious breakdown. Instead, the second attitude fuels a misalignment, causes a failure of recognition, makes repair impossible, and condemns the relationship to dysregulation. Whereas in the first case each one fully experiences their own subjectivity, their own capacity to act and become compassionate, in the second case, the failure of recognition results in dissociation, and conceals to each one’s consciousness significant parts of the self. Benjamin, in fact, declares that recognition and affective regulation determine each other. And so recognition of the effect on the part of the other promotes the integrative functioning within the self. Rereading within a Gestalt therapy context the cocreation of the field in the light of these stimulating ideas can certainly provide an extremely enriching opportunity. This is the attempt that Spagnuolo Lobb (2016, 2017a, 2017b) has made with her model of the “dance of reciprocity” (see Ch. 2), in which the recognition of the patient’s (or child’s) intentional movement and the therapist’s (or caregiver’s) reparative proposal of movement allow for the cocreation of a new field in which change to the relational dysregulations suffered by the patient is possible. Phenomenolog y and GT: New Challenges Under-the-Radar 77 6. A Provisional Conclusion We must keep in mind that phenomenology has always been a constituent fea- ture of Gestalt psychotherapy (Amendt-Lyon, 2018). The model can continually regenerate and feed its own vitality, on the theoretical as well as the clinical level, to the extent that who practices it as a professional will know how to engage, not only with classical or academic phenomenology, but also with the various “phe- nomenological sensibilities”, which, on many sides, materialise “under-the-radar” in many areas of learning, offering rich inspiration capable of revitalising and re- contextualising the Gestalt therapy approach in the world of today and tomorrow.
