Psychotherapists’ engagement in social
context and out of the therapy room
NVAGT Congress, Antwerp, Oct.18th 2015
Ivana Vidaković
ividakovic@ian.org.rs
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Exhibition
“The Border is closed’
Belgrade, 2015
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Immigrants crises, points to be taken:
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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
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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)
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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
• Optimism
2. 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 System
3. 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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Balancing needs for independence and
relatedness
• … 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)
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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).
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“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 Vidakovic
ividakovic@ian.org.rs
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