Advised by Margherita Spagnolo Lobb

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Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb is one of the brightest Gestalt therapists of our time. She is director of the Italian Gestalt Institute and president of the Italian Federation of Psychotherapeutic Associations. In 1996 — 2002 President of the European Association for Gestalt Therapy. Editor-in-Chief of the journals Quaderni di Gestalt (in Italian) and Studies in Gestalt Therapy (international journal in English). International trainer and visiting professor at many universities in Italy and other countries. At one time, she studied Gestalt therapy with Isidor Frome.

Discussion of consultations

Alexander Gamaleev

Here I draw attention to the resource of gestalt: increasing awareness of how the client pinches himself, returning him responsibility for his stoop, can contribute to greater effectiveness of recreational and physical education classes, which gestalt, of course, does not reject. Most importantly, expanding awareness: HOW the client chooses inefficient ways to respond to the environment, and gaining experience experimenting with other, more effective ways of responding. The main thing is that the client realized that her stoop is associated with the inhibition of her emotions, she conducted an experiment with allowing herself to show these emotions more openly. The experiment was accompanied by a rather strong experience, I believe that the client will remember it — and not only with her head. Is one such experiment enough to change the habitual ways of behavior that have been established for decades? Probably not. Therefore, in order to build in new ways of responding, actions, support is needed. This may be the continuation of individual work and participation in the Gestalt group. Everything is like distance exercises: changes become habitual if they are consciously practiced for a certain time.

Emilia Goncharova

Yes, mindfulness is very important, but it can be different. Working with clients, I constantly focus their attention on awareness (I move them to the third position), I constantly ask — how does this work for your goal? It turns out that I use the main method of Gestalt, but under some other key, for some other purpose than Gestalt: I include the head, not the feelings. And it seems to me that this is more effective than working through feelings. It was — I asked a couple of times, or, more precisely, at the very beginning I came across — I was led by clients who wanted to talk about feelings. Such garbage begins … Yaroslavna’s sobs are about nothing. Now I try to always talk about the case: what do you want? What are you doing for this? Feelings are needed, but they do not need to be sought, they need to be formed, so I try to give them ways to feel success — with the help of small, small steps-actions.

N.I. Kozlov

Taking responsibility for your stoop is wonderful. And was it done properly, in full?

In “full scope”, it seems to me, it would be if Margerita asked “How long will you monitor your posture every day, how do you organize all this, what kind of support system and what system of fines” — and helped the girl to do not even stoop ( this is a negative goal setting), but a beautiful and healing posture.

And «as it should», it seems to me, would be when finding an obvious or at least probable reason for her stoop. The obvious reason is that the girl does not take care of herself. Probable — cowardly to be bright and the first. The counselor didn’t, instead the therapist went down the path of digging into the unlikely underlying causes: «it’s all about holding back and inhibiting your emotions»… Maybe so, but it seems far-fetched. I think that the violation of the order of work with the internal problems of the client is the fault of the consultant.

In this case, the psychotherapist used the method «Created a problem, removed the problem — cured it!». The girl complains about her stoop, the therapist suggests that this is all because of the containment of her emotions (created a problem). At the suggestion of the psychotherapist, the girl allowed herself an open expression of her feelings (simply, she and the psychotherapist emotionally hugged), the girl felt better, she felt better, she seems to have forgotten what problem she came out with (the problem was removed). The psychotherapist in this regard formulated the belief that now everything will improve, that she has become more slender and more mature (positive suggestion for the exit).