Authenticity

Authenticity — authenticity, identity of the declared. Authenticity is one of the central values ​​of Gestalt therapy, where it is understood as the correspondence of a person to himself; the ability to live without changing your true self.

… What concerns the values ​​of Gestalt therapy, first of all (and this is the difference from some training systems), is the achievement of authenticity. That is, one of the goals of the work is just to increase the authenticity, the correspondence of a person to himself. So that in cases where there is no point, you do not need to fight with yourself, somehow live in peace with yourself and correspond to yourself. The fact is that our system of civilization is basically built, of course, on retroflexion and on the most complex retroflexive complex — narcissism. And narcissism, in short, is defined by the following thought — (this is from A. Lowen’s book «Narcissism») the denial of the true self. That is, in fact, I am a person who reacts quite quickly, quickly, emotionally to many things. For example, at some point I find out that it is not very profitable for the reason that it is inconvenient for others, for the reason that it does not correspond to the standard pattern, say, of male behavior in society, and I find out that it is more profitable for me to pretend to be, for example, a phlegmatic person. And then, accordingly, I begin to behave in this way. And instead of the true self, I have such a pseudo-construction that does not correspond to my reality, but nevertheless. — Daniil Nestorovich Khlomov, «Paradoxes of Gestalt Therapy».

One of the manifestations of authenticity is congruence: the correspondence of the external expression to the internal content.

Authenticity is a concept from the dictionary of the phenomenological paradigm in practical psychology, the behavioral approach does not understand the talk of authenticity, since this concept has no outwardly observable signs.

In phenomenologically oriented psychology, this is the ability to be oneself, to live in accordance with one’s own ideas about life, to be attentive to any processes of one’s inner world. The ability to bring oneself outside according to one’s desires, experiences, processes. It’s a moment-to-moment decision to be yourself and take responsibility for that choice.

Authenticity according to K. Rogers (Rogers S. R.) is the ability of a person in communication to refuse various social roles (psychotherapist, professional, teacher, leader, etc.), allowing to manifest genuine thoughts, emotions, and behavior.

“Authenticity is an integral “existential formation”, the manifestation of which requires a sufficiently high level of development of many “existential abilities” of the subject.

The musician improvises; he, and only he, can talk about whether his improvisation is authentic, whether he managed to merge his own being and the process of generating notes into a single process, connect the “birth point” of the action with the “point of implementation” of it. Listening to the same improvisation retrospectively, he can no longer feel whether it was authentic, if he did not have a sense of «internal authenticity» at the time of its creation.

The action can be carried out freely, but not be authentic. And at the same time, a non-free action, carried out according to a template or an external instruction without internal consent, cannot be authentic. A person may take responsibility for the consequences of his own action, but this alone does not make his action authentic. And at the same time, authentic action is always responsible, because it is the clearest manifestation of what a person is, the last thing on which and for which he can stand. Is an authentic action connected with a spiritual principle, values? Yes, to the extent that values ​​form the core of the subject, to the extent that they have become the semantic basis of his being.

Is it true that authenticity is always associated with some action? No. In external interaction with any material, it can be experienced most concentrated and fully, however, the experience of authenticity can also be associated with internal action — with the act of choosing or taking a certain position, with experiencing what is significant, in contact with otherness — the being of another a person or a work of art, the truth of which can be obvious only to an authentic contemplator.

The word “sincerity” seems to us the closest to the concept of “authenticity” among words more familiar to a wide range of people. Authenticity is the sincerity, openness, honesty of a person. Not only and not so much in relation to other people, but in relation to oneself, to that inner principle or «tuning fork», which Frankl called conscience. To be authentic means to live according to conscience: not only “in accordance with conscience”, but also “to live, that is, to carry out what is internally justified, and not to refuse it. Manifestation of authenticity, “meeting with oneself” can occur in a person and remain a single event if he does not integrate his experience, the experience gained into the process of his life. And vice versa, authenticity in action leads a person to greater authenticity “in life”, but at the same time makes him less free. For a person who has not discovered his own authenticity or rarely encounters it, it is not so difficult and not so difficult to betray himself, even if by an act of free choice, than a person who is more authentic. A clear expression of authenticity is the phrase «fidelity to oneself» ↑.