Gestalt Self and Contact (and other) Quotations.
Source | Category | Page | Quotation |
|---|---|---|---|
Lobb 2007 | Adjustment | the contact boundary is the place where creativity (which expresses the uniqueness of the individual) can be combined with adjustment (which expresses that reciprocity which is necessary to social living). | |
Perls et al 1951 | Anxiety | P231 | Anxiety is the interruption of the excitement of creative growth |
Perls et al 1951 | Awareness | P229 | Aware response in the field is the agency of growth in the field |
Perls et al 1951 | Awareness | P229 | What is called ‘consciousness’ seems to be a special kind of awareness, a contact-function where there are difficulties and delays of adjustment |
Perls et al | Confluence | P451 | Confluence is the condition of no-contact |
Perls et al 1951 | Consciousness | P229 | What is called ‘consciousness’ seems to be a special kind of awareness, a contact-function where there are difficulties and delays of adjustment |
Lobb 2000 | Contact | Contact is the end of self | |
Perls et al 1951 | Contact | P073 | Your sense of unitary interfunctioning of you and your environment is contact, and the process of contacting is the forming and sharpening of the figure/ground contrast. |
Perls et al 1951 | Contact | P073 | For you as a living being contact is, then, ultimate reality |
Perls et al 1951 | Contact | P118 | Every healthy contact involves awareness (perceptual figure/ground) and excitement (increased energy mobilization) |
Perls et al 1951 | Contact | P229 | Experience is ultimately contact, the functioning of the boundary of the organism and its environment |
Perls et al 1951 | Contact | P230 | Primarily, contact is the awareness of, and behaviour toward, the assimilable novelty; and the rejection of the inassimilable novelty |
Perls et al 1951 | Contact | P230 | All contact is creative and dynamic . . . because it must cope with the novel . . . cannot passively accept or merelyadjust to the novel, because the novel must be assimilated |
Perls et al 1951 | Contact | P230 | All contact is creative adjustment of the organism and environment |
Perls et al 1951 | Contact | P373 | Contacting is, generally, the growing of the organism. By contacting we mean … in general every function that must be primarily considered as occurring at the boundary in an organism/environment field. |
Philippson | Contact | P008 | . . . “if I am in good contact with my environment, I am more likely to achieve my wants and needs”, as opposed to “the achievement of these wants and needs takes precedence over the making of contact” |
Lobb 2007 | Contact Boundary | the contact boundary is the place where creativity (which expresses the uniqueness of the individual) can be combined with adjustment (which expresses that reciprocity which is necessary to social living). | |
Parlett 2003 | Creative Adjustment | P51 | … having an adaptive and spontaneous response to living in this world. |
Perls et al 1951 | Creative Adjustment | P371 | … deploying the activity of the self as a temporal process,… fore-contact, contacting, final-contact, and post-contact; … is an account of the nature of creative-adjustment growth |
Perls et al 1951 | Creative Adjustment | P404 | It is the work of creative adjustment that heightens awareness of what one wants |
Wheeler 2000 | Creative Adjustment | P167 | In this whole-field process view the creative adjustment, the living integrative principle or process in action, is not just something done by a self that is pre-existent: it is the self, the self which is ‘given in contact’ |
Jennings 1986 | Creativity | Pvi | … I believe that everybody is potentially creative, whether worker or client. Some of us have to discover or rediscover our own creativity; and some of us are tired and jaded. Others are daunted … |
Lobb 2007 | Creativity | the contact boundary is the place where creativity (which expresses the uniqueness of the individual) can be combined with adjustment (which expresses that reciprocity which is necessary to social living). | |
Lobb and Amendt-Lyon 2003 | Creativity | Pix | Creativity, traditionally seen as a special gift of remarkable and exceptional personalities … |
Lobb and Amendt-Lyon 2003 | Creativity | Pix | … is considered in Gestalt therapy to be a spontaneous adaptation in interpersonal processes, as well as an important ingredient of healthy social living. |
Perls et al 1951 | Creativity | P230 | what is assimilated is always novel[i] |
Perls et al 1951 | Creativity | P231 | |
Perls et al 1951 | Creativity | P367 | Creativity is inventing[1] a new solution; inventing it both as finding it and as devising it; … |
Perls et al 1951 | Creativity | P406 | For the most part, however, we may consider the self’s creativity and the organism/environment adjustment as polar: one cannot exist without the other[iii] |
Perls et al 1951 | Creativity | P407 | Creativity without outgoing adjustment remains superficial (because) the excitement of the unfinished situation is not drawn on (and) it is in manipulating the resistant that the self becomes involved and engaged |
Philippson | Cycle of Contact | P042 - 045 | Forecontact, Contacting, Final Contact, Post-contact |
Perls et al 1951 | Dreams | P051 | If you will notice your dreams, you will discover that you can make sense of a great many by treating them as reversal experiments spontaneously performed! |
Perls et al 1951 | Dreams | P051 | In dreams, the resister gets a chance to express himself more openly, but he does it in a language which you, the awake personality, find largely incomprehensible |
Sichera 2003 | Dreams | P097 | … the most useful work on dreams would probably be their portrayal, in literary or pictorial form, by the dreamer. In other words, the “best exercise” in therapy is probably “letting the dream be” in complete autonomy, as a work of art, fruit of the extraordinary creative powers of childhood, which the patient must be able to experience fully and freely … |
Sichera 2003 | Dreams | P098 | The portrayal of the dream, in the presence of and together with the therapist, puts the dream itself into the circuit of the relationship. |
Sichera 2003 | Dreams | P098 | The dream is …a pure aesthetic form to be listened to and developed together. |
Perls et al 1951 | Dreams, daydreams | P051 | Daydreams … are spontaneous reversal experiments, and their meaning is usually more obvious. What we fantasy ordinarily is the reverse of a present frustration |
Philippson | Ego | P130 | Ego is the active process of moving towards some aspects of the environment (identification) and away from other (alienation) |
Perls et al 1951 | Excitement | P037 | The sense of this formative process, the dynamic relation of ground and figure, is excitement: excitement is the feeling of the forming of the figure-background in contact situations, as the unfinished situation tends to its completion. |
Perls et al 1951 | Excitement | P231 | Anxiety is the interruption of the excitement of creative growth |
McLeod 1993 | Gestalt | P26 | It the foundation of a psychology without a psyche |
Parlett 2003 | Gestalt | P51 | … a philosophy and method to be lived, not just a theory to be talked about, and not merely a specialised approach to psychotherapy. |
Lobb 2000 | Gestalt Theory | What is specific to our theory is that the self is regarded in the medial position between organism and the environment, which is to say, in a uniquely relational position[2] | |
McLeod | Growth | P27 | In the “spontaneous absorption of final contact” (Perls et al 1951 p.418), occurs the assimilation through which the self functions as the organ of growth (ibid p.229 |
Perls et al 1951 | Growth | P230 | Growth is the function of the contact boundary in the organism/environment field |
Perls et al 1951 | Growth | P231 | Anxiety is the interruption of the excitement of creative growth |
Perls et al 1951 | Growth | P368 | …growing, the self risks – risks it with suffering if it has long avoided risking it and therefore must destroy many prejudices, introjects, attachments to the fixed past, securities, plans and ambitions; risks it with excitement if it can accept living in the present |
Perls et al 1951 | Growth | P372? | An organism preserves itself only by growing Self preserving and growing are polar |
Perls et al 1951 | Growth | P373 | … materials and energy of growth are: the conservative attempt of the organism to remain as it has been, the novel environment, the destruction of previous partial equilibria, and the assimilation of something new. |
Perls et al 1951 | Knowledge | P367 | Knowledge is the form of what has already occurred |
Perls et al 1951 | Living | P230 | … it is by means of creative adjustment, change and growth that the complicated organic unities live on in the large unity of the field. |
Philippson | Middle mode | P035 | . . . what we are looking at is an equal cooperative effort between me and my environment, where there is no ‘doer’ and no ‘done to’ (or alternatively there is both). This is the ‘middle mode’: neither active nor passive. |
Philippson | Middle mode | P035 | The other name for this is spontaneity. |
Wheeler 2003 | Perception | P87 | Every perception is in a real sense a hypothesis, a trialorganisation of data (literally, “givens”). We’re “wired” to make this kind of estimation, and to integrate it into an even wider, ever more complex and coherent picture of the world: this is our gestalt nature. |
Perls et al 1951 | Personality | P378 | The personality is the created figure that the self becomes and assimilates to the organism, uniting it with the results of previous growth |
Perls et al 1951 | Personality | P382 | The personality is the system of attitudes assumed in interpersonal relations. Personality is essentially a verbal replica of the self. Thus personality is the responsible structure of the self |
Perls et al 1951 | Personality | P423 | The aftermath of creative social contact is the formation of personality |
Perls et al 1951 | Personality | P427 | In ideal circumstances the self does not have much personality. It is the sage of Tao that is “like water”, assuming the form of the receptacle. Where the self has much personality, we have seen, it is because either it carries with it many unfinished situations … or it has abdicated altogether and feels itself in the attitudes towards itself that it has introjeced.[3] |
Lobb 2000 | Self | The self … is conceived in Gestalt Therapy as an experiential event which takes place in the phenomenal actuality. | |
Lobb 2000 | Self | What is specific to our theory is that the self is regarded in the medial position between organism and the environment, which is to say, in a uniquely relational position | |
Lobb 2000 | Self | P001 | The theory of self in Gestalt therapy is epistemologically based on the paradox of theorising the untheorisable, of grasping experience in its very transitoriness.[iv] . And the only route possible was phenomenology |
Lobb 2000 | Self | P001 – p002 | The self is a function of the organism-environment field; it is the “experience of the field” of organism and environment[v], it is the system of contacts at the boundary |
McLeod 1993 | Self | P025 | The deepest Gestalt premise is that we create ourselves in our contact . . . our very psychological existence is dependent on relationship |
McLeod 1993 | Self | P025 | We are the contact we make . . . it follows that self must be defined as contact |
McLeod 1993 | Self | P026 | This concept [of self] is so significantly and so radically subversive of most psychological thinking that it has yet to be fully grasped and accepted, even by many Gestaltists. The concept is, in its simplest form, that self is contact |
McLeod 1993 | Self | P026 | Gestalt asserts, rather, that humans at each moment are engaged in the creation and destruction of self . . . indeed, is always in the process of being created and destroyed |
McLeod 1993 | Self | P026 | Self is, rather, part of the world of process and time, discoverable only as experience; discoverable, that is, only in contact |
Perls 1957 | Self | The self is that part of the field which is opposed to otherness | |
Perls 1957 | Self | Self cannot be understood other than through the field | |
Perls 1957 | Self | The self is to be found in the contrast with the otherness | |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P235 | Let us call the “self” the system of contacts at any moment. As such the self is flexibly various, for it varies with the dominant organic needs and the pressing environmental stimuli; it is the system of responses; … |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P235 | The self is the contact-boundary at work; its activity is forming figures and grounds. |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P235 | It [self] is only a small factor in the total organism/environment interaction, but it plays the crucial role of finding and making the meanings by which we grow. |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P247 | the self is the system of creative adjustment |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P248 | The self only finds and makes itself in the environment.[4] |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P315 | “personality” is best taken as a formation of the self by a shared social attitude. |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P315 | …the self, as the system of excitement, orientation, manipulation, and various identifications and alienations, is always original and creative. |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P367 | The self is the system of contacts in the organism/environment field; and these contacts are the structured experience of the actual present situation. |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P371 | we consider the self as the function of contacting the actual transient present[5] |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P372 | An organism preserves itself only by growing. Self-preserving and growing are polar, … |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P373 | The complex system of contacts necessary for adjustment in the difficult field, we call ‘self’. |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P373 | Self may be regarded as at the boundary of the organism |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P373 | The self is not to be thought of as a fixed institution; it exists wherever and whenever there is in fact a boundary interaction. |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P373 | The complex system of contacts necessary for adjustment in the difficult field, we call “self”.[6] |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P374 | … the self is the figure/background process in contact-situations[7] |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P374 | In contact situations the self is the power that forms the gestalt in the field; or better, the self is the figure/background process in contact-situations. |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P374 | Self exists where there are the shifting boundaries of contact. |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P378 | As aspects of the self in a simple spontaneous act, Id, Ego, and Personality are the major stages of creative adjustment: the Id is the given background dissolving into its possibilities . . . The Ego is the progressive identification with and alienation of the possibilities, ... of the on-going contact. The Personality is the created figure that the self becomes and assimilates ... |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P427 | In ideal circumstances the self does not have much personality. It is the sage of Tao that is ‘like water’, assuming the form of the receptacle[vi]. |
Perls et al 1951 | Self | P427 | In ideal circumstances the self does not have much personality. It is the sage of Tao that is “like water”, assuming the form of the receptacle. Where the self has much personality, we have seen, it is because either it carries with it many unfinished situations … or it has abdicated altogether and feels itself in the attitudes towards itself that it has introjeced.[8] |
Philippson | Self | P001 | Its [self] primary characteristics are fluidity and relationship |
Philippson | Self | P001 | The concept of self . . . is my varied contacts with the world I live in, with otherness, rather than inner experience. |
Philippson | Self | P031 | Emergence of three interacting boundaries: the physical contact boundary, the self/other boundary (I and not-I), and the personality boundary (e and not-me) |
Philippson | Self | P032 | . . . the differentiation of ‘self’ and ‘other’ is achieved by the boundary process of identification and alienation |
Philippson | Self | P036 | The self is spontaneous and middle mode, swaying between the passive, receptive mode of id and the active, autonomous mode of ego |
Wheeler 2000 | Self | P175 | We understand self to be an active process of meaningful field integration – making sense of experience as a ground for action, - with a recursive or continuously back and forth sequence of scan-evaluate-interpret-integrate-act[9] |
Wheeler 2003 | Self | P185 | Self is comprised of ‘elements of the field |
Philippson | Self-actualisation | P009 | The creation of selfhood out of interaction.[vii] Gestalt therapy explores the actualisation inherent in the self that is emerging in the present moment. |
McLeod | Spontaneity | P34 | Spontaneity is a matter of being fully engaged in the endless flow and return between id and ego |
Philippson | Spontaneity | P035 | equal cooperative effort between me and my environment, where there is no ‘doer’ and no ‘done to’ (or alternatively there is both). This is the ‘middle mode’: neither active nor passive. The other name for this is spontaneity. |
Perls et al 1951 | Therapy | P015 | What is essential is not that the therapist learn something about the patient and teach it to him, but that the therapist teach the patient how to learn about himself |
Perls 1957 | Unfinished Business | P001 | If something happens which, through something non-self, comes about then we have the unfinished situation |
[1] Invention is original, it is the organism growing, assimilating new matter and drawing on new sources of energy.
[2] Same quote appears under Self
[3] This quote is replicated in the Self category
[4] See p248 for self-awareness being powerless - v – creative.
[5] S=f(C)t
[6] See p374 for creative adjustment
[7] For EXCITEMENT refer to p374
[8] This quote is replicated in the Personality category
[9] Does this fit to the phase of awareness+mobilisation in the cycle of awareness?
[i] How does ‘it’ know it is novel: novel on the field orientated axis – the poles ‘novel<--->old’; original<--->unoriginal, fresh<--->stale. What is pervasive (the same or indifferent) is not an object of contact, i.e., not assimilable. What the organism perceives as the same or indifferent is not contacted, nor contactable. Certainly the contact is dynamic.
[ii] Adjustment, in Perls et al, is used in connection with adjusting emotion and behaviour to social norms – “the external world and its demand as reality” p99
[iii] Polarities: in discussion remember that this refers poles of reference, in that a north pole does not exist without a south pole; that day is only defined with night; ying and yang.
[iv] I think this represents not a paradox but a deficiency in our language (and technology) to interpret the experience. As Lobb continues, phenomenology provided the route for meeting and theorising the experience.
[v] In saying this Lobb is establishing the credentials of self away from the Lewinian view, as Lobb says in the same paper “… the (Perls and Goodman) implicitly kept their distance from Lewin, refusing to turn the subject into a point in or of the field.” (p1). To keep this distance Perls et al (1951) introduce the concept of ‘middle mode’ so that self may be placed at the boundary – not on the side of the organism, nor of the environment AND neither active nor passive. My sense of this – at this moment as I write – is that there is a differentiation of organism and self that seems to point to a differentiation of body and soul; that the self is the essence of organism-environment
[vi] P427, Where the self has much personality, we have seen, it is because it either carries with it many unfinished situations, recurring inflexible attitudes, disastrous loyalties; or it has abdicated altogether and feels itself in the attitudes toward itself that it has introjected.
[vii] As such a description term, talking about what happens as opposed to humanistic psychology (Maslow) where it is a goal
Lobb, M. S. and Amendt-Lyon, N. (eds) 2003 Creative Licence The Art of Gestalt Therapy SpringerWien New York
Lobb, M. S., (2000), The Theory of Self in Gestalt Therapy, in Gestalt Therapy. Hermenuetics and Clinical. (2000) Editor Lobb, M. S., Angeli Publishing House Milan
Lobb, M. S., (2007) What’s Gestalt Therapy. Accessed online April 2007. http://www.gestalt.it/inglese/get-e.htm
McLeod, L., 1993, The Self in Gestalt Therapy Theory. The British Gestalt Journal, vol2 No1, pp25-40
Parlett M., 2003 Creative Abilities and the Art of Living Well. In Creative Licence The Art of Gestalt Therapy, Lobb, M. S. and Amendt-Lyon, N. (eds) 2003 SpringerWien New York
Perls F, Hefferline, R, Goodman P. (1951:1984) Gestalt Therapy Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, Souvenir Press, New York.
Perls F, Hefferline, R, Goodman P., (1994) Gestalt Therapy Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, Gestalt Journal Press
Perls, F., 1957, Finding Self Through Gestalt Therapy. Available at www.gestalt.org/self.htm Accessed 2nd September 2005
Philippson, P., (2001) Self in Relation, Karnac Books, London
Sichera, A., 2003 Therapy as an Aesthetic Issue: Creativity, Dreams and Art in Gestalt Therapy. In Creative Licence The Art of Gestalt Therapy, Lobb, M. S. and Amendt-Lyon, N. (eds) 2003 SpringerWien New York
Wheeler, G., 2003 Contact and Creativity: the Gestalt Cycle in Context. In Creative Licence The Art of Gestalt Therapy, Lobb, M. S. and Amendt-Lyon, N. (eds) 2003 SpringerWien New York
