From: Gestalt Therapy in Clinical Practice: From Psychopathology to the Aesthetics of Contact (Gestalt Therapy Book Series 2). Gianni Francesetti, Michela Gecele, Jan Roubal, and Leslie Greenberg
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Dependent Behaviors
in Gestalt Therapy in Clinical Practice: From Psychopathology to the Aesthetics of Contact. (Gestalt Therapy Book Series 2)
Gianni Francesetti, Michela Gecele, Jan Roubal, and Leslie Greenberg
Chapter 19. Dependent Behaviors (loc: 8650)
the experience of self (loc: 8664)
deserves a phenomenological scaffold (loc: 8665)
to hang the features of dependence, (loc: 8665)
addictive and self-medicating process. This chapter (loc: 8665)
provides a Gestalt therapy orientation to the “what” and “how” of dependent behavior (loc: 8667)
1.1. Tolerance (loc: 8677)
refers to the need for ever-increasing amounts of a substance to achieve the desired effect or to bring about intoxication. (loc: 8679)
1.2. Withdrawal (loc: 8682)
physical symptoms resulting from a decrease in the amount of substance in a person’s system. (loc: 8684)
1.3. Recovery (loc: 8687)
overcoming or healing (loc: 8690)
following an organized program designed to combat the addiction and the tendencies for relapse, (loc: 8691)
1.4. Co-dependence (loc: 8694)
a disease of lost selfhood (loc: 8696)
being affected by another person’s behavior to the point that one attempts to control that behavior, (loc: 8697)
co-dependency is a learned behavior associated with an excessive focus on the needs of others (loc: 8698)
the attempt to take responsibility for (loc: 8699)
other people, (loc: 8699)
motivated by the need for safety, acceptance and self-worth. (loc: 8699)
two significant approaches to recovery from addiction: (loc: 8724)
the goal of abstinence is complete sobriety (loc: 8726)
the goal of harm reduction is to modify in some positive direction the dynamic of addictive and self-medicating behavior. (loc: 8726)
1.7. Phenomenological Concepts Relevant to Dependence and Recovery (loc: 8736)
1.7.1. Attitude Attitude is (loc: 8741)
related to interest. (loc: 8743)
attitude is the atmosphere we breathe; (loc: 8746)
attitude organizes (loc: 8747)
according to a central interest (loc: 8748)
1.7.2. Horizon Horizon is (loc: 8750)
related to potential: (loc: 8752)
can be thought of as all things held possible for a given world, (loc: 8752)
When one’s horizon is closed, not much is believed to be possible, (loc: 8753)
1.7.3. World/Life World World is (loc: 8756)
related to context. (loc: 8758)
It’s our physical neighborhood – but more (loc: 8759)
it’s the mindscape we inhabit. (loc: 8760)
3. Gestalt Therapy Case Conceptualization and Theory of Dependence (loc: 8796)
there is no explicitly direct treatment of dependent process in Gestalt Therapy. (loc: 8800)
Gestalt (loc: 8803)
speaks about persons in addictive processes instead of addicted persons. (loc: 8803)
characterises addictive processes as behaviors dependent (loc: 8805)
fixed behavioral patterns. (loc: 8805)
(or basic introject is: “I can’t stand life without my drug” (Dreitzel, 2010). (loc: 8806)
Dependence, (loc: 8828)
never a simple matter of the individual addict, (loc: 8828)
is fostered and supported (loc: 8829)
becomes a fixed pattern of contacting within an increasingly shrunken world. (loc: 8830)
People who develop addictions often grow up (loc: 8834)
where self-medicating is an element in (loc: 8834)
early coping strategy. (loc: 8835)
3.2. Intersubjective, Dyadic Relationship (loc: 8839)
I-It is the dominant attitude involved in dependent process. (loc: 8853)
people are pawns in (loc: 8854)
self-medicating behaviors. (loc: 8854)
in co-dependent behavior there is a give-to-get dynamic that makes the security of the relationship the target (loc: 8856)
not intimacy with the other (loc: 8857)
3.3. Subjective, Phenomenal Experience Addictive experience is the retreat from novel stimuli, (loc: 8874)
a desire for repetition of previous experience (loc: 8876)
there is a delusional character to dependence. (loc: 8877)
from a Gestalt perspective. (loc: 8879)
the appetite is usually vague (loc: 8879)
in cases of extreme need, (loc: 8880)
spontaneous appetite may make itself definite, bright, and sharply delineated (loc: 8881)
point of hallucination. (loc: 8881)
it makes an object, largely out of the fragments of memory. (loc: 8882)
This is the spike rather than the sine wave (loc: 8884)
depiction of the addict’s cycle of experience. (loc: 8885)
the addict goes from sensation, (loc: 8887)
and (loc: 8888)
“hallucinates”, or substitutes an old and fixed Gestalt (loc: 8888)
and goes straight to action. (loc: 8888)
It is the substituting of a previous figure, (loc: 8890)
in the current field (loc: 8891)
and what Gestalt Therapy referred to as a neurotic hallucination. (loc: 8891)
it does not provide anything new (loc: 8891)
there is no learning from experience. There is simply repetition. (loc: 8892)
Another way of looking at this is that the person, (loc: 8903)
is not growing. (loc: 8904)
An organism preserves itself only by growing. (loc: 8906)
This is ego functioning, (loc: 8910)
specifically, this is the organism identifying figures of interest and choosing to move toward them, to satisfy them. (loc: 8910)
in contrast to the id function in which the addict is stuck. (loc: 8911)
the id’s contents are “hallucinatory and the body looms large” (loc: 8912)
there is vague awareness of sensory data, (loc: 8912)
person does not truly pay attention to that (loc: 8913)
There is sensation and neurotic anxiety. (loc: 8915)
a pseudo choice and a delusional ego functioning that “chooses” a fixed Gestalt, (loc: 8915)
first a retroflection and then a confluence (loc: 8916)
5. Gestalt Therapeutic Process in Working with Dependent Clients (Loc: 9037)
(1) try new things and to become more creative in meeting his or her needs (referred to as experimenting); (loc: 9039)
(2) develop the ability to be more in touch with his or her body (referred to as embodying) and the senses that inform about contacting in the environment; (Loc: 9051)
(3) expand upon abilities to recognize (referred to as self-recognizing) and appreciate his or her experience of self; (loc: 9053)
(4) the capacity for relationship (referred to as inter-relating), and (Loc: 9055)
(5) the ability to take responsibility for his or her own experience, including the choices the client makes and the natural (loc: 9057)
consequences of making those choices (referred to as self-responsibility). (loc: 9058)
Therapy with addicted persons has to be multidimensional and multimodal. (loc: 9083)
therapy of body, soul, spirit and the social environment. (loc: 9084)
also often includes the spiritual dimension of a person’s life. (loc: 9087)
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