Individualidade, Questionamento e Psicoterapia Gestaltista
(Individuality, Questioning and Gestalt Psychotherapy)

Vera Felicidade de Almeida Campos - Editora Alhambra - Rio de Janeiro -1983

[This book is out of print]
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Extract

Chapter III - Neurosis - The emptying of the Present

Why is it more common and frequent to perceive reality, the other, my ownself, as representation (distortion, symbol)?

Koffka, in his book The Growth of the Mind - an introduction to child psychology, pg.17, published by Littlefield, Adams & Co., while commenting the objective methods of the behaviourists, says: "... if one had only the capacity to make such responses as others can observe, no one would be able to observe anything." Crucial point, confront between objectivity-subjectivity, two sides of the same coin which antagonize themselves with the concept of to experience (the datas of experience) (Erlebnis, from Husserl). The human behaviour is expression of the perception of the relational datas of the human being with himself, and / or with the world and / or with his context, structured in a cultural, social geographic space and in a time: past, present or future. This entanglement, synchonization or dis-synchronization, gets organized by a trajectory given by another, who is a fellow creature or a different one (animal, plant, object or conjucture).

We bracket all of these and look at the trajectory, the relation. Here we have a figure which is structured by a ground: the motivation. Any human behaviour expresses a motivation. Motive is what directs, awakens and maintains the behaviour. Motives are extrinsic or intrinsic to the experienced relations, they can be here-and-now, there-before, beyond-after. The understanding and the aprehention of human motivations are the objectives of the gestalt psychotherapist, in order to dimension them psychotherapically, structuring individualities.

In the present, motivations are the possibilities which orient and demarcate our behaviour / relationship. Structured as past, motivations become codes, patterns of behaviour, a priori which regulate our behaviour, the previous freezers which stagnate the being-with-the-other-here-now-in-the-world. Unleashed by the aspirations and goals, motives begin to become the light which delimitate our behaviour, functioning as polarizing magnets and emptying of the present. We run through out our day-to-day, in order to reach the place postulated as nirvanic.

We gave now a context, a ground which makes Koffka's statement more intelligible: "... if one had only the capacity to make such responses as others can observe, no one would be able to observe anything."

We can observe and describe the forces, the constituents of the relation, but never the relation which configurates them, the relation which establishes itself, the relation which is experienced. Remembering Husserl, we would say that to experience is the "Wesenchau" of the humane. The essence of the human being is relational. The relation is the dynamics, the motivational trajectory, individualized or non-individualized, humane or inhumane (objectification=reification). And,why is it so that to perceive reality, the other, my ownself, as representation, distortion, symbol, is more common? The human being exists in a time and in a space. Temporality is the dynamic and processual dimension of the humane, as much as the space is. The body, the organism, is the changeable situated in a plan (world, society , culture, family) that because of context forces dislocate itself, move itself. But it happens that this body, this organism, auto-regulate itself, discriminate its trajectory, maintaining or modifying it according to the discriminatory relations stablished with its contexts, its plan, its space. It has an autonomy which is given by the perception of its limits or its dependences; it loses its dependence when ignore its limits, realizing just the movements possible to it. To perceive the limits, discriminate the constituent referentials, detachs it from its world, individualizing, structuring its way of action, its life motivations. While walking and reflecting about this, while perceiving its trajectory, it integrates the continuity, the temporality, it is not just a simple target of forces any more, a result of forces' action. The movement of being dislocating itself over a plan, space, can be graphically represented as:



The perception of its limits is graphically configurated:





Integrating its limits, it temporalizes itself:





The intersection of the spatial and temporal relations configure plans which become ground of the being-in-the-world, being in this way, their limits. It raises new dislocations, new interests, new intersections, new plans, and in this dynamics, situations begin to repeat themselves, the representation of the actions, of the behaviour, gains 'Prägnanz'.To perceive this, to relate to this, to look for directions that possibilitate or convergencies that maintain, is a constant experience. This continuity of experience, 'spatializes' time through memory and thought. Perception is extrapolated or indured. The process becomes a way, becomes a bridge, lace of union between myself and the other, myself and the world. To perceive is to know and relate with the existent, it is to qualify, to colour the phenomenon, what is happening: in myself, in the other, in the world. To categorize what is perceived, take possess of it, auto-determine and auto-regulate myself through it, does structure ways, directions, perceptive residues, 'spatialize' the present through memory. We are, than, learned ones, which is in itself extrapolation of knowledge, as it is a situated referential of experience, relations and configurations: we are acquainted with, we experiment, we have a context, a ground which possibilitates / impossibilitates perceptions. We already have marks (engrams) responsible for directions and ways. The novelty, the complexity, the closure, the 'Prägnanz' of the world, of the other, of the present, remains crushed or involucred, encased by this ground. Memory directs and orients our perception of the present. The thought, which is creativity, perceptive prolongation, becomes, usually, a mnemonic prolongation, as perception than exists related to the referential / ground of memory.

Its a serious and grave moment, a chaotic moment at human existence: the present becomes an emptiness, a lacuna which works as context for human perception. We are always living in the present, in spite of not always perceive the present.

This temporal emptiness responsible for the 'Prägnanz' of the past (fears, compromises, experiences, truths, lies) or for the 'Prägnanz' of the future (goals, desires, ambitions, etc.) transforms ourselves in mobiles submited to the action of the inertia; we lose our autonomy, we are what the others allow ourselves to be, through their systems, rules, laws. We begin to experience in the present, the representation of our ownselves (our desires, illusions, fears, expectations), the representation of the world, society, culture: their slogans and rules of how to do. It is left to us to distort r eality, to be neurotic.

We distort reality, we perceive it, the other and ourselves as representation, as symbol. It is the adherence, contingence, value. The attribute transforms itself into substantive, and the substantive, the subject becomes attribute, appendix of a valorative system, where man is what he appears to be, by what he has, he represents as productivity, culture, acquirements, money. This alienation possibilitates the homogeneousness necessary to transform him in standart of des-personalizer systems. It is neurosis. The behaviour is then motivated by acquired learning (memory): maintain what one has got, avoid what obstructs, the behaviour is motivated as well by the longing to attain what is going to realize, justify, save one's own life (thought): children, properties, nation, science, religion, ideology, gain a nobel prize, etc.

This alienation, this becoming an object, resultant of the non experience of the present but as an emptiness, is context for the representation of the real, the other and of my ownself, exilates the motivation, the joy, the love, from human quotidian; since all behaviour is motivated and since the situation is motivating insofar as it is new, complex, 'Prägnanz't and impose closure - creating a sensation of interrupted task, something to realize - we see that in emptiness there is homogeneity, there are no signals, complexity, and impasses are lacking, consequently, nothing is new, everything is complete and finished.

It happens that any behaviour is motivated, that is the reason we use the emptiness of the present as bridge between the future and the past. Pre-concepts, habits (past) and goals, aspirations (future) transform the repetition, the homogeneity in novelty; the lucky hit, the error, become complexity to be maintained or avoided; the learning, the experience of existence becomes complementation and realization of tasks, what majority of the times generates anguish, leaving as 'Prägnanz' the motivation to save one's own skin, to continue being what one has managed to be. In this process the human being loses what characterizes and defines him as humane: the questioning resultant of the dialogue he stablishes with his present. Losing this questioning he objectifies himself, he goes with the masses, desindividualize himself for the sake of his context.

The social, politic and economic systems, in search of the maintainance of its postulates and valorative adherencies, always try to neutralize the antithesis generated by them themselves, that is why their key points, their bastions - education, occupation, family, moral, science, philosophy, religion - always try to sedate, avoid questioning to its own structuration; nevertheless, as the whole is not the sum of the parts, always emerges any present dimension, represented by individuals who initiate the questioning, the antithesis. This dialectic, this attrition, sparks of the present, energize the humane, possibilitating exits, in spite of minimized by the fragment crushing caused by the attrition and opression. It raises new school, new proposal of work, new moral, questioning the millenary philosophical, moral and religious truths. There emerges the marginalizations, the anti-systems; it is antithesis but it is not change, since the preoccupation is not with individualization but with better living conditions, more space, from this comes alienation, despersonalization continues, as the man not having integrated the other, his main limit, not having integrated his biological limits, remains away of his temporality as present, he spatialize himself, as he is dedicated to overcome the obstacles of his being-in-the-world, in the place of transcend them, transforming them.

A school, a family, a society which would base their structures in the present questioning relationship of what they transmit, would bring to integration of temporality. The presentification would open new ways on the entangled systems. There would be differentiation on the homogeneousness of the empty present. The same would occur in the human relationship. Being-with-the-other-here-and-now would be revitalizing, it would be one way to revive the thing which was held to the other-thing-which-held-myself-before-and-is-going-to-support-me-accepting-me -always.

Another important aspect is the one of communication as language. The word is a tool forged by the culture. In this way formalized, language informs more than expresses. It reprents more than shows, exposes, being by genesis, alienate. It is a symbol which unifies, but already comes from division and sum of perceptions. To name something or any situation is to express a relational significant already aprehended, as well as it is to coin a form to reproduce it infinitally, des-characterizing it from its basic constituents; in philosophy, as view of the world, this is well enphatic while studing concepts done by other cultures, other languages. The coloquial individualized significant of the word, is a search of individualization, coming the jargons, slang language, the semantic dislocating use of the word, the constant neologisms in the children language while learning it, the special and individualized words of the lovers when, among them, designate the quotidian, the others, their ownselves. With the 'spatialization' of the time, this search too, objectifies itself.

The conventional, the quantitative sublevates the essence, the quality, the authenticity, the being-in-the-world is substituted by the world-of-the-being. This particularization, this partialization too, desindividualizes. "Every head is a world", it is wise, skilful, but it is not totalizator of the human phenomenon; if we consider a relationship between two heads, two worlds, it would be enough to destroy this axiom, which is basilar in our culture and guess, in our so called psychological science.

We now have context (ground) to answer the question (figure): why is it more common to perceive reality, the other, my ownself, as representation (distortion, symbol)?

We can understand that the life of the human being is built through illusions (symbols, language, money, values etc., etc.); the sensation of imortality, the wish to have children to continue oneself, to have someone to take care of oneself in old age, in sickness, instead of the desire to have children to put a being in the world, to recreate the universe in its individualized dimension. The non experience of the existential limits, is the illusion, it is the neurosis. The human experience, as representation of reality, due to non presentification, leaves it clear that illusion is the raw material of the humane. This is clear if we think of the eternally divergent relations between man and woman, friends, parents and children. etc., in religion; in ideologies; in the so called die for the nation; in the work of existential recuperation; in the psychological help.

When the human being is in the present, unitarianly structured, he acquires consistence, he has no illusions, he has believes which are result of discoveries, meetings, confidence, participation in the world with the other and with one's ownself. Love can be an illusion when it is an aim, necessity; it is a belief, a significant experience when comes from the meeting between two individualities; from this point of view, jealousy, betrayal, omissions, etc. are completelly strange to love, they are typical referentials of illusion, of neurosis. [pg. 38 to 45]

Chapter IV
Motivation and Alienation

We have already seen that motive is what awakens, maintains and directs the behaviour, so much so that the motivations when present are the possibilities which orient and demarcate our behaviour / relationship. We shall not forget that while perceiving the present as emptiness, the human being lose what characterizes and defines him as humane: the questioning resultant of the dialogue he establishes with his present. Losing this questioning, he becomes an object, a follower of the masses, he loses his individualization for the sake of his context - it is alienation.

To be motivated is to participate integrally of what is here-and-now with me, it is presence, it is present. In the neurosis, that is, in the perception of the present through filters which distort, represented by goals and a priori, motivation is not participation, since it is necessity unleashed through schemes, it is the automatic-unhumanizer, which we use to face alienate contextual demands. There is no dialogue, there is no questioning, we just obey or desobey orders, appeals, exigencies. Establishing dialogue with others, with the world and with my ownself, I situate myself, as possibility of relationship, being-in-the-world auto-determined in relation to limits and relational transcendencies.

I think, by prolongating my perception, as continuity of the dialogue which exists between myself and the reality; I decide, I wish, I don't wish, I desire, I agree, I desagree. I auto-determine myself in relation to the circunstantial and structural variants. I am, I have the condition to do and to have, while exercising my human possibilities of being, in this dialogue where I answer and ask. Without the dialogue, without the other, the interlocutor, there are no questions, no answers. There are dogmas, rules, schemes which have the necessity to be attended. In this realm of necessities and contingencies, alienation is structured as residual raw material of the human despersonalization. This utilization of what was formely humane, is realized in an appearence of life, of humane, for what is already devitalized. It is the social and biological adaptation achieved through the autophagic swallow of the existential possibilities. I no long exist, I just survive, securely supported by patterns which give me the right to survive. Luypen, Dutch phenomenologist, use to say: "When the issue is the right, there is no legitimacy anymore".

No one is going to discuss if we have the right of having our own eyes, our own hands; they are intrinsic, legitimately ours, but it is possible to discuss what to do with our adherencies; to leave the car in a place where it is prohibited, wear any type of clothes etc. In the perceptive alienation and distortion, the adherencies become intrinsic constituent of the human being; for exemple: I am what I represent - my car, my status, my profession, my bank account, they define and situate myself, allowing myself to-be-with-the-others. This distortion generates alienation, emptying the present, substituing the other as constituent of myself, while figurating him through patterns, rules of the system.

In the level of survival, of alienation, neurosis and objectivation of the humane, the signals, the motivators of our behaviour, are our necessities built by the storage of experiences, exigences which search solution through configurations previously postulated. These a priori, directed to goals, are emptyings of the present, and destroyers of the human possibilities. The man thus constituted is just a biological organism inside a social system [4]. It is a body on a space, dinamized by its physiological cicles, and placated, calmed down, explained by its social lebels. He lost his humanity, des-individualized himself, remains without autonomy, since he no more stablishes dialogue, he no more exercise the questioning, the experience of the present, the being-in-the-world-with-the-other.

Why does he do this? Or, why does this occur?

Contextual and relational homogeneity brings to representations, symbolizations which usurp the reality, he perceives just what is before him, what is not him. Exhausting himself in this relation through his convergent auto-referential, polarizator point of everything which is around him, he despersonalizes himself, staying with a juxtaposed accumulation of experiences and relationships where it is lacking a center, an autonomy, an individuality, resultant of the perception of I-am-with-the-other-here-and-now. This alienation of his existential possibilities was the price paied for the illusion of guaranty and security which are given by the fact that he is supported by the majoritarian groups and determiners of the social systems. The running after a good position, after money, after respectability, demandes a way already taken for a long time, a way with deep tracks, in reality, abyss that gorges individualities. To avoid holes, tricks, learning and orientation are recquired, and for that there are family, religion, support- psychotherapy, clubs, etiquette- schools, finally, all institutions of alienation and salvation.

Where is the motivation? Where is what is complex, 'Prägnanz' and new? [5] Nowhere, absolutelly nowhere. In alienation, the question is how to have ability, how to have tools, how to acquire conditions, skills to achieve the desired money on top of the greasy pole [6], or how to attain nirvana, enlightment, joy, dettachment. What is the way of satisfaction, richness, goodness, the realm of God and power? This is what one wants to learn and know when one lives in alienation of the constituent patterns and systems. Having nothing new, nothing to motivate as present and presence, we repeat ways; crushed the possibility of creations, we just repeat; it remains the ability to repeat, to copy doing even better, with less costs and more profit, more advantages. There araise values as determinators and motivators of behaviour. New representations, symbols, responsible for distortions, which generate and maintain fragmentations and omissions, which characterize the human objectivation, neurosis and alienation, creating goals and a priori which emptying the present.

The directed experience, situated in values, raises neurosis, alienation, since value is adherent to our humanity, to our being-in-the-world; it does not integrate, and it may desintegrate when we try to situate ourselves and with them relate ourselves, since values are extrinsic symbols, lebels, rules, patterns to the individual totality of the human being. Values create norms, criterions of right and wrong, treads which configurate the being-in-the-world. They are the light which iluminates our way, situates. They extract, decentralize our individual referentials, objectify, alienate ourselves, since we have no motivations resultant of experiences of our present, but resultants of demands previously configurated and programed. We are actors, puppet of assembled spectacle, we just participate of what is delected to us, to what we have the right after great effort, our status, our family, our blameless moral, etc.

The biological organism held to the social system, is the alienated man, despersonalized, neurotic, who do not experience the present, in spite of live in the present. The price of this absurd, of this contravention to the natural perception and relation with what is-now-here-with-me, is unhumanization, the death of human being as possibility, freedom, autonomy and individuality. In this universe of unhumanity, of death-alive but efficacious, where almost everything is dimensioned, programed to supply the necessity to maintain the established, there are no breaks, since the break, the change, the new is the chaos, the unorganized state, the dispair. There emerge the preservers and organizers of the order: institutions (family, mariage etc.), and the sciences, specially the social sciences, which turned themselves towards man and worried just with the explaination that he is complex, aggressive, in need of domestication, they see religion promising salvation to the souls, victory in competitions, through sacrifices, donations, promises etc. The systems try to erase the flame of human possibility which still exist, in spite of being weak, that is the reason of the effort to situate the man inhis past, his acquired behaviour, incentivating him with hopes and believes to the future, negating what would revive him: the living in the present.

The human being is a biological organism inside a social system with infinite possibilities of relationship with what situates and configurates himself. The human essence is relational, or the relational datas constitute a human wesenchau [7] and it is from this essence that the man constitutes himself as man, or alienates himself, going away from this relational demands, changing them for guaranties of positions. Stoping himself, immobilizing his movement, he becomes unhuman, alienated of his possibilities, structuring himself through his necessities, becoming slave of his social and familial systems and of his sexual and intellectual desires, etc.

We now discuss this issue in another level: motivation and alienation, humanization and unhumanization. The human essence, what is configurator, the quantitative, intrinsic to man, is the possibility to relate with himself, with the other and with the world, in other words, the possibility of relation is a human quality. This human quality resultant of neurophisiological, organic-biological differentiation, transcends the organic data, creating new gestalt: the being-in-the-world, by the transformation of quantity [8] and evolution; the biological dynamics realizing itself and being surpassed by its own constituent imanencies: the possibilist relations.

This process is continuous, and when broken, it does not desappear the basic quality of the human - his possibility of relation - but it remains limited, referentiated to the patterns of mecanic repetition; in this binary compasses, the dynamic cicles stereotype necessary configurations of survival, and the human quality just survive to the minimum to maintain the effort. The more auto-referential the relations are established, the less is their qualification as possibilities, they situate themselves as necessary quantity of information, movements and efforts to maintain the desvitalizing organizations. The gestalt psychotherapy try to make a dynamic structure of the relationship of the human being, by questioning and motivating him to the perception of his problem as restrictive and captive presence, and so doing, it conferes to him an human quality. To perceive that one is a problem, that one is auto-referential, motivated by necessities, empty as a present, opens perspective, situates him in a new manner in front of reality. The individual begins to become motivated by the present experience of his problems, while perceiving them in a new manner, 'Prägnanz' and complex. This living diversification, resultant of the psychotherapic antithesis, possibilitates conflicts, discovers, perceptive changes responsible for behavioural changes.

The perception of one's own problems as existential fetters, as restrictions of possibilities, individualizes, since the dislocations of tensions - homogenizer and emptying - disappear. [pg.47 to 54]

FOOTNOTES:

[4] - Unfortunatelly, Psychoanalysis, Behaviourism, Marxism, finally the so called modern social science, because of its deterministic and reducionistic foundations, still think man in this way. The repercussion of these theoretic fundamentations are of enumerable partializations, distortions, in its practical propositions of how to improuve, to treat or to approach man.

[5] - Complexity, Novelty, 'Prägnanz' and Closure, are the characteristic of the experience of motivation. New is the antagonism between what one perceives (happens) and what one expects to perceive (to happen): the more organization is there, 'Prägnanz' in the situation, experienced context, the more motivated he is; the same for the complexity and for perception of Gestalten which insinuates its complementation, its Closure.

[6] - In Brazil there is a children game, the groesy pole: it stands a stick of 5 to 6 meters of hight, unted with groese, having in its top a bag with coins: the children have to go up to the top to get the bag of coins, but they slide, fall down, being almost impossible to get the top but using artifices to neutralize the groese. The one able to get the bag wins and gains the prize.

[7] - Wesenchau is used in the Husserl's sense.

[8] - It is interesting to remember that according to the dialectical, the quality is a transformation of quantities.