Contact and Awareness in Gestalt Therapy Theory

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Cycle of Contact

Awareness always resides in the here and now and it is always accompanied by gestalt formation (Perls, Hefferline and Goodman, 1951). A gestalt is a meaningful whole. In order to make sense of our internal and external worlds, our perceptions are organised into gestalts. When a gestalt is formed, there is a sharpening of attention to a specific figure against a background of everything else of potential relevance. Whatever is of most interest at any moment becomes figure, but if something else becomes more important, the figure recedes into the ground and is replaced by a new figure. Perls calls this the ‘cycle of inter-dependency of organism and environment’ (1947: 44), which breaks down into four phases:[2]

- The first phase is “fore-contact” where a need arises, there is a sensation and awareness is disturbed. For example, while my need to complete this essay is currently figural, the sensation to smoke a cigarette became a disturbing factor and my awareness shifted. The image of a cigarette interrupted my trail of thought.

- This interruption led me me to “contact”, as I considered how I would satisfy my need, mobilised and took action.

- Whereupon I entered “final contact”, lighting the cigarette, becoming so engaged with smoking, that it became the most figural thing in my ground, thus satisfying me need.

- Upon stubbing out the cigarette, I entered “post-contact” as balance was restored, enabling the gestalt to “then melt into the background […] and leave the foreground free for the next relevant Gestalt to emerge” (Perls. L qtd in Yontef, 1993: 139), namely returning to this essay.

Healthy individuals use this cycle to assimilate what they need, unleashing awareness to mediate the process, thus providing impetus for growth. The extent to which a person breaks or modifies this cycle determines the richness of meaning they gain from it. But when this flow is disrupted to the degree that an individual is unable to form complete gestalts, we are left with unfinished business.

Creative Adjustment

When a need remains unmet, and the gestalt un-whole, it continues to demand satisfaction. When satisfaction is prevented, we impose our own sense of closure by creating adjustments to fill in the gaps and fudge wholeness. But since the underlying need is still effectively unresolved, our experience, physiology and behaviour become distracted, hindering our ability to engage in the here and now and thus meet new needs.

For instance, while at a comedy gig a few weeks ago, my preoccupation with a stressful work situation completely hi-jacked my ability to “make meaningful contact” with the performance. The jokes simply were not funny to me yet everyone else in the audience was laughing. My awareness was on the unfinished business of my work problem, not on the performance.

According to Mann, there are a number of ways that we adjust or disturb the cycle of contact in order to create a sense of wholeness (2010). While none are overtly negative or positive, they can become “neurotic when used chronically and inappropriately” (Perls et al qtd in Clarkson. P, 1989: 51). Each adjustment tends to be more prevalent at different phases of the gestalt formation and destruction cycle, although they can manifest in any of the following stages:

- Disruption in the sensation phase may result in desensitisation, a dulling of the senses, e.g. the way I numb myself from my feelings to avoid suffering the agony of emotional pain.

- While deflection tends to take place in the awareness phase, as it is a way of avoiding of direct contact with another person or the environment, e.g. my tendency to answer a question with a question when I do not want my true feelings exposed.

- Introjection, when a rule, role or belief is ingested without being properly assimilated, is particularly disruptive at the stage of mobilisation, since swallowed beliefs can prevent a person from taking the appropriate action to meet their needs. For instance, as a child I introjected the idea that it was unacceptable to be fat, prompting me to be very draconian about my diet and body shape, for fear of rejection.

- Projection is often seen as a disruption to the action phase, as it happens when parts of your personality are not experienced as yours, but interpreted as being aspects of another’s personality. While there may be some truth in a projection, frequently this results in people “paying very selective attention to the environment or experiencing themselves as powerless to change the situation” (Clarkson. P, 1989: 59) For instance, I often project that others see me as fat and dislikeable, which inhibits my interactions, when in reality it is a disowned part of myself that is disrupting the situation.

- Confluence is the inability to perceive any boundary between self and other. “The chronically confluent individual does not know where he ends and others begin.” (Clarkson. P and Mackewn. J, 1993: 5). I’ve experienced this positively as a TV producer working in a team, when I have been party to the united sense of triumph that follows a production wrap. But also negatively, when my 15-year marriage broke down and I had to re-discover who I was, without my then husband. As such, confluence is most profoundly felt during the withdrawal phase of the contact cycle.

- Retroflection happens when expression meets opposition and causes a person’s stored up mobilised energy to turn in on itself, instead of out into the environment. It manifests in either of two ways. The first is doing to oneself what one wants/wanted to do to others and the second is doing to oneself what one want/wanted others to do to them. I have harboured anger towards my Mother for many years. Yet due to her fragile emotional state, I have not been able to express it. Over time, this anger has turned inwards and manifested with an eating disorder. Retroflection is most deeply felt during the final phase of contact as it diminishes satisfaction, the ensuing phase in the cycle.

- Egotism is when a person “is aware and has something to say about everything, but the concentrating self feels empty, without need or interest”, what Perls et al (1951/1961) call “self-conscious spectatoring” (qtd. in Clarkson. P and Mackewn. J, 1993: 61). Egotism often disrupts satisfaction, as when a person becomes too caught up with themselves to fully experience satisfaction. For example, I can be very circumspect when it comes to eating a meal and I often obsess about calories and weight gain, thus not wholly experiencing a sense