The boxer who never ducks a punch? A lover without the ability to merge in ecstasy with his beloved? An employee who does not accept the rules of his company? Absurd examples illustrate the idea that different types of resistance to contact (avoidance, fusion, introjection in the above cases) are not always harmful.
The key concept of Gestalt psychology — «contact» describes the interaction of the organism with the environment. Without contact, Gestalt therapist Gordon Wheeler emphasizes, the organism cannot exist. But there is no “ideal” contact: “Remove all resistances, and then what remains will not be a pure contact, but a complete merger or a dead body, which is completely “out of contact”. The author proposes to consider resistances as “functions” of contact (and their combination as a “contact style” characteristic of the individual, which is useful if it corresponds to its goals, and harmful if it contradicts them).
Uiga, 352 p.