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Psychology is the science which studies and
explains human behaviour. There are four approachs, schools or
basic concepts to realize this study.
The psychoanalitic approach (Freud, M.Klein, H.Sullivan, Lacan
etc) understands human behaviour as resultant of a process of
unconscious motivation; the behaviour is basically view as projective
expression of Ego, Id and Super-ego.
To the behaviourists (Watson, C.Hull, Skinner) the behaviour
is resultant of the conditioning of the innate reflexes; to the
functionalists (Piaget, W. James, Dilthey) behaviour is synonym
of adaptation, it is the expression of the interaction between
the organism and its environment. The gestalt psychology, the
classical gestalt psychologists (Koffka, Koehler, Wertheimer)
understand behaviour as perceptive process.
The psychoanalitic school, since its beginning (Freud) was concerned
with the therapeutic aspect, with the treatment of neurosis,
phobias; behaviourists and functionalists built a theory to explain
human behaviour, as well as techniques to modify it, treat it,
through the social, through the educational.
The gestalt psychologists explained human behaviour as being
resultant of perceptive processes. The preoccupation of the gestalt
psychologists was to perceive the human dimension; they would
not propose a therapy for what was not yet globally perceived,
configurated. Their main task consisted of eradicate the elementarism
and organicism dominant in the psychological conceptualization.
It was not created a gestalt psychotherapy.
In the 1960s, F. Perls appears as the creator of the gestalt
therapy. He used to say that the whole is not the sum of the
parts (gestalt psychology's concept), but, holding the idea,
the belief in the existence of the unconscious, he could not
admit knowledge as a relational, perceptive data; he would rather,
continue thinking knowledge as a resultant of inner, subjective
process. He did not understand behaviour as perceptive process,
but as an expression of unconscious motivations. This conceptual
dualism did not allow him to perceive the being-in-the-world,
this gestalt; still thinking as Freud, the being versus the world,
he exiled himself from any gestaltic context where unity is a
fundamental concept. Fighting for "lose your mind, gain
your senses", he wrote his dualistic manifesto.
Having completed my graduation in psychology in 1968, at Universidade
Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), I started my work of psychotherapy
creating the gestalt psychotherapy.
In 1972, while publishing "Psicoterapia Gestaltista - Conceituações"
("Gestalt Psychotherapy - Conceptualizations") I wrote:
"This book results from a whole, unitarian view of the human
phenomenon. In this sense it is enclosed and based in the gestalt
psychology as theory regarding human behaviour, in the phenomenology
and dialectical materialism (which shall not be mistaken for
marxism as ideology) as methodological approach. This whole and
unitarian view surpass its fundamental constituents - gestalt
psychology, phenomenology and dialectical materialism - while
synchronizing them in their unities mediators totalities.
We reached this synchronization starting from a phenomenological
attitude - to know the phenomenon, in this case the man, without
a priori, through his evidence, through the apprehension of his
essence. This starting point revealled a whole - the-being-in-the-world.
This perception led to the questioning of how we perceive, what
is perceived or not perceived, in short, the laws of perception,
their meaning and organization inherent to the process of be-in-
the-world, in the context of time and space. We are fundamented
in the theory of gestalt regarding human behaviour and in the
dialectical materialism, since by the appearance of the man,
the whole, the figure, it is insinuated his context, ground,
the world. Through Closure - one of the aspects which characterizes
the perceptive organization - we perceive the time dimension,
space, the reality, the matter, the movement, the continuity
which characterizes the existencial cosmic processes. The synchronization
happened, since we did not unilateralize the perception of the
processual phenomenon to its mediators, configurations or essences,
but we rather apprehended its essential configurative mediation;
that is the reason why in this book, the man is studied as a
whole, questioning and answering his genesis, his movements of
constituent and constituted. This aspect has major importance
since in the pragmatism, in the dualistic, estruturalist, marxist,
religious, sociological, anthropological and physical positions,
it is not done any questioning about what is the human being,
in spite of speaking of him, present solutions for his problems,
specially in the diverse therapeutic views unilaterally fundamented,
where one searchs and justifies those solutions without the datas
of the problem. These absurdity occur only because it is done
through preconceptualizations, preconceptions, and never through
conceptualizations. In this book, we look for the conceptualization
of man in his context - living temporality - taking in consideration
its decurrent structuralization and des-structuralization, pointing
out dogmatic aspects impeditive of these realizations and aprehensions."
[pg.15 / 16]
In 1993, while writing "Terra e Ouro são Iguais -
Percepção em Psicoterapia Gestaltista" ("Earth
and Gold are Equal - Perception in Gestalt Psychoterapy"),
I wrote:
"To be a psychotherapist is a way of being in the world
with the other. I don't believe in psychotherapic function, I
don't see the relational processes for the sake of results, in
spite of knowing that the profession I have has a socio-economic
structure well delineated, functionally specified. To me, what
characterizes the psychotherapist is the way he perceives, what
he expresses - speaks and communicates - how he is structured,
what are his positions.
I always had a conceptual and theoretic approach, as, in my opinion,
only starting from this, I can globally perceive the other who
is with me as "client". It is this theoretic approach
which allows me to perceive the other not as my fellow-creature,
emphatically, but as a complaint, a difficulty, a sorrow, an
incapacity, a possibility not realized, contingentiated, limited
by necessities, positioned before me.
My psychotherapic experience has been a constant questioning
in the sense of not blind my tool, eternizing a theoretic position.
When I created the concepts responsible for the structuralization
of the Gestalt Psychotherapy, besides of thinking that neurosis
was fundamentally non-acceptance, I developed the concept of
perception as knowing by the senses, following the gestalt fundaments,
antidualistic and not based on the hypothesis of the unconscious.
In this context, I believed that, through the attitude of acceptance,
I would realize the antithesis necessary to change. In 1978,
in my book "Mudança e Psicoterapia Gestaltista"
("Change and Gestalt Psychotherapy"), my worry was
to understand and explain why this occurs: "...in psychotherapy
may happens change as adaptation or as transformation; (...)
the psychotherapy may means taking-position, 'positionament'
(...) the client's will to change, to do psychotherapy, is, at
times, the search of a place to hide, to keep, develop or confort
his problems. The existence of the psychotherapist makes sense
only as a propitiator of antithesis, changes; in case he stabilizes
himself, take-position, defines himself as holder of verities,
theorist of realities and representative / defender of constituted
orders - be them any one, even the most revolutionary ones -
he negates himself as psychotherapist to become an authority,
propitiator of well-being and adaptation, never a propitiator
of transformation and existential synchronization.
Later on, I perceived that to know by the senses - perception
- was relation. This globalization of processes made it possible
to me to emphasize the questioning as a lever propitiator of
changing, as neurosis was basically perceptive distortion - the
questioning, the denunciation, gave the possibility of other
perceptions responsible for changes. Changing the perception
one changes his behaviour - was the dominant concept.
Today, 24 years after the beginning of my work of conceptualization
of the gestalt psychotherapy, I know that neurosis is non-acceptance
and perceptive distortion, that to perceive is to know by the
senses, and that this relation is perception. But I perceive
also that perception is vivência , that neurosis
is positionament. From that comes my psychotherapic attitude
of antithesis be, basically, characterized by the break of positions
- that is what I express in this book, when I deal with the classical
dualities which configure the human, showing that they are partial
and unilateral apprehensions of the human: subject-object, quantity-quality,
for exemple.
As a psychotherapist, in spite of my theoretic position, I feel
contemplative when I merge with the problem of the other to get
it globally. We only find a solution if we dedicate to the problem,
if we plunge into it. To search solution outside the configurative
context of the problem, is never to find it. This type of solution
is a way to adaptation, normally reached through interpretations
and control of behaviour. The psychotherapist shall not even
desire the improvement of the client, what he should aspire is
that the client perceives why he is as he is: fearful, confused,
not accepting oneself, divided, after all, neurotic."[pag.127,128,129]
Vera Felicidade de Almeida Campos
- August 1996 -
Updated 2002
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