THE PERSONALITY-FUNCTION IN GESTALT THERAPY

The unconscious and its by-passing in a histori-cal-cultural perspective Freud himself, on the threshold of the 20th century (a histor-ical period that was not by chance defined as the "age of catastrophe" by Hobsbawm 1), perhaps did not intend the un-conscious to become a metaphor and a hermeneutic criticism of mature modernity. The dawn of the modern age, in fact, coincides with an attack on the paradigms of the classical and Judeo-Christian tradition, and the consequent break in a thousand-year old equilibrium, in which a series of rec-ognized authorities, transcending subjectivity, guaranteed a shared interpretation of the cosmos, of history, of existence itself. It was the form borrowed in the Medieval period from the paradigm of Christianity, based around the divine justi-fication for living or dying. Its demise, cleverly foreseen by Nietzsche in the famous pages of The Gay Science 2 , may, in fact, be represented as the "death of God" (of the father, of tr...

Gestalt Theory - An International Multidisciplinary Journal, 2021

Summary: The paper presents basic Gestalt psychological concepts of ego and self. They differ from other concepts in the way that they do not comprehend ego and self as fixed entities or as central controlling instances of the psyche, but as one specific organized unit in a psychological field in dynamic interrelation with the other organized units—the environment units—of this field. On this theme, well-known representatives of Gestalt theory have presented some general and special theories since the early days of this approach that could partly be substantiated experimentally. They illuminate the relationship between ego and world in everyday life as well as in the case of mental disorders. Not only the spatial extension of the phenomenal ego is subject to situational changes, but also its place in the world, its functional fitting in this world, its internal differentiation, its permeability to the environment, and much more. The German Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Metzger emphasizes the significant functional role that this dynamic plasticity of the phenomenal world and its continuously changing segregation of ego and environment have for human life by designating the phenomenal world as a “Central Steering Mechanism.” In this article, ego and self as part of this field in their interrelation with the total psychological field will be illuminated from the perspective of the thinking of the Gestalt psychologists Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Lewin, Wolfgang Metzger, Mary Henle, Edwin Rausch, and Giuseppe Galli. Zusammenfassung: Der Beitrag stellt grundlegende gestalttheoretische Auffassungen von Ich und Selbst vor. Sie unterscheiden sich von anderen Konzepten darin, dass sie Ich und Selbst nicht als feststehende Gegebenheiten oder als steuernde Zentralinstanzen des Psychischen verstehen, sondern als Teil eines psychologischen Feldes in dynamischer Wechselbeziehung zu ihrer psychologischen Umwelt. Zu diesem Thema haben namhafte Vertreter der Gestalttheorie seit der Frühzeit dieses Ansatzes einige allgemeine und spezielle Thesen vorgelegt, die zum Teil auch experimentell belegt werden konnten. Sie beleuchten das Ich-Welt-Verhältnis im Alltäglichen wie auch im Fall von psychischen Störungen. Situativen Veränderungen unterworfen ist schon die Ausdehnung des phänomenalen Ich, aber auch sein Ort in der Welt, seine funktionale Einpassung, seine Binnendifferenzierung, seine Durchlässigkeit zur Umwelt und vieles mehr. Die bedeutende funktionale Rolle dieser Plastizität der phänomenalen Welt in ihrer wechselnden Ich-Umwelt-Gliederung für das Leben der Menschen hebt Wolfgang Metzger hervor, indem er die anschauliche Welt als “zentrales Steuerungsorgan” bezeichnet. Ich und Selbst als Teile dieses Feldes in ihrer Wechselbeziehung zum psychischen Gesamtfeld werden im vorliegenden Beitrag aus der Perspektive von Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Lewin, Wolfgang Metzger, Mary Henle, Edwin Rausch und Giuseppe Galli beleuchtet.

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2010

Gestalt psychology emerged in Germany in the opening decades of the twentieth century and grew to become one of the major psychological schools alongside functionalism, structuralism, behaviourism and psychoanalysis. As a case study in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), it provides a rich source of insights as to how scientific theories develop in particular socio-historical contexts. In the early twentieth century the fate of psychology still hung in the balance: it could become an independent empirical science modelled on the natural sciences or remain housed in philosophy departments as the foundation of a scientific philosophy. The rapid development of experimental psychology in the late nineteenth century had raised the prospect that traditional philosophical problems in logic, epistemology and metaphysics might prove susceptible to experimental solution. Such claims, known collectively as 'psychologism', came under intense attack from a wide range of philosophers wishing to defend the traditional philosophical enterprise from the encroachment of science. The highly charged 'psychologism debate' (Psychologismus-Streit) extended from the 1880s to the 1920s, when it was finally resolved in favour of a separation between experimental psychology and 'pure' philosophy. It was in this fraught institutional context that the founders of Gestalt psychology -Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka -sought to establish their new theoretical framework. The purpose of the present essay is to trace the influence of the psychologism debate on the development and reception of Gestalt psychology in the period 1910-1930. The main source of information on this topic is Mitchell Ash's seminal study Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890-1967 (1995), which provides a detailed sociological analysis of the intellectual, institutional and wider cultural context in which Gestalt 1 Gestalt Psychology & the Psychologism Debate | Campbell Edgar psychology emerged. Another important source is Martin Kusch's Psychologism (also published in 1995), an in-depth analysis of the psychologism debate involving a novel application of the principles of SSK to philosophical rather than scientific knowledge. Kusch argues that the First World War and the antiscientific mentality of the Weimar Republic caused the abandonment of the psychologism debate and the victory of phenomenology.

Springer eBooks, 2018

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Although many early 20th-century descriptions of personality pathology were unabashedly psychoanalytic, recent editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) have attempted to frame personality disorders (PDs) in atheoretical terms. This article discusses the continuing relevance of psychoanalytic theory for PD diagnosis, research, and treatment. After reviewing the evolution of the PD concept since Freud's time, 3 psychodynamic constructs central to a contemporary understanding of personality pathology are described: ego strength, defense style, and mental representations of self and others. Research in each area is briefly reviewed, the heuristic value of the psychodynamic perspective is discussed, and unresolved questions and future directions in the psychodynamics of personality pathology are addressed.

Freud and his Discontents; an aetiology of psychoanalysis, 2021

The book, ‘Freud and his Discontents; an aetiology of psychoanalysis’ (ISBN 978-87-4303-717-0) is published, available in Denmark and Germany, and will be promoted in Britain, America, and Canada. A synopsis of the book is contained in the pdf along with text samples from the book. The book runs from the records of the Freud family in Pribor, the Jewish Enlightenment from a center not too far of in Tysmenitz which, influenced Freud’s parents and his early years. His first three years were actually spent with a Catholic nanny which left him relatively positive to the Catholic faith but his family's beliefs in Judaism were strongly rejected. This, plus his reports of some sexualization in Freud records, leaves him with early sexual attachments to his mother and anger against his father - his response to his family was therefore rooted in Oedipal dynamics. Sexual theories of the time, including Havelock Ellis, von Krafft-Ebbing, and Albert Moll also play a part in his theory of libido. He also seems to hold to such templates where two mothers are present and with birth confusion, he records two possible fathers. Freud’s Oedipal theory established at age three, occur simultaneously when Freud significantly lost his nanny and returned to his mother. These factors become evident in his works up to and including his last work, Moses and Monotheism. A significant amount of Freud’s works are discussed including, the psychosexual stages, Leonardo da Vinci, Totem and taboo, and the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. In this last section, there are brief entries describing the main ideas of those who met with Freud in Vienna on Wednesdays. These are the ‘discontents’ where despite stormy meetings, some remained as Freudians, and some, like CG Jung and Alfred Adler, go their own way. We then have a ‘diaspora’ of psychologists which, gives rise to the modern world of psychology and its disciplines as we find it.

Introduction and Apologia This is a schematic-like introduction to psychoanalytic theory or philosophy (including its philosophy and psychology of mind) and its correlative mode of therapy. This novel science and its corresponding therapeutic model (in the form of a unique therapeutic regimen known as ‘analysis’) is considerably more modest in aim and scope than what we find in religious and philosophical models of therapeia that go back to Hellenistic ethics and ancient Indic philosophies. Loosely speaking, these “therapies of desire” (or ‘the passions’), “spiritual exercises” and antidotes to ignorance continue in one way or another into our own time, be it, for example, in the Yoga system of Patañjali (400-500 CE) as outlined in the Yogasūtra(s), among sincere devotees of Buddhism, or with those attracted to philosophy as therapeia (or ‘philosophical counseling’) believed prominent in the works, say, of Nietzsche or Wittgenstein. In other words, cures, remedies, therapeutic prescriptions and regimens for “maladies of the soul” or human suffering in its various forms, but especially its psychological and existential incarnations, have long been conspicuous features of philosophical and religious worldviews (this largely ‘Western’ division of intellectual and ethical labor is not hard and fast in classical Indic and Chinese worldviews), and thus it is not surprising that there is a growing literature comparing various dimensions or elements of psychoanalysis (its philosophy and praxis) with Yoga and especially Buddhism. The “modesty” I refer to in Freudian (and Kleinian) psychoanalysis is in reference to the fact that Freud was committed to the relief or amelioration of suffering, this suffering being intrinsic to the human condition and thus not eliminable or subject to transcendence as we frequently find is the case with the aforementioned (especially religious) worldviews (this ‘transcendence’ does not come with death but is thought to be possible in this very life, while embodied, as it were). Psychoanalytic therapy was designed by Freud (i) to increase our capacity for self-knowledge or understanding, (ii) to encourage or enhance the powers of human agency or moral psychological autonomy, and (iii) to set the conditions of or improve the analysand’s capacity for happiness or the little joys we might find in everyday life. As Ernest Wallwork reminds us, although psychoanalysis “is one of the healing arts,” and while it was originally intended to “relieve mainly neurotic suffering” (it has since been extended to address more severe forms of mental disorder or illness), Freud was adamant that the person so relieved “may continue to suffer from the common human misery.” Again, Wallwork is apropos: “The goal is not only the negative one of reducing the patient’s suffering that Freud’s famous line about substituting ordinary unhappiness for neurotic misery is often taken as implying, but also the positive one of enabling the patient to enjoy life as fully as possible and to ‘make the best of him[self] that his inherited capacities will allow.”