In the 1951 volume that founded Gestalt therapy, Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman discuss awareness in depth as a central element of Gestalt therapy. They lay the groundwork for a psychopathology of contact, exploring the contact cycle and its interruptions. Later, in his last manuscript—published posthumously and translated into Italian by our Institute—Perls broadens the psychopathology and sketches several illuminating reflections on the psychopathology of awareness, describing the phenomenology of its interruptions.
In this paper we will examine the Gestalt definition of awareness—one of the core aspects of Gestalt work, arguably the most important—and the relationship between awareness and contact, considering questions such as: Is awareness necessary in order to make contact? Can there be contact without awareness? Is awareness always part of a contact process?
THE THREE QUALITIES OF AWARENESS: AWARENESS, CONSCIOUSNESS, DELIBERATENESS
Awareness is a quality of experience that Perls and Goodman examine in the section devoted to personality theory. In Italian it is rendered by a single word, whereas in English it is differentiated into three terms denoting distinct states of consciousness: awareness, deliberateness, and consciousness.
- Awareness as awareness denotes a state of sensory openness and the quality of being ready to take in what is happening; the senses are spontaneously open insofar as they respond to the situation the person is living through. We can understand this awareness as a spontaneous bodily response to what is occurring at the contact boundary between organism and environment, or as an “immediate consciousness,” which therefore does not entail thought or reasoning. For example: during a session, the patient holds their breath without noticing, and the practitioner confronts them about this spontaneous, immediate movement, bringing what was outside awareness into awareness. The practitioner’s questions when working in terms of awareness are: “Did you notice that you held your breath? If you bring your attention to your body, what are you noticing?” Indeed, people are not always aware of what is happening in their bodily experience—for instance, that their eyes are moist, that they are agitatedly moving their legs, that they are holding their breath, etc. The capacity to apprehend the phenomenon as it presents itself, without interpreting or judging it, is a discipline Perls developed under the influence of phenomenology, one of the roots of Gestalt therapy.
- Consciousness is treated in relation to awareness, with particular attention to the difference between immediate consciousness and reflective consciousness. It emerges when the interaction at the contact boundary becomes complex and requires greater cognitive elaboration. It is the thought-through, logically mediated word, which therefore lacks the immediacy of the spontaneous word and expresses the thought of the Id. It manifests in evaluations, narratives, and thoughts. In the previous example, consciousness shows up when the patient becomes aware of the breath-holding and, together with the practitioner, begins to inquire into the intentionality of this movement. Possible questions might be: “What purpose is holding your breath serving? What happens if you hold it?” When interaction with the environment is fluid and simple, sensations and spontaneous responses (awareness and deliberateness) are sufficient; but when interaction with the environment becomes more complex and the satisfaction of needs less immediate, then bringing attention, thought, and language can support the organismic process. We are then faced with a slowing of awareness and an increase in consciousness, which may serve either to restore more spontaneous self-regulation or to maintain a chronic interruption in the contact process. An excess of consciousness turns into “blah, blah, blah,” draining vitality from the patient and the relationship.
In other words, if the experience at the boundary becomes complex, ambiguous, or conflictual—if there are mixed emotions (fear/desire), difficult choices, relational blocks, or inner conflicts—the organism begins to elaborate cognitively what is happening. At this point, consciousness comes into play: a form of awareness that is not only felt but thought, reworked, observed from without. As written in PHG, thought is a delay of action (1951). - Deliberateness is not frequently named in PHG, but it is present in the discussion of intentionality and personal responsibility. It denotes a deliberate, non-spontaneous effort of attention, supported by will and ego functions. I decide that finishing this piece of writing is very important to me, and therefore I will not even go to the bathroom in order to keep my attention deliberately focused, even though my body—or at least my physiological needs—would orient toward a different figure. Working on this plane of awareness means asking the person what they want to achieve in that situation—about their choices. Deliberate attention, for example, is necessary for learning processes in any field. Playing an instrument, riding a bicycle, understanding a text, etc., are activities that require an initial effort; only later will we likely begin to enjoy them, as we will have acquired habits and can welcome more pleasurable aspects of the same situation.
THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF GESTALT
The founders of Gestalt therapy speak of awareness in terms of awareness—that is, as the quality of being fully present in the here and now with respect to one’s emotions, sensations, thoughts, and actions. They do not refer to a “thought that has been thought,” reflective and mediated by logical connections, but to a thought pertaining to bodily, sensory, and emotional processes that supports organismic self-regulation. Perls states that awareness is the foundation of mental health and the only possible goal within a Gestalt session (1965).
From the Gestalt psychopathological perspective, the aim of therapy is not to eliminate symptoms, but to offer the person the support needed to recognize what they are avoiding. In this way, they can become aware of how they narrow their perceptual field and limit their possibilities for action.
Symptoms are considered creative adjustments: ways in which intentionality seeks to express itself, attempting to modify the situation—adapting to the environment and, at the same time, adapting the environment to oneself. They represent a provisional solution to a problem that generates anxiety, especially when the person does not find within themselves or in the environment the resources to sustain their intentionality. They are therefore a response to a difficulty that is still unclear and that, in therapy, must be explored and clarified.
The symptom repeats itself in a state of restricted awareness: it reduces the perception of the distress linked to not knowing how to act in a hostile or uncertain environment. As mammals, the inability to face a problem is experienced as a threat to survival; remaining in uncertainty for long is difficult, and the nervous system tends to react with flight or forms of desensitization. The symptom then becomes an automatic, crystallized (neurotic) adjustment: it reduces anxiety, but at the cost of suffering that often outweighs its benefits.
Precisely because the symptom is the solution found by the patient, the Gestalt intervention does not aim to dismantle it, but to support the person in expanding their awareness so as to discover new possibilities for creative adjustment. In therapy, the symptom is “frustrated”—in the sense that its automatic repetition is interrupted—but the vital impetus it carries is not denied, namely what the patient is seeking and is unable to obtain in the environment. Eliminating the symptom would mean losing sight of the direction in which the person is already moving, their attempt—albeit incomplete—to solve the problem. Most psychological disorders thus arise from a reduction, an avoidance, or a manipulation of awareness. We do not suffer because we have problems, but because we avoid seeing and feeling what is actually happening to us.
From this perspective, Perls links the psychopathology of awareness to the interruption of the contact cycle, identifying the lack of awareness as the heart of psychological suffering.
In a session, a person may notice a change in their breathing or tension in their shoulders—slight bodily shifts that precede, or through which they enact, the interruption of contact. By focusing on the sensation, an emotion may emerge that signals something occurring at the contact boundary: the person sharpens into focus that they have been holding back an irritation, perhaps toward the practitioner; at that point, they can decide whether to express it or not. When, supported by the therapeutic situation, they express it, they no longer need to stiffen their shoulders and will feel a pleasant warmth spreading.
Working therapeutically means bringing what is outside awareness into awareness and thus restoring spontaneous self-regulation. Psychopathology is viewed as a frozen form of the self-regulatory process, which can begin to flow again through a return to awareness in the present. Where the subject becomes aware of the “how” of their interruptions—that is, how, rather than why, in the here and now they produce their own difficulties—they can then help themselves resolve them in the present (PHG, 1951, p. 76).
AWARENESS AND PHENOMENOLOGY
Thirty years after the publication of Ego, Hunger, and Aggression (1942), where Perls first spoke of awareness, the practice of mindfulness—founded in 1979 by Jon Kabat-Zinn in the United States—spread widely. This kind of presence is a quality of consciousness that we can train when we pause, learn to halt associative thinking, and begin to notice what is present in the here and now, taking in what is happening. Perls invited patients to practice this training: “I am aware of the window in front of me; I am aware of my breath reaching down to my belly,” etc. We know that Perls and Goodman were strongly influenced by phenomenology and, indeed, from Husserl onward the concept of intentional consciousness was central. Through the practice of phenomenological reduction, we bracket the natural world—made up of perceptual habits and subjective and cultural prejudices—and access a radical awareness (Raggiunti, 1970; Tarditi, 2023).
Gestalt therapy essentially adopts the method of phenomenology—that is, its way of proceeding (Bosco, 2022). By taking a “reflective and transcendental attitude,” we observe the how of experience, not the what. For Husserl, awareness is not psychological or introspective but phenomenological: it focuses on the structured manner in which we live every experience.
A simple example:
You are listening to a song.
Ordinarily, we speak in terms of a judgment: “It’s beautiful; I like the chorus.”
With reduction, instead, you pause and observe how the music appears to you—for instance, how the sound unfolds over time; how you perceive it as a unity even though it is made of different notes; how it evokes emotions or memories, etc.
This is phenomenological awareness: not what you feel, but how you fee
Perls, in the famous session with Gloria (1965), posits an intriguing equation: awareness = here and now = reality. Awareness gives shape to the reality we live—what appears to us—which is not objectively given but subjectively constructed.
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF AWARENESS AND CONTACT INTERRUPTIONS
In Gestalt Therapy, contact interruptions are modes by which the individual avoids or distorts authentic contact with the environment or with oneself. They include:
1 – Introjection — uncritically “swallowing” values or expectations from outside, which then constrain choice.
2 – Projection — attributing to the environment what is disowned in oneself, thereby displacing responsibility.
3 -Retroflection — turning impulses meant for the environment back on oneself (e.g., self-criticism instead of expressing anger).
4 – Egotism: One watches oneself act without fully engaging in the experience; the self withdraws from the spontaneity of contact and takes the stance of a spectator, analyzing and controlling instead of allowing itself to be involved in the relationship.
5 – Deflection — diverting or diluting contact (joking, vagueness, distraction) to avoid immediacy.
6 – Confluence — blurring the boundary between self and other, minimizing difference and conflict.
Let us consider two concrete examples in which work on contact interruptions is linked to the functioning of awareness. In the first, the practitioner works on awareness of deflection; in the second, on confluence.
Situation No. 1
🔹 Context: a young woman (Laura, 28) begins therapy complaining of anxiety, decision blocks, and difficulties in relationships. She often says: “I don’t know what I want,” “I feel confused,” “Other people always decide for me.”
The therapist does not interpret and does not look for a rational “why.” The aim is to bring Laura into the present, to increase her awareness of what she is experiencing, moment by moment.
🔹 Gestalt intervention:
Laura recounts an episode at work in which she was unable to say “no” to her boss. She laughs nervously. The therapist interrupts her with a typical Gestalt observation:
“What are you doing right now?” The therapist’s stance is welcoming and nonjudgmental. She knows she does not know, insofar as the patient’s smile is part of a process the therapist does not control and co-constructs step by step together with the patient. It is a delicate confrontation, because depending on how it is done, the patient may feel supported or, on the contrary, exposed, judged in her body, overcome by shame.
Laura: “I’m talking about what happened to me…”
T: “No. You just laughed. But you were telling me something that made you feel frustrated. Is that something funny?”
Laura stops. For the first time she notices the contrast between her real emotion and the automatic behavior. After a moment:
“I always do this. I smile when I’m angry. That way others don’t notice.”
🔹 Therapeutic insight:
With this intervention—grounded in dialogue and in phenomenology (specifically, the patient smiling while speaking about something serious and the practitioner noticing and bringing it into the dialogue)—the therapist creates an experience by breaking a confluence.
In that moment, Laura notices that she is laughing and takes a first step of awareness: it is easier to show the laugh than the anger she is in fact feeling but not showing. She realizes that deflection prevents her from feeling and expressing anger. She was not “anxious for no reason”: she had been compressing authentic emotions for a long time.
T. does not interpret. She invites Laura to stay there:
“Now, sit with that anger. Where do you feel it in your body? What shape does it have?”
Laura turns her attention inward. She is moved. It is the shift from talking “about herself” to talking “from herself”—from narration to contact.
🔹 Conclusion:
In that small moment, awareness interrupted the neurotic pattern of the symptom. Laura is not cured, but she has begun to “see” something that was previously automatic. Perls would say that healing begins the moment we become fully aware of what we are—without avoiding it any longer.
Situation No. 2
During a session with a long-term patient, the practitioner feels little interest and drowsiness. We have several possibilities in terms of awareness.
She yields to the impulse and dozes off: in that case she feels no tension between opposite needs (to sleep and to stay awake). However, if the patient notices and confronts her angrily, the practitioner immediately wakes up, as something new captures her previously dulled senses. In this case she is working on a plane of awareness and relational self-regulation. Since anti-awareness is one of the features of awareness itself, sleep/falling asleep can be functional to therapy in various ways.
At the opposite pole, the therapist begins to lie and feign interest by nodding. In that case she struggles between the need to keep her eyes open and keep the person from noticing, and the desire to be elsewhere, leaving the session very tired due to the tension between movements that pull the body in different directions (to leave versus to stay). This is an example of neurotic self-regulation grounded in a block of awareness. In terms of the contact process, it is possible that the practitioner has acted on the basis of the introject that “one must not” tell the patient that I am bored, that I am confused, etc. From the standpoint of awareness, the therapist or counsellor is not aware of the introject, nor of having interrupted contact and of her anxiety.
Finally, we have a third possibility that involves the principle of inclusion and difference. When the practitioner brings awareness to the sleepiness, she may feel the anxiety and the difficulty of acting in a delicate situation; she can then choose what to do—not starting from “one must/must not do” (i.e., rules introjected from others), but from her own evaluation of the situation. There is no fatigue because there is no struggle between opposing impulses. The difference between moods (patient/practitioner) is brought to awareness and transformed into a communication that moves the contact boundary.
No contact boundary can be created unless people bring themselves in their difference, as we can observe if we keep a hand still in water: after a while, sensitivity is lost. At this point, the practitioner can decide to confront the patient, share her state of mind, or choose to remain silent.
In the first example of awareness, sleepiness happens and does not represent something new for the practitioner who dozes off (perhaps not even for the patient, who may be accustomed to an environment that shows no interest in him). In the second example, the anxiety/difficulty slips into the background and becomes unaware. In the third example, the novelty lies in the uncertainty of meeting, not knowing how to act (which may be connected to the fear of offending, of hurting, to one’s own or the other’s anger, etc.), which—if it finds support in the breath or in the relationship—leads to awareness of a conflict between different possibilities, before which the therapist or counsellor pauses and makes a conscious choice.
Although the third hypothesis may appear the most brilliant and effective, in reality the complexity of Gestalt therapy is evident in the consideration that there is no “more correct” way of working, since even unawareness and neurotic self-regulation, in some therapeutic situations, are the best possible adjustment for the resources present in the field at that moment. In “Psychopathology of Awareness,” Perls reiterates this fascinating complexity when he states that unawareness is one of the five characteristics that awareness can take on and is functional to the field in which that figure emerges (1965).
CONTACT AND AWARENESS
In Theory and Practice of Gestalt Therapy, we find some interesting—though also complex and contradictory—reflections regarding being in contact and at the same time aware of bodily experience and of what surrounds us.
Let us start from the psychopathology of contact and, in particular, from the definition that PHG give of contact, namely the “awareness of the assimilable novelty and of the actions needed to assimilate or reject it” (1951, p. 230).
Contact requires two elements: awareness and novelty. Novelty is a stimulus that draws interest: my being in front of you is not necessarily a novelty, because it may be a taken-for-granted, repetitive presence. Novelty, in Gestalt, is part of a process that begins with perception, organizes experience, and leads to growth. If it is an assimilable novelty, it becomes part of growth. If it is not assimilable, it orients us and mobilizes a series of actions to reject it.
If, in the middle of a city full of visual and auditory stimuli, I hear the sound of water, I turn, see a drinking fountain, and move closer to drink, this is an example of a novelty that spontaneously attracts my attention and organizes experience, bringing forth a need (thirst) of which I was not previously aware. It will probably not be a novelty that greatly intensifies my awareness, since I can approach the fountain absentmindedly, almost without realizing it. By contrast, if a man stands in front of me with a knife, my awareness will be entirely oriented toward facing this non-assimilable novelty, which I must find a way to deal with and reject.
Perls maintains that open Gestalten tend to be an organizing principle of experience, in the sense that, in the present, we will tend to seize those stimuli that make the situation functional to closing an unfinished business from the past, as happens in the therapeutic setting. Awareness supports the contact process.
Awareness always implies a contact process, just as the contact process implies awareness; they are codependent.
Awareness necessarily requires contact, because it is always awareness “of something,” that is, of a figure that emerges and captures our attention. Phenomenology would say that every conscious act is intentional. This means that there can be no authentic awareness without a living, direct relationship with something—a person, an emotion, an object, a need, an idea. If I feel hunger and recognize it, it is because I come into contact with that bodily sensation, I live it, and I become aware of my need.
In living beings where consciousness is “simplified” compared to human nature, the relationship between awareness and contact is much closer and more evident. Dogs, or animals in general, are aware insofar as they live in an eternal present: if there are stimuli or novelties that ignite their awareness (food, noises, dangers, etc.), they move and interact in the environment; otherwise, they tend to sleep. They do not need reflective awareness (consciousness). Awareness is not separate and is simultaneous with contact and action.
We can say that contact without awareness is fusion, whereas awareness without contact is dissociation.
In reality it is improper to speak of contact, since fusion is not a contact process but rather a “link” with the environment in which differences are annulled, just as dissociation is an interruption of the contact process that implies a form of isolation.
Without awareness, experience becomes undifferentiated; self is no longer distinguished from other. We see this when a person is swept away by emotions without a clear direction, or when they act reactively. Or in symbiotic relationships, where there is no distinction between I and you. In all these cases, contact is confused. We observe various interactions in which no clear figure manages to emerge. In couple or group processes, we observe people speaking at the same time, not listening to one another, with a high level of energy and conflict without it being clear what they want in the same situation, or when there is an apparent agreement but little excitement. It would be more accurate to speak of background confluence, where what is lacking is precisely a clear figure.
Awareness without contact, by contrast, means separating from the living experience, disconnecting from the body and the present moment, isolating oneself from one’s emotions by stiffening one’s boundaries—as happens in intellectualization, in self-observation where the experience is thought instead of lived, or when the person knows they are angry but cannot feel it in the body. Dissociation is a state in which awareness is not embodied and does not translate into action. In the most severe cases, we are faced with psychotic experiences.
To conclude, full experience, for Gestalt, arises only from the integration between contact and awareness. Clients come to therapy in order to change, and that is legitimate. Gestalt therapy does not work for change, but to broaden the possibilities of choice through an expansion of awareness in the here and now. Awareness is linked to choice, which in turn is linked to responsibility—to an authentic existence, as M. Heidegger and J.-P. Sartre would say, where freedom means being present and taking the risk of choosing what people and what therapist* we want to be, what life we want to live, and which people we want to surround ourselves with.
Bibliography
Bosco N. (2017). Karl Jaspers. Figure Emergenti, 2016-2017 | Numero 1: Aggressività&Sessualità
Yontef G. (1993). Awareness, Dialogue and Process: Essays on Gestalt Therapy. The Gestalt Journal Press, Highland, NY
Perls F. (1942). L’io, la fame e l’aggressività. Franco Angeli, milano
Perls F., Hefferline R. F., Goodman P. (1951). Gestalt Therapy. Excitement and growth in the Human personality, trad. it. Teoria e Pratica della Gestalt, Roma: Astrolabio, 1997.
Perls F. (1965). Psicopatologia della consapevolezza. Roma: Astrolabio, 2023
Polster E., Polster M. (1973). Gestalt Therapy Integrated: Contours of Theory and Practice.
Editore: Brunner/Mazel
Polster E. (1997). La trasposizione della teoria nella pratica. Martin Heidegger e la psicoterapia della Gestalt. In Quaderni di Gestalt, n.24/25, Anno XIII, 1997.
Raggiunti R. (1970). Introduzione a Husserl. Bari: Edizioni Laterza
Salonia G. (1989). “Tempi e modi di contatto”. Quaderni di Gestalt, n. 8–9, 1989, pp. 55–64.
Spagnuolo Lobb M. (1990). Il sostegno specifico nelle interruzioni di contatto, in “Quaderni di Gestalt”, n. 10/11, pp. 13-23.
Tarditi C. (2023), Variazione fenomenologiche sulla paura. Figure Emergenti. 2023 | Numero 6: Il mondo fa paura. La paura fa il mondo
https://figuremergenti.it/radici/variazioni-fenomenologiche-sulla-paura/
