Abstract

The thesis I seek to develop in this article is that fear, the phenomenon we address in this issue of the journal, is directly linked to the hardening of our physical, mental, relational, and social boundaries. I will attempt to demonstrate that Eurocentric culture has placed particular value on the construction of identities—personal, familial, social, political, etc.—but to construct an identity, we must crystallize the process of identification and alienation, which is essential for creatively adapting to a complex and challenging environment. Patriarchal culture, with its logic of dominance and possession, bears great responsibility for the creation of crystallized identities. To address this topic, I will begin with a phenomenon tragically linked to patriarchy: war. From there, we will move on to the experience of trauma and damage, addressing the importance of boundaries and the crisis of the current identity system. Finally, I will arrive at a hypothesis for intervention based on the ability to recognize and alienate ourselves from solutions no longer appropriate to the situation we are experiencing. This is an essential prerequisite for identifying with our next evolutionary stage.

Fear is the emotion that makes us understand immediately, that is, without the mediation of thought, that we are encountering danger. Danger is an event that can cause us suffering, harm, or trauma.

To discuss fear, suffering, damage, and trauma as human experiences in this historical period, I decided to begin not with psychotherapy but with the experience of war, which has forcefully returned to the forefront of our European reality.

The conflict unfolding in the heart of Europe is weighing on our consciences, not least because it brings to mind experiences, interpretations, and positions that many of us perhaps thought were outdated and a thing of the past century.

I am very impressed by the way the issue of war is being addressed and the actions developed by all parties involved in the event.

I will try as much as possible to distinguish observable events, the shared reality on which all parties involved can agree, from experiences and interpretations.

The event we begin with is the entry of Russian armed forces into Ukrainian territory. This event has given rise to widely varying interpretations and experiences. Russia has defined it as a special operation, motivated by the desire to protect the Russian and pro-Russian minorities present in those territories from the violence and oppression perpetrated against them by neo-Nazi militias supported by the Ukrainian government. This is further compounded by the desire to curb NATO expansion, which is increasingly “encircling” Russia’s borders.

Ukraine, as well as the European Union and the United States, defined this action as an invasion, that is, an act of war that cannot be justified in any way and can only be understood by Russia’s, and Putin’s in particular, desire to expand Russia’s borders by annexing territories that were once part of the Soviet Union. Consequently, they affirmed Ukraine’s full right to defend itself in any way possible and guaranteed full support through the delivery of weapons, technology, and other forms of assistance necessary to wage war.

The reasons I’ve outlined are a simplification, but I’ve only used them as a well-known example: in every conflict, both sides boast powerful reasons justifying their actions; as history has taught us, in every war, all the warring nations had God on their side.

The event we are observing and which arouses fear, indignation and anger in most of us Europeans is that a large and powerful country is using weapons, that is, force and violence, to obtain from a smaller country something that it cannot obtain through dialogue and diplomacy.

We thought and hoped that this experience, which continues to be frequent in much of the planet, would never happen again within Europe.

This event helped create an “us” that includes Ukraine, most of the rest of Europe and the United States, and a “them,” namely the Russians.

Here, for me, an important question arises: Russia or the Russian people?

And do we want to defend the Ukrainian people or Ukraine?

I feel deep sorrow for all the human beings who have died and who have suffered and are suffering in this war, as in all wars, but I cannot empathize with the request to die in defense of one’s homeland.

I was hoping this request would never be made again.

The term patria derives from pater, father, as do patriarchy and patrimony. The land of the fathers, the dominion of the fathers, the goods of the fathers.

Patriarchy is the rule of the strongest over all others. The dominant male acquires the right to impregnate females. The dominant male is the strongest among the other males and dominates them. He has the best weapons, protects, and accumulates goods that are given to him in exchange for the protection and food he provides, and the goods he uses to build houses and everything else necessary. He becomes the patriarch, accumulating wealth. In the land he governs, his language is spoken, because his commands and demands must be understood, and that becomes the homeland of those born there, who live there, and who share that language.

Even today, we live in countries dominated by patriarchy. Dialogue and democracy are attempts to balance the use of force to shape decisions and choices. But wealth holders are still those who wield power and have the power to influence and shape governments.

Many people today have doubts about the actual existence of democracy in Eurocentric countries, do not vote in elections and probably share a maxim by Mark Twain: “If voting were of any use they would not let us do it.”

Patriarchy is predominantly male, but not necessarily so. Women can also embrace the patriarchal perspective.

The difference between patriarchy and matriarchy is not that in the former, men have more power and in the latter, women have more power.

The difference is that one speaks of possession of dominance and the force required to gain and maintain possession.

The other speaks of participation, of union and of the energy needed to make this union possible and for this union to be creative.

I can make a fortune on my own, but I can’t get married on my own.

Now, what does all this have to do with experiences like danger, harm, or trauma?

What causes trauma is the encounter with an invasive and overwhelming experience, which as such cannot be the object of contact, in living which I do not find in myself or in the surrounding environment the capacity and support to reject it.

Trauma is therefore linked to boundaries and our ability to safeguard them by using our resources and/or environmental support.

But if it is linked to boundaries then trauma is also linked to the process of identification and alienation.

For the mystic who identifies only with his spirit, his soul, or his faith, suffering segregation, violence, and bodily mutilation does not cause trauma, but on the contrary can make him feel stronger and more whole.

For “ordinary” people, like us, identified with our corporeality, segregation, torture, rape and other forms of violence become possible traumas.

For those who expand their boundaries to their home or car, that is, they feel they are part of themselves, a burglary or a car accident, even without consequences for the person, can become a traumatic event.

If our borders become the borders of our “homeland,” a military invasion that I cannot repel becomes a source of trauma.

For example, even the arrival of migrants, whom I didn’t invite and who I fear could threaten what I possess, my “heritage,” can activate those emergency mechanisms that are part of the defense against trauma.

Let’s try to imagine something absurd.

What might have happened if the Ukrainian government, instead of asking or even forcing its citizens to fight and die to defend their homeland, their homes, and all their property, had taken away all its people, all its inhabitants, caring only for the safety of human beings? What if it had destroyed all the homes, roads, bridges, and factories, leaving the invaders only rubble and no property? What if the European Union and the United States, instead of sending trillions of euros in weapons, had sent them to compensate the people for what they had abandoned? What would have happened if a war had been fought without deaths? Without asking human beings to die to defend homes, factories, bridges, and power plants. What if life, in all its forms, were considered the only inalienable and expendable asset, and not objects, things, and possessions?

As far as we know, those assets have been destroyed anyway, and the disputed territories are piles of rubble. Thousands of human beings have died and are dying. The damage to the environment and other life forms is “collateral damage.” Trillions of euros have been spent on weapons and ammunition, and thousands more people have suffered and will bear the trauma for a long time to come.

As long as we continue to live and support the patriarchal vision and systems, wars will continue to be fought for heritage and not to protect living beings.

As long as we support the patriarchal vision: violence, oppression and the law of the strongest, will continue.

Let’s be clear: patriarchy isn’t just violence and oppression. We know this very well. The patriarch also cares for and wants the best for his children, his wife or husband, and any and all potential lovers, as long as he feels they are his; this is also why he has been able to establish himself over time and this is also why he is still appreciated.

In a seminar I recently gave, where, as I’ve been doing for a while, I was talking about the consequences of patriarchy. A woman, a well-established psychiatrist and psychotherapist, forcefully expressed her appreciation for patriarchy. She said, “I like it when a man is strong, powerful, in charge, and takes care of me even though I feel weaker. I like feeling like he’s vulnerable to my seduction and my beauty. I like feeling like I can seduce him and thus reap the benefits of his power. I like all of this.” This is not a rare or isolated case.

Patriarchy is also convenient, because the responsibility for increasing wealth and for the success of life projects tied to financial resources falls fundamentally on the person in charge, namely the patriarch. If he or she fails, I’m not to blame; I can complain and, if I have the strength, ally with other dissatisfied individuals, eliminate him or her and replace him or her with a new, more capable patriarch.

Patriarchy supports individualism, unequal relationships, and the big-small relationship.

Patriarchy supports a hallucinatory I-other relationship, and by hallucinatory I mean separate, unconnected, in which, if necessary, I can make the other suffer without this suffering harming me.

Gestalt brought about an epistemological revolution on this point, relying on phenomenology and making it even more radical.

Molti fenomenologi non capiscono perché noi parliamo di organismo/ambiente e non di individuo/mondo. Da molti questo è visto come una svalutazione del processo di coscienza che permette all’individuo di esperire la propria relazione col mondo.

The point is that before being a conscious individual, we are an organism inextricably part of the environment. This is why we consider it a mistake to place an “and” between organism and environment, and this is why Gestalt therapy invented this concept, so difficult to understand because it is so alien to the patriarchal culture that shaped the language we use: “the contact boundary.” A boundary that simultaneously separates and unites. A boundary that does not exist as an empirical, measurable fact in nature[1], because it is a product of our consciousness that allows us to become aware and take responsibility for how we continuously and inevitably exchange with the environment in which we are immersed, creating what we call “the organism/environment field.”

The concept of contact boundary is not comprehensible within patriarchal thought because this is an individualistic thought that conceives the individual as separate and dominant with respect to the environment.

Challenging the patriarchal system means challenging the concept of dominance, and it also means challenging the identity system, because dominance and identity go hand in hand.

Identity is a form of dominance because it defines fixed criteria, often considered objective, that characterize areas of belonging which, once we have entered, are almost impossible to leave.

Gestalt Therapy speaks of identifications not identities and Perls in his last published manuscript: “Psychopathology of Awareness”, defines any crystallized identification as an identity, pathological[2].

The process of identification and alienation is a function of the ego, it serves to encourage the emergence of new solutions that are more functional to the growth of the individual within a given context and in a certain time, abandoning solutions of the past that today are dysfunctional to growth.

Identity is nothing other than one or a set of identifications that have proven effective for the growth of individuals in a given context and in a given time, which are then fixed, that is, defined as immutable..

Identities are about security, stability, and preservation.

Identifying with new solutions is about excitement, growth, and evolution.

The process of identification and alienation develops the capacity to fully identify, create an identity, and maintain it as long as it is nourishing and provides us with solid ground on which to build, and the capacity to abandon it, to alienate ourselves from it, when something assimilable, exciting, and nourishing newness emerges into our awareness, demanding that we move and change.

I’m fascinated by how the LGBTQ+ movement is currently, at least in the Eurocentric world, the subject of debates, positions, clashes, approvals and condemnations.

Born as a “home” for those who felt discriminated against by a society with a gender identity biologically determined in binary terms: male – female considered “natural”, that is objective[3], a heterosexual orientation also considered natural and therefore healthy and a culture of strongly monogamous or at most polygynous couples[4], it has now become, perhaps even against its will, a movement that strongly questions all identity systems.

Thinkers such as Paul Preciado[5] also contest the recognition of oneself as a “homosexual”, stating that every fixed identity paves the way for discrimination.

The more crystallized our identities are, the more the risk of invasion, the danger of damage and trauma, and therefore fear, increases.

A growing phenomenon in our Eurocentric society is that the average age of people seeking therapy or counseling is decreasing. Today, having patients aged 20 or 18 is common; until a few years ago, it was rare.

Young people are the first to feel that the identities that culture, family, and habit tend to provide them are increasingly less supportive.

Even children increasingly have identity doubts or perhaps the identity doubts of those age groups are listened to today while, until recently, they were minimized or ignored[6].

Is this a danger? Is the LGBTQ+ movement the tip of the iceberg, signaling the growing debauchery and decay of our Eurocentric culture?

For thousands of years, the patriarchal vision has accustomed us to feeling surrounded by enemies. We founded the European Union, but all it takes is a disagreement between two governments for the enemy logic to resurface. There are always new dangers to face and defeat. Because the patriarchal model is military: we must not surrender, we must fight and defeat the enemy. Whether human beings, natural events, pandemics, or cultures: there is always an enemy on our borders.

What if these boundaries, instead of being rigid or full of holes, were elastic, mobile, adaptable? What if, instead of crystallized identities, we had identifications capable of sustaining contact with others?

What if Ukraine were a people instead of a place?

People who suffer and come to psychotherapy or counseling don’t come because they have problems, but because they have solutions that have allowed them to survive in a difficult environment and that today are no longer effective or are too expensive to bear. What makes them suffer is that these solutions have become identities, that their boundaries have become rigid, and perhaps this rigidity makes them fragile or full of cracks, or even causes them to collapse and leave them exposed, naked, without skin.

I believe our task, in this historical era, is to support people in confronting fear. To bring alternative visions to those of enemies at the borders. Through the experience of encounters based on interest, non-judgment, authentically being with the other, and the entire practice of Gestalt Therapy, we can help them experience a significant difference. On the one hand, the habit of closing our boundaries, holding our breath, and tensing our bodies and thoughts, defending ourselves and attacking. On the other, the novelty of being listened to and being listened to, giving us time to feel. Giving value to sensations and emotions. Developing the awareness that the other is difficult because he or she is different, but this does not necessarily make him or her an enemy to be fought.

Fear doesn’t tell us that what’s out there is dangerous, but that we perceive it as such.

It doesn’t mean becoming naive like children. On the contrary, it means developing greater attention, greater listening, greater insight. With the awareness that all our certainties, our convictions, our securities become prejudices that make the world more dangerous.

Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido, considered one of the most effective martial arts for self-defense, often told an anecdote that ended with a question: “Two Aikido black belts are riding the Tokyo subway. Suddenly, a drunk gets on and begins to be disruptive and aggressive. One of the two black belts balances himself well on his legs and takes a guard position, ready to neutralize a potential attack. The other advances toward the drunk, takes his arm, and says, ‘I’m sorry you’re so angry. Come, let’s sit together and tell me what happened to you.’ Who do you think has understood what Aikido is?”

[1] At least according to our current technical and scientific knowledge

[2] F. Perls – Psicopatologia della Consapevolezza – Astrolabio . 2023

[3] This is a characteristic of crystallized identities to be considered natural, objective by those who make them their own.

[4] Polygamy is mistakenly spoken of, but this would mean both that a man could have many women (polygyny) and that a woman could have many men (polyandry), the latter eventuality not permitted by patriarchal cultures.

[5] P. Preciado – Manifesto Controsessuale – Fandango Libri – 2019

[6] Sara Buchard – Sessuologia della Gestalt – Franco Angeli – 2022