Gestalt Therapy, in agreement with many contemporary philosophies, states that individuals play an active role in attributing meaning to their environment. It also supports the creation of new meaning, the absorption of novelty that can be assimilated at the individual personality level, the establishment of new and adaptive functions that facilitate organismic self-regulation. For Perls and Goodman the only form of social aggregate that supports self-regulation is the community. The rigid identification of the individual with abstract organizations such as the State or with traditional rules hinders the re-establishment of organismic equilibrium. The second generation of Gestalt therapists develop useful concepts for organizational intervention and, more recently, accounting of broader social dynamics.

 Attribution and creation of meaning             

Before starting a discussion about meaning – that might be so slippery and abstract to submerge me in elephant-shit [1] (Ginger , 2007 , p.127) – I would like to say that in gestalt we deal with both attribution and creation of new meaning. By attributing meaning I mean the activity that leads individuals to give meaning to the things they do, they see and feel (emotionally) by referring to learned knowledge and experiences made in the past. To attribute meaning means to refer back what we see and feel to our previous experience, acquired categories and habits. All this is the result of previous aggressions and successful integrations.

In considering attribution of meaning Gestalt Therapy is aligned with the human sciences and contemporary philosophy. For example, Wittgenstein, referring to the work of Austin (1962) and many others, stated that words and language shape the world we see and imagine. The limits of our personal world are the limits of our language (Wittgenstein, 2009 ). One of the focuses of husserlian phenomenology was the study of the sense of certainty we derive from attributing meaning to everyday objects. This sense of security comes from referring back this table, this apple, this hand to an essence that we already possess in our mind ( Kolakowski , 1975). Merleau-Ponty was concerned with how a perceiving subject – in its concrete, specific and historical situation – projected meaning on perceived objects, differentiating himself from them, making them ob-jectum ( Merleau-Ponty, 2007, p.23). Ethnomethodology and constructivist sociology deal with the complex negotiation of meanings required by the most banal and worldly interactions such as saying hello or inviting a person for a coffee (Schwartz & Jacobs, 1979 ). Michel Foucault (1997) and Pierre Bourdieu (1993) deal with the attribution of meaning by individuals with certain social functions, at a certain moment in history, in order to exert influence on others.

The pioneers of the German Gestalt psychology were interested in the work of attribution of immediate and pre-verbal meaning to the forms created in the process of visual perception [2]. Koffka and Khöler focused their experimental work on the description of laws that provided some order the perceptual field in which discrete visual elements are linked in within visual gestalts (Ash , 1995) . During perception our gaze casts a meaning on sets of elements that will be subsequently named, manipulated and used for instrumental purposes. Kurt Lewin (1960) later states that the activity of attribution of meaning is a process of continuous exchange that involves the individual and the environment. The course of action and the words chosen by the individual are dependent on the interaction he has with his surroundings and with the totality of which he is a part. The topological psychology of Kurt Lewin (1965) shows us, for example, how individual motivation is a vector that is the result of both individual and environmental influences. In the same line as Lewin, K. Goldstein (2010, p.376-8) expresses the interaction of field and self with the expression coming to terms, Wollants (2012, p.6 )  provodes a distinction between individual referring forces and environment referring forces, P. Philippson (2009) draws inspiration from neuroscience and defines  a constantly emerging self that synthetises person and environment. Robine (2006, pp. 166-175) by reducing the concept of field to situation highlights the local and cooperative co-creation of meaning.

Starting from PHG the role GT has given to itself is the process that supports people in creating new meaning. It is one of the functions of the self [3] to find and build the meaning that makes us grow.

But the self is precisely the integrator; it is the synthetic unity, as Kant said . it is the artist of life. it is only a small factor in the total organism / environment interaction, but it plays the crucial role of finding and making the meanings That we grow by [4] (PHG,1994, p.11). [my bold].

As indicated by the subtitle of PHG, GT links growth and the individual ability to create new meaning. The growth takes place through the – more or less partial – restructuring of the functions performed by the personality by means of assimilation of novelty.

In PHG we also read that our daily experience is a constant creation of figures that emerge from the background with variable vigour and brightness. This process, besides indicating excitement, is the attribution of meaning that concerns the individual ability to cut out defined and brilliant figures from the background: this entails the emersion of meaning from the background. The generation of new meaning, as well as the formation of mobile and energized figures, requires a restructuring of some parts of the personality functions. This happens through subsequent episodes of contact.  A portion of the background excited by the Es function is made figure and submitted to the Ego function, to be then integrated in the personality function (Schoenberg & Feder, 2005 ) [5] . This integration is creative in itself, the assimilated novelty in fact makes the habitual behaviours of the person more flexible, more easily excitable by the assimilable novelty.

PHG deals with the, interpersonal and interactive, process of generating individual functions that exceed the personality ability to provide a solution to a problematic situation. The problematic situation concerns the satisfaction of a need; what is actually generated at the level of personality function is a new function that gives rise to a behavior that satisfies the need or or allows a meaning to be discovered by the person (Winter , 1967) . The establishment of a new function and its integration completely or partially reorganizes the way in which a person faces the same problem, similar problems and numerous other problems. In particular, the same situation will never require a creative effort by the subject leading to growth; actions for the satisfaction of need will remain below the level of awareness (PHG, p. 208 eng, p. 234 ita) [6]. A new function adds to the personality of an individual a range of possible automatic responses in which little or no presence of Ego function or Es function is required. In this way the novelty is reabsorbed into the routine and the individual is ready to meet new challenges and growth opportunities.

Meaning and society for Perls and Goodman

For Perls and Goodman it is precisely this growth that is lacking in individuals who live in modern, urban and technological societies: we would live in a generalized state of low -grade emergency.

For let us consider still another possibility at the contact-boundary. conceive That instead of either the reestablishment of equilibrium or blotting -out and hallucination in a temporary emergency excess of danger and frustration, there exists a chronic Low tension disequilibrium, a continual irk of danger and frustration , interspersed with occasional acute crises , and never fully relaxed (PHG, p. 39 eng.)

The people of our urbanized civilization instead of responding creatively to the emergence of exciting events, making contact with them, self-limit their aggression. We no longer direct vitality towards growth but dissipate it in repetitive and frustrating experiences. The lack of current meaning would come from “the excess of life through the nerves” and from a diminished sensitivity to the corporeity that would instead offer us a direction towards action, satisfaction or at least towards meaning (see above). In place of an exciting progression through figures that emerge energetically and harmoniously expanding our ability to grow and have a satisfying life, we now have an anxious shrinking of vitality within the stable forms of personality function. It is the victory of the past on the future, of the attribution on the creation of meaning, of the personality function on the Ego function and Es function.

Perls and Goodman share a lack of confidence in technological development and the proliferation of bureaucratic systems that would have alienated people from the immediate and sensual experience of their world of everyday life. Perlsian dissent towards abstraction, mindfucking, the return to one’s own senses follows many of the themes present in the debate of the post-Freudian left and the Frankfurt School: humanity would have restricted its field of action to the mental adjustment of means-to-ends, escaping the exciting meeting with the environment, emotions and novelty (Alyward, 109). The famous expression of Perls for which the GT transforms men of paper into men of flesh recalls the one dimensional man of Marcuse (Perls , 1967).

For Goodman, a libertarian and an anarchist, the way of recovery is the reestablishment of organic self-regulation, the return to the individual’s ability to fully contact the environment, feel bodily sensations, act erotically and poetically in the world. Born in the literary and political tradition of Emerson and Thoreau, Goodman is highly critical of large bureaucratic aggregates such as the State. This abstract principle of organization is opposed to the vitality of the community of self-organized individuals who live in close contact with nature. The utopian projects of pedestrianizing Manhattan and the community based restructuring of the American educational system fully represent these anti-bureaucratic values (Stoher , 1994).

For the founders of GT the creation of new meaning is an individual’s matter and happens in the proximity of another human being. A sufficient level of support for change to happen can be created in the therapeutic couple, between lovers or in the intimacy of a small group. Only under these circumstances a person can to take the risk of leaving an “old” behavior to gradually assume a new one. Only in these potentially fusional and at the same time highly differentiating contexts, where the meaning of words and actions is emotionally charged that meaning can emerge. Organizations and bureaucracy offer the organism only a dose of the past, stiffen the background, lead the self to identify with the social roles, weakening the ego function. The identification with an organization allow people to be functional to the system in which they live in, but in no way help them to express their true potential (Perls, L., 2012, pos. 973).

Meaning and society after PHG

Perls and Goodman wish to replace the bureaucratic and abstract interaction between people with here-and-now, embodied, local and authentic interaction [7]. For a similar reason – unlike other authors such as Foulkes or even Reich – the founders of GT did not directly develop a theory of psychotherapeutic intervention in the organizational field or an analysis of the ” intermediate bodies ” between individual and social (family, organizations, classes, movements, parties, etc.). The original GT remained faithful to the assumption that the object of psychology concerns the interaction of organisms at the contact boundary and not the study of social habits or biological repetitions that form the background (PHG, pp. 38-39, ed. ita). As mentioned above, the community is for Perls and Goodman the only form of association among individuals that can support their growth.

Who came after Perls and Goodman started to be interested in creating social theories of not necessarily inspired to community and/or anarchist ideals. By gradually integrating systems theory elements, the Cleveland School specializes in OD (organization development). They often emphasized that the purpose of organizational change is to make the individual freer of the bureaucratic structures in which he is placed (Herman and Korenich, 1987). The reflection on the application of GT in institutional health, clinical and educational settings began at the end of the sixties (Fagan & Shepherd, 1970) and was consolidated throughout the seventies ( Feder & Ronall, 1980 ).

The interest in how the individual meaning is connected to social and cultural environment in which people find themselves living is more recent. For the last twenty years Wheeler focused on the structure of the cultural background in which people  live (Wheeler, 1991). Even if Wheeler’s texts were heavily criticized (Yontef, 1992), they bring our attention to the horizont that provides meaning to individual action. Statements about the liquid society and the need to consolidate the background of Francesetti (2015) and Spagnuolo- Lobb (2014) [8] were probably born from similar reflections. In line with their work is Sean Gaffney [9] (2016) about the specific border dynamics that emerge in international groupwork contexts. J-M. Robine [10] (2015) inaugurates a reflection on the individual-society interaction that indicates in the power of the social ritual the emergence of meaningful figures in group situations. This theoretical operation combines the Randall Collins’s sociology of emotions, of durkheimian imprint, with the description of the dynamic figure-background of PHG.

Conclusions

GT from PHG onwards has focused its interest on the co-creation process of energized and vital figures that detach themselves from the background generating new meaning. The emerging figure, by reinforcing the Ego function, supports the creation of new functions that, once assimilated, make the background more mobile and adaptive.

For the founders of the GT the emergence process of the figure and the subsequent increased adaptability of the personality function can be obtained mainly in one-to-one therapy or through collaboration within local communities.  Creativity cannot be fostered by adherence to abstract principles and institutional roles. Participation in a community accommodates individual aggressive process, and prevents the individual’s to play by jntrojected dominant social models. In time GT has gradually distanced itself from the state-community dichotomy; the spreading of GT gave way to interventions within health/ educational contexts and in large American private companies.

More recent statements linking the increase in individual pathology to political and ecological instability and social “liquidity” (Francesetti and Spagnuolo Lobb), are tempered by the sociological approach recently introduced by J-M. Robine who attributes the generalized presence of low-grade emergency to the relative strength of social rituals. Other possible interesting theoretical areas that could help the understanding of the individual-society interaction are those of the Foucaldian discursive approach and Bourdieu’s social theory, directly influenced by classic field theory. In this direction I will bring my future research.

Notes

[1] See S. Ginger (2007) , producing elephant shit for Perls means the use of scientific, philosophical discourses etc. in daily contexts.

[2] Kant and the kantians called this apperception process.

[3] We should say selfing instead of self to respect its nature as a dynamic process. Lynne Jacobs clearly treats this point in Robine, J-M. self, p 251 et seq.

[4] The Italian translation uses the word maturation, completely losing the concept of growth (growth (PHG, 1997, p.XX)

[5] The clarifying process of sticking is proposed by Paul Schoenberg Bud Feder in Woldt, AT & Thoman, SM (Ed.), Gestalt therapy , 2005, p. 231 . Assimilation is a process of progressive structuring of new functions in the personality function, which needs more or less time to stabilize (to stick).

[6] “The line of demarcation of contact is now outside the assimilated learning, the habit, the conditioned response etc … for example what is similar to what has been learned does not affect us, does not raise any problem ” (PHG, p.24).

[7] As proof of this thesis, Perls never applied to have his German degree in Medicine recognised in the USA and did not work in health institutions (although he influenced numerous therapists who participated in the famous Gestalt demonstration workshops). Goodman was refused the title of psychologists by the state of New York and continued to work as a poet, essayist and activist.

[8] See Spagnuolo- Lobb , M. , The basic principles and the development of Gestalt psychotherapy in contemporary society in Francesetti G., Gecele M., Roubal J. , Eds . Gestalt psychotherapy in clinical practice: d to psychopathology of contact aesthetics (2014)

[9] Gaffney, S., The art and craft of the field attuner , in Francis, T., Parlett , M. , Contact and context , ( 2016 ) .

[10] Robine, JM., The man of the situation in Social Change begins with two , Siracusa, Gestalt HCC Institute, 2015.

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