Human Interaction and Emotional Awareness in Gestalt Therapy Exploring the Phenomenology of Contacting and Feeling

Contents

Acknowledgements

Translator’s Note, by Michaela von Britzke

Foreword, by Michael Vincent Miller, PhD

I. Introduction

II. Historical Context

The Fate of the Body and the Senses in the Civilizing Process

III. The satisfying Experience

The Contacting Process in the Interaction between Humans and their Environments

1. Figure and Ground

2. The Phases of the Contacting Process

3. The Instincts

4. Sensori-motor Functions

Perceiving and acting

5. Consciousness and Awareness

Accepting and rejecting

6. Aggression

Destroying and annihilating

7. Integration

Surrender and enjoyment

8. Post Contact

Enjoying the afterglow of an experience and affirming

9. Assimilation

Remembering and forgetting

10. Self-Identification and social Anchoring

Identifying oneself and taking responsibility

IV. Emotional Orientation in the Phases of the Contacting Process

Considering the Significance of Emotions in the Contacting Process

The Relationship between the Senses and the Emotions.

1. On physical Pain and the Nature of Suffering
2. Emotional Expression and emotional Experience

On the anthropology of emotions

3. The fore-contact Emotions

Aversion and attraction

4. Aggression

The differences between aggression and assertiveness

6. Smiling, Laughing and Crying

Emotional gestures and emotional expressions

7. Beyond the Moment

Timeless emotions

8. Post-contact

Appreciative emotions

9. The inhibiting Emotions

Being anxious and feeling ashamed

1. The Problem of Violence

The limits of emotional freedom

2. Un-integrated Affects and emotional Habits

Emotional attitudes and character

3. Forms of Sympathy

Contagious emotions and shared emotions

4. Forms of Empathy

To be emotionally sensitive to others and to identify with them

5. Catharsis and Therapy

On the relationship between involvement and distance in emotional experience

6. Aliveness and the Joy of Life:

General goals of Gestalt Therapy

VI. Cultural Context

1. Looking down from the Moon or End and Eternity of Nature

2. Anxiety and Civilization in everyday Life on Earth

3. Pressure of Time and the Fragility of Hope

4. The Uncertainty of the Future and the Certainty of Death

5. Flight into the trans-human Realm and the Misery of Power

VII. Epilogue:

Gestalt Therapy of Environmental Destruction

Bibliography

Biography

H. Peter Dreitzel, PhD, was born in Berlin in 1935. Between 1960 and 1970 he was Assistent Professor of Sociology, University of Göttingen, Germany, and Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, New York, USA. From 1970 to 2000 he was Professor of Sociology at the Free University of Berlin, and in 1973 he co-founded the Berlin Gestalt Center (GZB). Inspired by his most significant teacher in the field, Isadore From, Dreitzel has been a Gestalt therapy practitioner since 1975 and has been a trainer and supervisor at several training institutes in Germany and other European countries. He is the author of several publications on Gestalt therapy.

"For all his continuing sociological interest, Dreitzel’s concerns are those of a practicing therapist who is interested in expanding the context and role of psychotherapy... This feature is what makes Human Interaction and Emotional Awareness a particularly valuable book for Gestalt therapists — for any psychotherapist, in fact. No matter how far ranging his social interests take him, Dreitzel brings them to bear on the character and quality of individual life, particularly in his detailed examination from the standpoint of Gestalt therapy of the ways in which we suffer physical and psychological pain and how we distinctively make use of our emotions in episodes of contact." - Michael Vincent Miller, PhD, from the foreword 

"Based on his unique sociological expertise and longstanding psychotherapeutic practice, H. Peter Dreitzel presents a provocative call for simultaneous interpersonal and ecological awareness. Human individuality requires respectful co-evolution with the others and with nature, both being inseparable environments. This highly recommended book provides a close look at the complexity of our continuous 'contacts'. It encourages emotionally charged, self-reflexive and collective actions, which may maturely face, tackle and change the many man-made social and climate destructions, which are already endangering our survival as a species." - Professor Helmut Milz, MD, psychosomatic medicine; psychotherapist; former in-house consultant, WHO; author, The Self-Sensing Human