HeaIth and IIIness in GestaIt-therapy: philosophical aspects

Abstract

This paper proposes an analysis ofthe question ofpsychopathology and the view of Dialetics in the
reflections ofHeraclitus ofEphesus and the dialogical philosophy ofMartin Buber, as foundations for a gestaltic compreension of reality. The basic idea to trace an elaboration of psychopathology in Gestalt- Therapy is the notion that "everything is a whole", like a counterpoint ofa traditional nos of graphic view that considers pathology as individual or intra-psychic. Psychopathology is interpreted like a product of subjectivity that is caracterized, basically, to be an intersubjectivity. Beginning byan epistemology ofGestalt- Therapy, the articIe traces a historical panorama ofthe thinkings that formed Gestalt- Therapy, establishing its basics philosophies. The text improves a critics ofthe traditional psychiatric model based on Thomas Szasz ideas. The core ofthe paper is the dialetical consideration of Gestalt- Therapy, by three points: I) Everything is a whole; 2) Everything changes and 3) Everything is related to everything else; and its correlations with the thinking ofHeraclitus of Ephesus. There is an elaboration ofpsychopathology by the relational view, according Buber, who considers pathology a product of disconfirmation of the being whereas an existent. Psychopathology appears like an event related to the absence of the dialogue. We concludes that the human being might be understood like a being-in-relations. Using a buberian language, the foundation of the relation is the confirmation ofthe existence ofthe Other. The final concIusion recognizes Gestalt- Therapy as a theory preoccupied with the ransom of the ethics of living.