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by Giovanni SaloniaAntonio SicheraValeria Conte

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LETTER TO A YOUNG GESTALT THERAPIST.GESTALT THERAPY APPROACH TO FAMILY THERAPY

Giovanni Salonia

Key words

the three functions of the self, the Id-function, the Personali-ty-function, the Ego-function, Gestalt family therapy.

Introduction1

I am writing to offer a more in-depth reply to your question about family therapy and Gestalt therapy (GT). Having seen me at work with families, you asked me why it was that fam-ily therapy manuals2 make no mention of GT, and why some Gestalt therapists themselves claim that GT should not be used with families. Although very much applicable to family set-tings at the theoretical and clinical levels, in its beginnings GT, for various reasons, privileged group and individual therapy work.3 The few Gestalt therapists who early on began working directly with couples and families were in some way ‘visceral’4 in their approach, focusing on the centrality of experience in both theory and practice. For this reason, manuals in the USA in those years classified GT as an experiential family therapy

1 The contents of this article were developed over many years of work with couples and families seen in co-therapy with Valeria Conte, who I very much thank for her clinical contribution and co-operation. A heartfelt thanks also goes to Professor Agata Pisana for her stylistic and bibliographical review of this paper.

2 Cfr. A.S. Gurman and D.T. Kniskern (eds.)(1981), Handbook of Family Therapy, Routledge, New York.; cf. also M. Andolfi (2003), Manuale di psicologia relazionale. La dimensione familiare, APF, Roma.

3 For example, W. Kempler (1974), Principles of Gestalt Therapy, Kempler Institute, Costa Mesa, CA.

4 On the division of GT into three streams see E. Rosenfeld (1987), Storia orale della Terapia della Gestalt. Conversazioni con Laura Perls, in «Quaderni di Gestalt», II, 3, 36-62.

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(together with C. Whitaker, V. Satir and others).5 Only later on, thanks especially to the theoretical and clinical research of J. Zinker and S. Nevis,6 was the theory of contact/withdrawal from contact applied in work with couples and families.The specific feature of the Gestalt Family Therapy model (GFT) which you saw put into action in my work, and which I will shortly present to you in broad terms, lies in having taken on and redeveloped with reference to family work the theory of self, and in particular the three functions of the self: the Id-function, the Personality-function, and the Ego-function. In this model, previous perspectives focusing on the experience and theory of the contact/withdrawal from contact cycle are therefore included within the broader framework of the theo-ry of the self.

The theory of self when working with families

As you know, one of the initial intuitions of GT lay in the development of a new and original theory of self.7 Taking a relational epistemology as their starting point (the relation-ship of the organism to its environment), the founders of GT moved from a theory of the ego to a theory of self. Their intuition soon proved clear to all theorists of the self: we do not live on islands but in constant contact and interaction, which means that any theory of growth and development must deal with the capacity of individuals to relate to their environment.

5 Cf. F.P. Piercy et alii (1986), Family Therapy Sourcebook, The Guilford Press, New York.

6 J. Zinker, S. Nevis (1987), Teoria della Gestalt sulle interazioni di coppia e familiari, in «Quaderni di Gestalt», II, 4, 17-32.

7 Cf. F. Perls, R Hefferline, P. Goodman (1951), Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in The Human Personality, Julian Press, New York.; G. Salonia (2012), Theory of self and the liquid society. Rewriting the personality-function in Gestalt Therapy, in «GTK Journal of Psychotherapy», 3, 29-57; C. Whitaker (1990), Considerazioni notturne di un terapeuta della famiglia, Astrolabio, Roma; G. Salonia (1989), Tempi e modi di contatto, in «Quaderni di Gestalt», V, 8/9, 55-64.

The specific feature of the Gestalt Fam-ily Therapy model which I will shortly present lies in having taken on and rede-veloped with refer-ence to family work the theory of self, and in particular the three functions of the self: the id-function, the personality func-tion, and the ego function.

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In line with their phenomenological approach to experience, and in order to prevent the reification of the self, the founders of GT set to work on carefully developing the concept of the functions of the self. They defined the self as the ‘organism-in-ac-tion’, identifying its three specific functions: the Ego-function, the Id-function, and the Personality-function. These functions, as you will know, come into play at various stages of the contact/withdrawal from contact cycle between the organism and the environment.The self is in the Id-function when it focuses on bodily sen-sations that come from ‘within the skin’, from the history of contact and from reactions to environmental stimuli. The ques-tion ‘what do you feel?’ — so typical of the Gestalt therapist — zeroes in on ‘where’ and ‘how’ the organism finds itself in relation to the environment (organismic intentionality). At this point, the organism needs to distinguish between what belongs to ‘me’ and what does not, the ‘non me’, and to decide whether or not to start the process that will bring it in contact with the environment. The Ego-function — ‘what I want’ — consists in the organism’s being present at the contact boundary with the environment. Once full contact is made between the organism and the environment, the assim-ilation stage begins, in which the organism redefines itself through the new contact experience, asking questions such as ‘what have I become?’, and ‘who am I now?’ (the Person-ality-function of the self).It should be stressed that these three functions are co-present at the contact boundary at all stages, mutually influencing each other. For instance, the perception of bodily sensations and en-vironmental stimuli (the Id-function of the self) is intimately tied with the perception we have of ourselves and of how we should interact with the environment (the Personality-function of the self). When a forty-year-old perceives himself as a teenager, he dis-torts his perception of lived experience and environmental stimu-li, and moves in the environment with false information.The family as a whole is an organism-in-action. Hence, a par-ent with a Personality-function disorder will find it difficult to become fully conscious of his parental experience and of the needs that emerge from his children, or rather, from his chil-dren’s bodies.

Three functions are co-present at the contact boundary at all stages, mutually influencing each oth-er. For instance, the perception of bodily sensations and en-vironmental stimuli (the id-function of the self) is intimately tied with the perception we have of our-selves and of how we should interact with the environment (the personality-func-tion of the self).

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The Id-function of the self in the family-body (a dia-chronic perspective)

As you will have often heard, requests for therapy usually arise when a person or a family is having difficulty going through a stage of its own life-cycle.8

The specific problem to be dealt with when working with fam-ilies is the emergence of difficulties for one family member (a child who is suffering for instance) from the troubled ground of the entire family (that is, undeveloped, confused or rigidly con-flictual experiences). For GT, the boy/girl is suffering because s/he does not have the specific support s/he needs from the family (or more specifically, from the parental figures) to grow and develop. Hence from this perspective, therapy needs to focus on the lived experiences of all the family members, which is the experiential ground from which the problem emerges. Let’s look at an example. A daughter will find it excessively em-barrassing to expose her body if severe, fearful, or discrediting family eyes have never permitted her the spontaneous, vibrant experience of expressing herself in full.Bearing in mind that the Id-function in GT concerns the body, understood as intimate identity, it should be stressed that such problems have a clear bodily matrix to them. Changes in our bodies trigger new lived experiences, signalling the passage from one step in the life cycle to the next. As the body chang-es, it presents us a new developmental task: the rethinking or redefinition of the boundaries of our identity and approach to relationships.9 Hence when working with families, the Gestalt

8 Cf. G. Salonia (1987), Il lavoro gestaltico con le coppie e le famiglie: il ciclo vitale e l’integrazione delle polarità, in «Quaderni di Gestalt», III, 4, 144-155; E. Scabini (1992), L’organizzazione della famiglia, tra crisi e sviluppo, Franco Angeli, Milano; F. Walsh (1993), Ciclo vitale e dinamiche familiari, Franco Angeli, Milano; R.G. Romano (ed.) (2004), Ciclo di vita e dinamiche educative nella società postmoderna, Franco Angeli, Milano.

9 That bodily changes trigger modifications in relationship approaches can also be seen through a Gestalt interpretation of freudian developmental theories. Cf. G. Salonia (2008), La psicoterapia della Gestalt e il lavoro sul corpo. Per una rilettura del fitness, in S. Vero (ed.), Il corpo disabitato. Semiologia, fenomenologia e psicopatologia del fitness, Franco Angeli, Milano, 51-81.

Changes in our bodies trigger new lived experiences, signalling the pas-sage from one step in the life cycle to the next. As the body changes, it presents us a new developmental task.

The emergence of difficulties for one family member (a child who is suffer-ing for instance) from the troubled ground of the en-tire family

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therapist observes signs and distress tied to changes in the bodies of the family members. The difficulties faced in the tran-sition from one stage of the life cycle to another are visible in both the body of the changing person and in the bodies of oth-er family members who, provoked by the new situation, seek to avoid it or impede it. How can a mother support and nurture the beauty of her daughter as she grows into a woman, if she herself did not experience this in the intimacy of her own body as a woman, before becoming a mother? It is precisely when the family-self is unable to understand the distress experienced by family bodies that the symptom becomes full-blown, often in one family member only.To understand fully the type of suffering expressed through the symptom, three dimensions of the symptom need to be borne in mind: the developmental, bodily and relational dimensions. The symptom tells us, in an anguished and often non-linear way, of how the body is changing, of how a family which should be changing with that body is unable to, of how other bodies experience fear instead of providing support, and of how old tensions have returned to the fore, exerting pressure to become the figure and be developed. Interestingly, the symp-tom can be placed within the nexus of proximity of bodies and relationships experienced within the family itself,10 and which elsewhere I have called intercorporeity.11 The family calls for help because it has not managed to silence (let alone under-stand) the distress of a body that is dismantling the emotional order, leaving the distress of family bodies to emerge.In the GFT approach, it is the Id-function that needs to be looked at first. Which body in the family is suffering? Which budding change is not being developed? How are other bodies suffering? At which stage of the developmental cycle is the family stuck?Understanding family processes (the family Id-function) offers the therapist a precise horizon for developing therapy (and helping the family progress to the next step of the develop-

10 On the lived home see G. Giordano (1997), La casa vissuta. Percorsi e dinamiche dell’abitare, Giuffrè, Milano.

11 On the body in GT see G. Salonia (2008), La psicoterapia della Gestalt e il lavoro sul corpo. Per una rilettura del fitness, cit.

He symptom can be placed within the nexus of prox-imity of bodies and relationships expe-rienced within the family itself, and which elsewhere I have called inter-corporeity.

The difficulties faced in the transition from one stage of the life cycle to another are visible in both the body of the chang-ing person and in the bodies of other family members who, provoked by the new situation, seek to avoid it or impede it.

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ment cycle). Bear in mind though that informing the family of the developmental nature of its distress will not produce any immediate therapy results. Results will only be seen once emo-tional-relational wounds have been opened up, giving voice to bodily fears.

The Personality-function (a synchronic perspective)

The disorder of Personality-function is also present in the difficul-ties a family has in dealing with change. If family members do not define themselves and the others by clear, flexible bounda-ries, they will not be ready to face the new, emerging situation and, as a result, their bodily experience of the new situation will be distorted (Id-function disorder). The Personality-function of the self is, in fact, intimately tied to the Id-function.Personality-function disorders in families have their roots in the Personality-function of the parenting couple — not just one par-ent, that is, but both. Their shared experiences — what they feel in relation to the parenthood of the other, which may be sym-pathy/ isolation, exclusion/inclusion, support/discreditation — determine the quality of the contact boundary and their identi-fication with their children (others talk of a ‘generational line’ which may be present/absent, flexible/rigid, clear/confused).The Personality-function of the parents consists of two specif-ic functions: the Personality-function-of-being-a-couple and the Personality-function-of-being-parents. These two functions are distinct, which means that even if the couple breaks up, they each remain parents. This is fundamental in guaranteeing the mental well-being of children, despite the physical suffering experienced with the break-up of the family.The parent-function, in turn, consists of two intimately con-nected states: ‘being-parents-of (I am the father/mother of this child) and ‘being-parents-with’ (I am the father of this child with this mother).12 It is therefore much more complex and intriguing

12 Cf. G. Salonia, Danza delle sedie e danza dei pronomi. La GT con le coppie e le famiglie, Il pozzo di Giacobbe, Trapani, in press.

The personality-func-tion of the parents consists of two specific functions: the personality-func-tion-of-being-a-cou-ple and the person-ality-function-of-be-ing-parents.

Personality-function disorders in families have their roots in the personality-func-tion of the parent-ing couple — not just one parent, that is, but both.

‘Being-parents-of’ (I am the father/moth-er of this child) and ‘being-parents-with’ (I am the father of this child with this mother).

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to observe the experience of ‘being-parent-of from the triangu-lar perspective of ‘being-parents-with’. Some family theories — especially in latest research into child development13 — and the Gestalt interpretation of Oedipus14 clearly suggest that the quality of our ‘being-parents-with’ influences and determines the quality of our ‘being-parents-of. If a parent has a disturbed relationship with the partner parent, the risk is that a negative perception of the co-parent will be transmitted to the child, or even, as we shall see further on, that contrasting alliances may be built. For this reason, the objective of the therapist when working with families is to reconstruct the parent-function, start-ing from the primary function of ‘being-parents-with’. Remem-ber that this does not mean that the parents have to ‘get along’. In GT, contact is considered ‘valid’ or ‘positive’ depending on how interaction occurs, and not on whether conflict is resolved or absent. Where developed with our full attention and the attention of others, conflict or diversity can render contact valid or nourishing. For instance, two parents who disagree on the curfew they should give their daughter will effectively and cre-atively resolve their conflict not by simply reducing the disa-greement to.a rational compromise (settling for a one o’clock curfew, where one parent proposed midnight and the other two o’clock), but rather when whatever solution they find is based on the appreciation of the other’s diverse point of view, and on the intimate awareness that it enriches their original perspective on parenting. In fact, even if no argument ensues, the parent proposing the midnight curfew will suspect in her inner self that she is being overprotective of the child, while the parent proposing the two o’clock curfew will realise in his inner self that he too is at bit afraid of the possible risks of his child staying out late. Since children need to learn both

13 E. Fivaz-Depeursing, A. Corboz-Warner (1999), The Primary Triangle, Basic Books, New York.

14 Cf. G. Salonia (2005), Id. (2003), Oedipus after Freud. From the law of the father to the law of relationship, infra, in P. Argentino (ed.), Tragedie greche e psicopatologia, Medicalink Publishers, Siracusa, 29-46; Id. (2013), Edipo dopo Freud. Dalla legge del padre alla legge della relazione, in G. Salonia, A. Sichera, Edipo dopo Freud, in «GTK-books», 1, 11-46.

‘Being-parents-with’ influences and de-termines the quality of our ‘being-par-ents-of’.

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prudence and audacity, it is important that the approach to parenting includes both these polarities, without false divisions being created. Where there is respect and gratitude for the ‘other’ perspective of the co-parent, whatever solution is found will be good for the child. Even where one parent is absent, the parenting function of the other parent will be validly fulfilled providing that he/she does not live this absence as a sort of ‘short cut’ to imposing their own parenting approach.Let me now present briefly some of the more common Personality -function disorders in parenting couples. While appreciating the genius of Salvador Minuchin’s structural therapy model15 (sys-tems, sub-systems, generational line), in the GFT approach, we will focus on how the bodily relational experience lived by each family member determines the quality of family relationships.Let’s look at these disorders together. A first disorder emerges when both parents remain stuck in a childhood Personality-func-tion, which leads them to create a falsely egalitarian relationship with their children (neurotic confluence). In this case, the bound-ary that distinguishes (separates and unites) the parent-child gen-erational line is missing. In reality, for various reasons (often the parents have not developed their own experience of children), the parents feel uncomfortable with the experience of taking care’ of others. They interact with their children on an egalitarian level without taking responsibility for their upbringing. As a re-sult, the parents may easily become authoritarian without being authoritative, or apprehensive but ineffective in managing rules within the family. Children who do not receive the support they need from their parents remain torn between being little and be-ing grown-up (Personality-function disorder)16.A second interruption in the parent-child boundary occurs when the parents experience parenthood as a threat to their own rela-tionship as a couple, as though the couple and parenting dimen-sions were irreconcilable. This perceptive dysfunction expresses a

15 S. Minuchin (1974), Families and Family Therapy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

16 This situation frequently emerges in disadvantaged social groups where the patriarchal family structure still reigns, with a ‘tribal chief’ in charge of, or insisting on, fulfilling the parental function even as far down as the third generation.

The parents expe-rience parenthood as a threat to their own relationship as a couple, as though the couple and par-enting dimensions were irreconcilable.

A first disorder emerges when both parents remain stuck in a childhood personality-function, which leads them to create a falsely egalitarian rela-tionship with their children (neurotic confluence).

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Personality-function disorder because the couple remain stuck in a disturbed confluence that inhibits them from creatively opening up to the parenting role. Differences are denied although the healthy aggressiveness necessary for full contact to be achieved remains in the ground.17 This developmental block, which is expressed and upheld by the habit of precociously resolving conflict, forces the couple to remain cohesive, and the couple is not able to evolve towards new stages involving openness towards others. Absorbed by unconscious internal conflicts (unfinished gestalten), each part-ner in the couple is unable to distract his/her attention away from the other partner, not even to take care of their children.18 In such a relational context, children feel their own presence to be of little interest to their parents, thereby exasperating, as a result, self-sup-port processes (parentalisation) and egalitarian ties with their sib-lings (a sort of solidarity between ‘emotional orphans’).A third dysfunction occurs when parents experience their couple relationship in terms of dependency and contraposition instead of on equal terms, that is as one up-one down. This rigid asymmetry may become manifest in a dependent/introjective way (where one partner is consensually perceived as up) or in a counterde-pendent/projective way (where one partner is perceived as the enemy in an escalation of symmetry).19 These two approaches to the relationship give rise to dysfunctional approaches to the parenting role of the couple. Either the family is organised hierar-chically, in which one parent becomes a reference for the entire family, and the other parent (together with the children) become dependent (in this case, a child of the same sex as the up parent is left in a down position, relegated to the role of ‘Cinderella’; or the

17 Cf. V. Conte (1998/99), Dalla appartenenza alla individuazione: come restare coppia, in «Quaderni di Gestalt», XIV-XV, 26/29, 134-136; Id. (2008), Essere coppia nella postmodernità, in A. Ferrara, M. Spagnuolo Lobb (eds.), Le voci della Gestalt. Sviluppi e innovazioni di una psicoterapia, Franco Angeli, Milano, 168-173.

18 Quite clearly, as therapists we are not concerned with the affection felt by parents, but exclusively with the quality of contact: cf. G. Salonia (1993), Time and relation: relational deliberateness as hermeneutic horizon in Gestalt Therapy, in «Studies in Gestalt Therapy», 1, 7-19.

19 P. Watzlawick, B. Beavin and D.D. Jackson (2011), Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes, W.W. Norton & Co., New York.

Parents experience their couple rela-tionship in terms of dependency and contraposition instead of on equal terms, that is as one up-one down. This rigid asymmetry may become man-ifest in a depend-ent/introjective way (where one partner is consensually perceived as up) or in a counterdepend-ent/projective way (where one partner is perceived as the enemy in an escala-tion of symmetry).

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couple experiences a rigid, conflictual asymmetry (‘one against the other’), in which children are often used as allied partners in a power struggle (with each parent allied to a child), and the family unit is beset by lacerating divisions and sterile, destructive conflicts. It is normal, even physiological, that one parent may feel closer to one child rather than another (for reasons of sex or affinity). However, parent-child alliances become dysfunctional20 when the child is perceived by the parent as a ‘better’ substitute to his/her partner, and the alliance is seen to be ‘against’ the other parent. In such a context, the parents obviously cannot fully take on their parenting role and hence fully take care of their children, who in turn are left bereft of the necessary and specific support they need to grow.These three models of disturbance in the parental function can be didactically described using the metaphor of who has the right to occupy the ‘matrimonial bed’: if the parents, stuck in their Personality-function, see themselves as children with chil-dren, then the bed will indiscriminately belong to everyone; if the couple, rigidly closed unto itself, sees parenthood as a threat to their intimacy, then the bed will be strictly prohibited to their children; if the couple are in the obsessive contrapo-sition of a one up-one down relationship (whether dependent or conflictual), the bed will be occupied by a crosswise par-ent-child couple.To sum up, each and every Personality-function disorder in the parents will produce persistent and innumerable unfinished gestalten in family members. When a new stage in the fam-ily life cycle begins, these situations of rigid suffering that have become stratified (forming what Goodman would call a ‘taken-for-granted ground’ which is therefore unconscious) inhibit the family from dealing with the new situation, which is

20 Decoding incest as a perverse, extreme situation of inveiglement opens up new perspectives for understanding compared to the classic interpretation of the ‘Oedipus complex’, cf. G. Salonia (2004), Incesto, in G. Russo (ed.), Enciclopedia di Bioetica e Sessuologia, Torino, ElleDiCi-Velar-Leumann, 986-989; Id. (2005), Il lungo viaggio di Edipo: dalla legge del padre alla verità della relazione, cit.

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predominantly manifested in the changing body. In this way, changes demanded of the family members by life clash with fears of life itself. As we all know, it is only by accepting and going through the pain of change that the fullness of change can be achieved, for ‘what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly’.

The Ego-function of the self: ‘being one-alongside-the-other’ or ‘being-in-contact’

Disorders in the Id-function and Personality-function go hand-in-hand with the loss of the Ego-function of the self. The or-ganism does not recognise the new brought by change as part of ‘me’ and as a result seeks to expel it. The Ego-function of the self, as I mentioned earlier, concerns the capacity of the self to identify itself or alternatively alienate itself from the environment with which it is in contact (the capacity for discrimination and decision-making). The loss of the Ego-func-tion makes full contact with the environment difficult for the organism, as it can no longer distinguish between the ‘me’ and ‘non-me’. In GT, being capable of contact means being capable of encounter with the other, in the fullness of our-selves and the other. This means being able to tell the other everything we feel it is important to say, while at the same time being able to listen to everything that the other wishes to tell us. This means words to be said, but also gestures to be made. In a healthy family, family members express themselves spontaneously through words and the body; they are free to make gestures and request that long-awaited gestures be de-livered. Being alongside each other is obviously not enough for contact to be made, but expressing oneself fully and spon-taneously is necessary. The task of the therapist, therefore, is to encourage family members to bring unfinished gestalten to completion, in the awareness that the unsaid-which-needs-to-be-said interrupts the fullness of a relationship, provoking suffering and symptoms. By inviting family members to speak to each other, the therapist can focus on how and when their interactions need specific therapeutic support so as not to be-come crystallised in non-functional approaches to interaction

Disorders in the id-function and personality-function go hand-in-hand with the loss of the ego-function of the self. The organism does not recognise the new brought by change as part of ‘me’ and as a result seeks to expel it.

In GT, being ca-pable of contact means being ca-pable of encounter with the other, in the fullness of ourselves and the other.

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(phases of orientation-introjection, manipulation-projection, decision-retroflexion, contact-egotism, assimilation-nervous attack). Getting family members to talk to each other and encouraging them to express their bodily/relational experi-ences, while remaining open to listen to the experiences of the other without neglecting their own, is an effective course of therapy.To orient ourselves through the complexity and fragmentariness of words that are commonly said in therapy, the therapist must bear in mind that the key to all family discourse lies in the inten-tionality of contact. It is necessary to distinguish between talking and interacting so as to move closer to the other or to move away from the other, so as to become interesting to the other or to become ‘invisible’ to the other, so as to evade an invasive embrace and rediscover one’s uniqueness, or evade the other out of fear of leaning on him and becoming dependent. As we know, family ties are in reality never entirely completed and are always a new attempt to combine uniqueness with belonging, spontaneity with care.As the family therapy sessions continue, the Gestalt therapist should observe and facilitate clear (Personality-function) and full (Ego-function) contact between the family members. Ulti-mately, this will act as a sort of Ariadne’s thread through the labyrinth of family subjectivities, enabling the warps and wefts of the relational fabric that day-in, day-out every family weaves to be rediscovered and restored.

Therapy

Session one: from the symptom to the relational fabric (the Id-function of the self)As you well know, the starting point when working with fam-ilies is to consider the family as a gestalt, as a totality giving structure. A sharp change in mentality, or epistemological shift, is needed by therapists moving from an individual setting to a family setting. The starting point lies in the Gestalt principle by which it is the whole that gives meaning to the parts. It is the sentence that gives us the sense of words, even though it is the

The therapist must bear in mind that the key to all fami-ly discourse lies in the intentionality of contact.

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words that form the sentence. As D. Parisi reminds us,21 in the sentence ‘The bishop ordered two cappuccinos’, the two pol-ysemic words ‘to order’ and ‘cappuccinos’ acquire meaning from the context of the sentence which they themselves com-prise. Similarly in the practice of family therapy, each family member should be observed as a figure that emerges from a ground constituted by the family’s history and the other family members. To understand the uniqueness of each single mem-ber, a double description (Bateson)22 or, in keeping with GT, a holistic perspective will be needed that observes and com-pares the subject in relation to the whole of which the subject is a part. Each and every characteristic of the subject is always a way of being a subject-in-relation, which means that unique-ness always has to be contextualised. We are always unique in reference to others. A practical example will clear this up. The excessive aggressiveness of a child23 has no predetermined sense for the Gestalt therapist. Meaning is acquired within the family context, which may be ‘appeasing’ or ‘accusatory’, or it may permit only some family members (males, children, etc.) to express aggression. Depending on the case, an accusatory approach may be either a healthy, functional way of distin-guishing oneself, or a dysfunctional way of imitating or allying oneself with others. In this regard, Minuchin24 would say that the family is the matrix of identity. From our Gestalt perspective though, we would say that the family is the matrix of relational identity. I am what my family has allowed me to be, just as I have the body which my family has allowed me to have.When considering the relationship between the individual family member and the family as a whole, it is useful to bear in mind as your goal the coexistence of two wholes and two fullnesses: that of the individual and that of the totality. Munch

21 D. Parisi (1972), La comunicazione come processo cognitivo, Boringhieri, Torino.

22 G. Bateson (2000) (or. ed. 1972), Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois.

23 Cf. V. Satir (1976)(or. ed. 1964), Making contact, Celestial Arts, Berkeley, Calif.

24 S. Minuchin, M. Nichols, W.Y. Lee (2007), Assessing families and couples: From symptom to system, Allyn and Bacon, Boston.

The family is the matrix of relational identity. I am what my family has al-lowed me to be, just as I have the body which my family has allowed me to have.

Each family mem-ber should be ob-served as a figure that emerges from a ground constitut-ed by the family’s history and the oth-er family members.

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expressed this concept artistically when he said, «When I look at a painting of mine, I see it in all its beauty. And I have ob-served that when I put all my paintings together, not only does each painting emanate its own beauty from the set of paint-ings, but it takes on an even greater beauty — almost a new meaning — that comes from being part of the whole set».25

As a Gestalt therapist you are already aware that ‘the symptom is an appeal to the relationship’,26 as it expresses the intention-ality and the impossibility of communicating one’s suffering and reaching out to the other. In family therapy, the symptom of the individual is never a phenomenon in itself. It always harks back to the relational fabric of the family, expressing a creative adapta-tion (although suffered and dysfunctional) to distress in the family. For instance, if a child cannot express his/her anger in the home because someone or everyone is uncomfortable with that anger, what else is the child to do if not creatively adapt to her environ-ment and direct his/her anger against herself, expressing his/her suffering, for instance, through a psychosomatic symptom?The symptom, as you know, also encloses within it the direction that the family’s growth has taken, and hence the next step in the life cycle towards which the family might, or must, move. It is for this reason that we say that the symptom also reveals the need for sup-port — something which all the members of the family, to a greater or lesser extent, sense in this stage along their path to growth.Let me now offer some clinical suggestions for approaching the symptom from a relational perspective (from the symptom to rela-tional fabrics) and a developmental perspective (the next step in the development cycle). It is important to take note, for instance, of who is the first to talk about the problem and how. You might ask each family member (including the ‘DP’)27 what they each would change in the family, if they had a magic wand, that would make them feel better. In clinical practice it is often noted how the way a family assesses a symptom reveals the relational dynamics at

25 E. Munch (2001), Munch Fine Art Tattoos, Dover Publications, Incorporated.

26 A. Sichera (1997), Comparison with Gadamer: Towards a Hermeneutic Epistemology of Gestalt Therapy, in «Studies in Gestalt Therapy», 6-7, 9-30.

27 ‘DP’ in family therapy literature stands for ‘designated patient’.

The symptom, as you know, also en-closes within it the direction that the family’s growth has taken, and hence the next step in the life cycle towards which the family might, or must, move.

‘The symptom is an appeal to the relationship’, as it expresses the in-tentionality and the impossibility of com-municating one’s suf-fering and reaching out to the other.

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work. Different situations, for instance, will emerge if everyone agrees on calling the symptom a problem, or if some are exasper-ated by it while others do not see it as a problem at all.To help facilitate the identification of the individual’s symptom in the family’s suffering, another question that should be asked — to the entire family (never forget the holistic perspective!) — is whether others have, or have had, the same or another symptom (not from a hereditary perspective obviously). In fact, very often one or both the parents tell of, or better still, reveal how at the same age as the DP, they too suffered distress which they expressed through similar if not the very same symptoms. It is touching to witness the DP’s ‘pleasant’ surprise at the new perspective offered to him, as he realises that he is no longer the household problem (the ‘bad’ or ‘mad’). In this way, the rig-id figure begins to dissolve, enabling relational gestalten, that are as yet unfinished, to emerge from the ground. I remember one family that presented the symptom of the fourteen-year-old Giulio’s enuresis.28 When the ‘circular’ question was asked, Giulio’s father revealed that he too had similar problems as a teenager, while his mother and twenty-year-old sister confident-ly affirmed that they had never suffered from any sort of prob-lem at all. At this point, Giulio’s symptom revealed the (certain-ly long-standing though unresolved) conflictual contraposition of strong, efficient women to ‘feeble’ men. For Giulio to grow, he needed to find a new answer to the question of how a boy could become a significant male in this family.Attention should also obviously be paid to how the family re-acts to the symptom expressed by one of the members, as this reflects the emotional climate in the family, and in particular the space granted uniqueness, diversity and fragility.Finally, to build on the value of the resources of the family unit as a whole and make them explicit, it can be useful to ask each family member what they see the strengths of the family to be, the potential they see in themselves and the other fam-ily members. Their replies will trigger a nourishing exchange

28 In this as in other clinical cases, certain details and the names of patients have been changed for privacy reasons.

Another question that should be asked — to the entire fam-ily (never forget the holistic perspective!) — is whether others have, or have had, the same or another symptom

Ask each family member what they see the strengths of the family to be, the potential they see in themselves and the other family members.

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between the family members (how often positive relational experiences remain implicit!) or they will raise aspects that not everyone agrees with. In either case, reciprocal dialogue can reveal experiences of genuine contact between the family members. Along these same lines, it can be decisively useful, and a source of surprise, to ask each family member how they believe they each contribute to the well-being of the family.Encouraging a developmental and relational understanding of the symptom in the family can take quite some time, as it tends to promote the personal and relational growth of all the family members.To conclude, right from session one, the therapist puts into mo-tion — as Erving Poster says29 — blocked and stagnant family relationships. In doing so, the original problem can become a resource for building new, creative, relational approaches.In the first session, questions are ultimately a tool, along with concentration (so dear to F. Perls30), for raising awareness and encouraging the family consciously to realise that the symptom can become an occasion to complete unfinished gestalten that restrict the nourishing and functional nature of the relational climate in the family.

Beyond the first session: inside the relational fabric

To recapitulate, in GT the following points are high-lighted with particular attention:– The family is undergoing a transition towards a new stage

in its developmental cycle, but it is unable to understand the new that emerges from bodies (Id-function disorder).

– The quality of contact between family members is often dys-functional (due to the loss of the Ego-function); they live side-by-side but are unable to achieve full, nourishing contact.

– Family members, especially the parents, perceive the bound-

29 E. Polster (1987), Every Person’s Life Is Worth a Novel, W.W. Norton & Co., New York

30 F. Perls (1947), Ego, Hunger and Aggression, Vintage Books, New York.

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aries of their relational identity in a distorted way (loss of the Personality-function).

In order for the family to rediscover its ability to move through a new developmental stage in its growth, therapy needs to focus on the relationships (‘the betweens’ or the ‘contact boundary’) between family members, bearing in mind the difficulties that emerge from disturbances in the Id-function and the Personali-ty-function, and from the loss of the Ego-function.In clinical practice all three functions are addressed in context, though for didactic purposes — action is synthetic, thought is analytic — I will describe separately two types of approaches that can facilitate change processes.

The dance of chairs’, or changes in family proxem-ics (acting on the Personality-function)

Let’s start with where our attention should begin. Observe how the family members freely sit down, how they occupy the chairs available. It should be clear to you now why in clinical practice an extra chair with respect to the number of family members is always added, so as to offer greater decision-making space. The choice of chair or where to sit clearly expresses familiarity with spatial placement (near whom, away from whom). I like to think that the proxemics of the chairs (of the seats taken) reflects the proxemics of relational experiences. Two elements make up this connection: the body which you want near to or far from you (intercorporeity),31 and whose face you want front on or to the side (visual perception). As I have stressed in other didactic contexts, the vicinity of certain bodies helps us breathe better, while others may block breathing and sponta-neity. Being seated next to a body that emanates warmth risks becoming confluent, though the effect is offset if that warmth is not supported by front-on faces. The seating arrangement also reveals which bodies are loved at a distance and in silence, which bodies are controlling, which annul each other, and

31 G. Salonia (2008), La psicoterapia della Gestalt e il lavoro sul corpo. Per una rilettura del fitness, cit.

The seating ar-rangement also reveals which bodies are loved at a distance and in silence, which bod-ies are controlling, which annul each other, and so on.

In order for the family to rediscover its ability to move through a new de-velopmental stage in its growth, therapy needs to focus on the relationships (‘the betweens’ or the ‘contact bounda-ry’) between family members, bearing in mind the difficulties that emerge from disturbances in the id-function and the personality-function, and from the loss of the ego-function.

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so on. As therapists we observe the obvious which, as Hegel noted, is a profundity all the more difficult to reach precisely because it is obvious.32 The point however is not to interpret the relational significance of proximity (the relational value of the seat occupied) but rather to help people become aware of the experience, which the body feels and recognises well before it is made explicit. For instance, it can be useful to ask the family members (though not immediately) how they feel (Id-function) in the seat they occupy, and how they experience others (bodies) near to and far from them. How does it feel to have certain faces fronton and others which can only be seen ‘out of the corner of your eye’? At this point, I often ask the fam-ily members to change chairs. Thus, each person takes turns, depending on how relationships are progressing, in playing ‘musical chairs’. Afterwards, of course, you should ask what the ‘game’ has revealed or confirmed, what has happened in the body of who has changed chairs and in the body of who has become his ‘new’ neighbour. It is amazing to see how the experience of changing chairs (whereby a person sits near a feared or desired body, or people speak facing each other instead of avoiding each other, etc.) produces such sig-nificant perceptive and relational changes. Not only chairs are changed but also perspectives, leading to new ways of being and new approaches to relationships.As people who work on bodies know, such changes in visual perspective and bodily vicinity provoke new relational thoughts,33 causing a concrete break with perceptive autom-atisms. A family seeks help for Giulia, a twenty-two-year-old who is having trouble graduating from university. She is very shy and is experiencing growing difficulties in her social life, to the point that she increasingly lives shut up in the home. Gi-

32 In this sense we talk about the ‘profundity of the surface’, cf. P. Cavaleri (2003), La profondità della superficie, Franco Angeli, Milano.

33 Cf. G. Salonia, Danza delle sedie e danza dei pronomi. La GT con le coppie e le famiglie, cit. For intercorporeity’s notion, see: Id. G. Salonia (2011), The Perls’ Mistake. Perceptions and misunderstandings of the gestalt post-Freudianism, in «GTK Journal of Psychotherapy», 2, 51-70

Such changes in visual perspective and bodily vicinity provoke new re-lational thoughts, causing a concrete break with percep-tive automatisms.

It is amazing to see how the experience of changing chairs (whereby a person sits near a feared or desired body, or people speak facing each other instead of avoiding each other, etc.) produces such significant per-ceptive and relation-al changes. Not only chairs are changed but also perspec-tives, leading to new ways of being and new approaches to relationships.

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acomo, her elder brother, is fully allied with their parents, and is particularly efficient and self-confident. The way they take their seats reflects these dynamics in a physical way: husband and wife are close to each other, with Giacomo alongside the father. Separated from everyone is Giulia. The husband de-clares his devotion to his wife, who is clearly the central figure of the family. All three agree that the only problem is Giulia. At a certain point, I was struck by the way Giulia eyed her father. Hence I asked the father if he spends time with his daughter. His answer was: ‘What is the point now that she has grown up? When she was little, of course I used to play with her.’ At this point I asked Giacomo and Giulia separately whether they would be willing to exchange seats so that Giulia was next to her father and could talk to him. The dialogue that ensued began angrily, before progressively calming down. I asked the two siblings how they experienced this exchange of seats. Giacomo replied, with the tone of someone who had just dis-covered something entirely unexpected, that only now, seated in his sister’s spot, did he understand something he had never before imagined: Giulia’s solitude. From that moment on, Gi-acomo experienced a growing understanding of his sister’s problems, while Giulia, in turn, experienced greater warmth and strength from the empathy of her brother. Then slowly, also through Giulia’s rapprochement with her father first, and then her mother, the parenting couple managed to overcome their rigid convergence and reconstruct the contact boundary between parents and children.Changing seats, therefore, facilitates receptiveness to one’s own and the other body (Id-function), opening up — finally — the opportunity of expressing what one has to say to the other (Ego-function), and enabling, even in a physical sense, the contact boundary between the parents and children to be rebuilt (Personality-function). As I said earlier, this is precisely what therapy wants to achieve. Obviously, to arrive at such a change, progress needs to made step by step, as can be seen in another example. Elena is the problematic daughter of a family in which the mother shines vibrantly in the light of every-one (including her husband) and places her youngest son on a pedestal. Given the situation, Elena’s distress can only be re-solved once the couple learns to see each other as equals and

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the children build their sibling bond. To achieve this, though, intermediate steps need to be taken, through which, for exam-ple, Elena speaks and moves closer to her father, perceived as unreachable due to his obsessive esteem for his wife. If not, how can Elena ever grow into a woman if neither of her parents, for different reasons (the father has eyes only for the mother, and the mother has eyes only for herself or others), see her as a woman and allow her to become one?

Transforming relational grammar, or ‘dance of the pronouns’ (the Ego-function of the self)

Now that we have discussed the Id-function (‘What do you feel?’), we can focus on the Ego-function (‘What do you want?’). Bearing in mind the bodily matrix of words, the Ego-function of the self can be said to become visible, from a GT perspective, specifically through words. It is with words (and their relation-ship with the body) that people express the quality of their rela-tionships. By working on relational words, the therapist seeks to encourage awareness of the connection between what we say and what the body feels. In this sense it can be said that words emerge from the body. In contrast with the Bowen method,34 where family members are asked to differentiate (de-massify) themselves by speaking to the therapist using I-statements only, in GFT members are asked to interact, as the sharing of rela-tional experiences expresses the quality of contact and enables contact to be improved. As this happens, the therapist should obviously take note of who speaks the most, who silences other, who is obstinate, and similar behaviour. By observing, some-thing will emerge as figure, though as a Gestalt therapist your task is to encourage not so much behaviours as experience — in particular missed experiences that have interrupted the contact process. It is interesting to note the relational value of the habit-ual use of personal pronouns — a suggestion I have also seen

34 M. Bowen (1978), Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, NJ.

In this sense it can be said that words emerge from the body.

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in the work of Irigaray, though from another perspective.35 Here I mean the self-referentiality of ‘I’, the dependent or accusatory tone of ‘you’, the confluent ‘we’, the plural ‘you’ that excludes the accuser, and ‘they’ referred to those outside the family set-ting. In working on the Ego-function of the self, family members should learn, playing a sort of ‘musical pronouns’, to listen to themselves («The concentrating self», as Goodman would say), to use an authentic ‘I’ when sharing their (bodily and relational) experiences and their own vulnerability, to use ‘you’ empathet-ically to reach out to the other, to use ‘we’ not as a sign of con-fluence but as a genuine experience of belonging, and to use a realistic ‘they’ when talking about the polis.36 The result is a harmonious dance that expresses and creates contact.It is also important to support the family members in having the strength to speak — a strength which is necessary for self-iden-tification. The eleven-year-old Yolanda tries to speak, but Mum, Dad, and her big brothers are so absorbed in their own discus-sions that nobody realises that she is pouting and beginning to get agitated. When the therapist asks her, «What would you like to say, Yolanda?», she cries out: «That’s enough, I want to talk now. Even if I’m only little and I don’t understand what you are talking about, I want to talk about my things».Helping family members to communicate without necessarily un-derstanding or agreeing with each other means helping them to become aware of the relational intentionality underlying the use of all words, even in discussions that seem to go on and on or which do not seem to make much sense. After a long and tortuous speech to his wife, I ask Carlo to tell her briefly whether his efforts to express himself were intended to bring him closer to her or to distance himself from her. His answer was: «I am telling you all this to be closer to you, because I don’t see you reaching out to me. All these words because when I look at you,

35 L. Irigaray (1985), Parler n’est jamais neutre, Les Editions de Minuit, Paris.

36 For a phenomenology of communication see H. Franta, G. Salonia (1979), Comunicazione interpersonale, LAS, Roma; cf. also Id. (1999), Dialogare nel tempo della frammentazione, in F. Armetta, M. Naro (eds.), Impense adlaboravit, Pontificia Facoltà Teologica, Palermo, 572-595.

In working on the ego-function of the self, family members should learn, play-ing a sort of ‘musical pronouns’, to listen to themselves (‘the concentrating self’, as Goodman would say), to use an au-thentic ‘I’ when shar-ing their (bodily and relational) experi-ences and their own vulnerability, to use ‘you’ empathetically to use ‘you’ empa-thetically to use ‘we’ not as a sign of confluence but as a genuine experience of belonging

Helping family members to com-municate without necessarily under-standing or agree-ing with each other means helping them to become aware of the relational inten-tionality underlying the use of all words.

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you seem cold, and I’m afraid of not being able to reach out to you». Regardless of the content and words used, the sharing of relational and bodily experiences in this way creates a new experience of healthy closeness between family members.Even negative experiences (‘I’m angry with you’, ‘I’m disappointed in you’) take on positive value if communicated with a sense of au-thenticity, integrity, and respect for the other. At times, an unfinished gestalt might concern a specific word unsaid or a specific gesture not made, in which the desire for full contact is interrupted and hidden. As I said earlier, when dealing with the Ego-function, the therapist should aim at bringing out the interrupted and unfinished gesture (and word) expected but not received, which has long been postponed or suspended. This is a necessary step in restoring the spontaneity of the relationship, which makes living together a healthy, nourishing experience. In working on completing this unfin-ished business, attention should be focused on breathing. Holding one’s breath means holding up words, as well as holding up the next step towards the other. Nevertheless, if the family members manage to share the experiences of their bodies, for instance by saying «When you say things like this, inside me I feel a fear of get-ting close to you, and I freeze, I don’t know why», the road towards the other will be opened again. Full contact unfolds and is revealed through the encounter of words and the body, when words emerge from the body and bodies open up to words.At a certain point when working with a family, the importance of working specifically with the parenting couple will emerge. It is a road that opens up many possibilities. Seven-year-old Francesco is ‘brought to therapy’ for behavioural disorders at school. It soon becomes clear, though, that the ground of his distress lies in unexpressed conflict in the couple. When we tell the couple in front of the child «Next time we want to see just the two of you», Francesco exclaims with candour and relief «Finally!». Perhaps he would have liked to have added, «Was it so hard to understand who really needed help?». As therapy continued, it became clear that Francesco was right.At this point you will be asking yourself, seeing that the rela-tionship between the parenting couple is so determinant, how should we work with couples?I will write to you soon on this. In the meantime, thank you for your attention.

At a certain point when working with a family, the impor-tance of working specifically with the parenting couple will emerge. It is a road that opens up many possibilities.

When we tell the couple in front of the child ‘Next time we want to see just the two of you’, Franc-esco exclaims with candour and relief ‘Finally’. Perhaps he would have liked to have added, ‘Was it so hard to under-stand who really needed help?’.

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Abstract

The author presents a Gestalt therapy approach to family therapy using the literary genre of the letter, which lends itself perfectly to the concrete approach of Gestalt therapy. Assuming and including past perspectives on Gestalt therapy with families (the experiential model and the theory of the contact/withdrawal from contact cycle), the author constructs, after years of therapy, research, and teaching activities, a heuristic and clinical model of Gestalt Family Therapy (GFT) which builds on a family-focused understanding of the theory of the self. The three functions of the family-self become the key to understanding personal-family distress, how therapy can be conduct-ed, and how long it can take. Specifically, the Id-function of the self embraces the family in a holistic way as bodies that grow; the Per-sonality-function reveals the quality of the contact boundary between the bodies of parents and those of their children; the Ego-function focuses on the quality of contact itself (bodies and pronouns, timing and approach to sessions). A peculiar characteristic of the model presented by the author is its understanding of the bodily nature of relationships (building on an intercorporeity perspective developed by the author). The author’s model represents further confirmation of the originality, genuineness and specificity of Gestalt therapy when working with families.

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