Gestalt psychotherapy

I vissuti corporeo-relazionali in psico-oncologia:
la Gestalt Therapy oltre il limite del modello della Kübler-Ross
Analizzando i vissuti corporeo-relazionali nella triade paziente-familiari-curanti, l’autrice Paola Argentino presenta la prospettiva gestaltica in psico-oncologia.  In modo originale correla alcuni principi epistemologici della GT all’intervento clinico di psicologia sanitaria, individuando quattro aree: l’intercorporeità estetica, funzionale, cenestesica e liminare.  Evidenzia, infine, come la GT, fornendo strumenti clinici di sostegno specifico nel percorso di consapevolezza di malattia, supera i limiti del modello della Kübler-Ross, affinchè l’ultima fase della malattia non consista nell’accettazione della propria morte, ma nel raggiungere l’integrità e la pienezza di vita.

Most contemporary text books of neurology and of psychology pay little attention to the function of the cerebellum beyond noting it to be an organ of motor control. A historical overview of research on cerebellar function is presented, from pre-Sherrinton suggestions of sensory and motor function, through the post-Sherrinton and dominant 20 th . Century view of "motor" function, to the 21 st . century perspective of "sensorimotor" function. The intrinsic capability of the cerebellum is briefly considered in terms of: its size/complexity/capacity; its information representation/processing characteristics (with "a particular computational function"); its sensory information processing capability; and, its role in sensorimotor regulatory control. It is suggested that the cerebellum can process sensorimotor stimulus information in a statistical (connectionist type) manner and respond to in on the basis of its own learning based sensorimotor representations, albeit at a "level" that does not necessarily involve cerebral "awareness".

1. We look through the mind and we gaze within awareness…becoming aware of awareness is the path of gazing (whether eyes or open or closed)…we can gaze into awareness and we are immediately the field, the field of being. If we look and look for awareness with our mind only blankness arises, a blank state. Sunyata, primordial knowingness is not blankness, it is not blanking out. As we become aware of awareness we enter the gaze, we become the place of the gaze…this gazing from within awareness opens the multidimensionalness….the different dimensions of the field manifest within the gaze, within us. The gaze is both within us and beyond us. Within the gaze, there is neither simple inside nor simple outside. The gaze is place...a vast place beyond inside and outside.

In questo contributo viene descritto un modello di intervento terapeutico e riabilitativo, sviluppato dall’Autrice, per i pazienti psichiatrici gravi nella prima comunità terapeutica assistita del dipartimento salute mentale di Siracusa, Italia, seguendo le basi epistemologiche della Gestalt Therapy. Viene analizzata la novità del Modello Gestaltico Comunitario nel percorso storico dal moral treatment all’antipsichiatria e gli elementi di differenza con il primo modello di comunità proposto da M. Jones. La metodologia clinica segue le fasi evolutive spazio-temporali del ciclo dell’esperienza di contatto di ogni ospite all’interno della Comunità, tenendo conto delle funzioni del Sé e degli strumenti di intervento terapeutici possibili, dal clima relazionale al significato del farmaco assunto. Attenzione viene data anche alla prevenzione del burn-out degli operatori sanitari e sociali che lavorano in comunità.

| This article supports the need for psychotherapy and psychiatry to overcome the fragmentation of scientific knowledge. The author focuses briefly on the evolving relationship between psychotherapy and society, providing a brief overview of today's clinical needs. She then proposes a new development in the clinical concept of awareness from the optics of the field: aesthetic relational knowledge as a clinical tool that emerges from the phenomenological, aesthetic, relational, and process-oriented approach that is the Gestalt method. Therapeutic competence, in other words, is empathic and resonates with the client in a cocreated field. A clinical example will demonstrate how the concept of aesthetic relational knowledge can be used in a Gestalt therapy setting.

The drive for a theoretical integration of psychotherapy arises out of is dissatisfaction with the inadequacy of single systems/theories. It has been suggested that there is a need for a 'meta-theory' that provides a framework to integrate different psychotherapy theories in terms of some shared construct. The theoretical integration should take into account behaviour, emotion, cognition, and interpersonal factors. In addition, trans-theoretical considerations should include theory and data from neurology and psychiatry. Some different integrative 'frameworks' are noted, including Clarkson's 'Systemic Integrative Psychotherapy'. Some neuroscience based frameworks for integration are also mentioned. It is proposed that homeostasis could serve as a meta-theory that encapsulates principles in terms of which to 'systematically' integrate aspects of psychotherapy, including trans-theoretical dimensions.

How can we understand the role of movement and kinaesthetic resonance in shaping our experience and knowledge? This paper gives a brief introduction to my current doctoral studies at Metanoia Institute/Middlesex University, where I am researching the experiences of psychotherapists. I have discovered my area of interest falls within Studies in Practical Knowledge, a growing research tradition in Scandinavia. This article presents some of the material I have gathered so far, focusing on working with embodied awareness in online Gestalt psychotherapy.

This paper describes in detail those aspects of trance that facilitate the ongoing therapy process with the borderline personality and secondly, the utilization of trance phenomena to directly work with the borderline person's experience and particular ego deficits, elaborated from an object relations viewpoint.

Gestalt Therapy has been influenced by a rich variety of approaches and concepts such as Gestalt Psychology, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and several remarkable individuals along the way (Sinay, 1998). This text will attempt to outline some of the main series of events and contributions which helped me gather a clearer understanding of the roots and process that is Gestalt Therapy’s history.

¿Cómo se puede poner en práctica la consideración positiva incondicional dentro de una relación psicoterapéutica? Sabemos que se trata de una de las condiciones que menciona Carl Rogers para crear un clima facilitador de crecimiento, al lado de la empatía y la congruencia. Sin embargo, la consideración positiva es un sentimiento y por lo tanto no se puede forzar. Entonces, ¿cómo un psicoterapeuta o un acompañante puede experimentarla frente a sus clientes y evitar el juicio o la evaluación proyectiva?

Gestalt Therapy techniques are considered to be powerful tools for the remobilization of human growth and change. I will attempt to show that the power of these techniques lies in the fact that they are effective ways of dealing with our "internalizations". I will first briefly review object relation theory and then discuss gestalt techniques as they pertain to internal objects.

How to read a text and how to hear a text. How to open words and syllables so that knowledge arises within your own body, within your inner awareness. When you are located in mind alone, when you are located in conceptualness and concrete mind alone, you will be locked in and contained. William Reich described concrete minds as living machines. Concreteness can be described as rigidity, a mode of tense cognitive activity. Strangely enough, concreteness with its compulsiveness, its drivenness can distort the sense of presence and the sense of reality. The concrete mind in its literalness struggles to find the right solution. The literal view can be narrow, highly vigilant and stimulus−stimulation bound. The concrete mind struggles to find the right solution relentlessly. Of course whatever the solution, it never is enough. One becomes stuck in the stimulus of the word and stuck in the signification of the word. The nexus between the signifier and signified is without space and is densely bound.

Aim: To identify therapists’ views on sexual boundaries and the strategies they employ to manage them in therapeutic practice. Method: In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with a sample of 13 accredited, experienced practitioners of psychotherapy or counselling. A grounded theory approach, informed by principles from Free Association Narrative methodology, was employed, in which team members used debriefing sessions for extending depth of understanding of the interviews. Findings: There is consensus about boundaries at the extremes, but variability about fantasy, flirtation and touch. A core process was generated from accounts of successful management of sexual attraction. We identified four problematic ways of reacting to boundary pressure, each with potential to harm clients and therapy. Discussion: A participant-observer stance was conceptualised as essential for managing threats to boundaries, consistent with the empathic stance. Minor boundary crossings were viewed by interviewees as both potential precursors of more serious transgressions, and as opportunities for understanding the client's difficulties. Implications for practice: These span training, accrediting organisations, supervision and therapy practice.

Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb observes Laura’s approach to the therapist from a phenomenological, aesthetic, field oriented perspective. She looks at how (rather than what) the client tells the therapist her problem, her expectation of change involved in her asking for help, her creative adjustment to traumatic situations, and finally at the feeling of the therapist
as aesthetic diagnostic tool which orients the treatment. The author refers to and describes the specific therapeutic path in case of abusive trauma and focuses on the feeling of the specific therapist (the aesthetic relational knowledge - ARK) and on the reciprocity that emerges in the therapeutic meeting. The therapeutic glance switches from the client to the reciprocity that is created in the therapeutic relation.

Our lack of awareness of Being results in bewildering experience. The intrinsic inner radiance, the inner light of Being arises out of primordial luminous spaciousness, the unbound openness of unbound pure potentiality. When this primordial ground of Being is veiled and obscured by the lack of experiential awareness, we can be locked into dualistic experiences, and consequently the non-dual nature of the field of Being is experientially foreclosed. The sense of indivisibility of all phenomena and awareness is experientially foreclosed. The capacity to see into, feel into and see through the lucidity of phenomena as the very field of Being becomes foreclosed and densified. We then live contained in mind alone. There is no experience of the field of Being. Without the field of Being we easily become things and objects both to our self and to others.

Este artículo describe fenomenológicamente nuestra situación ontológica y nuestros dos modos de conocimiento. Existe el conocimiento de la mente como el conocedor de las formas y el conocedor de la conciencia como el conocedor del Ser. Este documento vincula e integra la visión tántrica Dzogchen de la distinción mente-conciencia con la visión fenomenológica europea de los siglos XIX y XX de la distinción mente-conciencia expresada en el trabajo de Heidegger y Merleau Ponty. Esta distinción de mente y conciencia nos permite aclarar la confusión sobre nuestro conocimiento de las formas y nuestro conocimiento del Ser. El artículo enfatiza el entrelazamiento de la conciencia y la mente. Cuando la mente y la conciencia están en unidad, el conocedor puede conocer el Ser del ser a través de un ser. La persona puede conocer la dualidad de los seres dentro de la no dualidad del Ser. Y la persona puede conocer la no dualidad del Ser dentro de la dualidad de los seres.

We have two ways of knowing. Our mind knows forms, things, both subtle and gross. Faces, hands, buildings, trees, math formulas, mind knows subject and the mind knows otherness. The mind knows dualities, the mind knows me and you, us and them, and this and that. Mind knows time, mind knows the past, the present and the sense of the future. The mind knows things and entities, the mind knows beings, infinite numbers of beings and things. The mind knows difference. The mind thinks conceptually, feels affectively, imagines through imagery, the mind has sense and the mind has memory. The mind knows dualistically.

In the Gudyargarbha tantra there is this most wonderful verse. Appearances, sounds, and thoughts are the diety, mantra and the state of dharmakaya. What this wonderful language brings forward into our awareness is the amazing understanding that self liberation is the direct experiencing of the appearing of appearances.

Resumen: Este trabajo analiza el lugar del cuerpo en la teoría y la practica del Enfoque Centrado en la Persona (ECP). Partimos de la hipótesis que el lenguaje no verbal es una expresión de la persona de la misma manera que lo es el contenido de la narración. No obstante, en la tradición del ECP, se evoca muy poco el cuerpo, y eso nos conduce a preguntarnos si el marco teórico del ECP permite una toma en cuenta de esta metacomunicación y del cuerpo en general. Examinaremos diferentes objeciones para preguntarnos finalmente, como en la praxis, el psicoterapeuta centrado en el cliente puede abordar las manifestaciones corporales de sus clientes sin traicionar los principios fundamentales que caracterizan el Enfoque Centrado en la Persona.

A person's own inner most awareness and the movements within their awareness field bring forth their direct personal experience of their cosmological archetypal field of awareness. This spontaneous event is given to us within the archetypal realm of awareness. The archetypal dimension manifests itself as us, and reveals itself to us through our experience of its self-manifestation.

In the summer of 2013 at the Tibetan Center in Poolesville, Maryland the great Lama YangThang Rinpoche gave instruction on the practice of the great compassion, or as he described the practice, as being the practice of Absolute Compassion. The instruction was to extend the light of awareness into the world and into the cosmos. Extending the light of awareness into the present moment of a person, extending the light of awareness into the past time of the person and extending the light of awareness into the future time of the person. This truly is the great practice of the great compassion and everyone can practice this extension of the light of awareness. This very proactive praxis brings forth the light within us and fills us with the light of the field of awareness. It is great to practice this vast practice. Of course it takes a boldness of intention and passion of heart. Extending the light of our innermost awareness into the present of those we love, and into the past of those we love, and then extending the light into their future of those we love is self-liberating. The light of awareness illuminates experience, metabolizes experience, opens us into un-bound awareness, undoes fixated-ness, and brings forth luminous intensity. The light of awareness is pure potentiality. The same practice can be used with those whom we hate or dislike or whom disgust us. This practice of extending the light of awareness deepens our own experience of becoming aware of awareness. As we practice extending the light of awareness, awareness itself completely opens up for us and deepens our experience in depth and breath. In time we begin to experience the true secret of this praxis. Timeless awareness begins to be experienced by us and sustained by us. Timeless awareness is the

The Author introduces a systematic reading of the phobic, obsessive
and compulsive disorders in the perspective of Gestalt Therapy. The
suggested hermeneutic reveals an original and enlightening re-reading
of the FOC symptoms, founded on a thirty-year clinical experience
one on hand, and an uncompromising and punctual adhesion
to the principles of the theoretical model of the Gestalt Therapy on
the other hand.
Each of the three relational styles is faced in a complete anthropological
and clinical analysis, within a reference frame, that primarily
defines the relational etiopathogenesis of the discussed symptoms
and, more generally, of the psychological disorders, in a clear and
clinically established vision.
The article ends with a further contribution about the specificity of the
therapeutic work. A particularly useful section for all those who – in
the different therapeutic approaches – work with POC disorders. The
article introduces strict modalities of theoretical and clinical declension
of GT and shares the researches of the Istituto di Gestalt Therapy
HCC kairòs with the Gestalt Community, on a national and international
level.

There is similarity of the theme of becoming self liberated through the manifestation of appearance in both dzogchen and Heideggarian phenomenology. There is this similarity between the dzogchen meditative awareness tradition as articulated by the 14 th century Tibetan master Longchenpa and the phenomenologist of 20th century philosophy Martin Heidegger.

Donald Winnicott's radical existential psychoanalytic understanding of transitional awareness and transitional relatedness is an amazing and little used doorway for today's psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. In today's cognitive clinical culture we have become cognitions tampering with cognitions. Life as cognition. Existential Ontology Winnicott's creative understanding of our capacity for transitional awareness and transitional relatedness intertwines both our personal psychology and our innermost experience of our own existential ontology. Transitional knowingness intertwines both our mind and our primordial awareness field. Our field of awareness knows the field of Being since awareness is the field of Being. Transitional awareness intertwines both our mind and our psyche. Donald Winnicott's phenomenological understanding of the self radicalizes our sense of self from being a representational picture or cognitive affective schema or synthesis of disparate psychological part's to a fluid sense of self as a direct experiential felt sense of ongoing continuity of Being. Our knowingness though the medium of awareness, opens for us the direct knowing of the experience of Being. The experience of Being is for us our sense of natural spirituality. Our liminal transitional awareness field opens us into the immediate ongoing intimate experience of Being. This experience of Being is of Being within our very own self and of Being within our very own relational life-world. Ordinary Personhood We, as a most ordinary person, can experience the unfolding movement of the experiencing of Being within our own self as our self, and simultaneously, the unfolding experiencing of our own being as the being-ness of Being which is the Being of the world. As we experience the Being .

is obscured because of the compelling actuality of our dualistic experience within the dualistic forms of phenomena. Phenomena is compelling! Our indivisibleness within each other and our indivisibleness with Being is obscured and made invisible by the dramatic compelling experience of the different range and forms of our experience such as pleasure and pain, happiness and horror, anxiety and relational yearning, sex and death, starvation and torture, to name a few.

This article follows a first presentation of the 'dance steps' between therapist and client, which appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of this journal, and gives a clinical example of how this phenomenological and aesthetic observational tool works in practice. The research path of the tool is also sketched. This contribution is presented in the frame of reference of psychotherapists' political and social response-ability today. For the author, a main clinical problem today derives from the lack of recognition from the other, which makes bodily desensitisation evident in our clients. This brings Gestalt therapists to focus on the reciprocity of their interactions with clients, instead of on how the client makes contact, because there, in the actual dance between them, is the possibility of revitalising the contact boundary, where the self is co-created.

It is not easy to understand the nature of the guru and understanding the nature of the guru can be bewildering. There is often bewilderment about the guru. One source of the bewilderment is that people think that the guru is an individual person and for most people the understanding that the guru is not a person has been foreclosed. The guru is not a person. And when people see and believe the guru is a person, such a belief will create illusions about the person whom they think is the guru, and their own relationship with the person whom they see as the guru will fall into various forms of the psychology of transference. Moreover, the true and pervasive nature of the guru will be concealed and the power of the guru limited and anthropomorphized, and politicized. To use Heideggerian language the ontic dimension will become the focus and the ontological dimension becomes foreclosed. In fact, the guru is not an entity, the guru is not a thing, and the guru is not even a being. The guru is the field of Being. The guru is the field of Being's manifestation of understanding, manifestation of protection and manifestation of self-revelation. The guru is the radiance of primordial awareness. The contemporary master of Kashmir Shavism, Swami Muktananda would teach, using the language of theology, " the guru is the grace bestowing power of God. " He would also say " The guru is your own innermost awareness and you must get beyond your mind to experience the guru as your own awareness. " Vehicle-ness It is also equally true that a person can be vehicle of the guru. Even you and I can be a vehicle for the guru. The light of the guru can manifest and shine forth through you and me, and through everyone. The power of the guru does not manifest only through institutional religious teachers as some would like you to think, but most often this manifestation is through

This paper is an elaboration of the Dzogchen and the Existential Phenomenological Ontological understanding of our lived luminous experience of Beingfullness and Beinglessness. Self-Liberation is the experience of living within Beingfullness within the context of our ongoing continuity of Beingfull life. Dzogchen and the Existential Phenomenological Study of the ontic ontological lived experience of Beingfullness and Beinglessness are intimately related. Self-Liberation is our lived experience of ongoing continuity of Embodied Beingfullness.

I will discuss Subjectivity as Lack and the Realm of Ontological Insecurity in Lacan and Winnicott from within the Context of Dzogchen. Primordial awareness manifests within us as our own subjectivity. This is the understanding both of Dzogchen and certain contemporary forms of Western phenomenology. This theme of primordial awareness manifesting as subjectivity is also the focus of the eight century Dzogchen source text the The Sovereign All-Creating Mind-The Motherly Buddha. Psychoanalyst such as Lacan and Winnicott focus on the ontological insecurity of being a subject, being a self, being a self constituted by awareness. In this paper the base of awareness as emptiness or space, or void or openness, or potential space or nothingness is described in light of Winnicott and Lacan's work on subjectivity and lack.

The phenomenology of the unfolding elaboration of our capacity to know Being directly and as well as our experience to know Being through beings is the focus of this paper. I will focus on the phenomenological elaboration of our knowing of mind; the phenomenological knowing of direct awareness and the consequent simultaneous intertwining of knowing through mind and through awareness. This union of our mind and our awareness allows the knowing of Being through beings and knowing the indivisibleness of beings and Being. As the Dakini said to Dudjom Lingpa " You and I are indivisible. " Our paper begins with a phenomenological elaboration of the Two Ways of Knowing. This is a necessary and a most useful distinction for our knowing of both beings and Being simultaneously. The Two Ways of Knowing: Mind Knowing Form and Awareness Knowing Being Mind Knows Form! Our mind knows forms, and things, both subtle and gross. Our mind knows beings and things. Our mind knows subject and our mind knows otherness. Our mind knows dualities .Our mind knows me and you, us and them and this and that. Mind knows time. Our mind knows the sense of the past, the sense of present and a sense of the future. The mind knows entities. Our mind knows difference. Our mind thinks conceptually, feels affectively, imagines through images, the mind senses sensation and the mind has memory. The mind always knows dualistically. Our mind thinks and knows through thoughts, our mind feels and knows through feelings, our mind has sensations, knows through sensation and our mind has fantasy and knows through imagination. The knowledge of our mind is mediated through conceptualization and representational thinking. Our mind can even know the mind of others. However, our mind cannot know Being and our mind cannot know the Being-ness of beings. Our mind cannot experience Being. Our mind cannot know Being directly. Awareness Knows Being! Our awareness directly knows Being and our awareness can directly know the Being-ness of beings. Being itself is not a being and Being manifests beings, infinite numbers of beings. Being manifests Being within beings as their own being. Being itself is not an entity and Being is not a being. Being is not a thing. Being is non-duality. Being knows the non-duality of everything and anything. Being is oneness and pervasiveness. Being is openness, and Being self-manifests as radiant light. Being is compassionate creative resonance. Being manifests presence. Our awareness can know the indivisible presence of the Being-ness of beings within beings and between beings. Being manifests duality, although Being is completely non-dual. By becoming aware of awareness, we experience primordial awareness which is the ground of being, which is Being itself. Awareness is Being. Awareness is Being knowing Being. Being knows Being and is the Being-ness of all the beings. Awareness can be timeless as well as awareness can be in time. Awareness can be timelessness and in time simultaneously.

so clearly shows in his dissertation, between the 8 th and 14 th centuries there were illuminating phenomenological distinctions that were considered essential to understand the great perfection practice of awareness, becoming aware of awareness. These distinctions were primarily made by the Nyingma masters of meditation. The most basic distinction is between the mind of dualistic experience (sems) and the primordial awareness of naturalistic non-dualistic experience or primordial knowingness (ye shes) or (semde). This ye shes is non dualistic knowingness. Unfortunately, many Buddhist texts describe dualism as deluded and non-dualism as non-deluded. This language of delusion is highly prejudiced and is nihilistic in tone and devalues the oneness of the two truths (conventional and absolute reality). They devalue the indivisibility of appearance and awareness and moreover, challenge the validity of the foundational human experience of oneness and difference or duality within non duality. This negative use of language unhappily challenges the divinity of appearance and invalidates the human experience of the Nirmanakaya dimension which is ordinary life. The differentiation and distinction of mind from awareness prevents the bewildering confusion of mind and awareness resulting in the negation of either the experience of non-duality or the experience of duality. Much of the understanding about the difference between mind and awareness was presented in the unfolding of the seventeen Atiyoga tantras that brought forth the heart essence tradition (sying thig). These teachings and instructions are part of the instructional teachings of Dzogchen. These teachings are instructional in the forms of skillful means or praxis for bringing the experience of awareness of awareness into completion. This completion is experiencing the fullness of experience of personal awareness within the vast infinite and multidimensional field of awareness. The essential method is to experience directly and completely primordial knowingness as well as the manifestations of this primordial knowingness such as mind, innermost subjectivity and external phenomenal appearance. Mind, subjectivity and all appearance are the manifestation of primordial knowingness itself. Primordial awareness is the primordial and abiding pervasive condition. Our experience of non-conceptual knowingness or non-conceptual perception opens us to the direct understanding and direct non-conceptual experience that everything and anything is the manifestation of primordial or ground awareness. Primordial awareness is radiance openness or radiant emptiness. Primordial awareness is not simply emptiness alone but the oneness of openness and radiance spaciousness as light. The incompleteness of emptiness alone is recognized by the 14 th century Nyingma master Longchenpa. Awareness is the union of spaciousness and radiance.

The focus of Dzogchen practice is to experientially understand the nature of our awareness through awareness itself. To be nonconceptually aware of the nature of our awareness is rig pa or open presence.The root or the source of all phenomena is Presence. This word presence is often used by 14th century Longechenpa as well the contemporary Namkai Norbu and many dzogchen masters as the signifier of ground of being, the ground as presence. Contemporary Christian philosophers influenced by existential phenomenology, such as Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner, describe the ground of being and ground of presence as Divinity. In Dzogchen philosophy descriptors are added such as the divine presence, luminous presence, radiant presence, pure presence, immaculate presence.

Transmission of trauma through generations is something that is talked about more frequently both in the field of social psychology and in the field of Gestalt psychotherapy. Both disciplines have studied this phenomenon independently and have come to similar or equal interventions focused on healing individuals, groups and societies. The comprehensive experience from research, intervention programs and Gestalt psychotherapy proves the importance of recognizing the needs of individuals, groups or societies and creating suitable interventions adapted to the specific context. In this article I attempt to combine the knowledge obtained from the two disciplines.

The focus of Dzogchen practice is to experientially understand the nature of our awareness through awareness itself. To be nonconceptually aware of the nature of our awareness is rig pa or open presence.The root or the source of all phenomena is Presence. This word presence is often used by 14th century Longechenpa as well the contemporary Namkai Norbu and many dzogchen masters as the signifier of ground of being, the ground as presence. Contemporary Christian philosophers influenced by existential phenomenology, such as Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner, describe the ground of being and ground of presence as Divinity. In Dzogchen philosophy descriptors are added such as the divine presence, luminous presence, radiant presence, pure presence, immaculate presence.

Carl Jung describes how the human unconscious is the hidden cosmological archetypal dimension of our being in the world. There is the personal unconscious that reflects personal history and experience either forgotten or foreclosed. There is another unconscious that is more primary, pre-reflective and cosmological in origin. In the language of the ancient Phenomenological Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, this existential dimension of archetypal manifestation is called the Sambogakaya realm of experience. This is the subtle realm of lucid forms of light and energy and vortices. These forms of light and energy field configurations become everything and anything. The Sambogakaya dimension manifests the Nirmanakaya dimension. The Nirmanakaya dimension is the actual experience of our self in contextual situations, unfolding through time and space as well as our unfolding of our personal psychological experience. Nirmanakaya is the dimension of our ordinary life world. Nirmanakaya is our being in the world. There is one more dimension. This dimension is the primordial foundational ground of everything and anything. In the ancient tradition of Dzogchen this is named as the Dharmakaya. Dharmakaya is the existential dimension of pure potentiality, pure creativity from which everything and anything manifests. Dharmakaya manifests the Sambogakaya. Dharmakaya is ground awareness, the ground of being. Dharmakaya is Being. Being is not a being but Being manifesting being as infinite numbers of numerous beings. All beings are the manifestation of Being. Dharmakaya is not an entity but manifests infinite numbers of entities.

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 conducted,
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 Personality-
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.

This paper compares the analytic and experiential approaches to dreams in order to illuminate the intrinsic and necessary relationships between the two understandings. It describes how dream work reflects the bimodalness of symbolism, thought and ultimately human consciousness. An extended example of dream work reflecting both analytic and experiential modalities is presented. 20