Abstract

ANTONY, Sheila Maria da Rocha. Creative adjustments for suffering children: a gestalt-therapy view of the main childhood psychopathologies. Estud. pesqui. psicol. [online]. 2009, vol.9, n.2. ISSN 1808-4281.

Gestalt therapy is a phenomenological-existential approach with a holistic view of human being and of the world while emphasizing this relationship and stressing two-way influences between the child and his surroundings. Psychological phenomena emerge from emotional exchanges experienced in the child-other-world unit, in the “inter” of relationships. Thus, emotional illness emerges from a disturbed relationship. An emotionally disturbed child reflects a family with disturbed affective relationships (once there is no trauma or others negatives experiencies caused by externals factors). Childhood psychological disorders generally stem from unresolved childhood dramas of parents that are projected onto the child. From a gestalt perspective, sickness implies self-regulation disturbances originating from psychological defense contact mechanisms that seek to inhibit awareness of feelings, thoughts, needs, and behaviors that generate sadness and jeopardize the relationship with the significant other. Based upon these psychological defense mechanism of contact of gestalt theory that govern the individual internal dynamics and the interpersonal relationships, we shall examine psychopathologies of depression, phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorders.

Keywords : Gestalt-therapy; Psychopathology; Child; Creative adjustment.

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