Abstract

ANTHONY, Sheila Maria da Rocha. Anxiety disorder: the child’s criative defensive adjustments. Rev. abordagem gestalt. [online]. 2009, vol.15, n.1, pp. 55-61. ISSN 1809-6867.

The article presents a clinical view of children with anxiety disorders from a theoretical Gestalt-Therapy standpoint. Gestaltic principles embrace the existential totality of the child and emphasize constant interactions in the organism/environment field, represented by child-other-world unity. In each situation there is always the child, the world of objects and the world of the other that form a net of forces interconnected. Enhancing the value of this inseparable unity, Gestalt therapy accentuate the impossibility of knowing and understanding a behavior, pathology or personality without taking into account the child within its family, social, school context. Children with anxiety disorders experience phobias that reveal belief in a hostile, dangerous and threatening world, built upon unresolved childhood dramas of their parents, that are projected onto the child. Facing up to this terrifying world make use of creative adjustments that are defensive behaviors to relieve anxiety, satisfy an important need in the field and avoid damage in interactions with the significant other. Each psychopathology reveals a personality with its own specific psychological characteristics, defense mechanisms and contact dilemmas.

Keywords : Gestalt; Child; Anxiety; Creative adjustment; Psychotherapy.

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