Saturday, April 14, 2007

gestalting: i-thou vs. i-it and contact/boundary


those are the things that were approached in the workshop yesterday...

i-thou: with no set definition yet, the idea of i-thou seems to imply the idea of my authentic Self (i) meeting your authentic self (thou) at the point of contact (see gestalt cycle ) where as the "i-it" then implies that atleast one person is not being authentic, whether it be the i stereotyping a person or the i reshaping self to meet the needs of the thou, if it is not the true self for all participants then an "i=-it" contact has been made...im not entirely clear on that yet, so let me get further into the weekend and do my reading after...

as for contact/boundary, it is the skill we worked on in practicum yesterday...practicum is where we break up into dyads (well actually my practicum is normally a group of four) and have opportunity to be both facilitator and client....well my client had to miss this weekend, so i had a new client and my new client had me as her new facilitator...it was strange and interesting....

the last time we met, back in february, the gestalt staff we had told me i had raw talent for this work....and that was empowering, but in real time, my real life, i dont see this talent playing out at all.....yesterday, i was told that my position as facilitator could have been taped for learning purposes, i was so successful in playing with the boundaries to allow contact without overwhelming either me or the client in this new pairing up (which was a strange dynamic on its own.... this was our fifth time meeting as a group, but really it was day one for me and my new client, as she and i had never built any field for some reason....and i am definitly not good with boundaries in real time, so it is strange to me that i am this successful in the learning environment with modulating contact and boundary, but cant seem to carry it over into my life...though one interessting thing that came up in the lecture part on contact/boundary is the difference between contacting with peers- often an "i-thou" experience and connecting with the gestalt staff, which many identified as feeling more like an "i-it" connection.

Song of the day: i write the songs- barry manilow

2 comments:

HitThaFloor said...

Little lost on that one, but maybe you don't see how it carries over into real life because, from an outsider's perspective, it seems like you live it. You don't really think about it, you use it all the time, every day. I'll elaborate that better when I see you.

molly said...

hmmm...i know that there are relationships in my life...including ours at times in our past...where i have gotten tangled up with boundaries and i feel it kept me from entereing an i-thou relaitonship with you

i also know that i have yet to see my talent play out at work, and that may be becasue i was new and then i was sick....or it may be that i feel real protected in the position of student= as if the position of student allows for a safe boundary that frees me up to play with the balance of contact and boundary...

i look foreward to the real time conversation

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