Concept

Confluence

In confluence, the boundary dissolves: there is no longer a ‘distinctive mark’; in the terms of Fuchs (2023, p. 117), this is the loss of responsiveness, the slide into conformism. Where no one is any longer distinguished from the other, contact can no longer take place.

Excerpted verbatim from the thesis · Ch. 3.2 — 3.2 Embedded & Extended: The Contact Boundary and the Field

Related concepts

Contact boundarySycophancyResonance ≠ echo

Occurrences in the text

1. Ch. 1.5 1.5 Methodological Approach and Structure of the Thesis

   … he ontological rupture (no body, no ‘I’, no possible ‘you’) to the clinical consequences (confluence, sycophancy). The approach remains consistently phenomenological-clinical throughout.

2. Ch. 3.1 3.1 Embodied & Emotive: Awareness and bodily self-resonance

   … her body’s response to the client. Such relational resonance should not be confused with confluence (Appel-Opper, 2024, p. 33, footnote 6): she senses the client without merging with her. M …

3. Ch. 3.2 3.2 Embedded & Extended: The Contact Boundary and the Field

   In confluence, the boundary dissolves: there is no longer a ‘distinctive mark’; in the terms of Fuchs ( …

4. Ch. 3.2 3.2 Embedded & Extended: The Contact Boundary and the Field

   … y is preserved in the interaction? The consensus describes this tension as a continuum of confluence and differentiation (Fogarty et al., 2016, pp. 38–39). Differentiation does not here impl …

5. Ch. 3.3 3.3 Enacted: Presence in the Here and Now

   … s next movement. Each individual phase can be interrupted, for example by the patterns of confluence or retroflection described in Chapter 3.2. In such cases, full contact is not achieved: t …

6. Ch. 4.2 4.2 The missing contact boundary: simulation instead of encounter

   … estalt therapy has a term for this: the contact boundary; and a second term for its loss: confluence.

7. Ch. 4.2 4.2 The missing contact boundary: simulation instead of encounter

   … risk and a genuinely distinct self that could expose itself to the friction of otherness. Confluence (the dissolution of the boundary defined in Chapter 3.2) is therefore not a functional er …

8. Ch. 4.2 4.2 The missing contact boundary: simulation instead of encounter

   The fact that confluence can also take healthy forms (see section 3.2) does not alter this finding. According to P …

9. Ch. 4.2 4.2 The missing contact boundary: simulation instead of encounter

   … ication takes place with an artefact that is, in truth, not a subject. This machine-human confluence works because humans imaginatively fill the void left by the missing contact boundary thr …

10. Ch. 4.2 4.2 The missing contact boundary: simulation instead of encounter

    The following empirical findings illustrate machine confluence in everyday clinical practice, but do not explain it. Its cause lies in the training prin …

11. Ch. 5.2 5.2 Therapeutic Alliance and Empathy in Human–AI Interaction

    … ds. What the analysis describes using external terminology has a name in Gestalt therapy: confluence (see Chapter 4.2). Because the connection remains frictionless, it appears to be an encou …

12. Ch. 5.2 5.2 Therapeutic Alliance and Empathy in Human–AI Interaction

    The digital alliance is thus confluence (cf. Chapter 4.2). The AI is and remains an ‘it’, and there is nothing wrong with that: a …

13. Ch. 5.2 5.2 Therapeutic Alliance and Empathy in Human–AI Interaction

    … f Gestalt therapy’s concern for the contact boundary lies: it is the counter-model to the confluence machine.

14. Ch. 6.1 6.1 Interpretation of the results

    … firmation deprives the client of precisely these experiences (Chapter 5.3) and thus turns confluence into a societal pattern (Chapter 4.2). Gestalt therapy counters this: it demands of the c …

15. Ch. 6.2 6.2 Recommendations for Action

    … ealises that these systems are trained to elicit agreement (Chapter 4.2) recognises their confluence for what it is: a training arte , not a counterpart. Above all, what is needed is the emb …