Concept
Contact boundary
Gestalt therapy breaks with the idea of an isolated inner space in which the ‘psyche’ takes place. In its place, Perls, Hefferline and Goodman (1951/2019) propose the Self: it does not take place within, but occurs as a process at the boundary between the organism and the environment – the contact boundary. This boundary is both physical and psychological.
Excerpted verbatim from the thesis · Ch. 3.2 — 3.2 Embedded & Extended: The Contact Boundary and the Field
Related concepts
ConfluenceFieldContact cyclethe in-between
Occurrences in the text
- Ch. 1.3 1.3 Objective
… peutic concepts such as bodily awareness, working within the intersubjective field at the boundary of contact, and immediate presence in the ‘here and now’ cultivate precisely those qualities that ar …
- Ch. 1.5 1.5 Methodological Approach and Structure of the Thesis
… body, neither intersubjectivity nor self-resonance is possible (4.1), and without its own boundary of contact, no encounter takes place, but merely an unopposed adaptation (4.2).
- Ch. 3 3 Gestalt therapy as relational medicine in practice
… orked with: body and feeling (Chapter 3.1) Where does the encounter take place: field and contact boundary (Chapter 3.2) How does it unfold: the concrete execution (Chapter 3.3)
- Ch. 3 3 Gestalt therapy as relational medicine in practice
… t by content or technique, but by the therapist’s relational and bodily engagement at the boundary of contact, in the here and now. Fuchs and Schmidsberger (2024, p. 113) distinguish this psychothera …
- Ch. 3.1 3.1 Embodied & Emotive: Awareness and bodily self-resonance
… oneself, but rather the alert, bodily anchored attention to the present experience at the boundary of contact. The difference is fundamental: self-observation steps back from the experience and views …
- Ch. 3.1 3.1 Embodied & Emotive: Awareness and bodily self-resonance
… pace, organismic self-regulation can be set in motion once more. This space arises at the boundary of contact.
- Ch. 3.2 3.2 Embedded & Extended: The Contact Boundary and the Field
… n, but occurs as a process at the boundary between the organism and the environment – the contact boundary. This boundary is both physical and psychological. Physically, it refers to the organs in …
- Ch. 3.2 3.2 Embedded & Extended: The Contact Boundary and the Field
… ient’ (Fogarty et al., 2016, p. 39). Bloom (2022, pp. 72–73) elaborates on this idea: the contact boundary is not a line separating two pre-existing individuals from one another, but rather the pl …
- Ch. 3.2 3.2 Embedded & Extended: The Contact Boundary and the Field
… pproaches (Bordin, 1979; Wampold, 2015). Contact, by contrast, refers to the event at the boundary of contact: the act in the here and now in which the self encounters the other as something differen …
- Ch. 3.2 3.2 Embedded & Extended: The Contact Boundary and the Field
The boundary of contact is always situated within a broader context: the field.
- Ch. 3.2 3.2 Embedded & Extended: The Contact Boundary and the Field
… roduced the following terms to describe contact disturbances—that is, disturbances of the contact boundary itself:
- Ch. 4 4 The ontological limits of AI
Chapters 2 and 3 have defined what constitutes an encounter: a body that resonates, a boundary of contact at which two separate beings touch one another, and a moment in the here and now that no …
- Ch. 4.2 4.2 The missing contact boundary: simulation instead of encounter
… but also the place where encounter takes place. Gestalt therapy has a term for this: the contact boundary; and a second term for its loss: confluence.
- Ch. 4.2 4.2 The missing contact boundary: simulation instead of encounter
In Gestalt therapy, the contact boundary forms the central locus of psychological processes. Psychological and personal growth can …
- Ch. 4.2 4.2 The missing contact boundary: simulation instead of encounter
AI has no contact boundary of its own. It lacks a standpoint of its own, an existential risk and a genuinely distinc …
- Ch. 4.2 4.2 The missing contact boundary: simulation instead of encounter
… act between two embodied subjects (cf. Bloom, 2022, p. 73; Chapter 3.2). Since no genuine boundary of contact exists at the interface with AI, there is also no space there for a Self to emerge and op …
- Ch. 4.2 4.2 The missing contact boundary: simulation instead of encounter
If AI is not a subject in its own right and has no boundary of contact, where then does the often overwhelming sense of a genuine encounter come from?
- Ch. 4.2 4.2 The missing contact boundary: simulation instead of encounter
… ine-human confluence works because humans imaginatively fill the void left by the missing contact boundary through their own act of projection.
- Ch. 4.2 4.2 The missing contact boundary: simulation instead of encounter
… ore accurate, more convincing. What this progress cannot, however, produce is a body or a boundary of contact, for neither can be calculated. The boundary to genuine encounter remains, no matter how …
- Ch. 5.2 5.2 Therapeutic Alliance and Empathy in Human–AI Interaction
… d contradicting. It is precisely here that the value of Gestalt therapy’s concern for the contact boundary lies: it is the counter-model to the confluence machine.
- Ch. 6.1 6.1 Interpretation of the results
… oodman, is not an isolated core within the individual, but arises through contact, at the boundary of contact between two embodied subjects. Since AI is not an embodied subject, there is no such boun …
- Ch. 6.1 6.1 Interpretation of the results
… the sense described by Fuchs (Chapter 3). It works with bodily enactment (3.1), with the contact boundary and the field (3.2), and with what is happening in the here and now (3.3); and it is prec …
- Ch. 6.1 6.1 Interpretation of the results
… hat appears as the ‘animation’ of the machine is termed ‘projection’; and concern for the boundary of contact proves to be the counter-model to the confluence machine. Drawing on Gestalt therapy prac …