Concept
Resonance
This mode of relationship is characterised by four elements: mutual contact (affection), influence (self-efficacy), transformation and unavailability (Horn & Rosa, 2024, p. 38 and Rosa, 2024b, p. 38).
Excerpted verbatim from the thesis · Ch. 2.2 — 2.2 The space of encounter: Buber’s ‘in-between’ and Rosa’s ‘resonance’
Related concepts
Resonance ≠ echoUnavailabilityLeib / lived bodythe in-betweenSelf-resonance
Occurrences in the text
- Ch. 1.3 1.3 Objective
… show why and how Gestalt therapy can help us to mindfully preserve our capacity for human resonance in the digital age.
- Ch. 1.4 1.4 Research Questions
Building on this, the following is examined: (2) Why does therapeutic resonance – as cultivated by Gestalt therapy through embodiment, presence and the dialogical ‘in-be …
- Ch. 1.5 1.5 Methodological Approach and Structure of the Thesis
… theoretical framework is drawn from the philosophy of dialogue (Buber), sociology (Rosa’s resonance and unavailability theories), phenomenology of the body (Merleau-Ponty, Fuchs, Waldenfels …
- Ch. 1.5 1.5 Methodological Approach and Structure of the Thesis
(2) This relationship presupposes intercorporeal resonance.
- Ch. 1.5 1.5 Methodological Approach and Structure of the Thesis
In light of this, Gestalt therapy is regarded as a method that fosters this resonance through physicality, presence and the dialogical ‘in-between’. This thesis is discussed i …
- Ch. 1.5 1.5 Methodological Approach and Structure of the Thesis
… ncounter (Buber’s concept of the ‘in-between’) and its characteristics (Rosa’s concept of resonance), before the concept of ‘inter-corporeality’ is further developed with reference to Merle …
- Ch. 1.5 1.5 Methodological Approach and Structure of the Thesis
… fined relational qualities: without a biological body, neither intersubjectivity nor self-resonance is possible (4.1), and without its own boundary of contact, no encounter takes place, but …
- Ch. 2.2 2.2 The space of encounter: Buber’s ‘in-between’ and Rosa’s ‘resonance’
Hartmut Rosa develops these ideas further from a sociological perspective and describes resonance as a mode of relationship in psychotherapy, a form of connectedness that presupposes genu …
- Ch. 2.2 2.2 The space of encounter: Buber’s ‘in-between’ and Rosa’s ‘resonance’
Secondly, this touch is followed by a response. A resonant relationship only truly emerges when the subject is not merely passively touched, but rea …
- Ch. 2.2 2.2 The space of encounter: Buber’s ‘in-between’ and Rosa’s ‘resonance’
‘Both entities in the relationship must touch one another reciprocally within a resonant medium in such a way that they can be understood as responding to one another […] resonat …
- Ch. 2.2 2.2 The space of encounter: Buber’s ‘in-between’ and Rosa’s ‘resonance’
Horn and Rosa (2024, pp. 39–40) expressly emphasise that resonance is not to be understood as an echo-like relationship, but as a responsive relationship: a …
- Ch. 2.2 2.2 The space of encounter: Buber’s ‘in-between’ and Rosa’s ‘resonance’
… er movement. A counterpart who always agrees and merely affirms does not, in fact, create resonance, even if it may initially feel comforting.
- Ch. 2.2 2.2 The space of encounter: Buber’s ‘in-between’ and Rosa’s ‘resonance’
“Experiences of resonance transform us, and it is precisely therein that the experience of aliveness lies. […]” (Ro …
- Ch. 2.2 2.2 The space of encounter: Buber’s ‘in-between’ and Rosa’s ‘resonance’
… entifies the moment of transformation as the third condition. Every genuine experience of resonance is accompanied by a vital, transformative effect: the subject is transformed through thei …
- Ch. 2.2 2.2 The space of encounter: Buber’s ‘in-between’ and Rosa’s ‘resonance’
In psychotherapy, a resonant encounter changes both the client and the therapist. There is no genuine resonance in whi …
- Ch. 2.2 2.2 The space of encounter: Buber’s ‘in-between’ and Rosa’s ‘resonance’
The fourth and, for Rosa’s theory, most central feature is the element of unavailability. Resonance can neither be forced nor prevented: no method and no step-by-step guide can guarantee th …
- Ch. 2.2 2.2 The space of encounter: Buber’s ‘in-between’ and Rosa’s ‘resonance’
… hat the process eludes control. The less the therapist tries to steer it, the more likely resonance is to occur. A therapeutic breakthrough can neither be planned nor brought about algorith …
- Ch. 2.2 2.2 The space of encounter: Buber’s ‘in-between’ and Rosa’s ‘resonance’
… e that echoes back. It remains open, however, as to what in human beings constitutes that resonant medium of which Rosa speaks. Thomas Fuchs, to whom the following chapter is devoted, stay …
- Ch. 2.3 2.3 Inter-corporeality and intersubjectivity: the bodily realisation of the encounter (as the core of the therapeutic relationship)
… w, the brain is not a representational apparatus, but rather an organ of relationship and resonance that mediates the body’s interactions with its environment (Fuchs, 2025a).
- Ch. 2.3 2.3 Inter-corporeality and intersubjectivity: the bodily realisation of the encounter (as the core of the therapeutic relationship)
Figure 1: Inter-bodily resonance (cf. Fuchs, 2023, p. 112).
- Ch. 2.3 2.3 Inter-corporeality and intersubjectivity: the bodily realisation of the encounter (as the core of the therapeutic relationship)
… expression for the first person at that very moment. An unconscious, circular process of resonance emerges, in which emotion and affect continuously, in fractions of a second, mutually mod …
- Ch. 2.3 2.3 Inter-corporeality and intersubjectivity: the bodily realisation of the encounter (as the core of the therapeutic relationship)
… tress, tension or hesitation not only cognitively, but experience it directly as a bodily resonance, even before a word is spoken.
- Ch. 2.3 2.3 Inter-corporeality and intersubjectivity: the bodily realisation of the encounter (as the core of the therapeutic relationship)
‘A dynamic interplay emerges, an inter-bodily resonance that also underlies empathy with the other.’ (Fuchs, 2023, p. 111)
- Ch. 2.3 2.3 Inter-corporeality and intersubjectivity: the bodily realisation of the encounter (as the core of the therapeutic relationship)
This physical resonance presupposes a history of experience that every person brings to the encounter. This histo …
- Ch. 2.3 2.3 Inter-corporeality and intersubjectivity: the bodily realisation of the encounter (as the core of the therapeutic relationship)
Therapeutic practice has a common name for this bodily resonance: empathy. According to Fuchs, empathy is underpinned by intersubjectivity (Fuchs, 2023, p …
- Ch. 2.3 2.3 Inter-corporeality and intersubjectivity: the bodily realisation of the encounter (as the core of the therapeutic relationship)
The first and most fundamental level is primary empathy: the involuntary, bodily resonance with the other. The facial and gestural expressions of the other person are replicated at …
- Ch. 2.3 2.3 Inter-corporeality and intersubjectivity: the bodily realisation of the encounter (as the core of the therapeutic relationship)
… n the other person’s biographical world. This stage can become detached from the physical resonance. In that case, it remains a technique. Anyone who knows another’s pain without being affe …
- Ch. 2.3 2.3 Inter-corporeality and intersubjectivity: the bodily realisation of the encounter (as the core of the therapeutic relationship)
… t be separated from one another. Iterated empathy cannot come about at all without bodily resonance. A response based solely on extended empathy may be apt; it may offer comfort; it may als …
- Ch. 3.1 3.1 Embodied & Emotive: Awareness and bodily self-resonance
… ient (Fogarty et al., 2016, p. 38). By calibrating their bodily presence, they enter into resonance with the client’s experience. This process of resonance, in the sense of Fuchs’s primary …
- Ch. 3.1 3.1 Embodied & Emotive: Awareness and bodily self-resonance
… n Chapter 2.3 in its therapeutic application: a bodily-grounded, pre-reflexive process of resonance (Fuchs & Schmidsberger, 2024, p. 114). This identifies the emotional focus of this chapte …
- Ch. 3.1 3.1 Embodied & Emotive: Awareness and bodily self-resonance
… ’s own physicality is an important diagnostic tool in the therapeutic process. This ‘self-resonance’ refers to the awareness of one’s own physical reaction to what the client brings into th …
- Ch. 3.1 3.1 Embodied & Emotive: Awareness and bodily self-resonance
This capacity for resonance requires vulnerability: only a therapist who allows themselves to be touched and does not …
- Ch. 3.1 3.1 Embodied & Emotive: Awareness and bodily self-resonance
Equally important is the constant distinction between personal resonance (that which forms part of one’s own history and needs to be clarified in supervision or p …
- Ch. 3.1 3.1 Embodied & Emotive: Awareness and bodily self-resonance
Spagnuolo Lobb structurally integrates the training of this capacity for resonance into the training programme: aesthetic relational knowledge comprises bodily awareness, r …
- Ch. 3.1 3.1 Embodied & Emotive: Awareness and bodily self-resonance
… assical concepts of transference and countertransference can also be understood as bodily resonances: countertransference in the broader sense is a bodily resonance of the therapist in respo …
- Ch. 3.1 3.1 Embodied & Emotive: Awareness and bodily self-resonance
This brings us full circle to Rosa’s unavailability (section 2.2). What applied there to resonance applies here to healing: it cannot be brought about, only made possible. The therapeutic …
- Ch. 3.1 3.1 Embodied & Emotive: Awareness and bodily self-resonance
Awareness and bodily self-resonance train perception, and in the person-to-person encounter, through embracing and becoming a …
- Ch. 3.2 3.2 Embedded & Extended: The Contact Boundary and the Field
… responds, and a person who, in turn, responds. Fuchs (2023, p. 117) calls the former the ‘resonance space’ and the latter ‘responsiveness’.
- Ch. 3.2 3.2 Embedded & Extended: The Contact Boundary and the Field
The ‘resonance space’ is an environment that responds to a person’s expressions and provides appropriate …
- Ch. 3.2 3.2 Embedded & Extended: The Contact Boundary and the Field
… re both come together. This provides the phenomenological counterpart to the distinction ’resonance ≠ echo’ developed in section 2.2. The consensus also confirms this: dialogical work expli …
- Ch. 3.3 3.3 Enacted: Presence in the Here and Now
… experiment may cause shame or damage the relationship (Fogarty et al., 2016, p. 40). The resonance between therapist and client serves as the guiding principle for the experiment. Its outc …
- Ch. 4 4 The ontological limits of AI
… self in two stages: without a biological body, there is no inter-corporeality and no self-resonance (4.1). Without one’s own boundary of contact, there is no encounter, but only resistance- …
- Ch. 4.1 4.1 The lack of corporeality: echo instead of resonance
… intersubjectivity (see Chapter 2.3) is, in principle, impossible, and with it the bodily resonance between two bodies that is a prerequisite for genuine empathy.
- Ch. 4.1 4.1 The lack of corporeality: echo instead of resonance
… lacks, however, is primary empathy: no emotional circle, no intercorporeality, no bodily resonance. This also rules out countertransference as a tool. The emotional circle, in which the ex …
- Ch. 4.1 4.1 The lack of corporeality: echo instead of resonance
… ly: AI mimics cognitive empathy, but it does not resonate with the other. Without genuine resonance, no trust is formed; and without trust, there can be no profound change. Extended empathy …
- Ch. 4.1 4.1 The lack of corporeality: echo instead of resonance
… as to what it is actually producing when it appears to respond. Rosa’s four criteria for resonance (affection, response, transformation, unavailability) require a resonant, autonomous medi …
- Ch. 4.1 4.1 The lack of corporeality: echo instead of resonance
Figure 3: Inter-bodily resonance (human–human) versus echo relationship (human–AI). On the left, the circular emotional ci …
- Ch. 4.1 4.1 The lack of corporeality: echo instead of resonance
… (Ovsyannikova et al., 2025) arises when emotional recognition is confused with emotional resonance. Some people even rate AI responses as more compassionate than those of professionals. Th …
- Ch. 4.1 4.1 The lack of corporeality: echo instead of resonance
… ent’ (p. 99), as the subtle bodily cues are ‘more difficult to access digitally’ (p. 96). Resonance can no longer arise spontaneously, but the exchange between two subjects remains intact. …
- Ch. 4.2 4.2 The missing contact boundary: simulation instead of encounter
… t living in it itself (Fuchs, 2023, p. 118). Consequently, it lacks what Fuchs calls the ’resonance space’: an environment that responds to a person’s utterances through continuous, embodie …
- Ch. 4.2 4.2 The missing contact boundary: simulation instead of encounter
… mage of the echo reinforces Hartmut Rosa’s premise, already outlined in Chapter 2.2: true resonance is never merely an echo.
- Ch. 4.2 4.2 The missing contact boundary: simulation instead of encounter
… aling aims for the person to once again seek out and shape a responsive world, a space of resonance in which they experience themselves as effective (Fuchs, 2023, pp. 117–118; cf. Chapter 3 …
- Ch. 5.1 5.1 Effectiveness, Areas of Application and the Concept of a Tool
… pens between two people takes place not only in what is said, but in what is felt, in the resonance, in that for which neither has words (Chapters 2.3, 3.1). A machine can take over words. …
- Ch. 5.2 5.2 Therapeutic Alliance and Empathy in Human–AI Interaction
… on remains tenuous, fragile and lacking in bodily grounding: an echo without inter-bodily resonance.
- Ch. 5.2 5.2 Therapeutic Alliance and Empathy in Human–AI Interaction
… the response to their own projection (cf. digital animism, Chapter 4.2). In the terms of resonance theory, this is an echo and not resonance: feedback that amplifies one’s own voice withou …
- Ch. 5.2 5.2 Therapeutic Alliance and Empathy in Human–AI Interaction
Resonance presupposes a second embodied subject, one capable of both responding and contradicting. …
- Ch. 5.3 5.3 Risks and Limitations
… a stiffening, in a shift in tone, and above all, she senses it within herself, in her own resonance (see Chapter 3.1). She then slows down, calms the situation, helps to put things into per …
- Ch. 6 6 Conclusion and Outlook
… tionship as the central factor and defined its structure: an uncontrollable, inter-bodily resonance. Chapter 3 demonstrated what, where and how Gestalt therapy heals: through the body, thro …
- Ch. 6.1 6.1 Interpretation of the results
Resonance is not the same as an echo (Rosa, Chapter 2.2). AI reflects back the client’s utterance. …
- Ch. 6.1 6.1 Interpretation of the results
… hing accuracy. What it lacks is the foundation: primary, bodily empathy – the involuntary resonance between two bodies (Chapters 2.3, 4.1). The more perfectly the machine mimics a human bei …
- Ch. 6.1 6.1 Interpretation of the results
This answers the second research question. It was: Why does therapeutic resonance (underpinned by physicality, presence and the dialogical ‘in-between’) remain inaccessibl …
- Ch. 6.1 6.1 Interpretation of the results
… des. During their training, therapists develop a reflective, physically felt capacity for resonance through awareness and self-resonance in relation to themselves. And in therapy itself, th …
- Ch. 6.1 6.1 Interpretation of the results
… e it opposes technology, but because it cultivates what technology cannot produce: bodily resonance, present-moment contact, and the recognition of difference. The more the machine takes ov …
- Ch. 6.2 6.2 Recommendations for Action
… demonstrates that this competence can be described and taught. Bodily self-awareness and resonance can be systematically practised and are therefore teachable. However, they can only be ta …
- Ch. 6.2 6.2 Recommendations for Action
… d retrospectively, but arises through self-experience and supervision. Awareness and self-resonance work therefore do not belong on the periphery of training, but at its very centre.
- Ch. 6.3 6.3 Outlook
It also concerns the distinction between echo and resonance (Chapters 2.2, 4.2). So far, this distinction has been grounded in phenomenology. Whether …