Pain and beauty: from the psychopathology to the aesthetics of contact

"Abstract: The concept of beauty in Gestalt therapy is explored, underlining the central importance of the aesthetic criterion for this model. Aesthetic evaluation, which is an essential component in the work of any Gestalt therapist, is a prereflexive and preverbal process, located at the root of the Gestaltung, in the dimension in which the subect and the world emerge. An original conception of psychopathology and psychotherapy is discussed: psychopathological suffering is conceived as an absence at the contact boundary. Therapy therefore consists in restoring presence to the encounter, through a process which transforms absence into pain and pain into beauty. The therapeutic engagement in ‘distilling beauty’ from the relational histories and dynamics narrated by the client is considered from an existential perspective, seeking to make sense of human suffering and of our work as therapists. Finally, in this light, we consider the ethical ground of psychotherapy, which permits us to avoid the risks of reductionism which we face at present – namely the risk of reducing the psyche into a biological or intimistic event. Key words: beauty, pain, aesthetics, contact, Gestaltung, intrinsic evaluation, psychopath- ology, ethics, existentialism, reductionism."