agile gestalt

It seems that the gestalt approach to psychotherapy and flexible development methodologies are very close. This article is an attempt to unwrap this thought, meaning habra readers. What is agile here should be clear, but what psychotherapy in general is and the gestalt approach in particular certainly needs clarification. Having dealt with both of them, you can look at familiar things from a new angle and, as always, understand something about yourself, about the world and something else.

Psychotherapy, unlike psychiatry, is a treatment by talking. Without pills. Or, to put it mildly, the art of chatter. If we talk about violations from the diocese of psychiatrists, then most often, in different proportions, both are needed. For example, in case of exogenous depression, antidepressants are first prescribed so that the patient who is exhausted has the strength to undergo therapy, then the psychological attitudes that drive him into this state are disentangled, and drug support is gradually canceled.

And psychotherapy is not medical. Thoughts that something is wrong in their lives, but what exactly is not clear, come to healthy people. Household advice, such as: "Yes, okay, do not worry, - or, - I wish your problems" - only add fuel to the fire.

Therapy is not training. Training is the development of skills, therapy affects the level of the individual, the level of conditions for the application of these skills. If trainings provide a suitcase of tools for use in negotiations, during public speeches, in conflict situations, then therapy, especially gestaltist, is more about finding support in such situations. It may well be that once the support is found, no additional suitcase of skills is needed. Moreover, if the problem is deep, trainings will not help at all. The person in a critical situation will be confused and stupidly will forget the learned skills to apply.
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The word gestalt itself means: “a figure in the background”. To see a figure without a background is impossible. In this post, for example, psychotherapy was consistently examined against the background of psychiatry, everyday conversations and trainings. Agile methodologies are visible only against the background of waterfall. If you remove it, it will become impossible to explain what it means to be agile.

Gestalt therapy is client-centered. If in the psychoanalytic therapy the analyst acts as an expert and in some sense repairs the patient, in the gestalt approach the client himself is the leading expert in his life.

Gestalt approach has a special respect for the current state. The scrum standup with the answers to the questions “What has been done, what will be done, what obstacles there are” exactly corresponds to the Geshtalic sharing. The work of the group usually begins with phrases like: “Tell us about your condition, how you feel, what requests are”. The meaning of these actions is not to report to someone. This is discovering yourself. Denoted feelings find or do not find a response in other participants, group dynamics are tied. During sharing, emerging dialogues are extinguished. Their development is carried out during the main work.

One of the significant themes of the gestalt approach is the paradoxical theory of change. Changes do not occur when a person tries to become what he is not, but becomes what he is. One can buy tickets from London to Paris as much as possible, while in Moscow, it will not help to fly to Paris. This is why, for example, Kanban insists on visualizing processes. That's exactly when you can accurately understand the current state, it becomes clear what the next step should be. You can go further. There is nothing static. A state is always an act of holding it. As soon as you manage to deploy the efforts expended on maintaining yourself, in the external environment, the changes begin to occur by leaps and bounds.

And what does a gestalt therapist who does not give advice and is not an expert at all. There are many answers: supporting awareness, supporting the process of the emergence and destruction of gestalts, research of the client’s contact with the environment and its interruption. Interrupting contact is a simple concept to genius. There are only six types of contact interruption: confluence, introjection, projection, retroflection, deflexion and egotism.

The programmer may not understand what they want from him. In this case, it can be said that he is merging with the team. Although merging is the basis of teamwork, when goals are not specific, but common, it is still necessary to get out of it. It is possible to find out that there are own interests and the interests of the company and to look for ways to unite them only by merging.

If the programmer believes that it is impossible to convey ideas to the management or the owner of the product, then this is an introject in the language of gestaltists. Some of the rules that were once adopted served to adapt in those conditions, but here and now they objectively interfere. In a waterfall environment, you must do everything stupidly, as they said, this is the basis of order. In the agile methodologies, the order is also important, but it needs slightly different introjects.

If introjects are all right and everything is good inside, the obstacles can be like outside. Ideas to communicate can and should be, but they do not seem interesting to others. It can be suspected that in this case there is an interruption of the contact due to the projection. The person, to be honest, is not interested in what other people think about the approaches to the decision, but unconsciously attributes this property not to himself, but to others. The projection needs to be swallowed. The role of the therapist in this case is to assist in recognizing one’s own and other’s interest. Laying a projection is unpleasant, but worth it.

After the massacre of the projections, the next ambush - retroflection. You can and should tell, just wanted to tell something, but somehow hesitated, pulled his head into his shoulders and became quiet. Suddenly I am out of place, maybe somehow later. Instead of realizing the plan, a person locks up the energy in himself. If we talk about individual work, the first thing I want to do is ask: “How do you stop yourself? What comes out of it? ”Just to discover this condition. If we talk about the environment, this example clearly shows why mutual respect is so important for development. Something big and delicious often grows from ordinary and insignificant.

If the excitement still broke out, it can turn to the side (deflexion). Instead of trying to identify sharp corners in retrospect, a person can simply complain about a hard life somewhere in the smoking room and do not move further conversations one iota. It's a shame, but it happens to everyone. I must say that deflexion, like all interrupts, has useful functions. For example, this article was born as a deflexion when looking for a job. Instead of telling all this at an interview, I write it here.

Well, the most offensive ambush awaits at the end. It is already clear what, how and with whom you need to do. It is already time to indulge in the satisfaction of need, but for some reason it is not possible to let go of control. And the candles are dim, and the chair is uncomfortable, and the dinner is not sufficiently refined. Everything has already been agreed and it is time to plunge into creativity, but the bureaucracy does not sleep. Sneezed - write a report. Selfishness, to be he is not fine. In this case, it is important to help the person learn to recognize the safety of the situation. This may not be obvious, but the useful function of selfishness is security. She, for example, helps playing with the child, to make sure that he does not hit something about something.

This is approximately what gestalt therapists are doing. It hurts like a scrum master, isn't it?