From losses of ego functions to the dance steps between psychotherapist and client. Phenomenology and aesthetics of contact in the psychotherapeutic field

This paper tries to describe the actual contact-making between client and therapist as a co-created dance. It basically makes a proposal to get rid of the individualistic language that is still in Gestalt therapy's categories called 'losses of ego functions', by using the idea of dance, which includes the feelings and the movements of both therapist and client. This perspective is in line with contemporary studies of neurosciences, intersubjective and relational psychoanalysis; it also allows the therapist to stay with the spontaneity of the co-creation of the therapeutic contact (the dance steps), and at the same time to include developmental and psychopathological aspects of the experience (the polyphonic development of domains), as part of the experience of the ground, as a music of 'steps' that the client takes in the therapeutic situation.