Journal title QUADERNI DI GESTALT
Author/s Noemi Rovetto
Publishing Year 2026 Issue 2026/1
Language Italian Pages 18 P. 69-86 File size 0 KB
DOI 10.3280/qg2026-1oa19317
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The present paper aims to investigate the experience of the psychotherapist regarding contact with patients' pain, specifically addressing the question: what does it mean for the therapist to be continually affected by the pain of others?
What it means to become a sounding board for pain of the other, feeling it right under your skin?
Starting from these, many other questions have developed: how much does the history of personal pain of the therapist on his ability to support the pain of others? And again, how the therapist manages all this without entering into confluence models does not functional?
The relational and phenomenological field of psychotherapy is full of painful experiences which are shared in a unique and unrepeatable way by a specific therapeutic dyad; healing comes through authentically going through these experiences.
Starting from the analysis of the literature and the similarity between psychotherapist and wounded healer, the author gets to the construction of a questionnaire designed to investigate the therapist's experience in the “painful fields” of psychotherapy. The term "painful fields" underlines the relational value of the Gestalt approach and the reading of the phenomena from the perspective of field.
The questionnaire consists of eight answer questions open and was administered to trainers and teaching students of the Gestalt Institute Hcc Italy.
From the analysis of the responses to the eight questions, specific dimensions regarding therapists'experiences have been derived, serving as points for reflection on the conducted investigation.
The therapist's personal experience represents a resource both for being able to be with others'experiences of suffering, decoding them, making them integrable, and for being able to (when appropriate) use them in the service of others with authenticity.
Keywords: Gestalt psychotherapy;Aesthetic Relational Knowledge;resonance;pain;Phenomenological field
Noemi Rovetto, Il vissuto del terapeuta nei campi dolorosi della psicoterapia in "QUADERNI DI GESTALT" 1/2026, pp 69-86, DOI: 10.3280/qg2026-1oa19317