Defence Mechanisms - Gestalt Contact Styles: Bring choice on how to contact the world

As organisms we can only exist in constant contact with the environment. This contact not only ensures our survival: its quality determines our nourishment and consequent growth, our ability to respond to various situations (responsibility), and our overall enjoyment of life.

However, negative experiences of our childhood, as well as the absence of necessary positive ones, forced us to limit and distort our relationship with others, with reality, and with our own self in order to protect us from what we saw, felt and thought…

Unfortunately, almost without realizing it, the protection of the past has turned into the prison of the present -very much like the little rope that keeps a huge elephant tied up- and as a result prevents us from fully participating in and savoring life.

In this workshop, we will explore 6 basic defense mechanisms (or “contact boundary functions” as they are called in the language of Gestalt Therapy):

INTROJECTION: Unquestioningly swallowing undigested foreign injunctions and becoming a human parrot or a mouthpiece (e.g. media).

PROJECTION: Blaming others for own vices, since “hell is—other people!” (Sartre).

RETROFLECTION: I hold back and bottle up until I develop an autoimmune disease, cancer, etc. or I explode and then I start all over again.

DEFLECTION: I play dumb and become my own spin doctor, so efficiently that in the end nobody understands me, not even my very self.

CONFLUENCE: I never rock the boat, like the good boy/wife/follower that I am, I always say “yes”.

PROFLECTION: I give to receive, the helpless helper, expecting you to know my needs/feelings without me asking.

We will theoretically examine the above protective mechanisms through rich audiovisual material with examples from films and scenes of political and social life; this will help us realise how these mechanisms function on a collective level. At the same time, we will delve deeper through experiential exercises to discover how we use these mechanisms in our personal lives.

The seminar is 50% theoretical – 50% experiential.

In addition to personal explorations there will be processes in dyads and the whole group. For participants who wish to take part in the experiential part, they need to have access to a camera and microphone. The use of a big screen (e.g. laptop) is also recommended for better participation.

By increasing our awareness of our current reality, we can restore to ourselves the freedom to consciously choose how, when, and how much to take part and interact with the environment and realise our own, true, desires

EXPERIENTIAL WEBINAR

The seminar will be conducted in English with simultaneous translation into Polish.

FACILITATOR
Dimitris Tzachanis

DATES
Sat/Sun, October 04 & 05, 2025
5pm – 9pm. Warsaw Time (CET)

The seminar will be recorded and participants will have the option to watch it asynchronously within the duration of 3 months.

COST
145 EURO / 165 USD

ADDRESSED TO
• Anyone interested in personal development.

• Mental health professionals and trainees
(psychologists, mental health counsellors, psychotherapists etc.)

CERTIFICATE
Participants will receive a certificate of participation: these 8 hours can be used for re-registration to EAGT.