The mundaneity of the body: (Re)thinking the individualistic culture and its implications for Gestalt-therapy

Abstract

Solidified in modernity, with the emergence of individualism, the dichotomies mind x body, person x world, organism x environment, subject x culture emerge from the same process that, as the anthropologist Le Breton points out, anatomized man, separated him from his environment and from others and objectified nature. Both Gestalt therapy and the philosopher Merleau-Ponty propose an understanding of the human being who seeks to overcome these dichotomies. For Merleau-Ponty we are incarnated in a world, woven with it, affirming the mundaneity of the body. For Gestalt therapy, both the body and the notion of organism/environment field also points to this non-individualistic understanding of human being. The objective of this work is, from these interdisciplinary references, to reaffirm the non-individualistic condition of existence and to deepen this perspective in Gestalt therapy theory.