Beauty and Uncertainty as Transformative Factors: A Free Energy Principle Account of Aesthetic Diagnosis and Intervention in Gestalt Psychotherapy

Abstract

Drawing from field theory, Gestalt therapy conceives psychological suffering and psychotherapy as two intentional field phenomena, where unprocessed and chaotic experiences seek the opportunity to emerge and be assimilated through the contact between the patient and the therapist (i.e., the intentionality of contacting). This therapeutic approach is based on the therapist's aesthetic experience of his/her embodied presence in the flow of the healing process because (1) the perception of beauty can provide the therapist with feedback on the assimilation of unprocessed experiences; (2) the therapist's attentional focus on intrinsic aesthetic diagnostic criteria can facilitate the modification of rigid psychopathological fields by supporting the openness to novel experiences. The aim of the present manuscript is to review recent evidence from psychophysiology, neuroaesthetic research, and neurocomputational models of cognition, such as the free energy principle (FEP), which support the notion of the therapeutic potential of aesthetic sensibility in Gestalt psychotherapy. Drawing from neuroimaging data, psychophysiology and recent neurocognitive accounts of aesthetic perception, we propose a novel interpretation of the sense of beauty as a self-generated reward motivating us to assimilate an ever-greater spectrum of sensory and affective states in our predictive representation of ourselves and the world and supporting the intentionality of contact. Expecting beauty, in the psychotherapeutic encounter, can help therapists tolerate uncertainty avoiding impulsive behaviours and to stay tuned to the process of change.

Keywords: field theory; gestalt therapy; neuroaesthetics; predictive coding; psychopathology.

FIGURE 1

Synergetics applied to psychological change. When Free energy (i.e., uncertainty/prediction errors) reaches a critical level, the usual pattern of feeling, thinking, and behaving can no longer coordinate and synchronise system dynamics. These patterns, which in FEP terms correspond to a shared generative model (see Section “Merging Predictions in the Pre-subjective Chaos”), can be disturbed and altered by critically increasing energetic tensions, so that the organism or system of organisms self-organises into a novel metastable order parameter. Change occurs (either in the direction of healthy or psychopathological development) at this point of bifurcation, when the update of the order parameters prevails over the slaving of the complex dynamics. This non-linear shift is promoted by psychotherapy, which renders it possible to introduce into the system uncertainty, novelty and the necessary distance to assimilate surprise without reproducing and re-enacting previously acquired behavioural patterns.