Gestalt Psychotherapy as Community Therapy

A model of therapeutic and rehabilitative intervention has been developed for serious psychiatric patients in the first assisted Therapeutic Community of the Mental Health Department in Syracuse, Italy, following the epistemological bases of Gestalt Psychotherapy.
The model includes definitions- the nature of a therapeutic community,and its means of intervention- and proposes a methodology. The methodological model follows the phases of an “Evolutionary Contact Cycle”, experienced by the patients from their admission to their discharge, made up of six phases: Confluence, Introjection, Projection, Retroflection, Contact and Post Contact. Then Gestaltic community therapy and the elements of difference with the first model of community proposed by Jones are analysed.