Definition excerpted with permission from Ginger, Serge International Glossary of Gestalt Psychotherapy (Seven languages including English. Order from FORGE at 183 rue Lecourbe; 75015 Paris, France) Paperback 1995.
- diminution of the self, abolition of the boundary between the client and his/her environment. One of the four classical resistances. A mother and her baby are in healthy confluence, but a 12-year-old child who is unable to take a different stance from his/her mother is suffering from unhealthy confluence. Some writers identify different sorts of confluence according to where on the cycle it occurs: confluence 1, when the need emerges; confluence 2, at the contact stage; confluence 3, at the end of the cycle (difficulty withdrawing).
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