Lending flesh to what is alien : atmosphere and pathos in Gestalt therapy and Drut’syla storytelling

Abstract

This article traces how atmosphere and pathos function in Gestalt therapy and the Drut’syla storytelling tradition as portals through which suffering becomes visible and healing possible. Rather than treating pain as an internal or isolated state, both practices understand it as emerging from the relational field—what Martin Heidegger terms Mitsein, the fundamental condition of being-with others. Drawing on Kurt Lewin’s field theory, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, and Gianni Francesetti’s and Jan Roubal’s contributions to contemporary Gestalt, I explore how pathos surfaces not in speech alone, but in silence, mood, breath, and aesthetic attunement. In the storytelling of Drut’syla Shonaleigh Cumbers, ancestral narratives are reactivated within the shared flesh of the listening body, revealing how unspoken histories are carried in atmosphere. Here, the body does not simply perceive—it participates. Through this intercorporeal engagement, what is alien, unresolved, or previously unsayable is allowed to take form. Gestalt therapy, like storytelling, becomes a practice of lending flesh to what cannot emerge alone—a shared act of recognition and presence through which healing begins.