Shyness: an everyday life concept

"Abstract: Shyness is a universal experience that is familiar in everyday life and yet it seems largely neglected in the literature. It can be described as a continuum of experience that ranges from mild fear at the presence of a stranger or a new situation, to extreme cases of neurotic shyness. The present work explores the experience of shyness and offers a Gestalt therapy approach to this exploration. Although Gestalt therapy has not dedicated particular attention to shyness, it does offer the conceptual frame to explore the understanding of shyness, as its interest is the situation: the self emerging in the contact with the environment. As such, shyness can be described as an experience that occurs at the contact boundary affecting the relationship. Shyness and shame can be entwined in a close cycle; shyness preventing feeling shamed and shame of being shy. Shyness can be conceptualised as a creative adjustment where the organism, lacking support from the field, inhibits its aggression to the environment where his initial interest was, retroflecting this energy towards himself. This adjustment can be perpetuated in fixed gestalts. He organises himself to fit his ideation of the world instead of organising the environment; his initial interests/needs recede unaware to the background and his experience of life gets rigid. Key words: shyness, shame, shying, shy, fixed gestalt, creative adjustment, child develop- ment."