The term containment is psychoanalytic, and if we speak in Gestalt language, it generally describes the same thing as the term contact. And even the origin of the words confirms this. Compare: Containing. Comes from English. container “container”, further from Ch. contain “to limit, restrain, contain”, from Lat. continere “to contain, to contain; restrain, limit"; further from cum (variants: com-, con-, cor-) “with, together” + tenere “to hold”, further from Proto-Indo-European. *ten- “pull, pull” [Wiktionary]. (Emphasis in bold is mine – I.R.) Contact. lat. contactus, suf. derived from contingere “to touch, touch”, pref. formations from tangere “to touch, touch” [Etymological Dictionary of N. M. Shansky]. In other words, container can be understood as “to hold together,” and contact is “contact,” “joint touch.” So containing - this is, perhaps, not only (and not so much) containment as joint holding of communication, delineation of boundaries. I will outline here the process of containment/contact quite roughly and approximately - in a word, schematically, but briefly and, it seems to me, clearly .But let’s first consider a situation that often looks like contact, but in fact is not one and is even in a certain sense the opposite of contact. This is fusion (confluence): when the client’s experiences resonate so much with the therapist’s feelings that the client seems to “infect” the therapist with them and the therapist becomes so involved, so caught up, that he can no longer do his job. And then both, the therapist and the client, are simply flooded with feelings and disoriented. Now let’s see what the process of containment (or contact) looks like. Let us highlight two main stages in this process. First: the client, captured by feelings or in a certain state, thereby influences the therapist. The therapist, being stable enough to accept the client’s feelings, is affected, he is alive, he reacts to them with his feelings, but is able to realize, understand, accommodate this response (to be, as it were, more than this response) - not to be completely captured by it, which means he is able to remain in contact. Then the second stage becomes possible: when the therapist returns his reaction to the client. And this allows the client to also process his feelings, integrate them, place them in his inner world, without being flooded by these experiences. Events and experiences become part of experience, are built into the picture of the world, into the idea of ​​\u200b\u200boneself. ***This process, in my opinion, is precisely described by the words of Sergei Bratchenko about the role of the therapist: To be as involved as possible and at the same time as detached as possible [Cit. based on the speech of V. E. Kagan at the International Psychological Online Conference “Psychology in Simple Words” on July 3-4, 2015]. It also seems to me that the idea from psychosynthesis is very suitable for illustrating the process of containment: “I have thoughts, but I am not just my thoughts; I have fear, but I am not only my fear (my anxiety, my pain, my trauma...), I am much more than them.” A therapist who is able not to “fall” into feelings (and at the same time not to freeze, not to suppress them), but to be aware and express it ecologically, helps the client to do the same: to experience his life as fully as possible, and at the same time remain in touch, in contact, do not go wild, do not go overboard, maintain boundaries, that is, remain integral.