Currently, Gestalt therapy is widespread in Russia - one of the varieties of existential psychotherapy, a movement that is part of the humanistic direction. The founder of Gestalt therapy is Fritz Perls put into practice a holistic understanding of human nature; he preached a holistic approach. As you know, the holistic view is based on the principle that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The whole has integrity, structure and integration of parts. D. Kepner believes that “to consider a personality as a whole, greater than the sum of its parts, means to consider the personality in all its parts: body, psyche, thinking, feelings, imagination, movement, etc.” (3, p. 39). Of course, this approach is very relevant for a modern school, in which the predominant focus is on transferring knowledge to children, rather than on personal development. It is also important to note that in a traditional school, knowledge is transferred in a ready-made form. The Gestalt approach proposes learning through discovery: cognition is seen as a creative constructive act of an individual or group through a process of contact. Learning is understood as a process of contact on the border of a living and autonomous system in the “organism/environment” field. This process of contact can be represented in the idea of ​​cyclical movement “figure - background” with all interruptions and disturbances. According to the Gestalt approach, in contact (communication) the position of both sides is important, i.e. both teacher and student. Indeed, communication is the interaction of people. If at least one side does not strive for contact, dialogue is impossible. Those behavioral features that disrupt interaction, break the contact cycle, and prevent a person from realizing his need or realizing it are called resistance to contact. Fritz Perls considered unconscious conflicts between needs to be neurotic and called resistance, accordingly, neurotic mechanisms or disorders (4). The Gestalt approach identifies the following main types of resistance, or disruptions of the contact cycle: confluence, introjection, projection, retroflection, deflection, invalidation. Resistance can be a defensive reaction, a creative adaptation to reality, a stable personal characteristic. Taking into account this feature of the student, the teacher can adequately respond to the lack of mutual understanding in communication. An observant teacher will identify the presence of one or another type of resistance to contact in a child. Confluence, or fusion, is characterized by the rejection of differences and dissimilarity, the difficulty of drawing a clear boundary between oneself and another person. As the main individual characteristics of a confluent person, Gestaltists identify an extreme form of connection in contact, which is in the nature of neurotic dependence on another person. In a situation of educational interaction, a student with this type of resistance to contact focuses attention not on the subject of communication, but on its emotional side. Signs that a student is exhibiting confluence as a type of resistance to contact are the following: - in a conversation, replaces “I” with “we”; - finishes sentences for another; - easily joins verbal and nonverbal means of communication, to the emotional state of the interlocutor; does not accept the difference between himself and others. When communicating with students who use confluence as resistance to contact, the teacher should emphasize the psychological boundaries between people, differentiate the thoughts and feelings of different people, help make their own choices, encourage independent responses. Another type of resistance to contact is introjection or absorption. A person introjects (“swallows”) information, attitudes, principles, dogmas, and ideas of other people. It must be taken into account that introjection is an important component of the socialization process, since society requires a person to assimilate and maintain certain frameworks.However, often other people’s “introjects” do not correspond to a person’s own ideas about life and cause internal conflicts. Sometimes raising a child does not contribute to the development of independence, a sense of responsibility for one’s actions, and the ability to test swallowed introjects in one’s own life experience. In this case, the individual develops introjection as a personal characteristic. Students with introjection strive to always be good, to meet the demands of society, and moral standards. They are afraid of being unsuccessful, they always strive to receive high marks, and they often have a motive to avoid failure. At the same time, their creativity and independence are poorly developed. Signs that a student is exhibiting introjection as a type of resistance to contact are the following: - often uses the words “should”, “should”, “I should”, etc. (“Boys shouldn’t cry”); - depends on other people’s opinions; - feels bodily pressure in the abdomen - immobility, heaviness; - expects unrealistic actions from himself and others; - constantly seeks absolute authorities. The teacher can help students who use introjection as resistance to contact, in separating one’s own needs, views from others, encouraging independent responses, paying attention to one’s own position. The third type of resistance to contact, opposite to introjection, is projection. Represents the process in which positive and negative properties, attitudes, qualities, beliefs, behaviors or feelings that actually relate to oneself are attributed to other people. It is difficult for projecting people to accept the point of view of a communication partner and to understand other people. Students who use projection as resistance to contact show negativity towards new information, stubbornness, intransigence, touchiness, and aggressiveness. They have the following features: - others constantly appear in their speech (“The other is the same as me”, “He is bad”), and the words “you”, “you”, “they” are used instead of “I” (“We believe...”, We think...”); - they use generalizations (“All teachers are the same...”); - they have a lot of aggressive gestures (vertical gestures); - they often make critical and condemning statements (“You shouldn’t to act like this"); - they fantasize a lot about the attitude of other people towards themselves (“No one loves me, no one understands me”); - they show a circumstantial type of attribution: they find the cause of events in the circumstances, and not in themselves; - “moves away” from their personal responsibility for what is happening. The teacher should help the student with the projection to return the properties, relationships, feelings that he projects onto others, and also accept himself. When communicating with a child who uses projection as resistance to contact, it is important to be in the position of an adult and strive to develop the same position in the student. The next type of resistance to contact is retroflection (turning to oneself). In this case, a person does for himself what he would like others to do for him, or what he would like to do in relation to others (for example, aggression towards himself instead of an externally blaming reaction). Divided conditionally into two halves, a person creates the world around him from one part. The contact process is the satisfaction of the needs of one part of the personality at the expense of another. In the process of interaction between a teacher and a student, retroflection manifests itself in the student’s “psychological withdrawal” from contact. As features of the behavior of a retroflexive student, the following can be noted: - rationalization, denial of one’s feelings; - bodily clamps, clenching of fists, biting lips, awkward movements and postures; - lack of eye contact; - monotonous voice; - external detachment; - restraint, “ swallowing" one's feelings; - lack of requests to other people; - inconsistency of gestures with the emotional meaning of speech; - use of reflexive particles in speech; - delays.