"Our work as gestalt therapists is that of our intuitions informed by our knowledge, integrated and integrating one with the other in a whole process as we continue to develop our art, our science --our practice."

Contemporary Gestalt Therapy

After having developed internationally for more than 60 years, gestalt therapy is a coat of many colors. There are many modes of gestalt therapy, emphasizing different aspect of the original model first developed by Fritz and Laura Perls and Paul Goodman at the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy (NYIGT).

My mode of gestalt therapy is a contemporary gestalt therapy derived from the "foundational model" of the NYIGT.

The foundational model is based on gestalt therapy's original 1951 text, Gestalt Therapy by Fritz Perls, Paul Hefferline, and Paul Goodman, and as further developed over the decades by members of the institute. This model's core is the "sequence of contact" within the "organism/environment field." "Interruptions of contact" are experienced and are observeable as "losses of ego functioning." By resuming the uninterrupted sequence of contact, a person may creatively adjust to the on-going situations of the "organism/environment field." "Self" is understood as an on-going "creative-adjusting" of the person in the world. This is the basis of the psychotherapy itself. This is a rough summary of a richly complex model.

This foundational model has been the bedrock for gestalt therapy for many years at the NYIGT and has become internationally established. It continues to develop.

The contemporary gestalt therapy is a more explicitly phenomenological and existential approach. This model emphasizes self as emergent of a social, phenomenal field, the self/world field. As seen as a function of this phenomenal field as well as the organism/environment field, the sequence of contacting is understood more readily as“intersubjective” and “relational.”

The contemporary model expands gestalt therapy in a phenomenological direction in order to integrate many of its concepts usefully into gestalt therapy practice. Likewise, related psychotherapy modalities such as contemporary psychoanalysis (relational and inter-subjective systems psychoanalysis), and other fields such cognitive neuroscience, psychology, philosophy of the mind, American pragmatism, and other related disciplines all have a place in the continuing development of contemporary gestalt therapy.

Most importantly, however, any of these "imported" concepts are integrated into gestalt therapy's already established tradition. "Contact" and "self" remain the principal functional organizing concepts to this model.Contemporary gestalt therapy is not a dilution of gestalt therapy, but a re-emphasis on gestalt therapy's existential-phenomenological dimensions, which more readily aligns gestalt therapy to other contemporary psychotherapies.

Contemporary gestalt therapy openly participates in the worldwide dialogue among all modalities and disciplines in which our theory and practice continues to develop and change with the world of which we are a part.

Both the foundational and contemporary models are models for gestalt therapy group process since both see the individual as a function of the social field. And “I” is foreground to “We.” Group process is self-emergent process. The sequence of contact is readily experienced within a group.