After having developed internationally since its origination 60 years ago, gestalt therapy is now practiced internationally. There are many modes of gestalt therapy, emphasizing different aspect of the original 1951 model of Fritz and Laura Perls and Paul Goodman at the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy (NYIGT) -- and drawing on subsequent developments in the field.
Gestalt therapy has not stood still. It has broadened into a variety of perspectives over time, just as have all serious psychotherapy modalities.
My mode of gestalt therapy is a contemporary gestalt therapy developed from the "foundational" model taught to me at the NYIGT.
That model is based on gestalt therapy's original 1951 text, Gestalt Therapy, Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, by Fritz Perls, Paul Hefferline, and Paul Goodman, and as further developed over the decades by us at the institute.
The model's core is the "sequence of contact" within the "organism/environment field." In an undisturbed "sequence of contact" -- experiencing -- 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 the 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.
My work is an on-going development of this model with contemporary understandings of psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and related psychotherapeutic modalities. I will explain, briefly.
My view of contemporary gestalt therapy is an explicitly phenomenological and existential approach. This model emphasizes self as emergent of a social, phenomenal field, the self/lifeworld 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,” “relational,” and "dialogical."
This contemporary model expands gestalt therapy in a phenomenological direction in order to integrate many of its concepts usefully into gestalt therapy clinical 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, these other ideas are not simply imported into gestalt therapy but are thoroughly integrated into gestalt therapy's metatheory. This 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.
Contemporary gestalt therapy is also an approach to group psychotherapy group since it sees 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.
This is a rough summary of a the theoretical framework for my clinical work. I offer it as a sketch as an invitation to my writings, training, which are described here. I offer it, further, as a guide to the perspective of my clinical practice -- that always informs my developing understanding of the theory.