Gestalt Therapy

There has been a renewed interest in the last ten years in the underpinnings - theoretical, philosophical, and historical - of the Gestalt approach. Often in the past, these have been lost in oversimplified versions of the therapy. The author's aim in his writings has been to provide a full and coherent account of Gestalt theory, and to emphasise our links to our therapeutic and philosophical heritage, particularly psychoanalysis and existentialism. His theme is a field-relational theory of self as the centrepiece of the approach, and how this has been placed within a structure that is still recognisably psychoanalytic. In this approach, self is understood as meaningful only in relation to what is taken as other, and how that other is contacted. The formation of a relatively coherent self-concept is a task, not a given, and can be problematic as well as helpful (when it no longer supports the person's life-situation).

Philippson, Peter