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About Gestalt

What is Gestalt?

Gestalt is a German word, a noun that has no direct equivalent in the English language but is generally accepted to mean pattern, form, shape, figure, configuration or constellation.  It is often used in English to convey a concept of wholeness.  The Oxford English Dictionary defines Gestalt as 'an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts'.  Other sources state variations along the lines of 'a physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts'.

A Gestalt practitioner inquires into the perceptions and beliefs people use to co-create their reality.  Working within the frame of an authentic relationship, Gestalt explores our energetic presence in the world using dialogue, metaphor and art to illuminate how people derive meaning. 

As an approach, Gestalt encapsulates a wide ranging and holistic vision focused upon direct perception and what a person is sensing, feeling and projecting out upon the world, rather than what they are thinking or interpreting.  This is not to say that intellect and interpretation are dismissed, but rather that conceptualisation comes second to the refinement of immediate experience and a felt sense of things when building a phenomenological representation or picture of awareness. 

When we become truly aware, our behaviour changes and the constellation of our personality shifts, for awareness is a catalyst.  Awareness is illuminated by attending to an individual’s psychological process, while exploring the immediate experience of the person embedded in their environment. 

In Gestalt, heightening awareness is not just a primary method of inquiry and the catalyst of cognitive and affective change (an instigator of holistic learning), but its root intention and final goal.  In this context, it may be suggested that Gestalt is growth, is change, is education, is therapy, and is holistic inquiry all rolled into one.

How does it work?

In Gestalt we are encouraged to empty our mind, to loosen our intellect and come to our senses, so that with an open mind and inquiring heart we might be guided by what is vibrant, alive and unfolding at this moment. 

Gestalt’s attention is upon what is in process of becoming and dissolving - twin forces of emergence (Yang) and dissolution (Yin).  It reminds us the past is memory and the future is imaginative projection, and that the only power we have to shape our lives is ‘now’.  Zen-like, Gestalt practitioners contend that if we go with the flow and innate intelligence of the relational field, all the resource we need to proceed will be revealed.  We clear our chattering mind and wait for the field to inform us – in this way Gestalt invites us to be guided by what is over and above and beyond us.

By stopping the course of our mind, and through a loosening of the psycho-social mechanisms that hold our world together, Gestalt encourages something other to flood in.  In this light, education, in the Gestalt mode, is less like filling a bucket and more like lighting a fire.  It trains the intuition.

Gestalt practitioners don’t follow a plan, nor work towards a pre-arranged end-product, or intentionally set out to unblock behaviour.  Instead, they present to the client sufficient information, imaginative impressions, sensory and social data, and creative vision to illuminate what is happening now.  Here participation is an absolute and the consumption of a ready-made plan is off agenda.  As existent ways of behaviour are highlighted and re-constellated in the light of growing awareness, our status quo drops away and we are changed!

Gestalt rejects notions of progress founded on conventional knowledge and scientific research in favour of an existential position, which advocates social relativism, is critical of existing traditions and re-directs attention upon aspects that are neglected or ignored.  A Gestalt facilitator is not interested in grand theories but in what works for clients, why it works for them, and what they choose to consciously and unconsciously ignore. 

Furthermore, what we call ‘my self’ is also seen as part of the field, co-created from moment-to-moment interactions; in this context, the way we create ourselves is through the choices we make and our influence upon and from others.  This radical view entails seeing group members not as separate people who happen to interact in the group setting, for this would be a systems approach, but as parts of the same field that co-creates and co-sustains our ongoing process.

Listening to our uncertainty and guided by the wisdom of insecurity, strong in our vulnerability as a fellow traveller alongside others, we are invited as a facilitator to illuminate the human condition.  Alive to ambiguity and paradox, attuned to our senses, we are better able to develop the sensitivity necessary to be guided by the embodied intelligence that emanates from ourselves and the field we facilitate within.

In the last analysis, Gestalt invites us, through the cultivation of awareness and active experimentation, to welcome change.  The essential message of Gestalt is that in freeing us from attempting to be this or trying to be that, we become the whole of what we are.

Origins of Gestalt

Historically, Gestalt has been largely associated with Fredrick (Fritz) Perls, a therapist who grew tired of psychoanalysis and its interpretive and passive approach.  He incorporated aspects of theatre and drama, humanism and oriental philosophy to develop a more robust and engaged approach to psychotherapy.  In the spirit of his time, he sought to create a new vision of the human being, one determined by social responsibility and compassion for others.  Creative art and healthy living were seen by Perls as evolving out of immediate inner experiencing and the dynamics of emotion.  The themes of expression and the valuing of feeling, intuition and subjectivity live on in Gestalt.

Fritz Perls experienced the horrors of warfare and mass destruction in World War I and for a time was an army psychiatrist.  He also studied Zen in Japan.  He was responsible for highlighting self-responsibility and personal choice in Gestalt, and for popularising the use of experimentation to arrive at a workable solution.  He is recorded as saying “Lose your head and come to your senses”, emphasising the need to contact the environment rather than to think about it.  He was also reported as saying to a client who was straining for a long time to work out something “If you can’t shit get off the pot” – meaning if the time is not ripe then stop!

Recordings of his work with more extravert American clients in workshop settings cause his practice to appear more challenging and confrontational than is reported by his individual clients.  Modern-day Gestalt has tended to distance itself from Fritz Perls and to draw closer to the ideas and practice of his wife Laura.  

Laura Perls, who similarly to Fritz was a psychoanalyst, studied philosophy and is credited to have been the first analyst to sit facing the client, rather than behind them as they lay on a couch.  While Fritz Perls travelled widely and ran many public workshops to demonstrate and publicise how Gestalt worked, Laura applied it to clients in one-to-one therapy, developing its more gentle and dialogical nature.  Laura’s approach emphasised body-work and supported the integration of the I-Thou relationship and phenomenology.  She also contributed a great deal to Fritz’s writing.

Many influences have shaped Gestalt, including the psychology of perception, psychoanalysis, humanistic psychology, and field theory.  Importantly, almost all those who originally contributed studied Eastern philosophy, in particular Taoism (with its emphasis on staying with what is unfolding and invitation to be led by the unknown) and Zen Buddhism, both of which emphasise a concentration on immediate experience and the here-and-now.  As a result, Gestalt blends Eastern and Western philosophies.  It has had a major influence on NLP, Psychodrama and Family Constellations, and continues to shape self psychology, education and consultancy.

Awareness:
Ability to stay open and receptive to all that presents itself without undue judgement or labelling; consciousness on a journey; retaining a beginner's mind.
Dialogue:
Listening fully to the other with full attention and respect for their reality, even when it challenges or confronts our own vision; the Chinese word for listening depicts the heart as well as the ear, and it is this deeper and richer sense of the other we seek to cultivate in Gestalt.
Authentic relationship:
Endeavoring to be fully present and honest without disguise, manipulation or game-play; speaking and honoring your own truth; cultivating transparency and honesty in all relationships.
Phenomenology:
Accepting that we interpret and co-construct meaning and in this way through our culture and beliefs influence our perceptions; we only perceive that which we have been first taught to conceive, therefore we perceive phenomena rather than the thing itself!
Experiential truth:
The lived truth of an experience; if a picture is worth a thousand words, an experience is worth a thousand pictures; to learn is to know, to see is to believe, to do is to understand.
I-Thou relationship:
A relationship of mutual respect where we meet on a person-to-person level, with a deep respect for the human condition, and a recognition of mankind being my kind; ferments non-possessive warmth, person-to-person communication and empathy.
Psychology of perception:
We perceive patterns rather than things and as we interpret so we see; put three dots together and we tend to see a triangle rather than 3 dots; we perceive in wholes rather than parts.
Humanism:
A philosophy that sees the true study of man being man; in humanistic psychology personal development and the growth of human potential are given priority; supports and furthers experiential learning and experimentation, personal empowerment, democratic decision-making and holism.
Holistic:
Appreciating the whole of what we experience, along with our physical, social, emotional, imagined and spiritual natures; recognises that everything interconnects and interrelates with everything else and is a part of a larger field or whole.
Field theory:
A recognition of the energetic property and innate intelligence of whole systems such as the family, group or organisation or nature, and for groupings such as these to develop their own intelligence or knowing (such as when women in a dormitory setting begin to menstruate at the same time); unlike systems theory it does not look at things or people and their relationships to each other but the self-creating whole; we cannot step into the same river twice as the river is continually re-constellating itself.
Here and now:
The primacy of what is current; we have no power in the past nor the future, as these are memories of what was or imaginings of what is to come; being fully alive and attuned to the moment; losing our ‘mind’ and our store of old knowledge to uncover and engage with what is, in our environment, right now.
Existential:
An approach that emphasises we are the authors of our life and ultimately responsible for our own position; honours the human condition stripped of its comforting beliefs and cultural delusions; what is, rather than what is thought or taught to be; teaches us that we live and die and must face the essentials of existence; in Zen terms, life just demands of us that we eat, shit and die!  
Embodied:
The end product of learning, when conscious incompetence has become unconscious competence and knowledge is now part of the organism; wisdom anchored in the body; intuition sweated out of life!