The five abilities

A less well-known gestalt map but one that I feel offers an optimistic outlook are the five abilities – a set of creative adjustments to one’s environment put forward by Parlett (2000) who identified them as: Responding, Inter-relating, Self-Recognizing, Embodying, and Experimenting. In healthy functioning – whether this be individual, small system, large organization or societal – these interrelated abilities need to be accessible to that individual/system. Whether they are fully utilized will be decided in the between of the relationship and will depend upon the situation, but they need to be available as potentials. When they are not, contact dulls, life becomes grey, relationships become detached – it is as if the fire that burns from the soul is denied the oxygen that feeds it. Through such self-restriction and due to our eternal interconnectedness we deprive others as well as ourselves.