ABSTRACT
This chapter enquires about the place of 'thinking-about' in Gestalt therapy, when it supports the therapeutic process, and when it becomes a deflection from the process. It discusses the differences between awareness and egotism, the limitations of the paradoxical theory of change, and the implications of neurological considerations. The mode of change in Gestalt therapy is an opening to new, previously inhibited ways of contacting the world, in which the client experiences him/herself in relation to others in a new way, and relaxes the habitual inhibitions to both contact and awareness that limited the clients self-actualisation. If the aim of Gestalt therapy is to restore contactful engagement informed by organismic self regulation, a physical moving towards an other that holds our interests and needs in the moment, we must ask ourselves what processes within a therapy session could fit the description of 'elaborate complication and long maturation', because these would be the times when normal egotism would have a place.
