ABSTRACT
In physical medicine the diagnosis of a set of symptoms will usually point to a particular disorder. Unfortunately, psychotherapy offers no such straightforward process. The Gestalt school of psychology, established in the early part of the twentieth century, holds that individuals are more than simply the sum of their parts, and that drawing conclusions on the basis of one aspect of a person can be misleading. Gestalt therapy, which was introduced by Frederick Perls and Laura Perls in the 1940s, builds on this concept and emphasizes the importance in any psychological assessment of recognizing and working with every aspect of the individual—intellectual, physical, and emotional. Gestalt therapists focus on the immediate present, encouraging their clients to concentrate on their feelings, thoughts, and emotions as they experience them at that moment, and to stay with those feelings so they become aware of themselves in the fullest sense.
