ABSTRACT
The question most frequently put to Gestalt therapists is: “What is Gestalt therapy?” On the surface it might appear that there are as many answers to this question as there are Gestalt therapists, since how a given therapist does Gestalt therapy will always bear the stamp of that therapist’s own personality. Nevertheless, in whatever ways Gestalt therapy is carried on the therapist is guided by a basic point of view about human living which is grounded in a well-developed theoretical structure. A comprehensive answer to the question, “What is Gestalt therapy?” would be incomplete, and perhaps misleading, without an explication of that point of view and the fundamental tenets of Gestalt therapy’s theory. The first aim of this essay, therefore, is to state as clearly and as succinctly as possible the theoretical framework on which Gestalt therapy is based. Its second aim is intimately connected to the first: to show how the major methods used by Gestalt therapists come directly out of the theory. A corollary of this is that whatever methods a Gestalt therapist adopts from other therapeutic approaches will be tailored to Gestalt purposes by being rethought in terms of Gestalt theory.
