ABSTRACT
Many consider that ‘gestalt’ should be capitalised, as is the case with other German nouns. However, gestalt therapy did not arrive in the English-speaking world yesterday. In the gestalt therapist’s work these philosophies weave in and out of one another and the relational perspective is at the core of each. Gestalt is an experiential therapy and as such experimentation is key to the approach. The mind/body split so prevalent in western culture is actively discouraged within gestalt’s holistic view of the individual/environmental field that are seen as co-dependent. This and the approach’s radical view of self as forming in the process of meeting, rather than seeing self as something belonging to the individual, sets it apart from virtually all other psychotherapies. The founder of gestalt therapy is often identified solely as Frederick ‘Fritz’ Perls. However, Perls’ wife Laura is considered to have played a major, largely understated, part in gestalt therapy’s development.
