ABSTRACT
Laura Perls believed that in gestalt therapists need to provide as much support as necessary and as little as possible. In a similar vein, the author believes that gestalt therapists need to show caring and effectiveness not through constant softness or a habituated confrontational attitude but through an ability to move along a continuum between those polarities in response to the client’s changing needs as, ‘support is everything that facilitates the on-going assimilation and integration of a person’. To best assist the client in their journey, gestalt therapists need to develop a range of authentic therapeutic stances, not as roles that therapists enter into, but as fully integrated ways of being. It’s not just the client who needs to be constantly re-evaluating their creative adjustments. Good contact is only possible to the extent that sufficient support is available.
