What is Gestalt Psychotherapy?
How to answer someone who doesn’t know the first thing about it.
Two years ago, I started studying Gestalt psychotherapy and since that time numerous people have asked me what it is. I sputter like an old boat motor trying to gain traction in the water. The challenge is, Gestalt doesn’t focus on one central idea or theme. The purpose of this post is to educate and increase the knowledge of what Gestalt psychotherapy is.
First, let’s start with the word Gestalt. It’s German, pronounced guh-sht-awlt.
What does the word Gestalt mean? In its simplest form, Wikipedia describes it as form or shape. Dictionary.com provides us with additional insights.
A configuration, pattern, or organized field having specific properties that cannot be derived from the summation of its component parts; a unified whole.
The following is from Malcolm Parlett from the British Gestalt Journal 18:1 2009. Parts of it have been condensed for the purpose of this post.
The Difficulty in Describing Gestalt
Everybody in Gestalt has the same difficulty: how to convey something about what Gestalt is, for the benefit of someone who has no direct experience of it nor has read anything about it.
