The Gestalt Therapy Book: A Holistic Guide to the Theory, Principles, and Techniques of Gestalt Therapy Developed by Frederick S. Perls and Others

Excerpt from the Introduction: The most visible aspect of Gestalt therapy is its techniques. Its forceful advocates have demonstrated their effectiveness in person and on film and tape before many thousands of lay and professional people.   The Gestalt approach is called Gestalt therapy, underscoring its orientation to therapeutic change. Gestaltists are practical people, primarily concerned with helping people mature emotionally. They stress the hard work and rewards of personal growth, not speculation about it. Gestalt therapists tend to be activists, more interested in doing therapy than in talking about what they do.    As a result of this orientation to activity and the practical on the part of Gestalt practitioners, the literature of Gestalt therapy is small and strongly weighted toward applications of Gestalt principles to psychotherapy and other activities such as teaching and the arts. One of the two volumes of Gestalt Therapy, the basic book Gestalt therapy, is devoted to theory, and it contains a wealth of provocative writing. But a clear and thorough explanation of the theoretical foundations of Gestalt therapy does not exist. This is the task I have addressed in The Gestalt Therapy Book.

The Gestalt Therapy Book: A holistic guide to the theory, principles, and techniques of Gestalt therapy developed by Frederick S. Perls and others

Medical Books

Joel Latner

Psychology

Gestalt Journal Press

Paul Goodman was one of the founders and major theoreticians of Gestalt therapy, as well as a practicing psychotherapist for many years. He constantly sought to understand the nature of our selves and our society. "Our misery seems so ingrained that it calls for an explanation from our essential natures.""Nature Heals" contains Goodman's most Important writings on psychology, including his critiques of Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich, his discussions of aggression, racism, sex, ethics and other areas of modern psychopathology. Of particular Interest is his appraisal of the special problems of writers, and his notes on his own self-analysis.This book stands alone as perceptive psychological writing. These essays also help us understand the underpinnings of Goodman's political and literary visions. The pieces - some of them published here for the first time - have been selected and introduced by Taylor Stoehr, Goodman's biographer and one of his literary executors.

Nature Heals: The Psychological Essays of Paul Goodman

Health, Fitness & Dieting

GOODMAN, Paul

Psychology & Counseling

This book makes it clear how "Meeting through healing" works for "ANY TYPE" of psychotherapist.

Between Person & Person: Toward a Dialogical Psychotherapy

Hycner, Richard

A novel autobiography in which the author applies his theory of focusing on awareness, writing "whatever wants to be written." Partly in poetic form, often playful, sometimes theoretical, the book is a many-faceted mosaic of memories and reflections on his life - in the past and at the moment - and on the origins and continuing development of Gestalt therapy. This is an exact reproduction of the original 1969 Real People Press edition and includes all the original illustrations by artist Russ Youngreen.

In and Out the Garbage Pail

Biographies & Memoirs

Perls, Frederick S.

Professionals & Academics

Presence of Mind: Roots of a Wise Psychotherapy

Schoen, Stephen

Jan Christiaan Smuts was Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 until 1924 and again from 1939 until 1948. He served in the First World War and as a British field marshal in the Second World War. A preeminent philosopher of his time, he pioneered the concept of holism, defined as "the tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution.” Smuts' formulation of holism has been linked with his political-military activity, especially his aspiration to create a league of nations. After Albert Einstein studied HOLISM AND EVOLUTION, he wrote that two mental constructs will direct human thinking in the next millennium, his own mental construct of relativity and Smuts' of holism. In the work of Smuts he saw a clear blueprint of much of his own life, work and personality. Smuts was an early influence on the thinking of the developer of Gestalt therapy, Frederick Perls during Perls’s stay in South Africa. Frederick Perls wrote of HOLISM AND EVOLUTION: "Our (South Africa's) Prime Minister, has the answer: ecology. Organism-as-a-whole — embedded-in-environment. This becomes the Unit. The objective-subjective identity is born." This Gestalt Journal Press edition is an exact reproduction of the original Macmillan and Company 1926 edition.

Holism and Evolution

Smuts, Jan Christiaan

Religion & Spirituality

The effective communicator requires many skills, along with awareness, presence and the intention to understand both self and others.  Being available for a relationship in the present moment, showing up as your authentic self, and giving your attention to the processes within you and between yourself and others are important components of real contact.  However, you can never predict the outcome of your interactions.  With the best intentions, you may be misunderstood.  When you speak your truth, you may be rejected.  The best kinds of contact happen when all of those involved have a true desire to understand as well as to be understood.  By letting go of attachment or reactivity and preconceptions, you can enter a neutral place of mirroring the other person as the unique person that he is now.  This is radical respect. By dropping your agenda and beliefs about this other person, you can open a door to a new place full of potential and change.  This manual helps you in developing and enhancing your verbal and non-verbal personal and professional communication skills.

iContact: A Gestalt Guide to Skilled Communication

Margaret P. Korb

Josie Davenport

Alice A. Martin

John P. Korb

Taking the novelist as an exemplar, Erving Polster models a new frame of mind for the psychotherapist one wherein he sees healing potential in the fact that people often marvel at the adventures of others but don't notice that their own lives are filled with drama. The author's theme may also provide insights for people who are not psychotherapists. Readers may realize that they live through experiences that, when rightly noticed, are as dramatic as the world of novels. Both the novelist and the therapist invite us to open the covers of our own lives to find the wonders inside. When we do, we move toward the satisfactions of a confirmed existence.

Every Person's Life Is Worth a Novel

Erving, Polster

"I am presenting here by own map of Gestalt therapy, from its first principles in philosophy to its expression in specific methods of psychotherapy."". . . While this is a book about Gestalt therapy, it is also a book about the emergence of life, and human life in particular, from the complexity of the universe. It is a tribute to the early Gestaltists, Fritz and Laura Perls, Paul Goodman, and Paul Weiss that these two themes can coexist and support each other so easily. My hope is that both therapists and philosophers will find much that will interest them, and feel free to ignore that which does not. In places in this book there are suggestions for experiments in awareness, which will hopefully illustrate the theory. There are also episodes from work with a client: the client is fictional, but the interactions are ones I encounter frequently in my therapy work. The client could thus be seen to be a composite of a large number of people. I also include a more speculative chapter on the early self-development of this client, which I hope will further give body to the theory. I also include as appendices (with permission) some writing from two clients giving some flavor of how such a therapy appears from their perspectives." - Peter Philippson

Self in Relation

Philippson, Peter

This book is about sexual aliveness. It explores what it means to be sexually alive and how the natural rhythms of sex can be viewed. It looks at the why and how of sexual deadening and the creation of sexual dysfunctions. Sexual perversion, those way of maintaining sexual aliveness which take unnatural and problematic forms are explored. Finally, the book addresses some of the philosophical issues - political and moral - which form the cultural context for sexual aliveness.

Sexual Aliveness: A Reichian Gestalt Perspective

Self-Help

SMITH, Edward W.L.

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