underpinnings of gestalt therapy

The I-Thou is the foundation of the clinical relationship in Gestalt therapy. The term comes from Martin Buber’s book I and Thou. Buber was an intersubjective existentialist and his idea was that when we meet another from a place of authenticity and consciousness, this meeting is a holy relationship, bringing one into relationship with God, who is the eternal Thou.  So, a Gestalt therapist works with this notion and holds the concept of self along with the understanding that self is inseparable from environment. There is an attention to all that is me, all that is not me and the unity. Attention to present moment is also important to Gestalt therapy. Perls’ basic premise was that life happens in the present – not in the past or the future – and that when we are dwelling on the past or fantasizing about the future we are not living fully. Through living in the present we are able to take responsibility for our responses and actions. To be fully present in the here and now offers us more excitement, energy, and courage to live life directly. Gestalt's paradoxical theory of change contends that we change only by deepening awareness and acceptance of how we organize our experience. The therapist does not seek to remove or interpret behaviors, but to bring them into awareness, with the goal of supporting new organization and self-regulation by the individual.

Contact takes place at the contact boundary, where the organism and the environment meet. We usually think of a boundary as separation, but in Gesalt, union is implied here as well. So, we can think of one person as the sand and one person as the ocean and the contact boundary as the shoreline or meeting of the two. An interruption or distortion of contact is called a boundary disturbance. These are ways in which we break contact and this can be a defense if it is unconscious or part of normal functioning if is conscious. Most of the clinical work in Gestalt therapy centers on these interruptions, as they occur in the moment at the contact boundary. In Gestalt therapy every symptom or defense is viewed as an attempt to solve a problem through creative adjustment. The only goal is awareness. Using this method, I usually ask my clients to check in and see what they notice in their bodies, to get a sense of how they are. I like to remind them to come back to this noticing if they get too far off in story telling or intellectualizing. Awareness in the present moment becomes an anchor for the work. Jim Doak, a local gestalt therapist that I did personal work with said, "Improving perceptual contact, working to allow greater sensation in the body and defining with sensitivity one's  wants and preferences are all building blocks for a more creative life. Out of knowing what is, internally and externally, our lives begin to unfold in a way which more truly reflects our uniqueness, changingness and in the end results in our contribution to the world"