“GESTALT” is a German word without a precise English meaning. It signifies the notion of a complete “form” or “image”. Let’s look at this way: You look out your window and see a landscape with trees, streets, houses, people, cars, birds, sky, clouds, etc., etc. You are looking at an entire gestalt of, perhaps, billions of separate items. You will, however, not perceive every piece of that gestalt all at once; only certain items will emerge from the background into your awareness. Then, put yourself into this picture, and you will notice that your awareness is influenced by your own perceptions and their limitations. In other words, you are part of the gestalt. In fact, it could be said that you create the gestalt—you create your reality.
As we move about in a process world—the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “You could not step twice into the same river."—we select or repress what we are able and willing to bring into awareness. Through the course of our growing up and our early relationships, we make certain decisions about who we are and how we fit into the larger world. In other words, we fashion our perceptions to suit our needs. One example of this is how we might suppress or contort our own organismic needs and wants to accommodate our notion of what we “should” need and want. Our true needs, of course, do not go away. They remain hidden in the gestalt often showing as feelings of guilt, anger, or depression and sometimes in physical manifestations like chronic illnesses, tics, or fixed facial expressions.
Gestalt therapy focuses on the here and now. Through techniques such as present awareness (“Now I am aware of …” ), two-chair dramatized conversation, dream work, and the therapist’s keen perception of the client’s physical and subliminal communications, previously alienated aspects of the personality are uncovered and examined, allowing a person to decide, in the here and now, what to incorporate and what to cast aside. The goal is to complete the gestalt and to enable the whole and fully-functional person to take charge.
For a more complete description of Gestalt philosophy and therapy, see: