VOICES FROM THE FIELD by Maria Kirchner, PhD

Kurt Lewin stated, "There is nothing as practical as a good theory." This being true for all therapeutic modalities, it applies to Gestalt therapy as well. Excitement, awareness, contact, and dialogue are all crucial elements that come to life in the therapeutic encounter. Being theoretically anchored and able to conceptualize the therapeutic change process is a prerequisite for an effectiveness therapy outcome, and therefore growth. Defining and describing theoretical concepts, however, cannot capture the excitement and vitality that is the vehicle for good contact, deepening of awareness and the powerful choices one can access. The paradoxical theory of change is one of the fundamental organizing principles in Gestalt therapy, with far-reaching implications. Only by being what and who one is can one become something or someone else. Effort, self-control, or avoidance focused exclusively on the past or the future is not sufficient to bring about change. We must become our truth (ourselves) first before we can move from it (change). Vice versa, if we try to be different without finding what is true for us, we are following someone else’s truth and will not bring about the long-term change to which we aspire.
The essence of human life is contact, a meeting with various kinds of others. Every healthy organism is capable of effective and fulfilling contact with others in their environment and pursues ways of having these contacts so that the organism can survive and grow to maturity. All contact is creative and dynamic and, as such, each experience unfolds as a creative adjustment of the organism in the environment (Perls, Hefferline & Goodman, 1951/1994). Contact is the forming of a figure of interest against a ground within the context of the organism-environment field. It is also defined as “the awareness of, and the behavior toward, the assimilable; and the rejection of the unassimilable novelty” (Perls et al., 1951/1994, p.230). To have the opportunity for functional and existential contacts in the field, as well as the strength to repudiate and/or sustain unhealthy contacts, is the quintessence of growth and change.
In Gestalt therapy, the dialogical principle is based on the I-Thou philosophic anthropology of Martin Buber. It assumes that individuals are made fully into people through the meeting between them (Buber, 1970). Intrinsically interrelated here-and-now focus is the openness to, and courage for, the fluid experience of bringing oneself to share with another in therapy. This attitude of openness to truly meeting the other is the I-Thou stance taken as therapist. A Gestalt therapist who commits to an I-Thou stance engages in two phenomenologies, his/her own and the client’s.
The ultimate aim of Gestalt therapy is to assist the client in restoring (or discovering) his/her own natural ability to self-regulate as an organism and have successful and fulfilling contact with others (environmental others), as well as with disowned aspects of oneself (internal others). That allows one to cope creatively with the events of one’s life and to pursue those goals which seem good and desirable to oneself. Through awareness of and experimentation with bodily sensations, emotional responses, desires, and cognitive assumptions, the clients’ range of choices about how they live their lives, especially how they engage with others and themselves, will be enhanced. The question of foremost interest is HOW a person is creating his/her life in a certain way, not WHY they came to be as they are. Accepting someone’s experiential validity is key, rather than manipulating occurrences and outcome.