Gestalt Therapy. Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality

Based on tried and tested therapeutic methods, this perennially valuable book invites the reader to embark on a course of self-therapy designed to develop an awareness of self and a growth of the personality. Employing the wide-ranging techniques of the Gestalt approach, it offers a series of experiments which will help the less severely neurotic reader to heighten awareness, sensory perception and motoric behaviour, and to deepen the capacity to enjoy interpersonal relationships. It thus provides a refreshingly practical insight into one of the most important psychotherapeutic techniques of our time. The authors explain in detail the theory behind the practical application, discussing the chief known methods of psychotherapy from Freud to the present day. They range widely over the fundamental problems of the perception of reality, the meaning of maturation and the ills of language and society, pointing out the deficiencies of our modern way of life that have imparted the vicarious and artificial character to the existence of the average person. Starting from the premise that experience begins at the contact boundary, they examine the nature of that experience before going on to investigate the various obstacles that stand in the way of maturation and growth. They stress the need for completion of unfinished situations, without which it is impossible to assimilate the new (in the same way that one can do no more than swallow a meal until the previous one has been digested). In a key section, they discuss the creative process and its relationship to verbalisation both in poetry and prose. Originally published more than forty years ago, this seminal work has stood the test of time and remains one of the most important and thought-provoking studies of self awareness available to the intelligent reader.