The Gestalt Experience

When we speak of Gestalt psychotherapy, we are speaking less of a method and more of a way of being. It is not something you put on when you enter a room and leave behind when you step out. It is a stance, a presence, an attentiveness that gradually seeps into the way you listen, the way you speak, the way you live. For those of us who have sat with it long enough, Gestalt is no longer theory, it is atmosphere, it is the pulse that carries through the room when we sit with another human being. It begins in the simplest place, with presence, because the presence of the therapist is the primary tool of Gestalt work. And when I say presence, I don’t mean sitting still or listening carefully, I mean arriving with the whole of yourself, with your sensations, your body, your breath, your ability to notice and resonate with the field you are part of. That presence allows for contact, and contact is the lifeblood of Gestalt. Not contact in the superficial sense, but contact at the boundary where self and environment meet, where you as therapist and the person across from you shape each other in real time. It is at this living boundary that everything happens, withdrawal, connection, resistance, curiosity, and our task is not to force it, but to notice it, to bring awareness to it. And awareness in Gestalt is never just cognitive; it is a full-bodied sensing of what is here now. It is the hand that clenches as a word is spoken, the breath that tightens when a memory hovers close, the silence that thickens the air when something unspoken presses at the edge. The skill we practise is to stay with this, to notice what is figural, what is emerging from background into foreground, and to help the client experience it, rather than explain it away.

And of course, awareness is not a one-way street. It is reflective, expanding and osmotic. The way my shoulder tightens when the story grows heavier, the way I feel restless when something is being avoided, the way my eyes are drawn to the corner of their mouth when it twitches with what they do not yet say, all of this is part of the field. Fritz does not ask us to step outside and analyse; it asks us to include ourselves as participants, to use our own awareness as a compass. That is where the skill lies, in holding awareness of the other and awareness of oneself, without collapsing into either, so that the whole field is illuminated. And when awareness arises, responsibility comes into view. Responsibility in Gestalt is not a moral label or a weight of blame, it is simply the ability to respond, to recognise that in this moment I have choices. Clients often discover that their difficulties are not external events but the ways they interrupt themselves, the ways they deny, project, conflate, or split off parts of their experience. Our work is not to correct them but to bring this process into awareness, so that choice appears. And here the paradox of change lives, the paradox Arnold Beisser named so clearly, that real change comes not from trying to become different, but from fully being who and where we are. Gestalt is never an isolated lens on an isolated person. We remember that the client is not a lone island but part of a field, always in flux. The person’s feelings, resistances, supports, and interruptions do not happen in a vacuum, they arise in context, in relation, in culture, in family, in the relational field between us. This is why humility is woven into our stance, because what emerges in a session is never just theirs, never just ours, but something co-created in the space between them and the one I was becoming in their presence that time-space-reality. And so we stay curious about the field, what forces are at play, what figures arise, what background shifts in and out, and we allow that curiosity to guide our practice.

When people ask about tools and techniques, I remind myself that in Gestalt, the therapist is the primary instrument. Dick says “the therapist is the therapy sometimes”, Yet we do have practices that give form to the work. Dialogue is the central one, not dialogue as conversation, but dialogue as encounter, presence meeting presence, words and silences carrying equal weight. We use phenomenological inquiry, describing what is here, resisting the pull to explain it away, staying close to what is seen and heard. Instead of saying, “You are anxious because of your father,” we might simply say, “As you speak, I notice your hand tightening on the arm of the chair. Could you stay with what is happening in your hand right now?” From such description, new awareness emerges. We also use experiments, not as tricks or dramatic performances, but as invitations to try something different in the moment. It may be as simple as exaggerating a gesture, speaking a phrase in the present tense, turning to the empty chair and addressing the figure that is missing. These experiments are not prescriptions, they are discoveries, they allow clients to taste themselves differently, to notice what happens when the pattern shifts, however slightly. Even language is a tool, we invite clients to own their words, to move from “it feels like anger” to “I feel angry.” And silence itself is one of our most powerful tools, because silence in Gestalt is never absence, it is the space where the unsaid gathers and waits to be heard.

Attention to parts and polarities, behaviours and roles, identities and beliefs, is also gestalt. To bring to the surface the motivation that is explicitly and those parameters that govern behaviours and drives implicitly. We know that every experience carries its opposite, strength and fragility, closeness and distance, control and surrender. To look for what is present, what is absent, what is present through its absence and also for what is missed in spite of it being present. Often people identify only with one side, pushing away the other. Our invitation is to bring both into awareness. When someone who prides themselves on control is invited to give voice to their chaos, or when someone who only shows strength is allowed to touch their weakness, something shifts. Not because we resolved the polarity, but because owning both poles makes the self larger. This too is the paradox of change, by embracing what I have disowned, what do I become …?. To enquire who am i in the presence of the Dog, in the presence of the lover who do i become; and then to bring holding to the awareness of ‘who am i, when the dog leaves, when the lover leaves’. Gestalt is that curious position, that space of awe and wonderment.  

And through all of this, what sustains the work is not the cleverness of our questions or the elegance of our interventions, but our stance as interventionists. We do not come as experts fixing problems, but as co-travellors in an unfolding field. We practise inclusion, being in allowance for the client’s world to touch us without rushing to change it. We practise presence, bringing our own authentic responses into the room. And we practise transparency, sharing what we notice when it might deepen the process. This stance demands courage, because it requires us to sit in the unknown, to tolerate ambiguity, to trust the process instead of controlling it. To be with our own demons and emerging polarities, It is less about guiding someone to an answer and more about accompanying them into their own experience until something new emerges. And perhaps the clearest reminder of Gestalt is found when we imagine ourselves back in the room. The client is speaking, and mid-sentence their shoulders drop, their voice grows quiet. We notice our own breath tighten. Instead of analysing, we pause, we lean into awareness. We might say, “Just now your voice softened and your shoulders fell. What is happening for you as that happens?” They pause, place a hand on their chest, and whisper, “I didn’t realise how heavy this feels.” And there it is, the moment of Gestalt. No technique in the traditional sense, no solution offered, just presence, awareness, and contact, allowing the figure to emerge from the field. So let this be our reminder. Gestalt is not simply a set of techniques, though it gives us many. It is not simply a philosophy, though it offers profound ones. It is a way of meeting life, a way of meeting ourselves, a way of meeting each other. It is awareness that heals, contact that enlivens, dialogue that transforms, and experiments that open new possibilities. Gestalt is, in truth, the whole. It is where psychology’s scattered strands find convergence. The empty chair, often seen as Gestalt’s hallmark, carries echoes of Freud’s transference, allowing the projection of unresolved figures into the immediacy of dialogue. Its emphasis on symbols and dreams resonates with Jung’s work on archetypes, where the unconscious finds voice through image and enactment. Its stance of authenticity and deep presence rests alongside Rogers’ person-centred empathy, where the therapist’s congruence and regard become the ground for growth. Fritz Perls, with Laura and Goodman, did not invent a new island of practice, they brought together these movements into a living integration, held not only in theory but embodied in life. This is the truest gift of Perls, a unification of psychology into wholeness, a practice where legacy becomes alive in every moment of awareness, every contact, and every heartbeat of the work.