Gestalt Psychotherapy Quotes

I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine.

Translation error is compounded by bias error. We distort others by forcing into them our preferred ideas and gestalts, a process Proust beautifully describes: We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds, these ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognize and to which we listen.

Gestalt means whole, and so are you.

To be aware is to be responsible. In Gestalt therapy, this word is used in two ways. First, we are responsible if we are aware of what is happening to us. To take responsibility means, in part, to embrace our existence as it occurs. The other and related meaning of responsibility is that we own up to our acts, impulses, and feelings. We identify with them, accepting all of what we do as ours. These are distinct and different meanings. We are responsible for things we clearly do - for being angry, or obstinate, or irresponsible; for breaking dishes and giving gifts. We are responsible as well for the injuries inflicted on us, and the presents we receive, for what is done to us. Here we are responsible for our part in the event - for the pain we feel and the taking of the gift. When it rains, we get wet. While we didn't make it rain, we are responsible for being wet. We are also responsible for our middle mode experiences, for the things we participate in and give ourselves to. We do not make ourselves love, or hate, but they are the feelings we have. We are responsible for having those feelings, not because we caused them to be, but because they are our existence at this moment.

Bir dizi çarpıtıcı prizma bir başkasını tanımamızı engeller... Önce imge ve dil arasındaki engel var... ... Bir başkasını hiçbir zaman tamamen tanıyamayışımızın bir nedeni de neleri açığa vuracağımız konusunda seçici oluşumuzdur... ... Bir başkasını tümüyle tanımaya bir üçüncü engel de paylaşan kişide değil, paylaşanın izlediği sırayı tersine çevirip dili imgeye- zihnin okuyabileceği metne- tercüme etmesi gereken öbür kişide, tanıyanda bulunur. Alıcının imgesinin göndericinin özgün zihinsel imgesine uyması çılgınca olanak dışıdır. Çeviri hatası önyargı hatasıyla karışır. Başkalarını kendi yeğlediğimiz fikir ve gestalt'lara uydurmak için zorlayarak çarpıtırız. ... Bir yüzü her görüşümüzde tanıdığımız şey o kişiye ilişkin kendi fikirlerimizdir. Bu kelimeler hüsranla sonuçlanan birçok ilişkinin anlaşılması için bir anahtar verir bize.

My own odyssey of therapy, over my forty-five-year career, is as follows: a 750-hour, five-time-a-week orthodox Freudian psychoanalysis in my psychiatric residency (with a training analyst in the conservative Baltimore Washington School), a year’s analysis with Charles Rycroft (an analyst in the “middle school” of the British Psychoanalytic Institute), two years with Pat Baumgartner (a gestalt therapist), three years of psychotherapy with Rollo May (an interpersonally and existentially oriented analyst of the William Alanson White Institute), and numerous briefer stints with therapists from a variety of disciplines, including behavioral therapy, bioenergetics, Rolfing, marital-couples work, an ongoing ten-year (at this writing) leaderless support group of male therapists, and, in the 1960s, encounter groups of a whole rainbow of flavors, including a nude marathon group.

The whole is less than the sum of its assholes.

from the foreword by Dan Bloom: It[this book] is a call for us gestalt therapists to welcome our patients as fellow beings-in the embodied life-word where we meet in a "primordial contact," that is, in an "embodied perception" that makes knowing one anotehr, contact one another, possible. Kennedy inevitably takes this a step further. [it is in the trust of this meeting that the healing happens. It is this dialogic contact in their shared world, an embodied meeting, that heals not only the client but the therapist also.