В этой статье я исследую значение концепции поля в гештальт-терапии, а также значениеориентации на поле для теории и практики терапии. Также я рассматриваю, какой вкладмогут внести философские принципы в ясность подхода: приблизить к ней, или же увестиот нее.

In this paper, I examine the meaning of ‘field’ in Gestalt Therapy, and what a field orientation means for the theory and practice of therapy. I also look at what philosophical principles can add to or take away from the clarity of the approach.

В чем смысл эмоций в терапии? Когда важно сосредоточиться на «чувствах», и когда этонепродуктивно? Во многом это кажется нелепым вопросом, поскольку «чувства» частовоспринимаются как центральная точка того, кто мы есть, и что мы предъявляем втерапии. В этой статье я хочу поставить под сомнение предположение, что эмоцияобязательно занимает наиболее важное место в терапии, и посмотреть на ее реальноеместо как для терапевта, так и для клиента.

Это стало трюизмом говорить, что терапия - это про «проживаемое тело» (Керпер), а нефизическое тело (Лейб) и про «феноменальный мир», а не физический мир, и такимобразом воспроизвелся декартовский раскол тела и разума, от которого так стремилисьотойти Перлз и Гудман (см. Филиппсон, недатировано). Человеческое животное со своимиаппетитами, кожей и гениталиями исчезло! Таким образом, мы остаемся с мозговойверсией сексуальности, которая потеряла свои грубост...

In a one-power family, only one person can have power at any one time: either there is one person who always holds the power, or the power moves between the family members in different situations, but still is never shared. In a two-power family, everybody can be powerful, and there is more liveliness, creativity and energy, and also more overt conflict.Having been sensitised to this idea, it became clear that a very high proportion of the difficulties brought by my clients came ou...

Когда я делаю терапию в новом месте, первое, что я делаю, это убираю часы. Когдаклиенты спрашивают меня, почему я это делаю, я говорю им, что часы способствуютиллюзии, что время - это данность, движущаяся с обычной скоростью. Часовая сессия содним клиентом в одно время имеет опытную продолжительность, которая оченьотличается от опытной продолжительности с другим клиентом или даже с тем же самымклиентом, но в другое время. Мы говорим: «Уже время?» и «Как в...

When I offer training workshops to people who haven’t seen me work before, one of the main things that they find surprising is how rarely I ask clients questions. In this paper, I discuss the issues that underlie my preference to avoid asking questions. I am aware that to even ask the question can seem strange. People have commented that I don’t see interested in my clients! And in fact, it turns out that the answer to that critique is a major part of the discussion.

My proposal is that the importance of obsessions and compulsions are that they provide an achievable quasi-response to the situation of anxiety and terror when acted out ‘as in a dream’. So frightening and alienating times inevitably bring out a combination of rageful aggression and loss of sensory and human contact with the world if we cannot find a meaningful way to address the danger in a contactful way. In time-honoured fashion, we find human sacrifices that we fantasise will bring bet...

I love working with dreams. I have found that they have the capacity to move therapy work on to a new level, both in individual and group therapy. They speak from a place that is outside the familiar, and often to what is not being attended to, or avoided in life and therapy.In this paper, I start with a (non-exhaustive) list of ways in which we could work with dreams. It is also not a set of either/ors: dreams can operate on many levels simultaneously. Dreams are incredibly artisti...

This is a chapter I was asked to write for a book to be published in Ukraine on the ‘active principle’ in a number of different psychotherapies. The book is now not going to be published, so I am publishing it myself. I would like to thank Larysa Didkovska and the Ukrainian Psychotherapy University for the inspiration to write this.I really like the question: what is the ‘active principle’ in Gestalt Therapy: what is the engine of change that I offer clients who come to me...

We are in a world that is increasingly complex. Most of us inhabit two worlds that seem very different, the immediate experiential world and a virtual cyber-world of e-mail, text, social media. Gestalt Therapy emphasises ‘contact’ and ‘awareness’, and the question arises how much we can talk about these in relation to connections in cyberspace. What are the ethics of cyberspace?One of the aspects of cyberspace is that we can create ‘avatars’ of ourselves that are our extensions into...

My thesis in this paper is that the people of the psychotherapy world, including Gestalt therapists, bear part of the responsibility for a world where truth has become fragmented, split off from the physical world of sensory and motor experience, and there is no obvious way for people to share through difference or to question assertions made that are ‘flatly contradicted’ by physical evidence. We have done this by a misreading of Husserl’s phenomenology, supported by a culture of confluen...