Showing results for "peter philippson"

The ‘empty chair’ experiment has had mixed fortunes in Gestalt Therapy. Once it was a central method, with Fritz Perls naming it as one of his essentials, along with a ‘hot seat’ and tissues. It was so prevalent that it got taken as defining the approach, and taught in that way on counselling courses.While the technique has remained meaningful for many Gestaltists, it has fallen into disfavour with most of the training schools I have come across. I think this is for two reasons: fi...

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.

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.

It seems important to me to address the place of confluence in the outlook of Gestalt Therapy. Does it have a meaning and functionality in our being in the world, or is it always a problem to be confronted? The latter was true at one stage in earlier Gestalt culture, where confluence was seen as always bad and to be avoided (although this is clearly not what our founding theory said).I will put the case that confluence is a very significant part of the Gestalt understanding of self...

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...

This book tracks a particular understanding of self, philosophically, from research evidence and in its implications for psychotherapy. At each step, the author includes first the theory he is working from, then the clinical implications of the theory, followed by some links to the philosophical outlook inherent in the theory, and finally a more extended case example.It takes the view that the continuing self is partly an illusion, partly a construct, and that we in fact have to work to st...

მე მომწონს კარგი საშინელებათა ფილმები. ისინი გვატყობინებენ იმას, თუ რისიგვეშინია სინამდვილეში და როგორ ვრეაგირებთ შიშზე. საინტერესოა, ამდენ ადამიანსრატომ მოსწონს საშინელებათა ფილმები, ან რატომ ხედავენ ბავშვები სიბნელეშიმონსტრებს, ან რატომ დადიან ადამიანები ჯომარდობაზე, ან, სულაც, რატომსიამოვნებთ ბლუზის მოსმენა ან სიმღერა? რას ამბობს ეს ჩვენზე, როგორც სახეობაზე?ან, რატომ არსებობს უამრავი ადამიანი, რომელიც ყველაფერ ამას მთელი ძალისხმევითგაურბის (თავი...

This book is a collection of articles written in the period 1985–2011. The articles form a background for perspectives that concern the foundations of Gestalt therapy: foundations in philosophy and foundations in psychoanalysis and connections with other therapeutic theories.

What does it mean for us to meet? Is it a matter of us being here together in the same place, or seeing each other, or you hearing me? How much is it just a meeting of my interpretation of you, while you are meeting with your interpretation of me? Are we just in a hall of mirrors, reflection meeting reflection? And in that case, is it meaningful to talk about meeting, or contact, or love at all? Are the narcissists right, and are we all like Narcissus, falling in love with our own reflecti...

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 want to develop a Gestalt field-oriented understanding of therapeutic work with couples. The approach can be extended to work with families, but that is beyond the scope of the present paper. The basic field awareness is that just as the activity of each person in a couple can only be seen in the context of the couple as a whole (rather than belonging merely to that individual), no couple exists in a vacuum, and many issues that couples come to therapy to resolve are relat...

In this paper, I have tried to do two things: to show how it is possible to talk about self-of-group in Gestalt terms, and to give a practical illustration of the idea of a person as an organ of choice and will of the field (in this case the field of a group). This way of looking at groups can be extended to groups of many sizes and configurations, including national politics and large organisations.I have tried to avoid losing either a field-centred orientation or a sense of the s...