01
Existential
Grounded in the here and now. Each person is responsible for their own destiny.
New Gestalt
From classical roots to the contemporary frame.
Gestalt Therapy International teaches contemporary relational Gestalt. A short account of the movement — its origins, its five orientations, and the four lenses through which the work is practised today.
Five orientations
What holds the work together.
02
Phenomenological
Focused on the client's perception of reality. Change from being more fully oneself.
03
Dialogical
The therapist is an active participant — willing to not have the answers and to sit in the creative void.
04
Wholistic
The wider field is taken into account — past, present, future; individual, family and culture.
05
Practical
Experiential learning rather than interpretation. How rather than why. Creative experiments embody abstract ideas in the present.
Four lenses
How the work is practised.
Field Theory
The whole picture. Past, present, future; family, culture, society. A small movement in the right place can shift the rest of the system.
Awareness
Here-and-now presence. Discovering the obvious; receiving what is. The paradox — change without pushing.
Relationship
The therapist's personhood is part of the work. Resistance becomes a creative force — not something to push through.
Experiment
The dimension that differentiates Gestalt from talking therapies. Immediacy, freshness, playfulness — new possibilities in the supportive atmosphere.
Historical development
Five stages of Gestalt.
- Stage 01
Founding · Fritz and Laura Perls, 1940s
Classical Gestalt with the Perls and their students. The 'empty chair'. Concentration, awareness, and figure-ground as the clinical ground. The strong character of the early work.
- Stage 02
First development · 1960s
Influence from existential and field-theoretic thinking. The move toward greater awareness of the relational field, the gut-level, and the somatic interruption.
- Stage 03
Post-classical · 1970s–1980s
Polarities, contact-boundary theory, and the paradoxical theory of change. The relationship between contact styles, the working edge, and the wider systemic view.
- Stage 04
Relational turn · 1990s
The dialogical and intersubjective turn. Greater attention to shame, support, attachment, and the co-created field — the ground of contemporary Gestalt.
- Stage 05
Contemporary relational Gestalt · today
The best of traditional Gestalt meets intersubjectivity, character styles, somatics, and field theory. Sensitive to shame, attentive to support, oriented to the wider ecology. This is the frame Gestalt Therapy International teaches.
Take the next step
Read it in practice.
The training program and the consultation practice both work from this frame. Open the program or write to the team.