In this path-breaking and provocative new treatment of some of the oldest dilemmas of psychology and relationship, Gordon Wheeler challenges that most basic tenet of the Western cultural tradition: the individual self. Characteristic of this self-model, which we inherit from as far back as the ancient Greeks, are our embedded yet pervasive ideas that the individual self precedes and transcends relationship and social fied conditions, and that interpersonal experience is somehow secondary and even opposed to the needs of the “inner self.” Assumptions like these, Wheeler argues, which are taken to be inherent to human nature and development, amount to a “controlling cultural paradigm” which does considerable violence to both our evolutionary self-nature and our intuitive self-experience. By the end of the book you will probably find yourself agreeing with Wheeler that we are actually far more relational and intersubjective than our culture generally allows, and these relational capacities are deeply built into our inherent evolutionary nature.
In a series of brilliantly crafted chapters, the argument progresses from the origins and lineage of the Western individualist and self-model, into the basis for a new model of self, relationship, and experience out of the insights and implications of Gestalt psychology and its philosophical derivatives, deconstructivism, and social constructivism, both of which Wheeler presents in freshly intuitive, “experience – near” terms. From there, in a linked series of experiential chapters, each of them a groundbreaking essay in its own right, he takes up the essential dynamic themes of self-experience and relational life: interpersonal orientation, meaning-making and adaptation, support, shame, intimacy, and finally narrative and gender, culminating in considerations of health, ethics, politics, and spirit. Each of these six chapters is based on an exercise which the reader is invited to participates in, and each of them leads us to a wholly new way of experiencing and thinking about its subject, and about ourselves.
The result is a picture and an experience of self which is grounded in the active dynamics of attention, problem-solving, imagination, interpretation, evaluation, emotion, meaning-making, narration, and above all relationship. By the final section, the reader comes away with a new sense of what it means to be human, and a new and more usable definition of health. In the words of noted author Mark McConville, “Here at last is a self model which does justice to both our “inward” experience, and our inherent, felt participation in the whole field of relational experience and other unique selves.”
Gordon Wheeler, Ph.D., is internationally known for his teaching, training, and writing in Gestalt therapy, coaching, and education. His written work, including a dozen books and over 100 articles in the field, has emphasized the evolution of Gestalt theory as the basis for relational and developmental self theory, integrating the body of Gestalt psychology research with the Gestalt therapy tradition. In his writings Gordon has focused particularly on relational development, self and shame, couples and intimacy, multi-cultural issues, gender and men’s issues, leadership and coaching, and lifelong integral education, as well as post-Holocaust issues and most recently Gestalt Systems Constellations. Since 2002 he has served as President of Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, where he also served for some years as CEO. Gordon and his wife Nancy Lunney-Wheeler have a large and growing blended family and make their homes at Esalen and in Santa Cruz, California.
