GestaltPress is thrilled to announce our new website, GestaltPress.com. This is your invitation to join us in a special ongoing feature of the website, our blog conversation about issues and applications of our work and our lives— all from an evolving Gestalt point of view.
How the blog conversation will work:
Here’s how we picture it going (subject to change of course—this is a Gestalt experiment!). Each month (or so) the blog conversation will feature a different host, by invitation. The conversation will start, or restart, at that point with a new input from the guest host, and pick up from there with the contributions from you, the readers. The first three hosts will be the three principal editors at GP: Deborah Ullman, Robert Lee, and Gordon Wheeler. And from there— join us and be surprised!
Other website features:
While you’re visiting with us and conversing with our world-wide community of Gestalt-interested folks here and on our Facebook page, check out other features of our site as they unfold: the bookstore of course (where you can order our books at the best prices you’re likely to find in the world)— and the Library, where you’ll find ongoing and downloadable postings of articles or chapters you may have missed, or may have seen and would like to see again, for free! Plus, we’re developing a calendar feature where you’ll be able to see major Gestalt-related conferences and other gatherings in the world as much as two years ahead (so you can schedule your own course or meeting in relation to those large events, to avoid conflicts or even to capitalize on travel to your area) as well as request to submit your own event and have it posted on our site.
With the great gift of the web, Gestaltists (and the Gestalt-curious) around the world are no longer isolated in our local practice communities (where we may be the only “out” Gestaltist in town!)— or even in our local Gestalt communities, which are now automatically parts of a larger, vibrant and dynamic whole.
Again, we at GestatlPress— principal Editors, guest Editors, and also our ever-growing contributing authors, who now number well over 100— are thrilled to take this step into the lively ferment that is the worldwide Gestalt community today. Our community has so much to contribute to the even wider community of all our creative colleagues from every “school” and method around the globe, dedicated to making a progressive difference in our shared world of challenges and opportunities. it is our privilege to take this new step together, and continue to foster Gestalt voices and Gestalt evolution in these new ways.
Looking forward to the dialogue.
I am a student. I want to ask some questions, particularly how I can match current ideas in psychotherapy with gestalt theory. For example I would like to ask where to connect in the Gestalt literature with the effect of intimate relationships on identity and sense of self. Can I do this sort of thing with this blog. Many thanks. Liz
I look forward to reading views and exchanging perspectives
Liz, I will have more to offer later and certainly hope we can wrestle with questions like yours on this blog. But to start with, the effect of intimate relationships on identity and sense of self is wonderfully explored both theoretically and experientially in Gordon Wheeler’s Beyond Individualism: toward a new understanding of Self, Relationship & Experience (2000) and comparative psychotherapy is explored a bit in several of our books — I’m thinking of Relational Approaches in Gestalt Therapy, eds Lynne Jacobs and Rich Hycner (2009). I’ll reflect further on a good referral for you in a follow-up. Hope this helps for now! Anyone else have a good recommendation?
Many thanks Deb and Gordon. I will follow up the references, thanks so much for the pointers.
If two people (or a group of people) affect one another’s physiology and psychology do we now exist as a property of the boundary rather than independent of it? Is our ability as a species to transcend the pull of the ‘other’ unique do you think? If so, what adaptive advantage does it hold? Why have we developed it? Where is it taking us?
Also, whilst attachment theory is important, I’m persuaded a little bit, I think, that this fear based dynamic cannot be the foundation on which adult relations are formed. I like the idea that there needs to be a positive attraction in relationships, something that is touching our reward centre.
Perhaps we currently sit astride the fear-based attachment dynamic, and a reward-based dynamic in relating to one another. And as our long-fought for individuality arises we look to both protect it and yet not move too far away from the ‘other/s’. Is this all about transition in human evolution I wonder?
This is a great post, I think you should turn it into a 2 or 3 part series.