Paradox: You Cannot Be Yourself by Aiming at Yourself Each person is unique, but only with human engagement is the unique self confirmed, maintained and developed. It is only in the contact of the I-Thou encounter that the uniqueness of each person develops. Only by knowing how we are with other people and how they are with us do we truly become

There is only the I of the I-it and the I-thou. Thou, what happens at the true meeting of persons as persons. In such meetings each person is treated as a separate other; each person is treated as an end in him or herself. A person in dialogue fully knows and confirms that the other is a separate and equally special consciousness. In the I-it

Dialogic Engagement — Reality Is Relating The dialogic view of reality is that all reality is relating. Living is meeting. Awareness is relational — it is orientation at the boundary between the person and the rest of the organismic environment field. Contact is also obviously relational: it is what happens between person and environment. Our sense

Historically Gestalt therapy has been in the camp of humanism and posed an alternative to behaviorism and similar control and technique-oriented therapies. Our emphasis was on working with people, not controlling or reconditioning them. But there was always some tension between our humanism on the one hand and our technology and propensity for

Part of the further development of Gestalt therapy has been an increased appreciation of Buber’s “healing through meeting.” Healing is a restoring of wholeness. And it was Buber’s belief that only through a certain kind of person-to-person engagement could healing take place.

The further development of Gestalt therapy in the United States has moved “beyond charisma.” Experience has taught us something of what is essential in the multiple-focused Gestalt therapy theory, i.e., a dialogic relationship and awareness based on respect for the patient’s personal experience and experiential style. This requires a good knowledge

In groups this becomes more complicated. For the therapist has the responsibility of observing, acknowledging, respecting the needs of all individuals and the group as a whole. The individual who needs to move slowly may elicit pushing from the rest of a frustrated group. Group pushing can be even worse than therapist pushing. In this situation the

I don’t think the answer is only in going easy with patients. The awareness work needs to be done, and the therapist who decides to be “supporting” and not do awareness work is also not respecting the patient and the patient’s choice. The answer is in dialogue and clarity about diagnosis (both of which will be discussed later). Respecting the

The patient knows best. Some Gestalt therapists attribute to the patient full responsibility, full power, to make themselves sick or well, but then take on themselves the decision to push the patient past their defenses. It seems to me that if patients are so capable that they are responsible for themselves (their lives, their pathology, their