Assimilation and the Conditions of Growth in Gestalt Therapy
Essays · Theory & Practice Assimilation and the Conditions of Growth in Gestalt Therapy A textual and conceptual rereading of Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman Sergio Hernán Blogna Tistuzza PhD · Postdoctoral Studies, University of Buenos Aires Researcher, Gino Germani Research Institute Member, Buenos Aires Gestalt Association An encounter can be vivid without becoming a usable […]
Kurt Lewin and Field Theory: The Scientific Foundation of Gestalt Therapy
GestaltReview Editorial Theory & History · Estimated reading time: 16–20 minutes Published October 2026 Editorial note: This article is researched from primary sources including Lewin (1951), Perls, Hefferline and Goodman (1951), and contemporary gestalt scholarship. All theoretical claims are attributed to named sources. GestaltReview.com is an independent educational platform with longstanding engagement with gestalt therapy […]
The Founders of Gestalt Therapy: Fritz Perls, Laura Perls, and Paul Goodman
GestaltReview Editorial Theory & History · Estimated reading time: 18–22 minutes Published October 2026 Editorial note: This article is researched from primary gestalt sources including Perls, Hefferline and Goodman (1951), Yontef (1993), and contemporary gestalt scholarship. All biographical details are drawn from published sources. GestaltReview.com is an independent educational platform with longstanding engagement with gestalt […]
Sensation of Excess Weight as a Somaticized Symptom: A Gestalt Therapy Case Study
Essays · Clinical Case Study Sensation of Excess Weight as a Somaticized Symptom: A 10-Session Gestalt Therapy Case Analysis Maryia Neoberdina Practicing Psychologist · Gestalt Therapist Community Social Services Center Psychological & Pedagogical Mastery Program Minsk, Belarus · 2024 Case Supervisors: Elena Artemenkova, Olga Sharai Published October 1, 2026 Editorial Introduction In gestalt therapy, the […]
Gestalt Therapy for OCD: Awareness, Contact, and the Current Evidence
OCD is one of the most extensively studied psychiatric conditions in all of psychotherapy research, and Exposure and Response Prevention remains its most robustly evidenced psychological treatment. This article does not argue otherwise. What it does explore — carefully, with the evidence and its limitations named clearly — is the question of what Gestalt therapy’s […]
Experiments in Gestalt Therapy: Joseph Zinker’s Creative Framework for Therapeutic Change
A Gestalt experiment is not a technique applied to a client, and it is not a clinical exercise designed to produce a predetermined outcome. It is something closer to a shared inquiry: a moment in therapy when the therapist, having attended carefully to what is emerging in the present-moment encounter with a particular client, invites […]
Gestalt Therapy for Depression: Awareness, Embodiment, Relationships, and the Current Evidence
Depression involves a specific quality of suffering that resists easy description: not simply sadness, not simply low energy, but a particular dimming of the world — a state in which the relational threads that connect a person to what is alive, meaningful, and possible seem to have become fragile or broken. Gestalt therapy approaches depressive […]
Gestalt Therapy for Anxiety: Awareness, Embodiment, and the Current Evidence
Anxiety is the most common presentation in psychotherapy, and it is one of the most misunderstood. It is often described as a problem of excessive thinking, catastrophic prediction, or an overactive nervous system — and these descriptions capture something real. But anxiety is also a bodily event, a relational event, and an avoidance event: it […]
Gestalt Therapy vs CBT: Differences, Similarities, Evidence, and Choosing an Approach
Gestalt therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy represent two of the most influential and most theoretically distinct approaches in contemporary psychotherapy. They share the goal of alleviating psychological distress and supporting psychological health, and they share the general evidence base showing psychotherapy works. But they differ substantially in how they understand what psychological difficulty is, how […]
Gestalt Therapy for Couples: Contact, Dialogue, and Relationship Repair
Intimate relationships present a distinctive therapeutic challenge: two people, each with their own history, their own contact patterns, and their own characteristic ways of approaching and avoiding genuine encounter, attempting to live in sustained, vulnerable proximity to each other. When that proximity becomes painful — when the patterns that protect each partner also prevent them […]