The main difference between Gestalt therapy and other schools of psychology is that it works “here and now”, exploring the client’s processes in the present tense (even when what is being discussed happened in the past).

At the same time it is important to understand that when a client comes to therapy, what is alive for them is rarely entirely in the present.

Beginning Gestalt practitioners are often in a hurry and go straight to the question: “How is this connected to you right now?”

Yet in order to bring the client into the present moment, you have to mobilise their energy, which is often still held in past experience, though it nevertheless unfolds “here and now”.

There is a technique called “presentification”, which consists in gradually moving the client’s focus from processes “there and then” into the “here and now”. To do this it is important first to bring the process into the therapeutic situation, and only afterwards to turn to the client’s life situations.

Beyond that, it is the direct observation of the process “here and now” — in the situation of “I and Thou, here and how”.

To move on to this part, knowledge of the context in which it arose is important. This is not about the client’s story itself, but precisely about the context!

One can do without complicated theories and instruments and simply work in the contact of two phenomenologies, in dialogue, relying on one’s own intuition, asking questions, showing curiosity and interest in the client themselves rather than in their stories. Many Gestalt therapists work exactly this way.

And still there is one instrument that every Gestalt practitioner should master thoroughly: Paul Goodman’s heuristic scheme — the concept of the cycle of contact.

It is a kind of Gestalt diagnosis of the situation.

In essence, it is the way Gestalt therapists make sense of how a client’s difficulties are organised, where they run into trouble, what gives rise to it and what deserves attention.

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