What is the most important and most essential thing that can be said about the methodology of a gestalt therapist’s work?

Something that conveys to students the essence of what they will be studying over several years.

All the knowledge a student gains in the course of training, and all the skills acquired through their own therapy and practice, ultimately come down to phronesis.

To effective situational thinking, thanks to which the therapist grasps the essence of the situation and arrives at the decision most fitting to it.

And so it goes — in every moment of the therapeutic session.

A gestalt therapist does not work to a protocol, does not follow a plan known in advance. They choose, they create an intervention at each particular moment — proceeding from the situation as it stands in that minute.

And that situation, according to field theory, is constantly changing.

More on the notion of phronesis in the practice of a gestalt therapist can be found in Gianni Francesetti’s article “The Field Perspective in Clinical Practice: Towards a Theory of Therapeutic Phronesis”.

The gestalt therapist Ruella Frank was once asked: what should one do if a client does this or that, makes such and such movements, and what does it mean…

And Ruella answers:

That is, it means that the therapist does not know what her next intervention will be. She is not following a written plan. Each subsequent intervention of the therapist depends on what has just happened, on what happened right now — before it.

Students often do not believe this. They do not believe that experienced gestalt therapists and trainers do not know what they will do next in a session.

These points are very important.

They are key to understanding the work of a gestalt therapist.

Because if I know exactly where I am “going” in a session, if I understand what I will say, ask next or suggest to the client, it means I am not taking into account the new situation that is created each time: after every intervention of mine, after every response of my client.

And then I stop taking the field into account, I stop relying on what is happening here and now.

Of course, one cannot say that all interventions are entirely unpredictable, that there is no horizon of expectation, no logic within which they arise.

This zone of the possible is precisely what is set by knowledge, by an understanding of the various concepts that make up the methodology of the gestalt approach.

Interventions arise out of this knowledge and out of a felt sense, a perception of the situation. Training in gestalt therapy can thus be pictured, on the one hand, as becoming acquainted with a set of notions and concepts underlying therapeutic thinking, and on the other, as mastering the ability to dwell in the situation — presence, and awareness of it.

The article is based on a text by Olena Vorozheikina