JG

• Gestalt therapy and marketing by JG, 8/26/98
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    • Hello Dale by JG, 10/31/98
      
      

I appreciate your posts as well JG, they have an authenticity I enjoy experiencing even through this two dimensional internet. I am especially caught up with your statement of going through psychoanalysis just to see what the hell it is. Outstanding! What a guy, JG! And then you discontinued cuzz you just felt the way you felt. Who needs why? Absolutely. What is, is.

I agree that you have done more than "just try" to realize/understand gestalt therapy JG. A living experience to be sure. Awareness. This is key. Perls would say that everything has awareness, we just have to meet it with awareness. Ya, I really love Gestalt therapy JG. Deeply. I am not all that with Gestalt theory, but I can get by. Years from now I will appreciate it more and more I am confident. Theories sometimes change like the weather, with a word here or a word there. Sometimes theories do more harm in feeding confusion then is accomplished by the research into theories. As a matter of fact, ALL theories must one day crumble, as always new experiences will engineer new realities. And new theories. What is here today is often gone tommorrow. What always remains eternal is experience.

I am now just starting my mid-life journey into my forties. I have spent almost two decades living Gestalt therapy. Things have changed since 1981. I have changed. Change is good simply because change brings awarness of experience and experience is good. Paradoxically the more things change the more they stay the same. Experience is the bridge between changes. Awareness is choosing to cross or not. Some bridges are well made and can carry heavy loads, others look good but fail prematurely. We all walk to our own music. I play mine pretty loud, but I am not deaf to the music around me.

I understand that the work done by other Gestalt therapists on the inside of Gestalt therapy theory is important, critical even, and that a universal theory realizing consistency is valid work-- I just am dancing to a slightly off key melody right now. I don't know why. I just am. My ideas of theory are going more into what gestalt is not then what gestalt is. Just seems more natural JG. Just like I don't know who or what God is, but I have plenty of awareness of what He is not. I don't know how the local bakery makes such devine Danish's either, but I sure know they taste better than anything I could make! To nutshell this, I spend a great deal of my awareness concluding what things are not then what things are. What is love for our fellow human being? I don't know for sure, but I know for sure when I am not loving. How is that? Paradox. A great sculptor, I think Michealangeo JG, said he did not in fact sculpt, he just removed the rock around the figure which he saw in the stone. Gestalt therapy is like that. An art. When I work I enjoy removing the tarnish from our clients and encouraging them to simply shine up what is left. Life is beautiful even when it is ugly.

Maslow. Is he still around? :) Self-regulation. Bill Gates and Microsoft are already using Gestalt prinicipals to my awareness. A kid in a garage talks to IBM. Kid keeps ownership, sells royalties. Kid sells programs to Joe and Jane Public. Kid keeps ownership. Big cash cow. Kid is self-regulating. Computers are self-regulating. Internet is self-regulating. Kid is now the richest kid in the world. Dire Straits (Rock Band) put out a song called "money fo nutin...and yo chicks for free." A great song which is all about self-regulation. Becomes a hit single, and the band is still hot today after almost twenty years.

Sure it works in marketing. It works so fast that we become de-sensitized to the how of it. Of course Netscape had the awareness to point out that Microsoft was maybe pulling the wool over the collective public. Now Microsft is in U.S. Court fighting for the right to self-regulate. The Kid in the garage, the Kid who has all the money for nothing, now needs to explain the how and the why of it. If he is sharp he will not attempt the why, but just stick to the how. On the other hand, Netscape is already explaining the how of it, so maybe the Kid is done for.

I'll tell ya this JG, I like your style. If you want to use Gestalt THEORY in marketing by all means do so (not that you need my ok.) Now that you seperated the "souless beast" from the experience, more power to ya! I am grateful that your taste for Gestalt is encouraging an everlasting hunger to provide your fellow man, woman and child on this our little mudball with something better. Lord knows we could all use a break. I am truly heartwarmedfelt to have met up with you JG. We do share enthusiasm for Gestalt Therapy.

your friend,

Dale R. Smith

P. S.

Thanks for the burgers and shakes JG! They went down just smooth as silk.

• Hmmm... by JG, 11/29/98