Application for research vs. therapy

• Gestalt Therapy: Phenomenological Behaviourism? by Brian O'Neill, 11/9/96
  
  

I agree that both sides of the psychological division need to be mended. Only when we as scientists and researchers can learn to communicate with the same language and set of tools will we be able to see where we are going (for the better or worse, as the case may be). But, the holistic approach seems to be most appropriate for therapuetic purposes. I believe that our psychological paradigms for research still remain primairly reductionistic, deterministic, positivistic, and fatalistic. These are easy claims to posit, but I do not deny the progress that such methodology and pedagogy has made. What I think I understand you to mean is that while Gestalt psychology re-creates a space for the totality of the human consciousness, our other, more empirical half also needs to recognize its limitations and acknowledge the strenghts that a more comprehensive systems approach might have on contemporary psychology as a whole.

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