Awkward but True

• Massaging of the buttocks is gestalt therapy? by T. Dunn, 3/2/97
  • Physical Contact and Gestalt Therapy by Joe Wysong, Editor, The Gestalt Journal, 3/3/97
    
    

While I am dismayed at the apparent lack of judgement with regard to someone who is on the block for inappropriate touching, I think Joe's response rather overstates the actual situation. Perhaps he will recall James Kepner's book, "Body Process," (1993, Jossey-Bass Publishers), originally published as "Body Process: A Gestalt Approach to Working with the Body in Psychotherapy." (1987) In the preface Joseph Zinker points out how helpful it is to acknowledge the importance of the physical body in a society in which sexual abuse leaves people disocciated from themselves and still victimized by recurrent "body memories." As Gestalt therapists, we should be at home with non-verbals, the cues regarding process that are manifest in and through the body, but not in some dichotomized, split fashion in which we view the physical as something really separate from one's self. Gestalt theory exalts wholeness, and that includes one's body with one's mind and spirit. Kepner gives many examples of touching his clients; granted, he uses better clinical judgement than to straddle them, but his case presentations illustrate his ease in working with body process and the appropriate use of touch in psychotherapy. I would highly recommend this book, as he not only presents the Gestalt approach, but also compares and contrasts it with the psychodynamic and with other therapies that utilize touching. It is an application of Gestalt therapy theory that is uncommon in the field today, but one that illustrates our therapy quite well.

• What is and what is not Gestalt therapy theory by Joe Wysong, Editor, The Gestalt Journal, 3/3/97