Hello Dale

• Gestalt therapy and marketing by JG, 8/26/98
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    • taste testing by Dale R. Smith, 10/20/98
      
      

Well Dale, It seems to be that you can't avoid the irony... it's ok though; i like that....

let's see...you still think im some kind of "machine theorist" and that it'll be difficult for me to get rid of that garbage to give space for experiencial approaches... all that because my psych training...

im from latinamerica (that's why my spelling in english is not so good..! sorry!) and there's where I studyied and graduated as a psychologist... the faculties of psychology there tend to put great emphasis in the social oriented approaches, cause that's what we need... psychosocial approaches to understand our people, to try to find some kind of identity, to know who we are and where can we start building ...(qualitative reasearch, semiotics, social psychology, psycholinguistics... and as i understand, that is not very close to mechanistic approaches!)... so you'll see a lot of psychoanalitical and humanistic psychologists there... are we getting close to Gestalt?

to obtain that degree I had to do 2 years of internships in clinical psychology (supervised psychoanalitical psychotherapy) and to be prepared for that we studied psychoanalisys for 2 years before... i felt attraction to Gestalt therapy (yeah THERAPY, not PSYCHOLOGY) as a gradual evolution from my first interests in psychoanalisis... I was even surprised when i read "ego, hunger and aggresion" cause the way Perls described systematically his disagreements with Freud where very similar to the kind of thoughts I was having at that moment (while i was doing my internship in clinical psychology)... i was even going through a psychoanalysis treatment (just to know what the hell was that) but i abandoned it because i thought it was not worth to understand why i felt in the ways i did... why, why, why... i just felt the way i felt... that's all... not need of any why. I've never been into a Gestalt training, but i've really tried to understand what are all those Gestalt therapists try to mean with the AWARENESS concept and because of the way my thoughts eveloped through my "psych training" (as you call it) i think i'm not so far to understand (as a living experience!) what is all that experiencial stuff...

you say that Gestalt therapy moves and lives ONLY between therapist and client... what about all that Gestalt therapists trying to use this approach in the field of Organizational Development?? there they are acting in a business enviroment involving not only one "client" but many people...

I understand that the moment-by-moment awareness is a pure experiential approach to human growth... that can help people to become more real, empowered and honest... but the efforts of now-days gestalt therapists to give some kind of consistent theory that can be the base for the experiential thing are important; "As for Gestalt therapy theory, it is a souless beast that seems to want to eat everything in it's awareness these days", you say... Gestalt therapy implies a philosophy, a way of thinking, in regard to human issues... so why not try to make this understaning explicit?

...and concepts like "organic auto-regulation" can serve as bases for OTHER disciplines that talk ABOUT human behavior.. a lot of marketing strategies are based in, for example, Maslow's pyramid of needs... what can happen if we understand humans as "self-regulated"? can that change something in marketing or consumer behavior disciplines? can they be improved with this concepts? and here, after a lot explanation, I got to the same point I started.... is there somebody out there trying to relate Gestalt therapy (ok, call it Gestalt therapy theory, or just that "souless beast") with marketing practices?

i really appreciate your responses Dale, and i can feel that you appreciate deeply what you are doing... Gestalt therapy.. I share your enthusiasm cause i highly appreciate what that little "taste testing" of Gestalt has done for me (even without Gestalt training!!)...

warmly

JG

• JG by Dale R. Smith, 11/7/98