Message to Phil about Gestalt Psychology

• Buddhism and Gestalt by Philip Brownell, 12/6/96
  
  

I've read several of your perspectives on Gestalt Psychology and I get the sense that you are curious, yet doubt the effectiveness. I don't know how long it's been since you've entered this page but let me share this: As a young adult, I spent a year a a gestalt-type training center (Hilltop Institute (Adult satellite of CEDU School) in Running Springs, CA) I've seen both the bad and the good of this approach. It's really true what they say about needing to go through it before attempting to teach or use the experiments. I was very fortunate in that I had already been prepped by other disciplines and the catharsis of the gestalt experiments which I encountered 12 years ago still positively affect me today. But it's like anything else, you have to be committed to yourself for anything to work. By the same token, I have had a few friends who went through that program with me who are now dead. Some became severely reckless and some flat-out killed themselves. In the deepest sense, we are our

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