According to psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, NLP originated when Richard Bandler, a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was listening to and selecting portions of taped therapy sessions of the late Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls as a project for Robert Spitzer.

According to Ervin Polster ( 1968 ), a pre-eminent Gestalt therapist, " Rank brought the human relationship directly into his office.

Because Gestalt therapy relies on the contact between therapist and client, and because a relationship can be considered to be contact over time, Gestalt therapy can be considered a relational or interpersonal approach.

A Gestalt therapist utilizing the phenomenological method might say something like, “ I notice a slight tension at the corners of your mouth when I say that, and I see you shifting on the couch and folding your arms across your chest … and now I see you rolling your eyes back ”.

Finally, the Gestalt therapist is committed to the process, trusts in that process, and does not attempt to save him or herself from it ( Brownell, in press, 2009, 2008 )).

Examples might include: ( 1 ) Rather than talking about the client's critical parent, a Gestalt therapist might ask the client to imagine the parent is present, or that the therapist is the parent, and talk to that parent directly ; ( 2 ) If a client is struggling with how to be assertive, a Gestalt therapist could either ( a ) have the client say some assertive things to the therapist or members of a therapy group, or ( b ) give a talk about how one should never be assertive ; ( 3 ) A Gestalt therapist might notice something about the non-verbal behavior or tone of voice of the client ; then the therapist might have the client exaggerate the non-verbal behavior and pay attention to that experience ; ( 4 ) A Gestalt therapist might work with the breathing or posture of the client, and direct awareness to changes that might happen when the client talks about different content.

Although all these tenets were present in the early formulation and practice of Gestalt therapy, as described in Ego, Hunger and Aggression ( Perls, 1947 ) and in Gestalt Therapy, Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality ( Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1951 ), the early development of Gestalt therapy theory emphasized personal experience and the experiential episodes understood as " safe emergencies " or experiments.

With all these experiments the Gestalt therapist is working with process rather than content, the How rather than the What.

This is the key point in the divergance of Gestalt therapy from traditional psychoanalysis — growth occurs through gradual assimilation of experience in a natural way, rather than by accepting the interpretations of the analyst ; thus, the therapist should not interpret, but lead the client to discover for himself or herself.

When using Gestalt therapy, non-verbal cues are an important indicator of how the client may actually be feeling, despite the feelings expressed.

The objective of Gestalt therapy is to enable the client to become more fully and creatively alive and to become free from the blocks and unfinished business that may diminish satisfaction, fulfillment, and growth, and to experiment with new ways of being.

Though perhaps a simple error made in translation, many lectures in textbooks of modern-day psychology quote Gestalt theory by saying “ the whole is greater than the sum of its parts ”.

' Dialogue, Gestalt techniques, dream work, guided imagery, affirmations, and meditation are all powerful tools for integration ', but ' the attitude and presence of the guide are of far greater importance than the particular methods used '.

Gestalt theorists believe that with the two together a person experiences a personal reality that is greater than the parts.

The core of the Gestalt Therapy process is enhanced awareness of sensation, perception, bodily feelings, emotion and behavior, in the present moment.

Gestalt therapy is a method of awareness practice ( also called " mindfulness " in other clinical domains ), by which perceiving, feeling, and acting are understood to be conducive to interpreting, explaining, and conceptualizing ( the hermeneutics of experience ).

She developed her own form of Gestalt therapy body work, which is essentially a concentration on the awareness of body processes.

She developed her own form of Gestalt therapy body work, based on the awareness of body processes.

Gestalt is roughly translated as " configuration ," or " pattern ," and emphasizes " the whole " of human experience.

Almost all polis citizens, except for those who specifically elect otherwise, experience the world through two sensory modalities: Linear and Gestalt, which Egan describes as distant descendants of hearing and seeing, respectively.

Gestalt conveys information qualitatively, and data sent or received about anything arrives all at once for interpretation by the mind of the Citizen in all its aspects simultaneously, resulting in an experience of immediacy.

Other workshops cover a wide range of subjects including: arts, health, Gestalt, integral thought, martial arts, massage, dance, mythology, philosophical inquiry, somatics, spiritual and religious studies, ecopsychology, wilderness experience, yoga, tai chi, mindfulness practice, and meditation, all with the prospect that the mission of the institute will last well into the future.

Gestalt therapy is an existential / experiential form of psychotherapy that emphasizes personal responsibility, and that focuses upon the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person's life, and the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of their overall situation.

Because Gestalt therapy includes perception and the meaning-making processes by which experience forms, it can also be considered a cognitive approach.

To this was added the insights of academic Gestalt psychology, including perception, Gestalt formation and the tendency of organisms to complete an incomplete Gestalt, and to form " wholes " in experience.

In contrast to the psychoanalytic stance, in which the " patient " introjects the ( presumably more healthy ) interpretations of the analyst, in Gestalt therapy the client must " taste " his or her experience, and either accept or reject it, but not introject or " swallow whole ".

The Gestalt grouping rules are the result of the experience of the visual system.

Notwithstanding the existence of Gestalt psychology schools that advocate a holistic approach to the operation of the brain, the physiological processes underlying the formation of percepts and conscious experience have been vastly understudied.

Gestalt theory, dominant in the late 19th and early 20th centuries espoused two general principles: the ‘ principle of totality ’ in which conscious experience must be considered globally, and the ‘ principle of psychophysical isomorphism ’ which states that perceptual phenomena are correlated with cerebral activity.

Lawson clearly writes here from bitter experience, evidence enough that the Gestalt of psychological servitude, cultural anxiety and entrenched peer-cruelty which was later to become labelled " the cultural cringe " was pervasive in nineteenth-century Australia, and is thus a fundamental element of Australian self-identity.

Barry Stevens describes both Gestalt therapy theory and practice and her relationship with Fritz Perls in a sensitive way.

This work held the beginnings for their new theory of psychotherapy, Gestalt Therapy, which consisted of facing the client to notice his or her postures and gestures ( Fadiman & Frager, 2002 ).

Her influences include Fluxus, Rock and roll, punk ( Dee Dee Ramone kissed her ), ballet, radical feminism, Gay rights, Black Power, Zen and Gestalt.

Another possible solution that could be seen as more proactive comes from Roney and Trick, Gestalt psychologists who suggest that the fallacy may be eliminated as a result of grouping.

Cognitive theories grew out of Gestalt psychology.

Over the years, the Gestalt psychologist provided compelling demonstrations and described principles by which we organize our sensations into perceptions.

Gestalt psychologists proposed looking at the patterns rather than isolated events.

Gestalt views of learning have been incorporated into what have come to be labeled cognitive theories.

( This attention, however, does not operate by clarifying what is already seen, but by constructing a new Gestalt oriented toward a particular object.

He derived the phrase spontaneous order from Gestalt psychology, and it was adopted by the classical liberal economist Frederick Hayek, although the concept can be traced back to at least Adam Smith.

Der Weg des Himmels: Zum Geist und zur Gestalt des politischen Denkens im klassischen China.

: Gestalt und Wirklichkeit ; Welthistorische Perspektives )-The Decline of the West ; an Abridged Edition by Helmut Werner ( tr.

During the 1930s, many Gestalt psychologists, most notably Kurt Lewin, fled to the United States from Nazi Germany.

* April 15 – Max Wertheimer, father of Gestalt Theory ( d. 1943 )

It had its foundations in the Gestalt psychology of Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka, and in the work of Jean Piaget, who provided a theory of stages / phases that describe children's cognitive development.

Fritz Perls presented his theory of dreams as part of the holistic nature of Gestalt therapy.

Gestalt therapists extended the subjective approach, claiming that even the inanimate objects in a dream can represent aspects of the dreamer.

Gestalt psychologists theorise that a face is not merely a set of facial features but is rather something meaningful in its form.

This is consistent with the Gestalt theory that an image is seen in its entirety, not by its individual parts.

Allen's work takes a psychological perspective that combines evolutionary theories with Gestalt psychology.

These assumptions are made using organizational principles, like Gestalt, an individual's ability of depth perception and motion perception, and perceptual constancy.

L. Ron Hubbard is widely believed to have used the theory in his creation of Dianetics and later to have incorporated it into Scientology, and acknowledges this in several texts ; the first of these two movements in turn introduced general semantics to a wider audience in the early 1950s, including popular science fiction writer A. E. van Vogt, personal growth theorist Harvey Jackins and his movement Re-evaluation Counseling and movements like Gestalt therapy.

Frederick Perls and Paul Goodman, founders of Gestalt therapy are said to have been influenced by Korzybski Wendell Johnson wrote " People in Quandries: The Semantics of Personal Adjustment " in 1946, which stands as the first attempt to form a therapy from general semantics.

NLP finds its therapeutic roots by drawing influences from Gestalt therapy.