Gestalt Therapy

by Claudio Naranjo

This remarkable exploration of the inner principles of Gestalt therapy originated over 20 years ago in the form of a completed book, written at Fritz Perls' request. Now fully updated by the author, it is joined by a collection of essays that present the Naranjo's reassessment of Gestalt therapy for the present day. In his fascinating study Naranjo has captured the flavour and distinctive character of the California-based school of Gestalt therapy, propagated by Perls in his last years as a teacher and exemplar of the approach he pioneered. Lively and readible, learned and insightful, this book will be indispensible both for professionals and the lay-reader, demonstrating why Fritz Perls was truly the father of the now-flourishing human potential movement.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction

318 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Claudio Naranjo was a Chilean psychiatrist. He was co-developer of the Enneagram of Personality. His studies and investigations oftenly focused in the search of spirituality to find mental stability, and also some times, the use of lisergic substance to free hidden and harmful thoughts.

Reviews

[Eugene Pustoshkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is one of the best books on Gestalt therapy I have read so far. Too many books convey some sense of averageness instead of the spirit of Gestalt. This Naranjo's book is not such case. Of course, in the light of Integral psychology (a movement started by Ken Wilber who himself was greatly influenced by Gestalt in his early years) many of Naranjo's thoughts on spirituality, transpersonal experience and so on in this book sound archaic. Yet it documents an intellectual and spiritual and therapeutic thirst of the Californian unfolding of Gestalt practice. Although I must say that it is not comprehensive in its discussion of the Gestalt approach; it is selective, as most books are. For me some of the important parts of Gestalt therapy are the notions of assimilation and contact, and while the latter is treated in the treatise at an adequate length (though I come to perceiving the phenomenological reality of contact somehow differently), the former is not elaborated in the fashion that I fully resonate with (yet it could be just my particular angle emphasizing that). Naranjo also convincingly defends Fritz Perls against attacks from those who were envy of him and attempted to devaluate his contribution over the years. As for myself, I am far from idealizing Perls; I consider him not to be intellectually or spiritually brilliant, even though he could have been a brilliant experientialist of his epoch. Yet at the times when he lived he made an enormous impact, and one would be happy to recapture this kind of magnitude of influencing the world with some more integral advancements in psychotherapy and psychospiritual growth (against the bias that exists in favor of so-called "evidence-based" and, in my opinion, oftentimes intellectually and spiritually weak therapies).

[Михаил Звоников · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very great book