Essentials of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy

The Essentials of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy offer for the first time in English an insight into the guiding ideas of this integrative psychotherapy method, which is consistently anchored in Gestalt psychology (and in this respect also differs substantially from most streams of Gestalt therapy, with which it should not be confused). The anthology includes ten contributions by authors from Austria, Italy, Germany and the USA. These deal with fundamental questions and concepts of any psychotherapy: The role and meaning of consistency in practical life and in psychotherapy; the question of human epistemic possibilities and an epistemology appropriate for psychotherapy; the personality theory of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy; the basic principles of therapeutic relationship and practice; the role of emotions in the example of phenomenal causality of feelings; the task of diagnostics in Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy; a clinical example related to anorexia; Gestalt psychological viewpoints for therapy progress; the role of relational determination in intrapsychic and interpersonal experience.

Auteur
born 1934, is an Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psy-chology and a Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Psy-chosomatic Disorders at the University of Bologna. He is also a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association. In 1975, he was the Chair of General Psychology at the University of Padova, and in 1977, he was the first Italian Chair of Psychosomatic Medicine at the University of Bologna. He has been working for more than 30 years on psychosomatic disorders in adults and children, and he designed new psychotherapeutic methods for children (Focal Play-Therapy and Drawn Stories).