Lobb 2007

Adjustment

the contact boundary is the place where creativity (which expresses the uniqueness of the individual) can be combined with adjustment (which expresses that reciprocity which is necessary to social living).

Perls et al 1951

Anxiety

P231

Anxiety is the interruption of the excitement of creative growth

Perls et al 1951

Awareness

P229

Aware response in the field is the agency of growth in the field

Perls et al 1951

Awareness

P229

What is called ‘consciousness’ seems to be a special kind of awareness, a contact-function where there are difficulties and delays of adjustment

Perls et al

Confluence

P451

Confluence is the condition of no-contact

Perls et al 1951

Consciousness

P229

What is called ‘consciousness’ seems to be a special kind of awareness, a contact-function where there are difficulties and delays of adjustment

Lobb 2000

Contact

Contact is the end of self

Perls et al 1951

Contact

P073

Your sense of unitary interfunctioning of you and your environment is contact, and the process of contacting is the forming and sharpening of the figure/ground contrast.

Perls et al 1951

Contact

P073

For you as a living being contact is, then, ultimate reality

Perls et al 1951

Contact

P118

Every healthy contact involves awareness (perceptual figure/ground) and excitement (increased energy mobilization)

Perls et al 1951

Contact

P229

Experience is ultimately contact, the functioning of the boundary of the organism and its environment

Perls et al 1951

Contact

P230

Primarily, contact is the awareness of, and behaviour toward, the assimilable novelty; and the rejection of the inassimilable novelty

Perls et al 1951

Contact

P230

All contact is creative and dynamic . . . because it must cope with the novel . . . cannot passively accept or merely adjust to the novel, because the novel must be assimilated

Perls et al 1951

Contact

P230

All contact is creative adjustment of the organism and environment

Perls et al 1951

Contact

P373

Contacting is, generally, the growing of the organism.  By contacting we mean … in general every function that must be primarily considered as occurring at the boundary in an organism/environment field.

Philippson

Contact

P008

. . . “if I am in good contact with my environment, I am more likely to achieve my wants and needs”, as opposed to “the achievement of these wants and needs takes precedence over the making of contact”

Lobb 2007

Contact Boundary

the contact boundary is the place where creativity (which expresses the uniqueness of the individual) can be combined with adjustment (which expresses that reciprocity which is necessary to social living).

Parlett 2003

Creative Adjustment

P51

… having an adaptive and spontaneous response to living in this world.

Perls et al 1951

Creative Adjustment

P371

… deploying the activity of the self as a temporal process, … fore-contact, contacting, final-contact, and post-contact; … is an account of the nature of creative-adjustment growth

Perls et al 1951

Creative Adjustment

P404

It is the work of creative adjustment that heightens awareness of what one wants

Wheeler 2000

Creative Adjustment

P167

In this whole-field process view the creative adjustment, the living integrative principle or process in action, is not just something done by a self that is pre-existent: it is the self, the self which is ‘given in contact’

Jennings 1986

Creativity

Pvi

… I believe that everybody is potentially creative, whether worker or client.  Some of us have to discover or rediscover our own creativity; and some of us are tired and jaded.  Others are daunted …

Lobb 2007

Creativity

the contact boundary is the place where creativity (which expresses the uniqueness of the individual) can be combined with adjustment (which expresses that reciprocity which is necessary to social living).

Lobb and Amendt-Lyon 2003

Creativity

Pix

Creativity, traditionally seen as a special gift of remarkable and exceptional personalities …

Lobb and Amendt-Lyon 2003

Creativity

Pix

… is considered in Gestalt therapy to be a spontaneous adaptation in interpersonal processes, as well as an important ingredient of healthy social living.

Perls et al 1951

Creativity

P230

what is assimilated is always novel^[i]

Perls et al 1951

Creativity

P231

Creativity and adjustment are polar^[ii]

Perls et al 1951

Creativity

P367

Creativity is inventing^[1] a new solution; inventing it both as finding it and as devising it; …

Perls et al 1951

Creativity

P406

For the most part, however, we may consider the self’s creativity and the organism/environment adjustment as polar: one cannot exist without the other^[iii]

Perls et al 1951

Creativity

P407

Creativity without outgoing adjustment remains superficial (because) the excitement of the unfinished situation is not drawn on (and) it is in manipulating the resistant that the self becomes involved and engaged

Philippson

Cycle of Contact

P042 - 045

Forecontact,  Contacting,  Final Contact,  Post-contact

Perls et al 1951

Dreams

P051

If you will notice your dreams, you will discover that you can make sense of a great many by treating them as reversal experiments spontaneously performed!

Perls et al 1951

Dreams

P051

In dreams, the resister gets a chance to express himself more openly, but he does it in a language which you, the awake personality, find largely incomprehensible

Sichera 2003

Dreams

P097

… the most useful work on dreams would probably be their portrayal, in literary or pictorial form, by the dreamer.  In other words, the “best exercise” in therapy is probably “letting the dream be” in complete autonomy, as a work of art, fruit of the extraordinary creative powers of childhood, which the patient must be able to experience fully and freely …

Sichera 2003

Dreams

P098

The portrayal of the dream, in the presence of and together with the therapist, puts the dream itself into the circuit of the relationship.

Sichera 2003

Dreams

P098

The dream is …a pure aesthetic form to be listened to and developed together.

Perls et al 1951

Dreams, daydreams

P051

Daydreams … are spontaneous reversal experiments, and their meaning is usually more obvious.  What we fantasy ordinarily is the reverse of a present frustration

Philippson

Ego

P130

Ego is the active process of moving towards some aspects of the environment (identification) and away from other (alienation)

Perls et al 1951

Excitement

P037

The sense of this formative process, the dynamic relation of ground and figure, is excitement: excitement is the feeling of the forming of the figure-background in contact situations, as the unfinished situation tends to its completion.

Perls et al 1951

Excitement

P231

Anxiety is the interruption of the excitement of creative growth

McLeod 1993

Gestalt

P26

It the foundation of a psychology without a psyche

Parlett 2003

Gestalt

P51

… a philosophy and method to be lived, not just a theory to be talked about, and not merely a specialised approach to psychotherapy.

Lobb 2000

Gestalt Theory

What is specific to our theory is that the self is regarded in the medial position between organism and the environment, which is to say, in a uniquely relational position^[2]

McLeod

Growth

P27

In the “spontaneous absorption of final contact” (Perls et al 1951 p.418), occurs the assimilation through which the self functions as the organ of growth (ibid p.229

Perls et al 1951

Growth

P230

Growth is the function of the contact boundary in the organism/environment field

Perls et al 1951

Growth

P231

Anxiety is the interruption of the excitement of creative growth

Perls et al 1951

Growth

P368

…growing, the self risks – risks it with suffering if it has long avoided risking it and therefore must destroy many prejudices, introjects, attachments to the fixed past, securities, plans and ambitions; risks it with excitement if it can accept living in the present

Perls et al 1951

Growth

P372?

An organism preserves itself only by growing

Self preserving and growing are polar

Perls et al 1951

Growth

P373

… materials and energy of growth are: the conservative attempt of the organism to remain as it has been, the novel environment, the destruction of previous partial equilibria, and the assimilation of something new.

Perls et al 1951

Knowledge

P367

Knowledge is the form of what has already occurred

Perls et al 1951

Living

P230

… it is by means of creative adjustment, change and growth that the complicated organic unities live on in the large unity of the field.

Philippson

Middle mode

P035

. . . what we are looking at is an equal cooperative effort between me and my environment, where there is no ‘doer’ and no ‘done to’ (or alternatively there is both).  This is the ‘middle mode’: neither active nor passive.

Philippson

Middle mode

P035

The other name for this is spontaneity.

Wheeler 2003

Perception

P87

Every perception is in a real sense a hypothesis, a trial organisation of data (literally, “givens”). We’re “wired” to make this kind of estimation, and to integrate it into an even wider, ever more complex and coherent picture of the world: this is our gestalt nature.

Perls et al 1951

Personality

P378

The personality is the created figure that the self becomes and assimilates to the organism, uniting it with the results of previous growth

Perls et al 1951

Personality

P382

The personality is the system of attitudes assumed in interpersonal relations.  Personality is essentially a verbal replica of the self.  Thus personality is the responsible structure of the self

Perls et al 1951

Personality

P423

The aftermath of creative social contact is the formation of personality

Perls et al 1951

Personality

P427

In ideal circumstances the self does not have much personality.  It is the sage of Tao that is “like water”, assuming the form of the receptacle.

Where the self has much personality, we have seen, it is because either it carries with it many unfinished situations … or it has abdicated altogether and feels itself in the attitudes towards itself that it has introjeced.^[3]

Lobb 2000

Self

The self … is conceived in Gestalt Therapy as an experiential event which takes place in the phenomenal actuality.

Lobb 2000

Self

What is specific to our theory is that the self is regarded in the medial position between organism and the environment, which is to say, in a uniquely relational position

Lobb 2000

Self

P001

The theory of self in Gestalt therapy is epistemologically based on the paradox of theorising the untheorisable, of grasping experience in its very transitoriness.^[iv] .  And the only route possible was phenomenology

Lobb 2000

Self

P001 – p002

The self is a function of the organism-environment field; it is the “experience of the field” of organism and environment^[v], it is the system of contacts at the boundary

McLeod 1993

Self

P025

The deepest Gestalt premise is that we create ourselves in our contact . . . our very psychological existence is dependent on relationship

McLeod 1993

Self

P025

We are the contact we make . . . it follows that self must be defined as contact

McLeod 1993

Self

P026

This concept [of self] is so significantly and so radically subversive of most psychological thinking that it has yet to be fully grasped and accepted, even by many Gestaltists. The concept is, in its simplest form, that self is contact

McLeod 1993

Self

P026

Gestalt asserts, rather, that humans at each moment are engaged in the creation and destruction of self . . . indeed, is always in the process of being created and destroyed

McLeod 1993

Self

P026

Self is, rather, part of the world of process and time, discoverable only as experience; discoverable, that is, only in contact

Perls 1957

Self

The self is that part of the field which is opposed to otherness

Perls 1957

Self

Self cannot be understood other than through the field

Perls 1957

Self

The self is to be found in the contrast with the otherness

Perls et al 1951

Self

P235

Let us call the “self” the system of contacts at any moment.  As such the self is flexibly various, for it varies with the dominant organic needs and the pressing environmental stimuli; it is the system of responses; …

Perls et al 1951

Self

P235

The self is the contact-boundary at work; its activity is forming figures and grounds.

Perls et al 1951

Self

P235

It [self] is only a small factor in the total organism/environment interaction, but it plays the crucial role of finding and making the meanings by which we grow.

Perls et al 1951

Self

P247

the self is the system of creative adjustment

Perls et al 1951

Self

P248

The self only finds and makes itself in the environment.^[4]

Perls et al 1951

Self

P315

“personality” is best taken as a formation of the self by a shared social attitude.

Perls et al 1951

Self

P315

…the self, as the system of excitement, orientation, manipulation, and various identifications and alienations, is always original and creative.

Perls et al 1951

Self

P367

The self is the system of contacts in the organism/environment field; and these contacts are the structured experience of the actual present situation.

Perls et al 1951

Self

P371

we consider the self as the function of contacting the actual transient present^[5]

Perls et al 1951

Self

P372

An organism preserves itself only by growing.  Self-preserving and growing are polar, …

Perls et al 1951

Self

P373

The complex system of contacts necessary for adjustment in the difficult field, we call ‘self’.

Perls et al 1951

Self

P373

Self may be regarded as at the boundary of the organism

Perls et al 1951

Self

P373

The self is not to be thought of as a fixed institution; it exists wherever and whenever there is in fact a boundary interaction.

Perls et al 1951

Self

P373

The complex system of contacts necessary for adjustment in the difficult field, we call “self”.^[6]

Perls et al 1951

Self

P374

… the self is the figure/background process in contact-situations^[7]

Perls et al 1951

Self

P374

In contact situations the self is the power that forms the gestalt in the field; or better, the self is the figure/background process in contact-situations.

Perls et al 1951

Self

P374

Self exists where there are the shifting boundaries of contact.

Perls et al 1951

Self

P378

As aspects of the self in a simple spontaneous act, Id, Ego, and Personality are the major stages of creative adjustment: the Id is the given background dissolving into its possibilities . . . The Ego is the progressive identification with and alienation of the possibilities, ... of the on-going contact.  The Personality is the created figure that the self becomes and assimilates ...

Perls et al 1951

Self

P427

In ideal circumstances the self does not have much personality.  It is the sage of Tao that is ‘like water’, assuming the form of the receptacle^[vi].

Perls et al 1951

Self

P427

In ideal circumstances the self does not have much personality.  It is the sage of Tao that is “like water”, assuming the form of the receptacle.

Where the self has much personality, we have seen, it is because either it carries with it many unfinished situations … or it has abdicated altogether and feels itself in the attitudes towards itself that it has introjeced.^[8]

Philippson

Self

P001

Its [self] primary characteristics are fluidity and relationship

Philippson

Self

P001

The concept of self . . . is my varied contacts with the world I live in, with otherness, rather than inner experience.

Philippson

Self

P031

Emergence of three interacting boundaries: the physical contact boundary, the self/other boundary (I and not-I), and the personality boundary (e and not-me)

Philippson

Self

P032

. . . the differentiation of ‘self’ and ‘other’ is achieved by the boundary process of identification and alienation

Philippson

Self

P036

The self is spontaneous and middle mode, swaying between the passive, receptive mode of id and the active, autonomous mode of ego

Wheeler 2000

Self

P175

We understand self to be an active process of meaningful field integration – making sense of experience as a ground for action, - with a recursive or continuously back and forth sequence of scan-evaluate-interpret-integrate-act^[9]

Wheeler 2003

Self

P185

Self is comprised of ‘elements of the field

Philippson

Self-actualisation

P009

The creation of selfhood out of interaction.^[vii]

Gestalt therapy explores the actualisation inherent in the self that is emerging in the present moment.

McLeod

Spontaneity

P34

Spontaneity is a matter of being fully engaged in the endless flow and return between id and ego

Philippson

Spontaneity

P035

equal cooperative effort between me and my environment, where there is no ‘doer’ and no ‘done to’ (or alternatively there is both).  This is the ‘middle mode’: neither active nor passive. The other name for this is spontaneity.

Perls et al 1951

Therapy

P015

What is essential is not that the therapist learn something about the patient and teach it to him, but that the therapist teach the patient how to learn about himself

Perls 1957

Unfinished Business

P001

If something happens which, through something non-self, comes about then we have the unfinished situation