Insights from psychoanalytic self-psychology and intersubjectivity theory for gestalt therapists

This paper will examine gestalt therapy in light of clinical and theoretical insights from self psychology and intersubjectivity theory. These theories have stirred a great deal of controversy in the psychoanalytic community, and many practitioners claim that either one or both of the theories has revolutionized their approach to treatment. The theories challenge basic assumptions of psychoanalysis, and through these challenges, are moving psychoanalysis closer to humanism. Since gestalt therapy was born in part as a humanistic critique of psychoanalysis, insights from these theories offer a chance both to enrich our current clinical theory, and to stretch our own concepts to take into account psychoanalytic perspectives which have emerged since the basic concepts of gestalt therapy theory were articulated. Any new theory brings with it a new way of understanding clinical phenomena. Self psychology and intersubjectivity theory offer clinical insights which any psychotherapeutic school might use. For instance, after one understands the concept of selfobject functions and selfobject relatedness, one never views clinical material in quite the same way again. I see self psychology and intersubjectivity theory influencing gestalt therapy mainly in two areas. They reinforce and enrich our developmental perspective on psychopathology and therapy, and they enrich our understanding of contacting, its phenomenology, its psychic function, and its vicissitudes in the therapy process. Assimilating the newer psychoanalytic constructs may encourage a shift in emphases in gestalt therapy, moving us to focus on some of the less developed aspects of our theory