Relational Gestalt Therapy (RGT) supports people to become vital, healthy, and connected. Isolation is a main cause of human suffering and mental illness. RGT supports a transformation of isolated individuals into relational beings that are skilled for better connection. We build capacity for awareness, allowing people to be more receptive to their own needs, the experience of others, and the world. With the support of therapy, we can build better relationships, families, and communities and improve mental health.
Relational Gestalt Therapy draws on rich philosophical traditions that support direct engagement with life as it is lived. It moves us away from broad categorisations and simplifications of human experience that end up being pathologising or otherwise amplify individual blame and shame.
It offers a compassionate understanding of human existence (including illness and suffering) and ways to support choice, vitality, and health for all.
What is Relational Gestalt Therapy?
The main proposition underlying Relational Gestalt Therapy (RGT) is that human experience is best understood holistically, by exploring the inextricable connection between notions of self, other and environment.
Fred Rossi, Faculty Member, Gestalt Therapy Australia
Fred Rossi, Faculty Member, Gestalt Therapy Australia
How Gestalt can help
Gestalt offers a view of human experience that is generous, creative, and kind. It holds that the key to living well and relating well is available by coming to accept ‘what is’ and being empowered to reject old stories that lead to shame and ideas of striving for imposed change. In this RGT stands against a medicalised culture of generalisations and characterisations of people, that ignore their situations and pathologises isolation and disconnection. In that space, RGT honours emergent possibilities and flow.
The gestalt practitioner starts in the here-and-now, feeling deeply into the situation bringing their whole being to the task. In this way they develop a capacity of personal presence that supports vitality, health and choice for all they work with.
The gestalt practitioner starts in the here-and-now, feeling deeply into the situation bringing their whole being to the task. In this way they develop a capacity of personal presence that supports vitality, health and choice for all they work with.