The philosopher Martin Buber (1970) distinguished between two fundamental modes of relating: “I-it” relating, where the other is seen as an object to be used or analysed; and “I-thou” relating, where the other is seen in their wholeness. For gestalt therapists, dialogic relating involves the capacity to enter I-thou moments marked by presence and mutuality. 

One of gestalt therapy’s hallmarks is its emphasis on moment-to-moment feelings, sensations, thoughts, and behaviours. This emphasis on the here-and-now does not mean that gestalt therapists view the past and future as unimportant. On the contrary, they see the past as ever-present in clients’ experience as memories, habits, and embodied responses, and the future as existing in clients’ expectations, hopes and fears.

Gestalt therapy is underpinned by phenomenology, which is a philosophy developed by thinkers such as Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Martin Heidegger. For gestalt therapists, phenomenological practice means staying as close to clients’ actual lived experience as possible, as opposed to interpreting or explaining their experience.     

From its beginnings, gestalt therapy has focused on “contact”, which is the process by which people move towards, interact with, and withdraw from their environment. Gestalt therapists help their clients develop awareness of their habitual ways of making contact, experiment with novel forms of contact, and adopt more flexible and intentional ways of relating to themselves, others, and their life situations. 

Gestalt therapy’s initial popularity had much to do with Fritz Perls’ dramatic demonstrations of certain experimental techniques, including the “the empty chair” and dreamwork. While gestalt therapy is no longer so closely associated with any particular methods of experimentation, an experimental attitude remains central. Gestalt therapists see therapy as an intrinsically creative process, one that harnesses imagination, curiosity, intuition, and artistry.