Erving Polster - Enchantment and Gestalt Therapy: Partners in Exploring Life

Enchantment and Gestalt Therapy is a personal exploration of Erving Polsters remarkable career, the value of the Gestalt approach, and the power of enchantment in psychotherapy.

Polster points ahead to a vision of a psychotherapy that includes the population as a whole rather than focusing on individuals, highlights common aspects of living, and focuses on creating an ethos for a shared understanding. The book outlines the six Gestalt therapy concepts that have formed the basis of Polsters work and describes Life Focus Groups, with an emphasis on the communal relationship between tellers and listeners. Polster also describes the phenomenon of enchantment in psychotherapy in detail, with reference to his own experiences.

This unique work is essential reading for Gestalt therapists, other professionals interested in Gestalt approaches, and readers looking for a deeper insight into community and connection.

Erving Polster is a veteran teacher of Gestalt therapy and the author of several books. His major interests have long been the transformation of psychotherapy as a curative process into psychotherapy as a communal source of orientation and guidance.

What a remarkable display of insightful revelation, historical narrative, personal evolution, and creative vision! With the beautiful language of a poet and the humility of an enlightened spirit guide, Erving Polster gives readers the gift of a wisdom nearly a century in the making. Reading, no savoring, this book provided an extraordinary opportunity to get to know the man and share his passion for catalyzing personal growth. Polster is one of this fields greatest treasures, and when you read Enchantment and Gestalt Therapy youll know why.

Michael D. Yapko, clinical psychologist, author of Trancework (5th ed.)

From his earliest writings, Polster has argued that psychotherapy, more explicitly the Gestalt approach, is too important to be confined to patients and the psychotherapists office. In this delightful, thought provoking, and wonderfully written book, he contends that it is the telling of ordinary stories in group settings that is essential to forming cohesive societies. Using Gestalt principles and drawing from the fields of religion, music, poetry and literature, Polster deconstructs and elucidates the mysterious process of generating communal intimacy. As with his other books, this one will enchant you.

Joseph Melnick, Founding Editor, Gestalt Review

Erving Polster re-conceives psychotherapy not just as a cure for symptoms or a return to normality, but as a path to a life of absorbing fascination and fulfillment. No one makes better use of Gestalt therapys teaching that a sharpened awareness of ones present situation is the key to wellbeing. Polster thoroughly persuades us through a mix of theory, example, and memoir how such awareness, especially in relationships with others, can amplify even the most ordinary passing moment into a stepping-stone to enchantment.

Michael Vincent Miller, author of Intimate Terrorism: The Crisis of Love in an Age of Disillusion and Teaching a Paranoid to Flirt: The Poetics of Gestalt Therapy

The Istituto di Gestalt series of Gestalt therapy books emerges from the ground of a growing interest in theory, research and clinical practice in the Gestalt community. The members of the Scientific and Editorial Boards have been committed for many years to the process of supporting research and publications in our field: through this series we want to offer our colleagues internationally the richness of the current trends in Gestalt therapy theory and practice, underpinned by research. The goal of this series is to develop the original principles in hermeneutic terms: to articulate a relational perspective, namely a phenomenological, aesthetic, field-oriented approach to psychotherapy. It is also intended to help professions and to support a solid development and dialogue of Gestalt therapy with other psychotherapeutic methods.

The series includes original books specifically created for it, as well as translations of volumes originally published in other languages. We hope that our editorial effort will support the growth of the Gestalt therapy community; a dialogue with other modalities and disciplines; and new developments in research, clinics and other fields where Gestalt therapy theory can be applied (e.g., organizations, education, political and social critique and movements).

We would like to dedicate this Gestalt Therapy Book Series to all our masters and colleagues who have sown fruitful seeds in our minds and hearts.

Scientific Board

Vincent Bja, Dan Bloom, Bernd Bocian, Phil Brownell, Pietro A. Cavaleri, Scott Churchill, Michael Clemmens, Peter Cole, Susan L. Fischer, Madeleine Fogarty, Ruella Frank, Pablo Herrera Salinas, Lynne Jacobs, Natasha Kedrova, Timothy Leung, Alan Meara, Joseph Melnick, Myriam Muoz Polit, Antonio Narzisi, Leanne OShea, Malcolm Parlett, Peter Philippson, Erving Polster, Jean-Marie Robine, Jan Roubal, Adriana Schnake, Peter Schulthess, Christine Stevens, Daan van Baalen, Carmen Vzquez Bandn, Gordon Wheeler, Gary Yontef

Editorial Board

Rafael Salgado, Billy Desmond, Fabiola Maggio, Max Mishchenko, Georg Pernter, Silvia Tosi, Jay Tropianskaia, Andy Williams, Jelena Zeleskov Djoric

Coordinators

Jeff Allison and Stefania Benini

Editorial Assistant

Serena Iacono Isidoro

General Editor

Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb

Series editor: Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb

Enchantment and Gestalt Therapy

Partners in Exploring Life

Erving Polster

Sexuality, Masculinity and Culture in Gestalt Therapy

An Autoethnographic Approach

Adam Kincel

Human Interaction and Emotional Awareness in Gestalt Therapy

Exploring the Phenomenology of Contacting and Feeling

Peter H. Dreitzel

For more information on the titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/Gestalt-Therapy/book-series/GESTHE and www.gestaltitaly.com

Enchantment and Gestalt
Therapy

Partners in Exploring Life

Erving Polster

First published 2021

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2021 Erving Polster

The right of Erving Polster to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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