The GIT’s Newsletter is back! Since our beginnings in 1973, the GIT has worked to create a community and resource for Gestaltists in Toronto/Canada. The newsletter has been an integral part of this community for decades and we are very excited to be bringing it back from it’s slumber. The Spring/Summer 2025 Edition will be […]
Four decades from the rebellious 60’s, we have learned from neuroscience, the close companion of Gestalt, that it is impossible to do, think, feel anything without impact on others and that what I do, think and feel is born of the impact of others on me. We share this world, this field, in the same way that fish share the waters, or pairs of children share the teeter totter, or dancers share the music and the beat.
Did you ever wonder why we become so dramatic when we are sharing our feelings? What we do with our emotions has a lot to do with the degree to which we failed to receive support or acknowledgment of our suffering. It is paradoxical that the bigger the drama the less we are able to feel our own suffering and the more our ability to be comforted by others is diminished.
My former colleague JoAnne Greenham used to say that some of us were born with a clown in their head. In this way we recognize one another — one of us puts on a rubber clown nose in the middle of an argument and the other stops arguing to guffaw.
One of the values of our training at the GIT is a sense of humour, and this seems to be a rare commodity – bestowed by genes and circumstance on some and forbidden to others.
When I was a child (a million years ago) there was a television commercial for aspirin. It showed a mother taking a stress break from her day by taking an aspirin and lying down on a cot in blissful serenity. Even then I knew that what she really needed was a break and the aspirin was the excuse to take one. Now I and everyone I know live in a world where stress is the norm. I can’t remember the last time I took a simple lie down in the middle of the day (as compared to a crash after overwhelm).