This work is an attempt to root Gestalt therapy - its theory and practice, in the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961).
It is not an attempt to fix this wonderfully versatile therapy in concrete or to subtract anything of its existential openness from it, but to give it a foundation and a philosophical framework from which it can operate and develop.
Its point of departure is the wonderful, even awesome, gratuity of one's being: 'I am given to myself'.
About the Author Des Kennedy is a Gestalt Therapist in private practice in the Wirral.
He has a particular interest in the influence of post-modern philosophy and neuro-science on Gestalt Therapy.
He brings to his study of Gestalt Therapy the foundational insights of Maurice Merleau-Ponty 1908-1961, whose writings have since become the main focus of studies relating phenomenology and psychotherapy.
In 2003 he was awarded a Ph D for his thesis on the Application of the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty to Gestalt therapy theory.
Over the years he has published several articles on this subject in the British Gestalt Journal.
Createspace Independent Publishing Platform Healing perception: an application of the philosophy of merleau-ponty to the theoretical structures of dialogic psychotherapy., paperback/dan bloom
