The Journal
The New Gestalt Voices Journal was launched in 2017 to challenge the narcissism of academic publishing, and offer an alternative model whereby the ‘field’ speaks through its less heard from voices.
Its aims are to support people who have not written in a gestalt journal to find their voice, gain practice in the field of publishing and editing to broaden the published repertoire of gestalt literature - including prose, poetry, visual art, and spoken word, offering an alternative to academic writing.
The journal accepts submissions from anyone. We can provide support to shape and edit what you want to say. We have published to date in English, and we can usually help with translation. We are open to non-English articles and requests to create special editions, and to guest edit.
We sometimes publish occasional papers.
The journal is available free to download and back copies of the journal are available here. We appreciate donations.
Edition 8 | June 2024
CONTENTS
This Special Edition started as a curiosity where direct references to love in gestalt writing felt absent yet present, ‘taboo’ yet reaching to be spoken out. It felt risky and raw, courageous and vulnerable to step into this ‘experiment’of calling ‘love’ in. Yet ‘we’, the editorial team for this edition – Anne, Helen, Liz and Dawn, had energy to explore this rawness in all its diversity, difficulty and difference. As the topic 'love' rarely has a platform, we particularly welcomed contributions from voices that also do not usually have a platformed publishable space, especially those with minoritised or counter-cultural perspectives within therapy.
The response to the call was extraordinary bodying forth lived experience of love in practice, supervision and training. In the spirit of gestalt, of holism, creativity, experiment and inclusion, we invited contributors to let their expressions of love in therapy flow across a range of tempos, styles and modes of presentation. There are many languages of love and this edition presents and live-links - music, poems, images, stories and videos alongside more traditional written articles and research, not privileging one form over another.
In many ways this process has been a liberatory practice and queering experiment illuminating the unspoken inbetweens of love and oppression. And as NGV’s Lena endorses, speaking from the field of war, when ‘love appears and hope is absent it often becomes the only resource able to heal wounds at least for a moment’.
Climate Change Manifesto
CONTENTS
The ultimate cause of unsustainable economies that lead to climate change is to be found in our “desensitisation” from the realm of the body, and our connection with the earth (Gaia) that supports us. Economic ‘laws’ and ‘models’ do not describe “reality”, instead they support our desensitisation (‘out of touch-ness’) from our world. These are arguments that are also made by modern day sociologists such as Bruno Latour, and Harmut Rosa.
We believe the answer to climate emergency will come from a rapid raising of the “collective consciousness” – a re-sensitising to our connections with each other and with our planet. The Covid 19 crisis has shown an example of how our planet can “bite back”, making itself felt at the level of our sensate awareness, and economic decision making. Collectively we have the choice to respond by moving in the direction of an “economics of our bodies and our hearts” (what Latour calls our ‘first nature’), letting go of an illusory idea of an ‘economic system’ that puts us on collision course with the planet. Such a move can only come as a result of collective process that supports people to “get back in touch” and may involve experiments in different forms of valuing and economically supporting each other, and transformation at all levels of community, business, and polity.
Edition 7 | January 2021
CONTENTS
Gestalt & Capitlism: Thoughts in Times of Pandemic
Qualitative Research in Practice, Scar Tissue, How Addiction Can be Trauma’s Manifestation
The Power of Creativity in Gestalt Therapy
Finding a Voice: in the School System
Power & Position: is it Time to Moderate Gestalt’s Phenomenological Imperialism in Favour of a More ‘Field Humble’ View of Self?
Agoratherapy: Bringing Gestalt into the Squares
A Gestalt Practitioner-Theorist Reflects on Recent Dynamics of our Co-created Field
Life on Earth
Generational Split - Passing the Torch
Curating an Expression of Relational Gestalt Therapy
Edition 6 | July 2020
CONTENTS
Diversity Integration ‘Manifesto’
Working with Racial oppression in Gestalt Therapy
The New Phenomenology
The Pilgrim Reaper
Against Therapy
De-centring the Subject Even More
Can I have Some Bread? From Pterodactyls to Gestalt
The Ethical Burn For a Beginner Researcher
Chem Sex as a Therapist
Leadership is Dead
Review of Erving Polster’s: Beyond Therapy
Igniting Life Focus Commnuity Movements
Edition 5 | July 2019
CONTENTS
Research Bursary 2019/20
Gestalt in the Hot Seat
The Shame of the Fox
Evolutionaty Grounds for Gestalt Therapy
Pain to Beauty
To Become a Gestalt Therapist Within a Group
From Burnout to the Fertile Void
The Art of Doing Nothing
Teach a Man to Fish
The Present Moment
Edition 4 | January 2019
CONTENTS
Call for Chapter Proposals
Collision and Other Forms of Love
Eros as Movement Towards the Other
Musings of a Gestalt Trainee
Journey to the Edge of Myself
Staying with Nothingness to Enter Fullness
They Left Their Home and Hearth
Gestalt Therapy as a Process of Liberation
Edition 3 | July 2018
CONTENTS
The Elephant in the Room
Being in the Field
A Team Coach About to go Rog
Lunch as a small gestalt session
Shame: Approaching This Crippling Experience Through the Psychotherapeutic Lens of Gestalt
X - Ján Ballx
Nekrasota (unbeauty)
Pushing Back at the Contact Boundary
UKAGP Conference Report
Research Bursary Award
Problem Page
Edition 2 | January 2018
CONTENTS
When the Therapist Falls
The Voice in Psychtherapy
Coming Out in Appreciation
Being Present as a Trader
Bite-size Gestalt Therapy
Threads Home
In Defense of Being a Jerk
Staying With Ubiquitous Shame
A Discourse on Accessibility in Gestalt Psychotherapy
The Presence of God and the Pneumenal Field in Gestalt Therapy
Book Review
Problem Page
Edition 1 | July 2017
Edition 1 | July 2017
CONTENTS
Experiences at the Relational Growing Edge
Metaphors in Play
Religion & Gestalt: Walking the Zone
Pushing into the Silence: A personal Exploration of Master/Slave Sexualities and Gestalt
My Way, or my Thoughts About Choice
Clouds: Reflections on the Impact of War
Eating as Emotional Language
Another Purpose to Branding