by Dan Bloom (Introduction by), Desmond J. Kennedy Phd (Author)
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'."
Author Biography
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 PhD 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.