Gestalt theoretical psychotherapy is a method of psychotherapy based strictly on Gestalt psychology. It was developed by the German Gestalt psychologist and psychotherapist Hans-Jürgen P. Walter and his colleagues in Germany and Austria.
One of the most striking characteristics of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy is the key role of the epistemological grounding position of Gestalt theory (critical realism) and its applicability to the fundamental, theoretical and practical problems in psychotherapy. In Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy this is closely bound up with the basic methodological approach (holistic, phenomenological, experimental) of Gestalt theory, its system theoretical approach, and its specific psychophysical and psychological approach.
Gestalt theoretical psychotherapy is related to but different from Fritz Perls' Gestalt therapy in its theoretical foundation. Many Gestalt psychology experts have pointed out the differences between Gestalt theory in its original sense and the Perls'ian understanding of Gestalt.
Famous quotes containing the word theoretical:
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)