Gestalt Therapy

Not insight — contact

Most therapy asks: why am I like this? Gestalt asks something different: what is happening right now? Not as a deflection from history, but as a recognition that the past doesn't live in the past — it lives in how we breathe, how we hold tension, how we make or avoid contact with others. The past is always present, and it can be worked with directly in the room.

Gestalt therapy was developed by Fritz Perls in the mid-twentieth century, drawing on phenomenology, existentialism, and field theory. The approach Sebastian practices is rooted in Claudio Naranjo's Gestalt Viva tradition — a deepening of classical Gestalt that integrates the Enneagram of personality, Eastern contemplative practice, and a genuine invitation toward what Naranjo called the Dionysian: aliveness, spontaneity, and the capacity to be fully present without the mediation of character.

The Enneagram as a map

The Enneagram describes nine core character structures — each organized around a different early wound, a different strategy for navigating a world that felt unsafe or insufficient. In Naranjo's hands, it is not a personality typology but a map of suffering: showing us the specific way we have contracted around a core hurt and built an identity on top of it.

Understanding your type isn't the goal — it's the doorway. What lies behind the character structure, when it begins to soften, is what Gestalt is oriented toward: a more direct, less defended way of being in the world, in relationship, and in your own body.

"The goal of Gestalt is not to feel better. It's to become more real."

What this looks like in session

Gestalt sessions are active. Rather than reconstructing the past through narrative, we explore what is alive in the present moment — a tension in the shoulders, a sentence left unfinished, a feeling that wants to move but doesn't. The therapist might invite an experiment: speak directly to the empty chair, finish that sentence, notice what happens in your body when you say that.

This is not performance or catharsis for its own sake. The experiments arise organically from what is present and are always in service of awareness — of seeing more clearly how you move through your life, what you avoid, what you reach toward, and what becomes possible when character loosens its grip.

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