Looking back: Reflections on research

When I co-founded Gestalt Review with Edwin Nevis nearly twenty years ago, one of our primary foci was to encourage more research by Gestalt-oriented professionals. In order to do so we published four issues per year, and we used a blind peer review process to make our journal more attractive to academics for whom tenure and pay are dependent on publishing in journals with this format. We also had a section of each issue dedicated to research (overseen by Professors Ansel Woldt of Kent State University and Iris Fodor of New York University). Despite our best efforts, we were unable to generate enough submissions to keep this section alive. I am now very pleased by the proliferation of Gestalt-based research, the support our approach is receiving from neurological exploration, and the acknowledgement from thought-based approaches that emotions, awareness, and relationship matter deeply. However, there is one other area that I believe has been neglected and might add support to the Gestalt method as a research supported approach to psychotherapy. This involves a looking back and reinterpretation of past research through a Gestalt lens. I would like to do this in the remainder of this chapter using two of my own research projects as examples. But first, I would like to provide a little background.