3.3 Enacted: Presence in the Here and Now
The phenomenological tradition classifies human experience into a series of basic forms: self-experience, corporeality, spatiality, temporality, intersubjectiv ity and the lifeworld (Fuchs & Schmidsberger, 2024, p. 114). The present-day practice of therapeutic work takes its starting point in temporality: Gestalt therapy focuses on immediate experience rather than on its retrospective interpretation (Fogarty et al., 2020, p. 496).
Since its inception, Gestalt therapy has taken a clear stance: change does not occur through insight into past events, but through their tangible unfolding in the present moment (Perls, Hefferline & Goodman, 1951/2019). The reason lies in the organism itself: it exists exclusively in the present. Memories of yesterday and expectations of tomorrow only have an effect if they are present in the here and now (Lewin, 1963, cited in Votsmeier-Röhr & Wulf, 2024, p. 44; cf. Chapter 3.2). Yontef has succinctly summarised this connection to the present: the act of remembering takes place now, but what is remembered is not now. The act of becoming aware is always present, even if its content lies in the past (Yontef, 1993). The international consensus independently confirms this: ‘the act of remembering the past or anticipating the future occurs in the present’ (Fogarty et al., 2016, p. 37). However, this anchoring in the present does not mean that a person’s history is overlooked: everyone brings their own history with them as a pattern embodied in the body, and the space between the two also has its own history, as shown in section 3.2.
Gestalt therapy practice itself, however, warns against limiting oneself entirely to the here and now: what is emerging in the moment often only becomes understandable when it is related to the person’s life story (Wheeler, 1998, cited in Skottun & Krüger, 2022, p. 52 ff.). The therapist does not, however, bring this history into the session by explaining it, but by picking it up within the present experience. For Laura Perls, the actual experience does not need to be explained or interpreted: it can be directly contacted, felt and described in the here and now (‘directly contacted, felt and described in the here and now’, cited in Fogarty et al., 2016, p. 37).
In practice, the therapist repeatedly invites the client to demonstrate what they are talking about right now: as a physical gesture, as a current sensation, as a present-moment relationship with the therapist. Language is not devalued in this process, but is complemented by presence, sensation and action. Even an old story can be brought into the present by the therapist asking how it feels to tell it right now (Fogarty et al., 2016, p. 37).
Gestalt therapy is not a matter of talking things through: it aims at the present, physically tangible lived experience. The paradoxical theory of change (Beisser, 1970) explains why change is made possible by this approach. According to this, the aim of therapy is not to change, but to experience what is as fully as possible: ‘the focus of the therapy is not to change, but to embrace as fully as possible all aspects of an experience, by increasing awareness of that experience’ (Fogarty et al., 2016, p. 37). Change follows acceptance, not intention.Footnote 1 The designation as ‘paradoxical’ has recently been critically examined: Scheidl (2025, p. 42) demonstrates that Beisser’s theorem does not contain an actual contradiction, but rather describes a coherent principle of action: change, because of engagement with the present moment.
Perls, Hefferline and Goodman (1951/2019) described contact as a cyclical process: a need arises, takes shape, becomes a figure and finds its form in successful contact before receding back into the background. Originally, four stages were distinguished: pre-contact, initiation of contact, full contact and post-contact. The professional consensus continues to adhere to this structure to this day (Fogarty et al., 2016, p. 39).
Votsmeier-Röhr and Wulf (2024, pp. 89–91) expand on this structure in a comprehensive contact cycle model, distinguishing within it, for each contact domain, the ‘I–It’ relationship from the ‘I–You’ relationship (cf. Chapter 2.2): the same counterpart can be influenced in a purposeful manner or addressed with an interest free of specific purpose. Interpersonal contact thus always remains a mixture of contact with the inner image, the fantasy of the other (subject-object), and contact with the external, real other (subject-subject), which includes mutual recognition (Votsmeier-Röhr & Wulf, 2024, p. 91)
The cycle is a bodily, pre-linguistic process and begins long before anything is said. Fuchs (2023, pp. 108– . 109) describes its phenomenological foundation as a dynamic coupling, as an ongoing dialogue between the organism and the world: what a living being does alters its environment, and the altered environment triggers its next movement. Each individual phase can be interrupted, for example by the patterns of confluence or retroflection described in Chapter 3.2. In such cases, full contact is not achieved: the need fails to take shape, and the contact breaks off halfway (Fogarty et al., 2016, p. 39). The therapeutic question then is at which point the experience breaks off and how the therapist, through their own bodily presence (Chapter 3.1) within the shared field (Chapter 3.2), can gently make this point accessible again.
Drawing on Gestalt therapy work with couples, Feuerbach (2022) describes how this cycle can be physically navigated: in the tango-style walking together, known as ’El Caminar’, a complete contact cycle can be achieved in a single shared step forward (Feuerbach, 2022, p. 99). He breaks this step down into eight ideal-typical phases, ranging from ‘awareness’ to ‘gathering’ (Feuerbach, 2022, p. 98). He does not view the giving of impulses and the responding to them as active leading and passive following, but rather as equally autonomous, vital acts (Feuerbach, 2022, pp. 106–107). What the dancers thus learn from one another—the rhythm, the tension, the dynamics of the other—they come to know in a way that they ‘could not necessarily put into words, nor would they’ (Feuerbach, 2022, p. 108). Through the movement of two bodies, what Chapter 2.3 described as implicit relational knowledge becomes directly experiential.
Every organism responds to its situation independently and in a new way: Perls, Hefferline and Goodman (1951/2019) call this ‘creative adjustment’. In an encounter, two subjects respond to one another, and from their responses something emerges that neither of them could produce on their own. It is the self-generating dynamic introduced in Chapter 3.2 as horizontal circularity: it leads both to ‘unintended, surprising points’ (Fuchs, 2023, p. 177), a shared process of sense-making (participatory sense-making, De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007, cited in Fuchs, 2023, p. 177): meaning does not arise in a single mind, but through a shared process. The new emerges in the space between, not within either of the two subjects. The therapist cannot create it. They can only create the conditions under which it emerges.
This quality finds its clinical expression in the Gestalt therapeutic experiment. It emerges from the material that arises in the encounter itself and is jointly brought forth by the client and the therapist (Fogarty et al., 2016, p. 40): a gesture that is exaggerated or reversed, a bodily arrangement, a sentence that is allowed to be spoken. Crucially, the experimental attitude remains a process, ‘a process rather than a method or technique’ (Fogarty et al., 2016, p. 40). The fact that even the seemingly technical ‘empty chair’ is rooted in dialogue is confirmed by Staemmler’s praxeology, which is ‘expressis verbis embedded in a dialogical theory of the self underpinned by corporeal phenomenology’ (Fuchs & Schmidsberger, 2024, pp. 114–115).
An experiment is always risky and is adapted to the client’s resilience, ‘graded for risk and challenge’: the therapist probes and adjusts the intensity accordingly. At the same time, they are mindful that an experiment may cause shame or damage the relationship (Fogarty et al., 2016, p. 40). The resonance between therapist and client serves as the guiding principle for the experiment. Its outcome is open-ended, and it is precisely for this reason that something truly new can emerge: ’a fresh figure of clarity’, a new, clearer awareness (Fogarty et al., 2016, p. 40).
Yontef describes this openness as the foundation of dialogical contact:
’Dialogical contact begins with bringing one’s will to the limit; everything else requires the response and goodwill of the other. […]” (Yontef, 1999, p. 61, cited in Votsmeier-Röhr & Wulf, 2024, p. 183, abridged).
According to Wegscheider (2020, p. 83), open-mindedness and surprise form the basis of this experimental attitude. The consensus also confirms that this attitude permeates the entirety of Gestalt therapy work: “the whole of GT is experimenting — experimenting with contacting, presence, self-disclosure, embodiment, challenge, support” (Fogarty et al., 2016, p. 40).
Where this experimentation succeeds, a ‘moment of meeting’ can occur (cf. Chapter 2.3): a ‘now moment’ is not routinely glossed over, but is authentically embraced. It cannot be planned or brought about by technical means. The therapist must be prepared to allow themselves to be moved, rather than resorting to a familiar intervention. Their response then does not stem from calculation, but from that pre-reflexive bodily engagement described in Chapter 2.3 using the dance analogy (Fuchs, 2023). Fuchs himself refers to Stern’s ‘moments of presence’: turning points that lead both partners to a new stage in the relationship (Fuchs, 2023, p. 178, footnote 65).
A sustainable relationship, however, requires more than just one such moment. Only when successful contact is repeated across many encounters can the spiral dynamics, already alluded to in Chapter 3.2, fully unfold. Circular processes, extended to include the dimension of time, result in spirals (Fuchs, 2023, p. 178). Every interaction leaves physical traces, and the next interaction begins from an altered starting point. The cycle of contact is therefore not a closed circle that returns repeatedly to the same starting point, but a movement that continues over time.
Fuchs (2023, p. 179) explicitly states that ’particularly in the therapeutic context, positive spirals can also be generated, for example through the trusting therapeutic relationship itself’. In this way, a field grows between the therapist and the client that becomes deeper and more sustainable. The spiral must be sustained by both sides: the therapist, too, is affected. Without this mutual change, no spiral emerges, but merely repetition. What unfolds over time as a spiral corresponds to the mutual circularity described in Chapter 3.2 (Fuchs, 2023, p. 177).
Body (Chapter 3.1), field (Chapter 3.2) and presence (Chapter 3.3) are three perspectives on one and the same process. Fuchs and Schmidsberger (2024, p. 114) speak of approaches that ’pay particular attention to the embodied relational process in the here and now’. Gestalt therapy thrives precisely on this: healing does not occur through technique, but in the encounter, which deepens through successful contacts into the positive spiral. This spiral requires two physical subjects. The following chapter examines whether such an encounter is also possible with a counterpart without a body.