Contemporary gestalt: The application of key principles to grief work

Whilst there has been relatively little written on the specific subject of grief work from a gestalt perspective, the model of the Awareness Cycle can be usefully applied to this work. This model, essentially process-focused, provides a way of conceptualizing the tasks necessary to grief work. The key principles of phenomenology, relational practice and contextualism, or field theory, are then explored in terms of their specific application to working with grief.

I do not think it is possible to be a therapist and not deal with issues of grief. Of course there are the more obvious issues that we associate with grief work, but grief has a more subtle edge and pervades our work in the ordinary and everyday losses that come with unmet needs. It is there in regret, present in the letting go of things hoped for and in the recognition of possibilities lost.

For this reason, perhaps more than any other, it is remarkable and not a little. disturbing that so little has been written about grief from a Gestalt perspective.