Gestalt Therapy and Human Nature

About the Book

No book about Gestalt therapy, or probably any kind of psychotherapy for that matter, has talked about anthropology, ethnology, and cross-species comparison (including vampire bats, ground squirrels, Florida scrub jays, and chimpanzees) as though they were relevant to the enterprise.  And, there have been only a few books that have described how Evolutionary Psychology should begin to change the way we conceive of psychotherapy, mental health, and psychopathology.  This book treads on relatively new ground for both psychotherapists and Darwinists.

Therapists, especially so-called Humanistic therapists, which include Gestalt therapists, will find many of their standard assumptions, about human behavior and life in general, challenged.  For example, the teleological view that life has purpose toward perfection cannot possibly be true.  This does not mean that humans can’t strive for some kind of ideal.  Indeed we should and we do.  But evolution tells us why this is difficult and why our hopes cannot be pinned on assumptions of innate “goodness.”  We need to understand what humans are really up to in order to achieve a social order that is, well, “civilized.”  This fact is most clearly exemplified by male-female relationships, which have hardly yielded at all to efforts to eradicate rape and violence, the double standard, and egregious misreading – even through the centuries.  This book dares to explore and seek that understanding.

About the Author

John Wymore, M.A. thought he knew what it was all about when he discovered cultural anthropology.  He was sure that it held all the secrets.  Instead of committing to graduate school in anthropology, however, he entered the Gestalt Institute of New England – convinced that Human Potential Movement was what it was all about.  That led to encounters with new-aged mysticism, shamanism, and tantric Buddhism.  Meanwhile he lived with 5 women, married three of them, had a child with one.  That wised him up – maybe a little.

            Then there were other forces in his life:  childhood on an Iowa farm, adolescence in the Florida swamps, high school and college in California when it was still golden, and a subscription to Natural History magazine.  All that plus a father who nurtured his son’s curiosity about the natural world.

            After twenty-five years’ practice as a psychotherapist, he still didn’t get it.  He probably wasn’t even aware of what he wasn’t getting.  Then he discovered the modern implication of Darwinian theory.  He had not ruminated much about Sociobiology: E. O. Wilson’s seminal work that appeared in 1976.  But by the time it had morphed into Evolutionary Psychology, the meaning had begun to dawn on him and much of what he had been taught about human psychology seemed wrong.  “Finally”, said he.  “I’ve got it.”

            John’s excitement and conviction began to annoy his friends and colleagues. “Well, that’s your opinion”, they would say; or “That’s just theory.”  Which, of course annoyed him.  After all it wasn’t his opinion.  He had studied diligently and what he was saying were conclusions based on the research of world-renowned scholars.  Furthermore, hardly any of his critics knew what a scientific theory was.  So he said to himself, “I’ll show ‘em.  I’ll write a book.”

About the book     (280 words)

No book about Gestalt therapy, or probably any kind of psychotherapy for that matter, has talked about anthropology, ethnology, and cross-species comparison (including vampire bats, ground squirrels, Florida scrub jays, and chimpanzees) as though they were relevant to the enterprise.  And, there have been only a few books that have described how Evolutionary Psychology should begin to change the way we conceive of psychotherapy, mental health, and psychopathology.  This book treads on relatively new ground for both psychotherapists and Darwinists.

Therapists, especially so-called Humanistic therapists, which include Gestalt therapists, will find many of their standard assumptions, about human behavior and life in general, challenged.  For example, the teleological view that life has purpose toward perfection cannot possibly be true.  This does not mean that humans can’t strive for some kind of ideal.  Indeed we should and we do.  But evolution tells us why this is difficult and why our hopes cannot be pinned on assumptions of innate “goodness.”  We need to understand what humans are really up to in order to achieve a social order that is, well, “civilized.”  This fact is most clearly exemplified by male-female relationships, which have hardly yielded at all to efforts to eradicate rape and violence, the double standard, and egregious misreading – even through the centuries.  This book dares to explore and seek that understanding.

This book should make Gestalt therapy, and its training methods, attractive to students who are looking for something beyond their graduate school experience to prepare them for the psychotherapy profession in the 21st century.  The author recounts some of his experience in residential training and shows why that be preserved as a central feature in the development of Gestalt therapists.