Exploring Masculinity Sexuality and Culture in Gestalt Therapy

<p><em>Exploring Masculinity, Sexuality, and Culture in Gestalt Therapy</em> is an invitation to explore social and political issues within the psychotherapeutic framework. It describes and analyses the author’s journey of becoming a gestalt therapist in Poland and England through analyses of masculinity, sexuality, relationality, and culture.</p><p>This book addresses the collective gestalts exploring the psychotherapeutic taboos of sexual transference, same-sex attraction, use or lack of touch, gender equality, and inter-cultural conflicts. Each chapter is an exploration of prejudices embedded in our cultures and therapeutic work, and provides a theoretical challenge to current practices within gestalt therapy and beyond. The author advocates for a more collective understanding of embodied sensations emerging in the therapeutic context as collective gestalts. </p><p>Through the use of autoethnographic research methodology, this book shows how personal embodied experiences are intertwined with the social, political, and material context. It is essential reading for gestalt therapists, as well as readers interested in gestalt approaches.</p> <p>1. Welcome 2. Defining the collective gestalt: what I have learned from large groups 3. Masculinity and male sexuality: how did my teenage years shape the man that I am becoming? 4. Embodiment of heteronormativity: building the field for addressing collective gestalts 5. (Un)related bodies: collective gestalts that shape gestalt training 6. Philosophies that inspired this book 7. Culture as ground; personal becoming as figure: autoethnography and gestalt therapy 8. Conclusion </p>