This book tracks a particular understanding of self, philosophically, from research evidence and its implications for psychotherapy. At each step, the author includes the theory, the clinical implications of the theory, links to the philosophical outlook inherent in the theory, and finally a more extended case example.

Philipsson takes the view that the continuing self is partly an illusion, partly a construct, and that we in fact have to work to stay the same in the face of all the different possibilities the world offers us. He believes that we do this for two reasons. First,...

There has been a renewed interest in the last ten years in the underpinnings - theoretical, philosophical, and historical - of the Gestalt approach. Often in the past, these have been lost in oversimplified versions of the therapy. The author's aim in his writings has been to provide a full and coherent account of Gestalt theory, and to emphasize our links to our therapeutic and philosophical heritage, particularly psychoanalysis and existentialism. His theme is a field-relational theory of self as the centrepiece of the approach, and how this has been placed within a structure that is still...