Summary As an introduction to this issue, the article substantiates the possibility and meaningfulness of a coherent theoretical system for psychotherapy, as it is strived for in Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy and presented in several articles in this issue. The necessity of consistency in the theoretical assumptions and concepts of a psychotherapy method is not derived from scientific considerations alone, but already arises from the elementary role of consistency in human life. This also results in the requirements for the consistency of theoretical foundations of psychotherapy. It is not fulfilled in a mere internal, logical consistency of its models, but only in the actual fitting together with the critical-phenomenal and naive-phenomenal worlds of the therapists and their clients (in interaction with their “naive psychologies”) in the reality test of life.

Summary The present work focuses on the transformations of the psychotherapeutic field through the relationship dynamics which occur within it. The first part of this article starts with a brief outline of the Gestalt psychological understanding of the field concept, also in its application to the psychotherapeutic situation, followed by a brief review of the introduction of the field concept into the psychoanalytic theory formation. After this, the first author first presents the theoretical concept underlying a new approach he has developed for observing the relationship dynamics in psychotherapy. Mirroring a formation of both psychoanalytic and Gestalt theory of the main author, this new approach is based on the combination of psychoanalytic and Gestalt psychological concepts. According to the clinical experience and insights of the author, the phenomenological and relational approach of Gestalt theory fits well with the psychoanalytic approach; on this basis, a criterion for recording the progress of therapy can be developed. This criterion is the phenomenology of the development of the qualities of the relationships of the client, as they become visible in his dream narrations and the subsequent associations in the analysis room and continue to develop during the session and the further course of therapy. The relationship dynamics in the dream narration is thus compared with those which develop in the course of the subsequent associations. This is demonstrated and further elaborated in the second part of this article on the basis of a clinical case. The clinical example shows how the relationship dynamics develop in this sense in the individual therapy sessions and over a longer course of therapy. The associated transformations of the therapeutic field give a good indication of the progress of therapy. The main author gained such insights into the transformations of the therapeutic field and the progression of therapy, which are visible in the course of therapy, from the careful application of the criterion “MDAC of relational dynamics”. In the specific case, there was also a high degree of correspondence between the results of the application of this phenomenological criterion and the empirical evidence of the symptom questionnaire, a self-report measure requested by the patient himself during the course of the therapy.

Summary In 1915 the Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin describes in his famous work on figure-ground perception, the phenomenon that when you look attentively at a picture, a second, virtual ego arises, breaking away from the viewer-ego to wander around in the picture along the contours of the depicted. In 1982, German Gestalt psychologist Edwin Rausch expanded this observation of the emergence of a second phenomenal ego to the conclusion that not only does a second phenomenal ego emerge, but with it a second phenomenal total field, ie a second phenomenal world with its own phenomenal ego and an own phenomenal environment of this ego. Several years ago, I proposed a multi-field-approach in psychotherapy building on this research. This approach involves three levels: First, the level of phenomenological observation and psychological analysis of the conditions that determine the formation of such a second total field (and even further total fields), regardless of whether this occurs spontaneously or intentionally or as a result of external influences. Second, the level of explanation of various psychic processes, which in the field of psychotherapy have been explained so far mainly on the basis of depth psychology, and the conceptualization of the therapeutic situation and therapeutic processes from a Gestalt psychological perspective. Third, finally, the level of practical application of such insights on the development of appropriate procedures and interventions that can promote or defer the emergence of such second or multiple fields in psychotherapy. The present article introduces the multi-field approach, especially at the first level, and refers to research and discussion on mind wandering, imagining, daydreaming and dissociation.

College bei Kurt Koffka studiert. Nachdem aber Koffka noch im selben Jahr gestorben war, wechselte sie für die beiden Folgejahre an die Graduate Faculty der New School for Social Research, wo sie bei Max Wertheimer ihre Master-Arbeit zum Thema "Memória das Formas" / "Memory of Forms" ausarbeitete. Engelmann fand in Cabral eine überzeugte und überzeugende Mentorin für seine Beheimatung in der Ideenwelt und Methodik der Gestalttheorie.

Summary The paper presents basic Gestalt theoretical concepts of ego and self. They differ from other concepts in the way that they do not comprehend ego and self as fixed entities or as central controlling instances of the psyche, but as one specific organized unit in a psychological field in dynamic interrelation with the other organized units—the environment units—of this field. On this theme, well-known representatives of Gestalt theory have presented some general and special theories since the early days of this approach that could partly be substantiated experimentally. They illuminate the relationship between ego and world in everyday life as well as in the case of mental disorders. Not only the spatial extension of the phenomenal ego is subject to situational changes, but also its place in the world, its functional fitting in this world, its internal differentiation, its permeability to the environment, and much more. The German Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Metzger emphasizes the significant functional role that this dynamic plasticity of the phenomenal world and its continuously changing segregation of ego and environment have for human life by designating the phenomenal world as a “Central Steering Mechanism.” In this article, ego and self as part of this field in their interrelation with the total psychological field will be illuminated from the perspective of the thinking of the Gestalt psychologists Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Lewin, Wolfgang Metzger, Mary Henle, Edwin Rausch, and Giuseppe Galli.

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Since 1993 the Austrian Federal-Hospital-Law demands the guarantee of adequate psychotherapeutic and clinical psychological care in Austrian hospitals. The target of the present survey was to explore the extent of realisation of this demand concerning the psychotherapeutic care in the General Hospital of Vienna (AKH). 125 of the 128 employees with psychotherapeutic qualifications were interviewed. The considerable number of psychotherapeutically qualified employees cannot obscure the fact that inadequate structural preconditions impede a satisfying care. These are: most of the interviewed persons have been employed because of other vocational qualifications (medical doctors, psychologists etc.). Therefore they can only use a very limited part of their worktime on psychotherapeutic interventions. Deficits of spatial and temporal resources could be detected as well as unclear vocational characteristics and qualification requirements. These deficits point out the necessity of developing professionally founded organisation structures, which enable well aimed networking and an optimal usage of resources.

Galli passed away on May 1 this year. With her death, the international scientific community loses an uncommonly committed, versatile, and open-minded personality in research and teaching in developmental psychology and educational psychology. With her death, the Society for Gestalt Theory and its Applications lose a lovable colleague and supporter, one of its honorary members, one of the most important representatives of Gestalt theory in Italy. Anna Arfelli was born in Ravenna on September 9 th , 1933. During her school years, she had already got to know and love Giuseppe Galli, with whom she should be connected in a lifelong partnership in personal and scientific life. In 1957, she earned her doctorate summa cum laude in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Bologna. Her dissertation was already dedicated to a developmental psychological topic, "The reaction of the infant's smiling." The supervisor of this dissertation was Professor Renzo Canestrari, known as the founder of the Bologna School of Gestalt Psychology, who familiarized her (as well as her husband Giuseppe Galli and others) with Gestalt psychology. In 1960, she completed her specialist training in Medicine in what were then known as "nervous and mental diseases" with a dissertation on behavioral disorders in adolescence. This was followed by several years of intensive clinical and GESTALT THEORY,