How/can Gestalt therapy promote liberation from anti-Black racism?

Abstract

Abstract: Anti-Black racism is an interruption of contact that often takes place out of awareness, and is continuously enacted through innumerable fixed gestalts at every level of human experience. Gestalt therapy as a movement does not leverage its great potential for undoing fixed gestalts of anti-Black racism, or supporting fluid gestalts of racial liberation; this article explores GT theories and practices that do so. I first discuss how concepts of the field, ground, awareness, consciousness, and contact can be informed by ideas such as intersectionality and double consciousness from Black liberation history as well as theorists such as Crenshaw, DuBois, Fanon, Freire, and the Black Lives Matter movement. I then offer a case example and explore how socialization into whiteness can lead to everyday forms of anti-Black dehumanization by white therapists. I conclude with questions toward furthering this work in our movement. Keywords: race, racism, anti-Black, Black, oppression, privilege, intersectionality, awareness, consciousness, field