As psychotherapy training and practice have become more focused and more flexible with new theories and techniques, there is a need for a model of therapy that has integrative power, that describes and treats the whole person as an integral part of his or her interpersonal, social and physical environment. Gestalt therapy, with its relativistic or post-Newtonian approach, facilitates the integration of a wide range of interventions into an approach that fits each individual client as well as the unique style of the psychotherapist. After two decades of the assimilation of many Gestalt concepts into contemporary psychotherapy, Gestalt therapy is reemerging as a major force in current psychotherapeutic theory and practice.

With its roots dated back to the mid 1920's, Gestalt therapy is historically grounded in psychoanalytic theory (Freud, Horney, Reich, and more recently Mahler, Kohut, et.al.) while concurrently assimilating data from less speculative methods (e.g. Vygotsky and developmental neuro-sciences), social constructivism, and cognitive theory, Gestalt therapy is steeped in dialogic existentialism (Buber), phenomenology (Husserl) and field theory (Lewin). Its intellectual roots are deep and wide.

As a process-oriented theory, Gestalt therapy maintains the flexibility to integrate new ideas and perspectives from many sources, thereby encouraging continual perceptual reorganization and maintaining its updated vitality.