Abstract: This article deals with the game of figures and backgrounds of Gestalt Therapy. Since traditionally, this therapy has been known for its figures: Fritz Perls, the «here and now», the techniques, the lack of a theory… etc, with the present work I intend to show what is at the bottom of these figures: Laura Perls, Paul Goodman, and Isadore From; the importance of the therapeutic relationship in front of the technicality. To finish with the theory that I believe sustains the practice of this therapy with concepts such as: figure/background, organism-environment field, contact, experience. Concepts that seem to me key and that determine the gestalt position in front of what is proper of psychology: neither subject-organism, nor environment but their inseparable relationship, which leads us to contemplate not a pathology of the «psyche», but a pathology of the «contact». This shows that certain tensions and blockages cannot be released if there is no change in the environment, offering new possibilities. In the therapeutic relationship, the therapist acts as the privileged environment of the patient and if as such offers new possibilities, he/she facilitates the patient’s change. For as it appears in the 1951 book Gestalt Therapy, if institutions and customs were modified, we would see numerous recalcitrant symptoms vanish immediately.
Keywords: Here and now, experience, contact, figure/ground, organism-environment field, Self, contact boundary, phenomenology, field theory, Gestalt.