Customer Reviews

Gestalt for Beginners (Writers and Readers Documentary Comic Book)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Gestalt for Beginners, (gestalt, which is incorporating the whole) is a great and fun book for anyone starting out in psychology or looking more into the Gestalt Theory which was made famous by Fritz Pearls. Author Sergio Sinay made a accessible approach inderstanding Pearls theories as well as close to being able to apply them. Giving a wonderful biography of Fritz from his many downs in his life to his peak moments near the end. Explaining the Gestalt approach in a lucid and simple style, I found this book to be one of the best written books in the Writers and Readers Beginners Books. Definately reccomended.

Having read and enjoyed a number of the other books in the "for Beginners" series, I was amazed at how vastly inferior this one was. The comments in another reviewer's one-star review about the apparent lack of editing by anyone familiar with the English language and the absurdity of the illustrations were right on the mark. In the other books I've read from this series, the artwork is used to illustrate concepts in an amusing yet informative way. Here, however, most of the sketches are crude portraits of Fritz Perls, or (not kidding) other people drawn with big, angry scribbles in place of their faces.

On the other hand, the lack of art illustrating concepts may very well be due to the almost total lack of any concepts to illustrate. Most of the book consists of a not particularly illuminating biography of Fritz Perls, then there's some other material about the history of gestalt therapy centers in various cities and countries (which looks like it may have come from a promotional pamphlet put out by one of those centers.) There's very little on the actual theory and practice of gestalt therapy itself.

Overall, readers looking for biography and history and not overly sensitive to horrible writing and artwork may find some slight use for this; readers hoping to understand something about gestalt therapy itself most likely will not.

If you live in South America and can get the book in its original language, it might be a reasonable introduction to the subject at a really basic level. As it is, the book appears to have been translated into English using a very poor computerised translation program, and much of it is simply unreadable. On top of this, it's littered with spelling errors and typos, and in the copy I have, even Fritz Perls's name is misspelled on the back cover. The artwork is pretty risible too. Avoid.