Donna Orange: A Solid Ground for Gestalt Therapists

Donna Orange is a star in the history of psychotherapy. From her philosophical ground and existential choices, she founded the “ethical turn” in psychoanalysis, a deep, humanistic, and field-oriented perspective that gives us, Gestalt therapists, a solid ground for the relational development of our approach. Some of the cornerstones of her philosophical and clinical research are like diamonds for me; they give strength and specificity to professional ethics of psychotherapists. As a Gestalt therapist who has been in dialogue with her for a decade, I felt incredibly supported by her teaching.First, she highlighted values such as fallibilism and the humility of the therapist, a language that surely supports Gestalt therapists to contextualize the trust in one’s own senses and to avoid the narcissistic trap that can be generated by it. We can make mistakes, not because we are not good therapists, but because we are ontologically fallible. To accept our fallibilism becomes an antidote to narcissistic solitude and guilt.Second, her ethics of Otherness (drawing on Lévinas) switch our focus from the responsibility to do the right thing to an interest in the other who is free to hurt us even without wanting to. This ethical position has helped me develop our Gestalt therapy concepts of aesthetics and field. Being present for the other—with our senses open, using our bodily processes to understand the client—allows us to become the “otherness of the other.” We do not want to make clients aware of something that they have denied. We stay before them with our differentness, and we sense the kind of unit we make together (what we call the organism/environment field). This “aesthetic relational knowing” allows us to focus our intervention on a “dance” tailored to that specific client.The third gift has to do with climate crisis. A psychotherapist cannot be blind to wider, political forces that are the polar opposite to our human values. Long before the pandemic and the wars, Donna was able to criticize governments and their policies by giving voice to what for Gestalt psychotherapists has always been the spirit of social activism. Her courage and determination stay with us and support us to identify with our roots.Our first conference was in Milan in 2014, and we met regularly every two years. Donna would have returned in November 2024 to Milan to dialogue on the similarities and differences between contemporary Gestalt therapy and contemporary psychoanalysis. Two days before the seminar, I was informed of Donna’s accident. We—the 150 participants—dramatically went through this loss as a community, using concepts such as compassion, fallibilism, and inner chorus which we had worked on with her.We are fortunate that she was so open to and curious about the world of Gestalt therapists, listening and learning from it. She offered a clear and useful language for the ethical turn our times needed, which could be shared with different resonances inside both psychoanalysis and Gestalt therapy. She remains one of the main voices who describe the turn of humanistic values, from supporting patients’ freedom from bonds to finding oneself precisely in relationships, starting with the therapeutic one.Donna Orange deserves great admiration and deep thanks.