Childhood and Human Development

All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization of human potentialities. ~Abraham Maslow

Childhood and human development have long been central concerns in gestalt practice: how early experience shapes the body, the emotions, the sense of self, and the ways we learn to meet the world. This section brings together archival materials, teaching records, and comparative developmental frameworks that explore these questions from several lineages.

This section includes, or will include soon, material by Dorothy Charles and others about Janet Lederman and Esalen's Gazebo School as well as information on the work Dorothy has developed inspired by those principles and more. There are recordings from Joseph Chilton Pearce, Violet Oaklander, and Patty Wipfler. Soon to be added are documents comparing stages of development across Freudian, Reichian, bioenergetic, and bodynamic systems, with notes on how these models intersect with Gestalt Awareness Practice.

Taken together, these resources invite inquiry into the developing human being: the child’s movement toward contact, expression, regulation, belonging, and embodied presence, and the ways early patterns continue to live in adult experience.