As Nurith Levi explains in her Epilogue, this book grew out of a conference that took place in Berlin in October 2018, entitled “Supporting Human Dignity in a Collapsing Field.” The title was chosen to give a voice to those from Africa, the Middle East, and South America who fled their countries and landed in European nations as immigrants. It also explores the impact of long-term conflicts—such as those between the Ukraine and the Soviet Union and the Catholics and Protestants in the north of Ireland/Northern Ireland—on individuals: refugees, immigrants, soldiers, newspaper reporters, and psychotherapists, as well as on families, communities, and countries (Rosie Burrows calls such conflicts “chronic pathologies,” 213). For Levi, this book is a collection of articles by Gestalt practitioners sharing their experiences of being embedded in a collapsing field and analyzing them from both theoretical and personal perspectives. I agree with her that this book is a demonstration of how the Gestalt approach in action contributes to social change.Two features stand out with regard to the organization of the book. First, there is just enough structure to provide continuity between the articles and the sections, so as to invite easy reading but not homogenize the various writers’ experiences. The individuals’ voices come through clearly. The second aspect concerns the writers’ identity as Gestalt practitioners. Despite differences regarding formal roles, degrees, and circumstances, all the writers carry a Gestalt-based philosophy of how to be in the world and how to treat people. It seems obvious that this Gestalt perspective helped to carry them through their powerful, often challenging experiences. Each writer displays a type of resilience that, although not unique to our approach, certainly courses through its philosophical veins. As Gianni Francesetti mentions in his foreword, this is a book about activists, that is, Gestalt practitioners who have had the courage to leave the consulting room to enter into the heart of traumatic environments. He presents a strong case that, overall, the world is getting better. Many if not most of us, however, deal with a perceived reality that the world is getting worse. And, of course, there are many advantages for holding this pessimistic perspective (Melnick and Nevis 2017). Francesetti asks us to hold both: “We cannot change the past, but we can heal the solitude of people who have experienced that past” (14). These relational experiences “open up new presents”; he adds: “We as humans have a fundamental need not to be stuck, but to transform suffering, to assimilate and then move on” (14).In their introduction, the editors describe the origin of the book, having grown out of a conference sponsored by the Human Rights and Social Responsibility Committee of the European Association for Gestalt Therapy (EAGT), whose goal is to bring the Gestalt approach out of the clinic and into real-life situations. The conference was attended by Gestalt practitioners from various countries, age groups, and professional affiliations. The editors describe how the conference organizers built community right from the start by minimizing fixed hierarchy, as all participants pitched in, from shopping and managing registration, to organizing and participating in the societal events. To their credit, the editors promoted diversity in the writings in terms of content and style. The book contains a range of articles from the theoretical to the highly personal.In a preliminary section, “Before Part I,” Dieter Bongers’ piece entitled, “Paul Goodman’s Heritage: Relevance for Today,” offers a homage to Goodman as a primary shaper of the Gestalt social change movement. There has long been a debate as to who, among the founders, was most responsible for our social change roots and values. Clearly, Frederick Perls and paul Goodman had much in common. Both were outrageous, brilliant, and passionate. Bongers makes a strong case for Goodman, and I have to agree with him. PerIs, though often expressing concerns over social issues, was not a social activist, did not work systemically, nor did he theorize beyond individual therapy. In contrast, Goodman lived his social activism. Perls, in fact, tried to limit Goodman’s influence in the Gestalt world, viewing him as “too radical” (personal communication with Erving Polster, 2020).Three articles in Part I, “Political Conflict, War, and Aftermath,” deal with the impact of war and postwar in Ukraine and Crimea and its effect on four different populations: wounded combatants, newspaper writers, asylum seekers, and psychologists. The authors discuss what it is like to be “influencers of the field,” while being outside of it. For Gestalt practitioners, this ability to move in and out is quite ordinary, but in a collapsing field it becomes more difficult to maintain. As the authors imply, war knows no favorites and, to their credit, all the contributors allow themselves to be impacted while displaying the courage to describe that impact.In “The Maidan Syndrome or the Mechanism of the Formation of the Collective Trauma,” Olena Levchuk describes her experience as a crisis psychologist in the Ukraine. She discusses how a “funnel of trauma” is formed and divides it into three phases similar to those described by other writers in this collection (see summary below). I particularly appreciated Levchuk’s highlighting of the sense of professional helplessness that can emerge when working with traumatized people in the midst of what seems to be an unending war. Unable to disengage and relax, individuals are often left in shock, disequilibrium, and disassociation.In the second article, “Do Those Who Have a Voice for Others Have a Voice About Themselves? Journalists Mental Health and War,” Tatyana Konrad and Natalya Stotetskaya discuss their psychotherapeutic work with journalists covering the military events in East Ukraine and in the annexed Crimea from 2013 to 2018. They hypothesize that journalists, because of their constant immersion in conflict environments, are at high risk of developing acute stress disorder. They address how we, as Gestalt practitioners, can apply our theory and ourselves to support individuals going through seemingly unending suffering through no fault of their own. My caricature of journalists as being primarily “off the screen” as they convey information and cover events was immediately challenged. As Gestalt practitioners, we understand that we are always “of” the field, and that there is no such thing as a bystander. No one is “off the screen.” Because of this common perception of journalists as “outsiders,” it is not surprising that journalists experiencing trauma often do not experience acknowledgment and support.1 The authors and their colleagues intervened by mobilizing a diverse array of assistances, including training on wartime trauma, the psychology of displaced people, the families of the deceased and their loss of support, support for children of immigrants, and prevention of burnout. One interesting format involved organized public lectures to help teach new creative tools.Svitlana Efimova and Liliia Zhyvotovska, in “Peculiarities in Providing Psychotherapeutic Assistance to Combatants with Adjustment Disorders,” focus on the wounded soldier and how to combat mental trauma. Like many of the other writers, they articulate the importance of providing “just enough” support in order for soldiers to understand their reactions and learn to recover their ability to self-regulate.In “From Yugoslavian Wars to Middle East Refugee Crisis: Insights and Transfer of Knowledge and Experience,” Iskra Pejić, Jasenka Pregrad, and Tia Tomiša detail their work with victims of the Yugoslavian war and the Middle East refugee crisis. Their model, based on Gestalt principles, is a multilevel effort to provide a variety of supports as individuals make their way out of trauma. They highlight the importance of helping to restore dignity to refugees’ lives. I particularly endorse their caution regarding the use of the paradoxical theory of change in dealing with trauma. There are instances when increased awareness is not useful. I also appreciated their work at different levels of system, for example, teaching educators to work with immigrant children, and their focus on group work.Olena Levchuk completes this section with her essay, “What’s Wrong? Reflections of a Crisis Psychologist,” in which she describes having to deal with traumatized individuals’ sense of almost hypnotic apathy that often permeates the psyche of people who have spent much of their lives under repressive regimes. It is, as she says, “the mentality of the colonized” (82), a type of inherent apathy and lack of robustness.A “Passage from Part I to Part II” offers a series of poems by Greet Cassiers. They fit in well, capturing the raw experience of traumatized individuals. Cassiers is able to delve beneath the exterior, compassionately capturing the sense of loss and loneliness, of bruising and darkness, and of diminished desire, out of which spring seeds of hope.Part II, “Migration and Refugee Crises,” focuses on Gestalt practitioners working with refugees in different settings. In “Crossing Borders and Boundaries: Towards an Encounter (Working on the Greek Islands),” Ioanna Alexia, Nikos Gionakis, Ioannis Goumas, Katerina Kaisidou, and Joanna Kato describe their approach to supporting front line volunteers, refugees, and professional workers on the Greek Islands, and their experience in forming an interventionist team. The authors discuss the difficult task of working with cultural and subcultural differences such as old versus recent arrivals, young versus old, valuing introspection and slow change versus speed and activism, omnipotence versus helplessness, groundedness versus frustration, self-sacrifice versus self-care, anger versus guilt, and chaos versus structure.Joanna Kato, in “Supervising (Supporting) Front Line Workers: Reflecting on Process,” also writes of her experience of being immersed in the quick changing and often chaotic environment of migration. She discusses her use of Gestalt concepts such as “here and now,” and contact and staying with people’s experience, but also describes the toll that workers pay for this immersion, such as disassociation, “doing more,” and the physical symptoms that often emerge. Importantly, she highlights the near impossibility of assimilating traumatic experiences that happen every day, and at the end having to accept the fact that there is rarely a solution or sense of closure.Martina Čarija and Jasenka Pregrad, in “What is the Figure? An Example of a Field and Changes of Figures in a Refugee Transit Country,” also discuss how to support refugees in a complex, polarized field when the definition of what a refugee is, and what the environment (Croatia) is, exist in a state of constant change. Their goal is trauma support, focusing on the caricatures and changing perceptions of refugees and helpers. Like many others in this volume, these writers talk about polarization as an ongoing issue.In “Contextualizing Therapist Self-Care in Therapeutic Work with Refugees,” Katharina Stahlmann and Deirdre Winter focus on therapist self-care while doing individual and group therapy with refugees in Berlin. They highlight the difficult task of connecting with clients, while not being too strongly impacted by them, lest it result in their own hopelessness and powerlessness. Because refugees bring in issues different from those the therapists are used to, the situation minimizes the effectiveness of traditional self-care techniques and exacerbates the difficulty of separating the work from their personal lives. These factors include urgency, cultural differences, complexity of trauma, poor or no pay, and a traumatizing, often dehumanizing, environment currently occupied by many of the refugees.Gabriele Blankertz, in “Shaping Change Through Dialogue with Responsibility for a Common Future,” discusses her inner process when working with Arab refugees over a four-year period. She describes the slowness of building trust that begins with finding a translator, having individual talks, dining together, cooking, and sharing stories. Once trust is established, she is able to discuss a series of issues involving gender, relatedness, conflict, understanding of psychological dynamics, and personal goals. Individual work is supported by a series of workshops with specific foci designed to help participants deal responsibly with personal and societal challenges and conflicts. She details a group program designed to develop internal understanding (self-awareness), as well as skills to address the refugees’ ever-changing situation.In Part III, “Gestalt Approach in Broader Social and Political Contexts,” the authors strive to grapple with situations different from immigration, war, and resettlement. In “The Trauma of Generational Poverty: Healing at the Contact Boundary,” Sara Hendrick discusses how generational poverty can be viewed as an unfinished relational situation. Potential causes include feelings of rejection, noncompliance, loneliness, humiliation, shame, and inferiority. Common results often include a deep difficulty to trust and attach, damage to brain structures, and somatic complaints. As a result, people move into a survival mode, resulting in isolation and alienation. She describes the responses from a physiological and a developmental perspective.Rosie Burrows in “Therapeutic and Leadership Lessons from Belfast: A Framework for Ethical Practice,” focuses on how her lived experiences in the north of Ireland/Northern Ireland have informed her views of the impact of long-term cultural trauma on relationships, leadership, and power dynamics. Like many of the other contributors, she integrates Gestalt methods with other forms; also, like others, she combines individual and group methods with experiential, nonverbal expression that goes beyond words. She talks about transgenerational trauma and body memory, as well as the importance of somatic approaches and neurological understanding in working with transgenerational trauma. Her goal is to create cultures “where we are emotionally and physically safe enough and encouraged to make mistakes, rather than shamed, blamed, and punished” (184).In “Politics as Therapy, Therapy as Politics? Contributions and Challenges of Gestalt Therapy Interventions in the Context of Social and Environmental Injustices,” Marien González Hidalgo draws on her research in Mexico to describe her experience as an environmental activist and a trainee in Gestalt therapy. She outlines how Gestalt-based interventions can support social and collective action concerning environmental conflicts and inequities. Challenging the commonly held Gestalt belief that personal growth is a means to social transformation, she discusses how, in a traditional way, therapy will not lead to increased social awareness and activism. Instead, she suggests adding content and experiences to form a bridge to a more sophisticated understanding of activism, one in which increased personal awareness results in social activism and political empowerment. In summary, these articles strive to frame the experience of Gestalt therapists working with traumatized individuals. In part, the experience is similar to what most psychotherapists do every day. One major difference, however, is that these therapists often join their clients in their “collapsing field,” thus having also to manage their own responses of living in the traumatic situation. The experience of “being” so relentlessly immersed in the situation adds a level of complexity not found in the traditional psychotherapeutic situation. As such, these therapists are forced personally to deal with the oftentimes “clash of cultures” which, if not generating the trauma, certainly does not help alleviate it.The authors see as critical the need to address the loneliness and isolation that often accompany trauma, that is, a tendency to hide and move into solitude. The task of the trauma psychologist is gently to bring the client back to the present, often utilizing group therapy and group support. Heartfelt empathy is essential and includes an acknowledgment that they cannot “put themselves in their client’s shoes.” As many of these authors attest to, the psychologist needs to appreciate that the “collapsed field” is so big and powerful that awareness, rather than being helpful, can sometimes be detrimental.Most of the authors here break the traumatic experience into stages: during, immediately after, and later on. The first experience—shock/desensitization—is a type of frozenness, immobilization, and disassociation. They recommend a slow beginning process, where trust in a therapeutic relationship can be established. Psychoeducation and normalization of the condition is essential, as are gentle techniques such as yoga in order to bring the body back slowly. In the second stage, the response phase, unfiltered and uncensored emotional reactions that are not tied to rationality often emerge. Rage, depression, and irrationality frequently occur. Many times, a prime psychotherapeutic goal is to promote self-regulation to reduce anxiety, and to increase the ability to control one’s emotions. Once trust is established, mindfulness, body work, visualization, and art therapy are useful as responses to negative emotions. The third, “later on” stage involves the processing of the experiences. This is when emotions diminish and hopefully become integrated. The work more closely resembles traditional psychotherapy, as experiences are “chewed over” and slowly recede into the individual’s ground. The authors point out that these “phases” are not linear. In truth, individuals move back and forth, and stages often overlap; thus, it is the therapist’s responsibility to meet clients where they are, and to supply the right amount of support.In short, this book, based on Gestalt principles, serves as a guide to managing cultural trauma, primarily from a client/therapist perspective. As such, it is an important contribution. Hinted at, but not developed, is how to create different types of interventions that go beyond the individual and impact the wider fields. This expansion would involve intervening more globally in traumatized and traumatizing systems. I believe that our process approach has the capacity to move beyond the individual and take on this immense task: to look forward to the continued development of our method to address social change more fully.