(snip interesting give-and-take between Gerhard and John)

>Well, that seems to be the crucial point: Our perception and experience
>in our phenomenal world just does not work this way (at least the
>Gestalt psychologists are of this conviction). It does not take this
>piece (coloration) and that (angles of facial features) and somehow sum
>up or transform these pieces into a whole but the sad or angry face is
>immediately encountered in our phenomenal world as an organized and
>meaningful whole and in normal cases it is sometimes even very difficult=
>
>to split up this whole into pieces like those you mention.
>This is what led the Gestalt psychologists to the assumption that this
>whole organization is not only happening in our phenomenal world but is
>somehow also happening in the brain-field.
>
>Warmly,
>Gerhard

To this I would add that the area of the brain-field that is crucial in
many cases is not the neocortex, that is, it is not in our awareness.  Much
of what matters most to us has begun processing in the "old brain" before
we get to think about it, and that's why we often feel like we're trying to
play catch up with our physical experience, including our feelings.

One good explanation of this is to be had in Joseph LeDoux's book, *The
Emotional Brain, The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (1996) New
York: Simon and Schuster.  This book shows the neurological correlative for
the self-regulating organism and allows Gestalt therapists to journey
outside of philosophizing into some pretty substantial research.  (There is
more about it in a review at Gestalt!
(http://rdz.acor.org/gestalt!/2(1)/ledouxreview.html).

On another, but related note, I like Gerhard's calling us back to the issue
of forms, patterns in the field that seem to convey meaning across the
experience of persons (transphenomenal).  Isn't this the issue of where the
gestalt resides (out there or in here)?  (okay, I know that that is a false
dichotomy, but I stated it that way to show the two sides of the issue, and
I think there is something to say about both).

Phil