This is a written transcript of my podcast of the same name. If you want to listen to it you can find it here: https://www.paulwhitehead.co.uk/podcast/episode/36b89cdc/episode-2-exploring-social-forces-and-mental-health-through-gestalt-therapy
As a Gestalt therapist, I don’t see individuals as being separate from their environment. Indeed, the word Gestalt is a German word that means something like ‘whole’, ‘pattern’, or ‘form’. Gestalt therapy suggests that people can't be understood by being broken down into parts but rather by appreciating the whole - including the larger cultural realities (gender, race, sexuality, economics, etc.) contributing to a person's situation. In other words, Gestalt therapy is a holistic process. It regards the individual as a totality of mind, body, emotions, and spirit who experiences themselves and the world in a way unique to themselves.
In today’s episode, I want to look at how social forces—like class, power, and even capitalism—affect our mental well-being.
As a Gestalt therapist, I see mental health through a particular lens—a lens we call Field Theory. What Field theory suggests quite simply is that we don’t exist in isolation. Our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours aren’t just random things happening inside us—our environment shapes them. This environment, or field, includes everything from our relationships and family dynamics to broader social systems like education, work, and politics. All of it affects us, whether we’re aware of it or not.
For example, if you’re struggling with depression, you might be told that it’s all about brain chemistry or negative thinking patterns and that may be part of it. But from a Gestalt perspective, we’d also want to ask: What’s happening in your life? What kind of pressures are you under? What’s the world around you telling you about yourself? What kind of support do you have, or don't have?
I recently read a very powerful book called Sedated by James Davies. Davies argues that instead of looking at the real-world factors contributing to our mental distress—like economic struggles or social isolation—the mental health industry has focused heavily on medicating away the symptoms. And while medication can be helpful for many, we’ve created an entire system that profits from this approach without addressing the root causes of people’s suffering.
Davies makes a pretty bold point in Sedated—and it’s one that really made me think. He argues that we’ve medicalised mental health to the point where we’re no longer asking why people are feeling depressed or anxious. Instead, we’re just handing out prescriptions and calling it a day. But think about this: what if depression is less about a chemical imbalance in the brain and more about living in a world that's unkind, unfair, or downright overwhelming?
Now, don’t get me wrong—medication can be incredibly helpful for some people, and I would never suggest that it doesn’t have its place or that people should stop taking their medication. But what Davies argues—and what resonates with me as a Gestalt therapist—is that by focusing almost exclusively on treating the symptoms with medication, we’re missing the bigger picture.
We’re not looking at the environment—the field—that might be contributing to someone’s distress.
Maybe it’s poverty. Maybe it’s isolation. Maybe it’s working in a job that feels soul-crushing or being part of a society that places more value on productivity than on human connection. But instead of looking at these things, Davies suggests that we often tell people: “Here, take this pill, and get back to work.” And he asks the fundamental question of who benefits from this approach.
And this is where Field Theory becomes so important. It asks us to look beyond the individual and consider the field they live in. What are the social forces shaping their mental health? And what would happen if we tried to change those external conditions, rather than just treating the internal symptoms?
Our framing of mental health difficulties also feels really important in this conversation. We hear about diagnostic labels all the time—terms like “depression” or “anxiety”. On the one hand, they can be helpful. They give us a way to understand what’s going on and open the door to treatment. But we have to ask: "Who decides what’s “normal” and what’s “abnormal? And what happens when we label people in this way?"
In Sedated, Davies also touches on this, explaining how these diagnostic labels—while helpful for getting access to care—can sometimes reinforce feelings of shame or inadequacy. Michel Foucault, a philosopher who had a lot to say about power and control, takes this even further. He argued that society uses these labels to control people—to keep them in line, so to speak. He called modern society “carceral,” like a prison, where all of our institutions—schools, hospitals, even therapy—are there to tame and discipline us.
So, when we diagnose someone with depression, we’re not just giving them a label for their feelings—we’re also placing them within a system of control. And sometimes that label can make people feel more anxious, confused, or ashamed than they did before. They start to believe that something is fundamentally wrong with them when in reality, it might just be that they’re responding to a world that feels fundamentally wrong.
Now, let me introduce you to two other thinkers who take this critique even further: Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. One was a French philosopher (Deleuze) and the other a radical militant psychoanalyst, (Guattari). They wrote these two very strange and radical books together, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus.
In Anti-Oedipus (1972), Deleuze and Guattari critique traditional psychoanalysis, especially its focus on the Oedipus complex. Their main argument is that desire should not be understood in terms of repression, lack, or a familial structure (like the Oedipal triangle of mother-father-child). Instead, they present desire as a productive force that is inherently creative and decentralised.
Deleuze and Guattari believed that human desire is a powerful, revolutionary force—it’s what drives us to create, to change, to break out of systems that are holding us back. But when psychoanalysis reduces everything to family dynamics, it keeps that desire trapped in the family, rather than allowing it to flow freely and make real changes in the world.
They even go so far as to say that psychoanalysis actually helps reinforce social repression. If someone refuses to fit into the expected mould—if they don’t want to be “Oedipalized,” as Deleuze and Guattari put it—then they’re labelled as abnormal, and the system (whether it’s a therapist, a hospital, or even the police) steps in to put them back in their place. It’s a pretty radical idea, but it really gets you thinking about how much of mental health treatment is about fitting in—making people fit back into a system that might be causing their suffering in the first place.
This brings us to our current economic system, capitalism. We live in a world that often tells us that if we just work hard enough, we can achieve anything. That, ultimately, it’s down to us. When people struggle, whether it’s with unemployment, financial stress, or just the exhaustion of daily life, they’re often told that it’s their fault—that they should have been able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. But that’s not always possible, is it? Because there are real, external forces—like economic inequality and systemic barriers—that make it incredibly difficult for people to succeed, no matter how hard they try. In therapy, I see clients who come in feeling like they’re failing at life. They’ve internalised this idea that they should be able to “fix” themselves, but they’re up against a system that’s fundamentally stacked against them. And that’s where Field Theory can be so powerful. It helps people see that their struggles aren’t just personal—they’re part of a larger, oppressive system.
So, where do we go from here? Well, in Gestalt therapy, we focus a lot on building awareness. And I don’t just mean becoming more aware of your thoughts or emotions—I mean becoming aware of the field, of how the world around you is shaping your experience. What’s happening in your life, in your relationships, in the world, that’s contributing to your feelings of depression or anxiety? What messages are you receiving from society that are telling you that you’re not good enough or that you should be doing more or better. By building this awareness, we can start to see the bigger picture—and maybe even begin to push back against it. It’s easy to see therapy as a process that we engage with on our own. We take ourselves away to a therapist's office somewhere and do some work on ourselves on our own and then we re-enter into society. But, sometimes the most powerful thing we can do in therapy is work out how we might change the environment we live in - that could include our personal relationships, but it could also include advocating for better mental health care, challenging the systems that keep people in poverty and simply recognising that we are more than the labels society puts on us.
Sometimes the most healing thing we can do is to recognise that it’s not all down to us. Field Theory makes clear that our mental health is connected to the world we live in. Depression and anxiety aren’t just personal issues—they’re shaped by the social and economic forces around us, by the stories we’ve been told, and by the systems that hold us in place.
My name is Paul Whitehead. I'm a Gestalt Therapist working in Glossop, central Manchester and online. I specialise in helping people through significant life transitions and challenges. Whether you’re facing a relationship breakup, a career change, a spiritual or existential crisis, grief, or questions about identity, I’m here to support you.
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