Gestalt therapy is an existential/experiential form of psychotherapy

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is a general term referring to any form of therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client or patient; family, couple or group...

 that emphasizes personal responsibility

Responsibility assumption

Responsibility assumption is a doctrine in the personal growth field holding that each individual has substantial or total responsibility for the events and circumstances that befall them in their life...

, and that focuses upon the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person's life, and the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of their overall situation.

Gestalt therapy was developed by Fritz Perls

Fritz Perls

Friedrich Salomon Perls , better known as Fritz Perls, was a noted German-born psychiatrist and psychotherapist of Jewish descent....

, Laura Perls

Laura Perls

Laura Perls in Pforzheim, was a noted German-born psychologist and psychotherapist who helped establish the Gestalt school of psychotherapy....

 and Paul Goodman

Paul Goodman (writer)

Paul Goodman was an American sociologist, poet, writer, anarchist, and public intellectual. Goodman is now mainly remembered as the author of Growing Up Absurd and an activist on the pacifist Left in the 1960s and an inspiration to that era's student movement...

 in the 1940s and 1950s.
Edwin Nevis described Gestalt therapy as "a conceptual and methodological base from which helping professionals can craft their practice".