How you see changes what you see. How you hear, changes what can be heard. Do you believe that? It is crucial to the way people relate to one another. Let me show you what I mean.

Periodically I get into discussions with my colleagues in Manchester, England, New York, New York, and other parts of the world. This flows out of a professional discussion group I started in 1996. It's called "Gstalt-L". I wrote about this group in a chapter for Brian O'Neill's edited book, 'Psychotherapy, Community, and Life Focus'.

Gstalt-L (the list) is a listserv discussion group originally archived at St. Johns University but now located with similar lists, hosted by L-Soft and the non-profit organisation known as the Information Center for Online Resources and Services, Inc. (ICORS).

Gstalt-L began in 1996 as an initiative of the original staff of Gestalt!, an online journal for gestalt therapy. That early history is outlined in more detail in Appendix A of Woldt and Toman (Woldt and Brownell, 2005).

The list grew to include over 200 participants from Europe, Russia, Asia, North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand, and the Middle East. Established Gestalt trainers and new trainees alike interact with one another on this list, and it evolved into a community in which people meet and grow in relationship as well as debate points of theory and practice. Portions of the theoretical dialogue have been synthesised for publication in Gestalt! (for instance a discussion of field theory among Sylvia Crocker, Philip Brownell, Gerhard Stemberger, Steve (Vinay) Gunther, Bruno Just, Amit Sen, and Ruth Wolfert (2001).

The list is un-moderated, meaning it is not censored, and participants are free to self-regulate. In fact, this central commitment to self-regulation has resulted over time in the evolution of community values, expressed through contact in that text-based environment, and it has provided a home for people in which they can experience a sense of belonging.

Even for those many who read only, they do so with the sense that they are checking in with friends and keeping up with the flow of real life.

Some have expressed that it feels compelling, almost like watching a soap opera on television.

Just this morning I was talking with a colleague. He said that ever since we lived in caves people knew that we see things differently if we interpreted them differently-look at them close or from a distance or look at them upside down while standing on our heads.

However, he claimed that that is not what people have come to know since Einstein, about a hundred years ago.

He stated that since then all our basic concepts such as length, time, speed, momentum, matter and energy are actually, not just because of interpretation, but actually, in reality, different depending on position and velocity.

Electrons, he stated, show different behaviours depending on how we approach them, because our actions are part of the same field as their behaviour and are inseparable from them. He believes that only in more modern theories is there enough indeterminism to allow us to make meaningful lives.

Now, I pondered this. The man usually challenges me to think, and I replied: "How things are", to me, is not a relativised term. To me, things are, ontologically, how they are. Things are also always in flux, so there is no such thing as a static "how they are". Things change as entities interact, so that, yes, our "stance" (if I understand what you mean by "stance") affects how things are – the ontology. Phenomenal experience is relative to our capacities to perceive, our position in the field, and our own agentic actions (as action reveals the person not only to others but also to oneself.).

He responded that to be more precise there is an overall state of the universe, or perhaps one might call it the quantum field, with no observer outside of that field who could see 'how it is'. Yet, as soon as one pulls out an observer making an observation, then reality becomes relativised.

Then, I wrote back: "Yes. I agree. The moment you pull out an observer, reality is relativised-relative to that observer. This is the same as saying we have subjective experience and it relates to having intersubjective relationships. So, to apply this to therapy, it makes no sense to ask the client to adopt my "reality" when reality for him or her IS not the same (and to adopt another's reality is to lose oneself, go insane, etc.).

"The ontological category is the universe sans observer. As soon as you have an observer, you are talking about a perspective (phenomenal field) and the reality itself (ontological field) begins to change."

In relationships, how "I" approach "you" in both verbal and non-verbal actions changes what I know of "us". Indeed, it changes what there is of us. Even if all I'm doing is observing what you do and say, the way in which I do that can turn the reality of the relationship in one direction or another. This is why I am concerned, when I meet with people, about what is going on and how people are doing it – what and how, rather than why.

The "why-question" turns a person to theorising and abstractions, stories about something that may or may not be accurate, but the "what-questions" and the "why-questions" point people to the ongoing and substantive processes themselves that form the relationship itself. Often expressing how you see your partner, and owning that observation as your own experience, can change the quality of your relationship.

When you say, for instance, "I notice that you are quiet, off in another part of the house from me", the other person may feel caught, vulnerable, understood, guilty, sad, or any number of other things, but what they are most likely not feeling is defensive.

Often, simple observations can open doors of relationship that do more than change the way one looks at something; simple observations can change the thing itself.