A polarity is comprised of two seemingly opposing qualities of a client’s personality that cause an inner conflict. When a clinician becomes present with their client, we begin to see the way the client disrupts contact with the present moment and turns off the light of awareness. During this time, the dominant aspect of the client’s personality becomes evident, which is where their ordinary mind makes meaning of the world. As we maintain our seat as a clear mirror, we can begin to see how this dominant aspect of the personality is casting a shadow on quieter aspect of the client’s inner world. The less dominant sub-personality that has been rejected or disowned opposes the dominant sub-personality, causing the inner conflict. These two aspects comprise the polarity.
When learning to identify polarities, it’s common for therapist to mistaken a thought pattern that causes a client distress and a quality of health as a polarity. In this misunderstanding, a polarity is seen as something “good” vs something “bad.” For example, clarity vs confusion could seem like a polarity, because confusion seems opposite of clarity. However, true clarity doesn’t polarize or conflict with anything–it simple sees something as it is. Another example would be “fear of rejection” and “trust in the process.” Trusting the process is not a polarizing quality–it is simple surrender. Similarly, a client who has hope for making a career change but feels stuck is not getting pulled off balance by hope–something else is there in conflict with stuck, like indecision.
An example of identifying a polarity can be seen in the following case:
A client shares that they are frustrated that people in their life don’t do things the way they want or when they want. Their employees don’t do the tasks they are asked, and if they do they don’t complete it correctly; their spouse isn’t interested in intimacy when they want; and their friends don’t want to do the activities they invite them to do. When the client looks deeper within, they begin to share that they don’t know what they want, and they become frustrated with their own confusion. The therapist begins to see the client’s polarity as having a lot of clarity, and being very confused. As mentioned above, true clarity doesn’t polarize. Here, we can see the client’s polarity as “I don’t know” vs “I want things the way I want them.” In all likelihood, embodied clarity will be the result of working through this polarity.
It’s important for the therapist to see a client’s polarity accurately in order to create an experiment where the client can unblend these two aspects of their personality. The unblending is essential for integration, because when the client cannot access the phenomenology of each component of the polarity, they will not metabolize the unfinished business that keeps this inner conflict at play.
In The Awakened Therapist: Spirituality, Consciousness, and Subtle Energy in Gestalt Therapy, I offer the image posted here as a visual representation of how to unblend a polarity, (Kwiker, 2025). 
You can see in this image that a polarity consists of a primary strategy of the personality, and beneath it lives a shadow strategy. Here are three steps to identify a polarity:
- First identify the primary strategy: If you were to name the essence of the client’s primary thought pattern or dominant sub-personality, what would that be? For example, the voice of judgment or perfectionism.
- Stay present with the primary strategy: Once you see the primary strategy clearly, do not dig around to find the shadow strategy. Instead, use the awareness continuum or perhaps a visualization to invite the client to stay present with the primary strategy. This will support their increasing awareness, and allow anything that isn’t this quality to come forth.
- Check in to see if you are holding the opposing quality: If you cannot see the polarity in the client, you might be sitting in the seat of the opposing quality. For example, if your client is working with perfectionism, are you currently feeling incompetent? Or if your client is working with anticipatory fear, are you holding the seat of certainty? This looking within is a subtle nuance that allows you to see the fuller picture of the therapeutic container.
To learn more about working with polarities, join our upcoming training.
To read more about polarities and gestalt therapy, read this book.
References:
Kwiker, H. (2025). The Awakened Therapist: Spirituality, Consciousness, and Subtle Energy in Gestalt Therapy. Routledge.