Have you ever found yourself caught in an argument with your spouse about something? Call it 'It'. The argument goes like this.

He says: "It's like this." And she says: "No, it's like that."

He says: "You don't understand; see this? This proves that it's like this." But she says: "No. That doesn't prove anything, and I say again that it's like that."

Back and forth they go, each one trying to persuade the other to adopt their version of the truth.

Well, there is a truth, but we each have our own relative versions of it. Some at this point would point to the Bible and tell you that the Bible is truth with a capital 'T'.

OK. Tell me what John 1:1 through John 1: 5 mean. Or let a Baptist and a Jehovah's Witness have that discussion.

What you will find is that different people don't just see different things in the Bible (the old idea that you can make the Bible say whatever you want to by yanking things out of context); different people have equally important but divergent interpretations of the Bible, and that gets one back to the fact that we all have our own, relative versions of the truth.

In gestalt therapy, a therapist is not so much interested in the truth, whether or not the patient is telling the truth, as he or she is interested in the patient's understanding and interpretation of the events of his or her life.

Each person is situated in some set of circumstances, and the gestalt therapist attempts to make explicit what it's like to be the patient in whatever situation brought that person to therapy.

Gestalt therapy deals with the personal experience of the client, with the quality of the client's contacting and the meaning making that arises from the flow of the process of the client's life.

In order to make clear what the client is going through and the ways in which the client is dealing with that, the gestalt therapist employs a modified phenomenological method as a paradoxical intervention, trusting that the heightened awareness and clarity it engenders will lead the client to his or her own, best creative adjustment.

This form of treatment is conducted as one aspect of an overall approach that also includes the relationship between therapist and client, all those extra-therapeutic factors that the client brings into session that are having effect in his or her life-also known by gestalt therapists as 'the field', and the experimental freedom that turns talking about something that happened somewhere else at some other time into a current and conducive experience.

This modified method consists of three actions. First, the therapist observes the client. This requires that the therapist become practised and skilful in the art of observation.

It is not good enough to see that the client is wearing a red shirt and walked upright while entering the office (duh!).

Rather, the therapist must begin to notice the subtle nuances of the client's non-verbal expressions – such things as the musculature around the eyes and mouth, a turn of the head, the stoop of the shoulders, the rate and depth of breathing, and the gleam or relative dullness in the eye, etc.

Second, the therapist brackets whatever comes to mind while observing that would pull his or her mind into model building, theorising about the client, or other kinds of explaining of what he or she is observing.

Also, at this time often the therapist's own issues can be triggered, and the therapist who notices this, must have a way of setting aside for the time being, his or her attention on such things.

The therapist can come back to them later at some point, but as the phenomenological method is being employed, the desire is to remain as close as possible to the client's experience.

Third, one describes what one observes. The therapist speaks back to the client what has been experienced of the client. This is more than simple mirroring, but it is certainly that.

It is a feedback loop that informs the client regarding elements of his or her experience that have often gone unnoticed.

So, what might happen if a couple were to practice this modified phenomenological method?

They might be keyed in more to what the other person was thinking and experiencing at any given moment than in fortifying their own important points or winning some argument.

They might come to understand one another more deeply. They might find they join one another in sharing a feeling, a thought, or a troubling conundrum. They might deepen their intimacy.

The 'argument' might go something like this.

He says: "It's like this." And she says: "I notice you're holding your arms and kicking the chair with your toe."

He says: "Huh? Well, I expect you to attack me in some way and it pisses me off." But she says: "I notice when you say that, it makes me feel sad."

He says: "Yeah. I feel sad too. I hate when we're so at one another." And she says: "Me too."