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128 SECTION II Evolution of Nursing Theory: Essential Influences

nu

rtu

ring

towar

dwell-beingan

dm

ore

• be
  ing
  Gestalt

Incarnate

in time

and space

Gestalt

Incarnate

in time

and space

NURSE

Response

well-being and

more-being

DIALOGUE

being and becoming

through intersubjective relating

(being with and doing with)

The Body knows

(a being in a body)

gut feeling

PAT I E N T

Call

HUMANISTIC NURSING

FIGURE 11–1 World of others and things.

that occurs in the living context of human beings,
human beings who interface and interact with oth-
ers and other things in the world. In the world of
Humanistic Nursing Theory, when we speak of
human beings, we mean patients (e.g., individuals,
members of families, members of communities, or
members of the human race) and nurses (see
Figure 11–2). A person becomes a patient when he
or she sends a call for help with some health-related
problem. The person hearing and recognizing the
call is a nurse. A nurse, by intentionally choosing to
become a nurse, has made a commitment to help
others with health-related needs.
It is important to emphasize that in humanistic
nursing theory, each nurse and each patient is taken
to be a unique human being with his or her own
particular gestalt (see Figure 11–3). Gestalt, repre-
senting all that particular human beings are, which
includes all past experiences, all current being, and
all hopes, dreams, and fears of the future that are
experienced in one’s own space-time dimension. As
illustrated, this gestalt includes past and current

social relationships, as well as gender, race, reli-

gion, education, work, and whatever individualized

patterns for coping a person has developed. It also

includes past experiences with persons in the

health-care system and a patient’s images and ex-

pectations of those persons.

Our gestalt is the unique expression of our indi-

viduality as incarnate human beings who exist in

this particular space at this particular time, with

circumscribed resources and in a physical body that

senses, filters, and processes our experiences to

which we assign subjective meanings. Accordingly,

a nurse and a patient perceive and respond to each

other as a gestalt, not just as the presentation of a

sum of attributes. In humanistic nursing we say

that each person is perceived as existing “all at

once.” In the process of interacting with patients,

nurses interweave professional identity, education,

intuition, and experience with all their other life

experiences, creating their own tapestry, which un-

folds during their responses.

One has only to observe nurses going about