CHAPTER 6 Gestalt Therapy Gestalt Therapy A school

CHAPTER 6 Gestalt Therapy

Gestalt Therapy • A school of thought that stresses the perception of completeness and wholeness. • Gestalt theory emphasizes how people function in their totality. • Stresses acting in the present. • Changes in thoughts and feelings basically follow changes in behaviors.

Fritz Perls • Born in 1893 in Berlin into a middle-class Jewish family with a younger and older sister. • Trained as a psychoanalyst in both Vienna and Berlin. • Established the Institute for Gestalt Therapy in New York City in 1952. • Moved to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, in 1960.

View of Human Nature/Personality • Human beings work for wholeness and completeness in life. • Each person has a self-actualizing tendency. • Trust is placed on the inner wisdom of people. • Each person seeks to live integratively, striving to coordinate the various parts of the person into a healthy and unified whole. • Anti-deterministic – each person is able to change and become responsible.

Gestalt and the Individual • Individuals are actors in the events around them, not just reactors to events. • People discover different aspects of themselves through experience, not talk. • Individuals may have the inability to identify and resolve unfinished business.

Individual Difficulties • According to Gestaltists, people may lose contact with difficulties in a number of ways: – Lose contact with the environment and the resources in it. – Too involved with the environment and become out of touch with themselves. – Fail to put aside unfinished business. – Fragmented or scattered in many directions. – Experience conflict between the top dog (what they think they should do) and the underdog (what they want to do). – Difficulty handling the dichotomies of life: • Love/Hate • Masculinity/Femininity • Pleasure/Pain

Neurotic Behavior • Individuals who become neurotic are those who try to attend to too many needs at one time and therefore do not take care of one fully.

Roles of the Counselor/Therapist • Create an atmosphere that promotes clients’ explorations of what they need to grow. • Must be exciting, energetic, and fully human. • Involvement occurs in the now, which is a continuing process. • Assist clients in blocking energy and using it in positive and adaptive ways. • Assist clients in recognizing patterns in their lives. • Do not use instruments or make diagnoses.

Gestalt Rules of Helping Client Awareness • • The Principle of Now – using present tense. “I” and “Thou” – direct address. The use of “I” – substituting “I” for “it”. Use of an Awareness Continuum – focusing on how and what rather than why. • Conversion of Questions – ask clients to convert questions into statements.

Goals • • Emphasis on the here and now. Recognition of the immediacy of experience. Focus on both non-verbal and verbal expression. Focus on the concept that life includes making choices. • Helping clients resolve the past to become integrated. • Pushing clients to experience feelings and behaviors. • Emphasize awareness.

5 Layers of Neurosis and Self (Perls, 1970) • The Phony – pretending to be what one is not; gameplaying and fantasy enactment. • The Phobic – afraid if they present who they truly are they will be rejected. • The Impasse – adrift in a sea of helplessness and despair; no sense of direction. • The Implosive/The Explosive – these two layers are often grouped together; feel vulnerable to feelings, but as they peel back the layers of defensiveness (implosiveness) they become alive in an explosion of joy emotion that leads to being authentic.

Process and Techniques • Gestalt therapy has some of the most innovative techniques found in counseling. • Exercises – ready-made techniques employed to evoke a certain response from clients such as anger or exploration. • Experiments – activities that grow out of the interaction between counselors and clients – Often what is learned comes as a surprise to both the counselor and the client.

Gestalt Techniques • • Dream Work Empty Chair Confrontation Making the Rounds I Take Responsibility Exaggeration May I Feed You a Sentence

Multicultural and Gender Sensitive Issues • Widely used throughout the world. • Experiments can be used to help individuals deal with and perceive their own culture (Sharf, 2004). • Very individualistic-based which may be fine for many cultures but contrast sharply with others. • As open to gender sensitive issues as any other counseling modality.

Strengths and Contributions • Emphasis on helping people incorporate and accept all aspects of their lives. • Focus on resolving areas of unfinished business. • Primary emphasis on doing rather than talking. • Flexible and not limited to a few techniques. • Versatility with regard to disorders.

Limitations and Criticisms • Lacks a strong theoretical base. • Does not allow for passive insight and change that some clients are more likely to use. • Mostly avoids diagnosis and testing. • Too concerned with individual development and is in essence very self-centered approach.

The Case of Linda: Gestalt Therapy • How would you conceptualize this case using Gestalt therapy? • What would be your treatment plan for this client using a Gestalt approach?