Gestalt Therapy

Question 1

Who founded Gestalt therapy?

Answer 1

Fritz Perls, Laura Perls, and Paul Goodman

Question 2

Is Gestalt therapy experiential and humanistic?

Answer 2

Yes

Question 3

How does Gestalt therapy work?

Answer 3

It works with the client’s awareness and awareness skills.

Question 4

Is Gestalt therapy a process-based postmodern relational field theory?

Answer 4

Yes

Question 5

Are there preset goals in Gestalt therapy?

Answer 5

No. Active methods and active personal engagement are used to increase awareness, freedom, and self-direction of clients.

Question 6

Is Gestalt therapy an integrative method?

Answer 6

Yes. It includes affective, sensory, cognitive, interpersonal, and behavioral components.

Question 7

What is holism?

Answer 7

Holism asserts that humans are inherently self-regulating, growth-oriented, and that persons and their symptoms cannot be understood apart from their environment.

Question 8

What is field theory?

Answer 8

Field theory is a way of understanding how one’s context influences one’s experiencing. It is a theory about the nature of reality and our relationship to reality. It represents one of the first attempts to articulate a contextualist view of reality.

Question 9

What is the bedrock of the Gestalt theory of personality?

Answer 9

The combination of field theory, holism, and Gestalt psychology is the bedrock of the Gestalt theory of personality.

Question 10

No one can transcend embeddedness in a field; therefore, all attributions about the nature of reality are relative to the subject’s position in the field. Field theory renounces the belief that anyone, including the therapist, can have an objective perspective on reality. Gestalt therapy considers the whole situation and connectedness of every part of the whole.

Answer 10

No one can transcend embeddedness in a field; therefore, all attributions about the nature of reality are relative to the subject’s position in the field. Field theory renounces the belief that anyone, including the therapist, can have an objective perspective on reality. Gestalt therapy considers the whole situation and connectedness of every part of the whole.

Question 11

The Paradoxical Theory of Change

Answer 11

The paradox is that the more one tries to become who one is not, the more one stays the same. The more one tries to force oneself into a mold that does not fit, the more one is fragmented rather than whole. Knowing and accepting the truth of one’s feelings, beliefs, situation, and behavior builds wholeness and supports growth.

Question 12

Organismic Self-Regulation

Answer 12

Organismic Self-Regulation requires knowing and owning, that is, identifying with what one senses, feels emotionally, observes, needs or wants, and believes. Growth starts with conscious awareness of what is occurring in one’s current existence, including how one is affected and how one affects others. One moves toward wholeness by identifying with ongoing experience, being in contact with what is actually happening, identifying and trusting what one genuinely feels and wants, and being honest with self and others about what one is actually able and willing to do - - or not willing to do.

Question 13

When one knows, senses, and feels one’s self here and now, including the possibilities for change, one can be fully present, accepting or changing what is not satisfying. Living in the past, worrying about the future, or clinging to illusions about what one should be or could have been diminishes emotional and conscious awareness and the immediacy of experience that is key to organismic living and growth.

Answer 13

When one knows, senses, and feels one’s self here and now, including the possibilities for change, one can be fully present, accepting or changing what is not satisfying. Living in the past, worrying about the future, or clinging to illusions about what one should be or could have been diminishes emotional and conscious awareness and the immediacy of experience that is key to organismic living and growth.

Question 14

Gestalt therapy aims for self-knowledge, acceptance, and growth by immersion in current existence, aligning contact, awareness, and experimentation with what is actually happening at the moment. It is here and now, not on what should be, could be, or was. From this present-centered focus, one can become clear about the needs, wishes, goals, and values of self and the situation.

Answer 14

Gestalt therapy aims for self-knowledge, acceptance, and growth by immersion in current existence, aligning contact, awareness, and experimentation with what is actually happening at the moment. It is here and now, not on what should be, could be, or was. From this present-centered focus, one can become clear about the needs, wishes, goals, and values of self and the situation.

Question 15

Three main concepts emphasized in Gestalt therapy are…

Answer 15

Contact, Conscious Awareness, and Experimentation

Question 16

Contact

Answer 16

Contact means being in touch with what is emerging here and now, moment to moment. One’s experience of contact and withdrawal determines the quality of one’s life and the capacity for growth and development.

Question 17

Conscious Awareness

Answer 17

Conscious awareness means being in touch with what is. Awareness, or focused attention, is a prerequisite for contact and vital in situations that require higher contact ability, situations involving complexity or conflict, and situations in which habitual modes of thinking and acting are not working and when one does not learn from experience.

Question 18

Experimentation

Answer 18

Experimentation is the act of trying something new to increase understanding. The experiment may result in enhanced emotions or the realization of something that had been kept from awareness.

Question 19

How does Gestalt therapy begin?

Answer 19

It starts with the therapist making contact with the patient by getting in touch with what the patient and therapist are experiencing and doing. The therapist helps the patient focus on and clarify what he or she is in contact with and deepens the exploration by helping focus the patient’s awareness.

Question 20

The Awareness Process

Answer 20

The continuum of one’s flow of awareness. To be consciously aware is to be engaged in the fully embodied human experience with another. This includes a focus on both what comes to awareness and what does not come to awareness.

Question 21

The Second Order of Awareness

Answer 21

The awareness of one’s awareness process. Awareness of awareness can empower by helping clients gain greater access to themselves and clarify processes that had been confusing, improving the accuracy of perception and unblocking previously blocked emotional energy.

Question 22

Gestalt therapists focus on clients’ awareness and contact processes with respect, compassion, and commitment to the validity of the patients’ experiential reality. Therapists model the process by disclosing their awareness and experience and being open to learning from the client’s perspective. Therapists are present in as mutual a way as possible in the therapeutic relationship and take responsibility for their own behavior and feelings. In this way, the therapist can not only be active and make suggestions but also fully accept the client in a manner consistent with the paradoxical theory of change.

Answer 22

Gestalt therapists focus on clients’ awareness and contact processes with respect, compassion, and commitment to the validity of the patients’ experiential reality. Therapists model the process by disclosing their awareness and experience and being open to learning from the client’s perspective. Therapists are present in as mutual a way as possible in the therapeutic relationship and take responsibility for their own behavior and feelings. In this way, the therapist can not only be active and make suggestions but also fully accept the client in a manner consistent with the paradoxical theory of change.

Question 23

In Gestalt therapy the view is a belief in the potential for human growth and by appreciation of relationships and conscious awareness.

Answer 23

In Gestalt therapy the view is a belief in the potential for human growth and by appreciation of relationships and conscious awareness.

Question 24

In Gestalt therapy, the client’s awareness is not assumed to be merely a cover for some other, deeper motivation. Gestalt therapy uses any and all available data. Gestalt therapy carefully observes behavior, including observation of the body, and it focuses on the here and now and uses active methods. The client’s self-report is considered real data. The therapist and the client co-direct the work of therapy.

Answer 24

In Gestalt therapy, the client’s awareness is not assumed to be merely a cover for some other, deeper motivation. Gestalt therapy uses any and all available data. Gestalt therapy carefully observes behavior, including observation of the body, and it focuses on the here and now and uses active methods. The client’s self-report is considered real data. The therapist and the client co-direct the work of therapy.

Question 25

How is Gestalt therapy similar to client-centered therapy?

Answer 25

Both believe in the potential for human growth, and both believe that growth results from a relationship in which the therapist is experienced as warm and authentic (congruent). They are both phenomenological therapies that work with the subjective awareness of the client.

Question 26

What is different between Gestalt and client-centered therapy?

Answer 26

Gestalt therapy is an experimental phenomenology. It uses awareness experiments, which are designed to clarify the client’s awareness rather than control their behavior.

Question 27

How does Gestalt therapy resemble person-centered therapy?

Answer 27

1. Gestalt therapists have become more supportive, compassionate, kind, and oriented to the client’s experience.
2. The therapist does not have an “objective” truth that is more accurate than the truth the client experiences.

Question 28

What is the concept of the relationship in Gestalt therapy modeled on?

Answer 28

Martin Buber’s I-Thou relationship.

Question 29

What tenets does Gestalt therapy share with psychoanalysis?

Answer 29

An emphasis on:
- the whole person and sense of self
- process thinking
- subjectivity and affect
An appreciation of the impact of life events on personality development
A belief that:
- people are motivated toward growth & development
- infants are born with motivation & capacity for personal interaction, attachment, and satisfaction
- there is no “self” without an “other”
- the structure and contents of the mind are shaped by interactions with others

Question 30

What does Gestalt therapy have in common with REBT?

Answer 30

The thoughts that REBT would label irrational are also an important focus for Gestalt therapy.

Question 31

The Gestalt therapist does not pretend to know the truth about what is irrational. They observe the process, direct the client to observe their thoughts, and explores alternate ways of thinking in a manner that values and respect what the client experiences and comes to believe.

Answer 31

The Gestalt therapist does not pretend to know the truth about what is irrational. They observe the process, direct the client to observe their thoughts, and explores alternate ways of thinking in a manner that values and respect what the client experiences and comes to believe.

Question 32

For Fritz Perls, Gestalt psychology, organismic theory, field theory, and holism formed a happy union. Organismic theory stressed the unity and integration of human beings, and holism stressed the natural, universal drive of all organisms toward wholeness. Field theory provided Perls a framework for contextualizing our being in the world.

Answer 32

For Fritz Perls, Gestalt psychology, organismic theory, field theory, and holism formed a happy union. Organismic theory stressed the unity and integration of human beings, and holism stressed the natural, universal drive of all organisms toward wholeness. Field theory provided Perls a framework for contextualizing our being in the world.

Question 33

What does the world Gestalt mean?

Answer 33

It refers to a perpetual whole or configuration experience. People perceive in patterned wholes. Patterns reflect an interrelationship among elements.

Question 34

How is the world studied in field theory?

Answer 34

As a systematic web of relationships.

Question 35

What is reality?

Answer 35

A function of perspective, not a true positivist fact. There may be multiple realities of equal legitimacy. This opens up to formerly disenfranchised voices such as women, gays, and non-Europeans.

Question 36

Phenomenology

Answer 36

Phenomenology assumes the reality is formed in the relationship between the observed and the observer. In short, reality is interpreted.

Question 37

Inclusion

Answer 37

Inclusion is a developed form of contact rather than a merger with the experience of the patient. The therapist discloses themselves as a person who is authentic and congruent and striving to be transparent and self-disclosing. The therapist is changed as well as the client.

Question 38

In Gestalt therapy is there any meaningful way to consider any living organism apart from its interactions with its environment?

Answer 38

No. Psychologically, there is no meaningful way to consider a person apart from interpersonal relations just as there is no meaningful way to perceive the environment except through someone’s perspective. It is impossible for perception to be totally “objective.”

Question 39

Does self exist without other?

Answer 39

No. Self implies self-in-relation. Experience does not exist without contact, but it is the contact between humans that dominates the formation and functions of our personalities. It is the contact that is the simplest and first reality. (Perls)

Question 40

Boundaries

Answer 40

The field is differentiated by boundaries. The contact boundary has the dual function of both connecting and separating people. Without emotional connectivity with others, one starves; without emotional separation, one does not maintain a separate, autonomous identity. Connection meets biological, social, and psychological needs; separation creates and maintains autonomy and protects against harmful intrusion and overload.

Question 41

Self-Regulation / Differentiated Contact

Answer 41

Effective self-regulation includes contact in which one is aware that what is newly emerging may be either nourishing or harmful. One identifies with what is nourishing and rejects what is harmful. This kind of differentiated contact leads to growth.

Question 42

Organismic Self-Regulation

Answer 42

Gestalt therapy theory holds that people are inherently self-regulating, context sensitive, and motivated to solve problems. Needs and desires are organized hierarchically so that in health the most urgent need takes precedence and claims attention until the need is met. When this need is met, the nest need or interest becomes the center of attention.

Question 43

Gestalt (Figure/Ground) Formation

Answer 43

Gestalt psychology has taught us that we perceive in unified wholes through the phenomenon of contrast. A figure of interest forms in contrast to a relatively dull background. One can only perceive one clear figure at at a time, although figures and grounds may shift rapidly.

Question 44

What replaces the unconscious in Gestalt therapy?

Answer 44

Awareness and unawareness.

Question 45

What is perception?

Answer 45

The formation of a figure against a background.

Question 46

What happens in neurotic clients?

Answer 46

Some aspect of the phenomenal field is purposely and regularly relegated to the background.

Question 47

Gestalt therapists maintain that what is being relegated to permanent background status reflects the client’s current conflicts as well as the client’s perspective on current field conditions. When a client perceives the conditions of the therapy relationship to be safe enough, more and more aspects of previously sequestered subjective states can be brought into awareness through the therapeutic dialogue.

Answer 47

Gestalt therapists maintain that what is being relegated to permanent background status reflects the client’s current conflicts as well as the client’s perspective on current field conditions. When a client perceives the conditions of the therapy relationship to be safe enough, more and more aspects of previously sequestered subjective states can be brought into awareness through the therapeutic dialogue.

Question 48

What is the Gestalt therapy notion of health?

Answer 48

In healthy organismic self-regulation, one is aware of shifting need states; that is, what is of most importance becomes the figure of one’s awareness. Being whole, then, is simply identifying with one’s ongoing, moment-by-moment experiencing and allowing this identification to organize one’s behavior. Compassion, love, and care for the environment (including other humans) are all part of organismic functioning. By trying something new, one learns what does and does not work in various situations. When a figure is not allowed to emerge, when it is somehow interrupted or misdirected, there is a disturbance in awareness and contact.

Question 49

What is the Gestalt tendency toward growth?

Answer 49

Gestalt therapists believe that people are inclined toward growth and will develop as fully as conditions allow. Gestalt therapy is holistic and asserts that people are inherently self-regulating and growth oriented.

Question 50

What are the existential themes of existence in Gestalt therapy?

Answer 50

Connection & Separation, Life & Death, Choice & Responsibility, Authenticity & Freedom. Gestalt therapy is existential, humanistic, and experiential. Meaning is understood in terms of what is experienced and how.

Question 51

How does Martin Buber reflect on Gestalt therapy theory?

Answer 51

There is no “I,” no sense of self, other than self in relation to others. There is only the “I” of the “I-Thou” or the “I” of the “I-It.” All real living is meeting.

Question 52

Connecting / Separation

Answer 52

In health, the boundary is permeable enough to allow exchange with that promoting health (connection) and firm enough to preserve autonomy and exclude what is unhealthful (separation).

Question 53

Isolation

Answer 53

When the experience of coming together is blocked repetitively, one is left in a state of isolation.

Question 54

Confluence

Answer 54

If the need to withdraw is blocked, there is a corresponding boundary disturbance known as confluence. Confluence is the loss of the experience of separate identity.

Question 55

Creative Adjustment

Answer 55

The term creative adjustment reflects a creative balance between changing the environment and adjusting to current conditions. Perls stated that all contact is creative adjustment of the organism and the environment.

Question 56

Gestalt Formation Cycle

Answer 56

The process whereby a need becomes figural, is acted on, and then recedes as a new figure emerges is called the Gestalt formation cycle.

Question 57

What is meaning?

Answer 57

The relation between that which stands out (figure) and the context (ground) is meaning. In a good Gestalt, meaning is clear.

Question 58

What is mental illness?

Answer 58

Mental illness is simply the inability to form clear figures of interest and identify with one’s moment-by-moment experience or to respond to what one becomes aware of or both. Impoverished or intrusive environments diminish one’s capacity for creative adjustment. Gestalt therapists assume that neurotic regulation is the result of a creative adjustment that was made in a difficult situation in the past and then not readjusted as field conditions changed.

Question 59

Polarities

Answer 59

Life is dominated by polarities: Life-death, strength-vulnerability, connection-separation, etc. When one’s creative adjustments are flowing and responsive to current field conditions, the interaction and continually recalibrating balance of these polarities make up the rich tapestry of existence. In neurotic regulation, some aspects of one’s ground must be kept out of awareness, and polarities lose their fluidity and become hardened into dichotomies.

Question 60

Resistance

Answer 60

Resistance is the process of opposing the formation of a figure (a thought, feeling, impulse, or need) or the imposition of the therapist’s figure (or agenda) that threatens to emerge in a context that is judged to be dangerous. The inhibited experience is resisted - - usually without awareness. The theory of self-regulation posits that all phenomena, even resistance, can be shown to serve an organismic purpose when taken in context.

Question 61

Contact and Support

Answer 61

Contact and support are inseparable. Contact is possible only when support is available. Support refers to anything and everything that facilitates assimilation and integration (Perls). The Gestalt therapist strives to restore the client’s healthy functioning by balancing self-support and environmental support.

Question 62

Anxiety

Answer 62

Therapists are concerned with the process of anxiety, not the context (what one is anxious about). Perls defined anxiety as excitement minus support. Negative predictions and irrational beliefs can trigger anxiety, that is, when people futurize. Anxiety can also be created by unsupported breathing. With its focus on body orientation and characterological issues, Gestalt therapy is ideal for treating anxiety.

Question 63

Impasse

Answer 63

An impasse is experienced when a person’s customary supports are not available and new supports have not yet been mobilized.

Question 64

Development

Answer 64

Infants are born with the capacity for self-regulation. The contact between caretaker and infant must be attuned to the child’s emotional states for self-regulation to develop best, and children seek relatedness through emotionally attuned mutual regulation.

Question 65

When is psychotherapy indicated?

Answer 65

When people routinely fail to learn from experience. When their self-regulatory abilities do not lead them beyond the maladaptive repetitive patterns that were developed originally as creative adjustments in difficult circumstances but that now make them or those around them unhappy. When clients who do not deal adequately with crises, feel ill equipped to deal with others in their lives, or need guidance for personal or spiritual growth.

Question 66

Do the patterns that emerge in therapy recapitulate the patterns that are manifested in the client’s life?

Answer 66

Yes.

Question 67

What is the only goal of Gestalt therapy?

Answer 67

Awareness

Question 68

What is awareness of awareness?

Answer 68

The client’s ability to use their skills with awareness to rectify disturbances in their awareness process. Awareness requires self-knowledge, knowledge of the environment, responsibility for choices, self-acceptance, and the ability to contact.

Question 69

Do Gestalt therapists provide support through the therapeutic relationship and facilitate the client’s awareness of how they block awareness and functioning

Answer 69

Yes

Question 70

What’s the goal of therapy?

Answer 70

The goal of therapy is growth and autonomy through an increase in conscious awareness. Therapy is an exploration rather than a direct attempt to change behavior.

Question 71

What is the therapist / client relationship?

Answer 71

The therapist is an alive, excited, warm, and direct presence. The relationship is open and engaged. Clients get honest feedback but also can see, hear, and be told how they are experienced by the therapist in the authentic contact. They have the healing experience of being listened to by someone who profoundly cares about their perspective, feelings, and thoughts.

Question 72

What and How, Here and Now

Answer 72

Therapy holds a dual focus: an emphasis on what the client does and how it is done and focus on interactions between therapist and client. Direct experience is the primary tool and the focus is always on the here and now. What happens first is not childhood but what is experienced now. Awareness takes place now. Methods are used that bring the old experience directly into present experience rather than just recounting the past.

Question 73

Does the concept of awareness exist along a continuum?

Answer 73

Yes. Gestalt therapy distinguishes between merely knowing about something and owning what one is doing. For full awareness, this more detailed descriptive awareness must be allowed to affect the client - - and they have to be able to own it and respond in a relevant way.

Question 74

Is contact, especially between therapist and client, another pillar of Gestalt therapy?

Answer 74

Yes. The therapeutic relationship is contact over time. Nonverbal subtext (posture, tone of voice, syntax, and interest level) that communicates information to the client about how the therapist regard the client is of great importance.

Question 75

Experiment

Answer 75

Experiments are experiments in awareness and not criticism of what is observed.

Question 76

Self-Disclosure

Answer 76

Therapists are encouraged to disclose their personal experience, in the moment as well as in their lives. Both the client and the therapist take part in directing therapy through a process of mutual phenomenological exploration. A client’s subjective reality is as valid as the therapist’s.

Question 77

Dialogue

Answer 77

Dialogue is the basis of the Gestalt therapy relationship. Real dialogue includes the therapist surrendering to the interaction, to what emerges from the interaction, and to the possibility of being changed by the interaction.

Question 78

Is Gestalt therapy existential, experiential, and experimental?

Answer 78

Yes.

Question 79

What is the prototypical experiment?

Answer 79

Some form of the question: “What are you aware of, or experiencing, right here and now?”

Question 80

Is creative expression another form of enactment?

Answer 80

Yes. It can help clarify feelings in a way that talking alone cannot. It includes the techniques of expression such as journal writing, poetry, art, and movement.

Question 81

What are core components of Gestalt therapy’s dialogic relationship?

Answer 81

Acceptance, warmth, and genuineness.

Question 82

Gestalt therapy is geared toward the development of human freedom, not human conformity. Gestalt practice is a protest against the reductionism of mere symptom removal and adjustment; it is a protest for a client’s right to develop fully enough to be able to make conscious and informed choices that shape their life. Gestalt therapy can be short-term or long-term therapy.

Answer 82

Gestalt therapy is geared toward the development of human freedom, not human conformity. Gestalt practice is a protest against the reductionism of mere symptom removal and adjustment; it is a protest for a client’s right to develop fully enough to be able to make conscious and informed choices that shape their life. Gestalt therapy can be short-term or long-term therapy.

Question 83

The principles of existential dialogue, the use of phenomenological experience for both client and therapist, the trust of organismic self-regulation, the emphasis on experimentation and awareness, the paradoxical theory of change, and close attention to the contact between the therapist and the client all form a model of good psychotherapy.

Answer 83

The principles of existential dialogue, the use of phenomenological experience for both client and therapist, the trust of organismic self-regulation, the emphasis on experimentation and awareness, the paradoxical theory of change, and close attention to the contact between the therapist and the client all form a model of good psychotherapy.