Gestalt Therapy

Question 1

give a basic overview of Gestalt Therapy

Answer 1

A form of psychotherapy that is centered on increasing a
person’s awareness, freedom, and self-direction. It’s a form of therapy that focuses on the present moment rather than past experiences

Question 2

Who is associated with Gestalt Therapy?

Answer 2

Fritz Perls

Question 3

What are the key concepts of Gestalt Therapy?

Answer 3

Is an existential, phenomenological, and process-based approach created on the premise that individuals must be understood in the context of their ongoing relationship with the environment.
- Phenomenological because it focuses on the clients perceptions of reality
- Existential because it is grounded in the notion that people are always in the process of becoming, remaking, and rediscovering themselves

Cornerstones of practice = awareness, choice, and responsibility

Focuses on the here and now, the what and how of experiencing

Believes that how an individual behave in the present moment is far more important to self-understanding than why they behave as they do

Question 4

What is Gestalt Therapy’s view of human nature?

Answer 4

Believes that individuals have the capacity to self-regulate when they are aware of what is happening in and around them
Believes people are context sensitive and motivated to solve problems.
Suggests that the more we work at becoming who or what we are not, the more we will remain the same.
- Coined this the Paradoxical Theory of Change (we are constantly moving between who we should be and who we are)

Question 5

What is the focus of Gestalt Therapy?

Answer 5

Principles of Gestalt Therapy Theory
Holism: Gestalt therapists are interested in the whole person, and as such, they place no superior value on any particular aspect of the individual.

Field Theory: Gestalt theory is based on Field Theory, which asserts that an organism must be seen in its environment, or in its context, as part of the constantly changing field.
- Therapists pay attention to and explore what is occurring at the boundary between a person and their environment.

The Figure-Formation Process: tracks how the individual organizes experience from moment to moment as some aspect of the environmental field emerges from the background and becomes the focal point of the individual’s attention and interest.
- Therapists facilitate the clients movement toward and away from this figure of interest, with the dominant needs of the individual influencing this process.

Organismic Self-Regulation: the figure-formation process is intertwined with the principle of organismic self-regulation.
- Equilibrium is disturbed by the emergence of a need, sensation, or interest.
- Individuals do their best to regulate themselves, given their own capabilities and the resources available in their environment
- In therapy, emphasis is placed on what it is that the client needs to gain equilibrium or facilitate change

Question 6

What are the goals of Gestalt Therapy?

Answer 6

Gestalt therapy is not really goal-oriented, but counsellors do clearly attend to certain goals, listed below

1. Assist clients in attaining greater awareness, and with it, greater choice.
   - Awareness includes knowing the environment, knowing oneself, accepting oneself, and being able to make contact.
   - Awareness, itself, is viewed as curative in Gestalt Therapy
2. For clients to expand their awareness of what they are experiencing in the present moment.
   - Through awareness, change occurs.
   - By remaining aware, important unfinished business can emerge and be dealt with in therapy
3. Help clients in moving from environmental support to self-support and to reintegrate the disowned parts of their personality
4. For clients to understand the ways they block or interrupt their awareness and experience

Question 7

What is the role of the therapist in gestalt therapy?

Answer 7

Therapists focus on interruptions, disturbances, and resistances to contact

Therapists focus on helping clients to become increasingly aware of their present experience.
- To help clients get in touch with the present moment, they will often ask what and how questions, rarely asking why questions

Assist clients in exploring how unfinished business and unexpressed feelings can manifest into bodily experiences

Encourage clients to fully experience any conditions of being stuck

Use active methods and personal engagement with clients to increase their awareness, freedom, and self-direction rather than directing them toward preset goals
View clients as the experts in their own experience
Functions as a guide and a catalyst, presents experiments, and shares observations
Create a climate in which clients are likely to try out new ways of being and behaving
- They do not force change on clients through confrontation, instead, they work within a context of I/Thou dialogue in a here-and-now framework

Question 8

What is the client’s experience in Gestalt Therapy?

Answer 8

Through involvement in Gestalt therapy, clients are expected to…
1. Move toward increased awareness of themselves

2. Gradually assume ownership of their experience (as opposed to making others responsible for what they are thinking, feeling, and doing)
3. Develop skills and acquire values that will enable them to satisfy their needs without violating the rights of others
   Become more aware of all their senses
4. Learn to accept responsibility for what they do, including accepting the consequences of their actions
5. Be able to ask for and get help from others and be able to give to others

Three stage integration sequence to characterize client growth in therapy

1. Discovery: clients are likely to reach a new realization about themselves or to acquire a novel view of an old situation. Such discoveries often come as a surprise to clients.
2. Accommodation: involves clients recognizing that they have a choice. Clients begin by trying out new behaviours in the supportive environment of the therapy office, and they then expand their awareness of the world. This process can often be difficult for clients, but with therapeutic support they gain skills to cope.
3. Assimilation: involves clients’ learning how to influence their environment. At this phase, clients feel capable of dealing with the surprises they encounter in everyday living. They begin to do more than simply passively accepting their environment

Question 9

What are the Methods, Techniques and Procedures of Gestalt Therapy?

Answer 9

Gestalt therapy methods are tailored to the needs of clients, and experiments are typically presented in an invitational manner.

The Experiment
Experiments: grow out of the interaction between client and therapist, and emerge within this dialogic process, providing clients with an opportunity to increase their awareness and try out new ways of thinking and behaving.
- Considered the cornerstone of experiential learning
- Shifts the focus of counselling from talking about a topic to an activity that will heighten the clients awareness and understanding through an experience.
- Flows directly from psychotherapy theory and is crafted to fit the individual as he or she exists in the here and now
- An intervention and active technique that facilitates the collaborative exploration of a client’s experience
- The goal of an experiment is learning, discovery, and gaining awareness
- Created by the therapist and focused around a topic already being discussed by the client
- Aimed at facilitating a clients ability to work through the stuck points of their life.
- Brings the possibility to take action directly into the therapy session
- Experiments can take many forms
Role playing, imagining a threat, dramatizing the memory of a painful event, creating a dialogue, reliving profound experiences in the present, etc
- Must be carried out in an environment that offers a balance of both support and risk

Question 10

What are the strengths and limitations of Gestalt Therapy from a diversity perspective?

Answer 10

Gestalt therapy methods are tailored to the needs of clients, and experiments are typically presented in an invitational manner.

The Experiment
Experiments: grow out of the interaction between client and therapist, and emerge within this dialogic process, providing clients with an opportunity to increase their awareness and try out new ways of thinking and behaving.

• Considered the cornerstone of experiential learning
• Shifts the focus of counselling from talking about a topic to an activity that will heighten the clients awareness and understanding through an experience.
• Flows directly from psychotherapy theory and is crafted to fit the individual as he or she exists in the here and now
• An intervention and active technique that facilitates the collaborative exploration of a client’s experience
• The goal of an experiment is learning, discovery, and gaining awareness
• Created by the therapist and focused around a topic already being discussed by the client
• Aimed at facilitating a clients ability to work through the stuck points of their life.
• Brings the possibility to take action directly into the therapy session
• Experiments can take many forms
  Role playing, imagining a threat, dramatizing the memory of a painful event, creating a dialogue, reliving profound experiences in the present, etc
• Must be carried out in an environment that offers a balance of both support and risk

Question 11

Give a brief overview of Gestalt Therapy

Answer 11

Gestalt theory has made a number of significant contributions to the overall field of counselling and psychotherapy. Prominent among them is the ability to bring aspects of the client’s existence into therapy and to work with the client experientially in the present moment. Gestalt therapy is based upon the personality theory that stresses the organism’s innate capacity to strive toward actualization. Fritz Perls (1893 – 1970) was, by his own acknowledgement, a physician, a psychoanalyst, a scholar, a pilot, and a “dirty old man” (Perls, 1969a). His philosophy of life appears to be represented by the first line of a poem written by himself (Perls, 1969):
In and out of the garbage pail
Put I my creation,
Be it lively, be it stale,
Sadness of elation.
Joy and sorrow as I had
Will be re-inspected;
Feeling sane and mad,
Taken or rejected.
Junk and chaos, come to halt!
’Stead of wild confusion,
Form a meaningful gestalt
Of my life’s conclusion.
Gestalt is a German word with no exact English equivalent; an approximate translation would be complete pattern or configuration. A Gestalt is a perceived whole. Gestalt theory is rooted in a number of disciplines and schools of thought. According to Clarkson and Mackewn (1993), in developing the Gestalt approach to therapy, Perls drew from:
Classical and innovative psychoanalysis
Holism
Easter religion (particularly Zen Buddhism)
Existentialism and phenomenology
Gestalt psychology and Kurt Lewin’s field theory
Wilhelm Reich’s character analysis and body therapy
Theatre, dance, and movement

Question 12

Upon completion of the lesson you should be able to:
describe the key concepts of the Gestalt approach;
describe aspects of the theory as they pertain to the general descriptors listed in Lesson 1;
outline the therapeutic process regarding the therapist, the client, and the relationship between the two;
evaluate the degree to which the theory behind the Gestalt approach is consistent with your theoretical notions of a counsellor.

Question 13

The text reading for this lesson is Chapter 8 of Corey (2024). Read the chapter before you begin to do the work in the lesson to get an overview of the theory. Supplement the textbook material by reading the articles by Enns (1987) and Wagner-Moore (2004).

Question 14

What are the basic concepts of Gestalt Therapy?

Answer 14

Awareness
Organismic Self-Regulation
Unfinished Business
Here-and-Now
Field Theory (Figure and Ground)
Interruptions to Contact (Disturbances at the Boundary)
Gestalt
Layers of Neurosis: Phony, Phobic, Impasse, Implosive, Explosive

Question 15

What are the basic assumptions of Gestalt THerapy?

Answer 15

The individual is considered a system in balance. In other words, the mind, body, and feelings are one. While learning is discovering and experiencing, the individual is responsible for his or her own behaviour and choices. As other humanistic approaches do, Gestalt theory recognizes the existence of an innate drive towards wholeness and self-actualization, or an urge to complete.

Question 16

WHat is the Heredity of Gestalt Therapy?

Answer 16

Heredity/Environment: Heredity plays no active role in Gestalt therapy. The dominant need (figure) emerges from ground, then recedes (satisfaction). Individuals are a part of their own environment and cannot be understood apart from it. Current awareness and actualization involves the meaningful integration and harmony between the person and his or her environment (Baruth & Robinson, 1987).

Question 17

What are the Cognitions of Gestalt Therapy?

Answer 17

Cognitions: The world is defined by the subjective reality of the individual’s perceptions. The mind or consciousness is understood in terms of its intentionality. Preoccupation with asking “why” things happen prevents people from experiencing “how” they happen.

Question 18

Does Gestalt Therapy use Motivation explanations?

Answer 18

Motivation: The focus is on growth and increased awareness. Everyone has only one inherent goal: to self-actualize. Rogers’s definition of self-actualization is ‘striving to become all that one is capable of becoming’. Kempler (as cited in Hansen, Rossberg, & Cramer, 1994) changes slightly that emphasis in his Gestalt definition of self-actualization: “becoming is the process of being what one is and not a process of striving to become”.

Question 19

What is the time orientation of Gestalt Therapy?

Answer 19

In Gestalt therapy, the past is important insofar as it is represented in the present. An excessive attention to the past may lead to the error of blaming the past as being responsible for what is happening in the present. Similarly, living with a focus on the future often results in not seeing what is at hand. Individuals who stray from the present and become preoccupied with the future are more likely to experience anxiety (Baruth & Robinson, 1987). Therefore, Gestalt therapy focuses on the immediate experience of the individual in the here-and-now.

Question 20

What is the view of human nature in gestalt therapy?

Answer 20

Humans are not independent from the environment and they are always in the process of evolving. Gestalt therapy believes that people are inherently self-regulating and growth-oriented. Existential human concerns, such as connection and separation, life and death, choice and responsibility, authenticity and freedom, are all at the centre of the therapeutic process. Gestalt therapy attempts to understand human beings by the study of experience.

Question 21

Does Gestalt Therapy use Holistic/Atomistic explanations?

Answer 21

Holistic/Atomistic: A person can only be understood as a whole. The whole is qualitatively different from and more than the sum of its parts. People behave in holistic fashion and they have the capacity to regulate themselves. Holism and field theory are interrelated in Gestalt theory.

Question 22

Does Gestalt Therapy use External/Internal Determinants explanations?

Answer 22

External/Internal Determinants: Gestalt therapy focuses on the client’s awareness and internal frame of reference. At the same time, this theory regards awareness and human relations as inseparable. People define themselves by how they experience themselves in relation to others.

Question 23

Does Gestalt Therapy use Nomothetic/Idiographic explanations?

Answer 23

Nomothetic/Idiographic: The emphasis is on the uniqueness of the individuals. People create and constitute their own worlds. As such, Gestalt therapy is highly committed to the validity of the client’s subjective reality.

Question 24

Does Gestalt Therapy use Longitudinal/Cross Sectional explanations?

Answer 24

Longitudinal/Cross Sectional: The emphasis is on the present (here-and-now) and on the awareness of current experiences. However, the role of the past is not ignored in Gestalt therapy, which recognized the effect of unfinished business and other past experiences.

Question 25

Does Gestalt Therapy use Tension Production/Reduction explanations?

Answer 25

Tension Production/Reduction: Gestalt therapy is known as an experiential therapy and attempts to increase the clients’ awareness through experimenting, enacting, and role-plays. The technique of exaggeration is sometimes used to intensify feelings and increase awareness.

Question 26

What is the observers frame of reference in Gestalt Therapy?

Answer 26

The focus is on the here-and-now and the what. The therapist would work with what is in front of him or her. In some forms of experiential Gestalt therapy (psychodrama, enactment trauma therapy), traumatic early childhood experiences may be re-enacted, under the therapist’s active guidance; however, even in those cases, the goal of therapy is to help clients identify and internalize a positive current resolution to past conflicts.

Question 27

What is the basis for inference in Gestalt THeory?

Answer 27

Gestalt theory is not invested in predicting future behaviour. The emphasis is on awareness of current experiences and the uniqueness of each individual.

Question 28

What is the basis for psychopathology in Gestalt Therapy?

Answer 28

Gestalt therapy is centred on increasing the client’s awareness of how psychological distress manifests itself, rather than explaining why it may have developed in the first place. According to Gestalt theory, there are several manifestations of psychological distress:

repeated experiencing of unfinished business (incomplete Gestalt);
lack of awareness of the need to complete (fixed Gestalt), leading to the development of neurosis;
repetition compulsion: a neurotic attempt to meet the original unsatisfied need (can be seen in the exercise of a maladaptive behavioural leitmotif);
the five layers of neurosis interfere with the individual’s capacity for authenticity;
interruptions to contact represent a failure to develop meaningful, genuine, and committed relationships, through a variety of maladaptive strategies (comparable, but not identical, to the maladaptive defense mechanisms in psychoanalytic theory):
introjection: rigid assimilation of external values, preventing the individual from developing his/her own personality;
deflection: inability to focus on the important figure out of the ground;
unaware projection: planning, anticipating, and empathizing are normal, but unaware projection of negative attributes onto others is neurotic;
confluence: impaired sense of differentiation between self and the world/others;
desensitization: numbing of oneself (similar to denial or repression in psychodynamic theory);
retroflection: doing to yourself what you originally did/wanted to do to others (akin to masochism in psychoanalytic theory);
proflection: doing to others what you would like them to do to you.

Question 29

What is the basis for a healthy personality in Gestalt Therapy?

Answer 29

The healthy individual finishes Gestalts (brings projects and life experience cycles to completion), is integrated, self-aware, authentic, self-supportive, and responsible. The healthy individual is also engaged in meaningful, genuine, and committed relationships.

Question 30

What is the role of the therapist in Gestalt Therapy?

Answer 30

The Gestalt therapist is very active in helping the client overcome barriers to awareness, re-enact past experiences and create adaptive endings to previously unfinished businesses. Particularly in psychodrama, a Gestalt-based modality of group psychotherapy developed by Jacob Levy Moreno (1889-1974), the therapist acts as a director of role-play re-enactments of clients’ experiences. The approach is highly experiential, often anxiety producing, and geared towards increased self-awareness and resolution. Because of the high emotional involvement on the part of the clients, the psychodrama therapist is particularly mindful of and trained in safeguarding clients’ boundaries and integrity, containing emotional abreactions in the group setting, and overall ensuring safety and a corrective therapeutic experience. An informative article on the current developments in psychodrama by Blatner (1997) is entitled “Psychodrama: The State of the Art”.

Question 31

What are the implications for helping relationships in Gestalt Therapy?

Answer 31

The Gestalt therapist encourages experiential learning. The main goal of helping is to move the client from environmental support to self-support and to assist the client in gaining awareness of moment-to-moment experiencing. With awareness, the client is able to recognize denied aspects of self and thus proceed toward reintegration of all parts of the self.

Question 32

What are the Gestalt Techniques?

Answer 32

Techniques focus on the intensification of experiencing and aim at the integration of conflicting feelings or conflicting parts of oneself. The client engages in role-playing; by playing out all the various parts and polarities alternatively, the client gains greater awareness of the conflicts within him/herself. Some techniques include:

“I take responsibility”
Making the rounds
The empty-chair technique
The two-chairs technique
Exaggeration
Playing the projection
Role rehearsal and reversal.
Internal dialogue exercise
Most of the Gestalt techniques listed above are well explained in your textbook by Corey (2024). However, I would like to make some clarifications about the chair-work techniques, which is not fully addressed by Corey.

In your textbook, Corey (2024, p. 253) starts by mentioning the empty-chair technique, but then he goes on to describe the two-chairs technique. Indeed, both techniques are examples of the internal dialogue intervention; however, there is an important difference between the two. Ideally, the aim of the empty-chair technique is to help the client process some unfinished business. A good example of unfinished business would be when a client is saying something like: “I am so saddened by the unexpected death of my grandmother - while she was alive, I never did get a chance to tell her how much I loved her.” Then the counsellor would invite the client to imagine grandmother seated in an empty chair and the client would have an opportunity to symbolically talk to the deceased person and, by doing so, to attain some sense of closure. Notice that in processing an unfinished business through the empty-chair technique there is no shuffling from one chair to another, there is no dilemma, or conflict between opposite or suppressed parts of one’s self.

On the contrary, as indicated in the definitions of terms included in the online Glossary, the purpose of the two-chairs intervention is to help the client integrate apparently conflicting wishes or parts of himself/herself. When there is something worth preserving from each side of a client’s inner conflict (initially expressed as an irreconcilable polarity), then the goal of therapy becomes helping the client arrive at a livable compromise, or an integrated realistic understanding that healthy psychological functioning does not have to be a matter of choosing between extremes or absolutes. The two chairs symbolically represent the two initially opposite poles of the client’s inner conflict. Inviting the client to move from one chair to the other and experience each position fully can help the client gradually identify ways by which the two seemingly irreconcilable positions may be integrated, or ways in which an acceptable compromise can be reached (Wagner-Moore, 2004).

Question 33

Learning Activities and Study Questions
Activities
Based on the article by Enns (1987), formulate your own feminist critique of Gestalt therapy. Then, list the possible points of intersection between the Gestalt approach and feminist values.
Write down a recent dream you have had. Then, based on Corey’s (2024) discussion of the Gestalt approach to dream work (p. 255-257), place yourself in the therapist’s role and try to imagine a Gestalt counselling session devoted to the exploration of that dream.
Self Reflections
What are the key characteristics that distinguish the Gestalt approach?
Compare and contrast how a Gestalt therapist and a psychoanalyst would work with a client’s past?
What Gestalt technique(s) would you apply in order to help a client bring closure to an unfinished business?
Discuss the concept of the ‘here-and-now’ as it relates to Gestalt.
Alfred Adler has often been called a forerunner of humanistic psychology. What are some of the phenomenological undercurrents that Gestalt therapy and Adlerian counselling have in common?