Gestalt therapy - Experiential and Relationship-Oriented Therapies Flashcards
Founders:
Fritz and Laura Perls
Key figures:
Miriam and Erving Polster.
Theory
An experiential therapy stressing awareness and integration; it grew as a reaction against analytic therapy. It integrates the functioning of body and mind and places emphasis on the therapeutic relationship.
The basic philosophies
The person strives for wholeness and integration of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Some key concepts include contact with self and others, contact boundaries, and awareness. The view is nondeterministic in that the person is viewed as having the capacity to recognize how earlier influences are related to present difficulties. As an experiential approach, it is grounded in the here and now and emphasizes awareness, personal choice, and responsibility.
Key Concepts
Emphasis is on the “what” and “how” of experiencing in the here and now to help clients accept all aspects of themselves. Key concepts include holism, figure-formation process, awareness, unfinished business and avoidance, contact, and energy.
Goal of Therapy
To assist clients in gaining awareness of moment-to-moment experiencing and to expand the capacity to make choices. To foster integration of the self.
The Therapeutic Relationship
Central importance is given to the I/Thou relationship and the quality of the therapist’s presence. The therapist’s attitudes and behavior count more than the techniques used. The therapist does not interpret for clients but assists them in developing the means to make their own interpretations. Clients identify and work on unfinished business from the past that interferes with current functioning.
Techniques of Therapy
A wide range of experiments are designed to intensify experiencing and to integrate conflicting feelings. Experiments are co-created by therapist and client through an I/Thou dialogue. Therapists have latitude to creatively invent their own experiments. Formal diagnosis and testing are not a required part of therapy.
Six components of Gestalt therapy form the basis of the goals in therapy to promote greater awareness in the client and allow greater choice. These basic components include the continuum of experience, the here and now, the paradoxical theory of change, the experiment, the authentic encounter, and process-oriented diagnosis. Key elements to Gestalt therapy techniques include role-play, working with dreams and creating experiments.
Applications of the Approaches
Addresses a wide range of problems and populations: crisis intervention, treatment of a range of psychosomatic disorders, couples and family therapy, awareness training of mental health professionals, behavior problems in children, and teaching and learning. It is well suited to both individual and group counseling. The methods are powerful catalysts for opening up feelings and getting clients into contact with their present-centered experience.
Contributions to Multicultural Counseling
Its focus on expressing oneself nonverbally is congruent with those cultures that look beyond words for messages. Provides many experiments in working with clients who have cultural injunctions against freely expressing feelings. Can help to overcome language barrier with bilingual clients. Focus on bodily expressions is a subtle way to help clients recognize their conflicts.
Limitations in Multicultural Counseling
Clients who have been culturally conditioned to be emotionally reserved may not embrace Gestalt experiments. Some may not see how “being aware of present experiencing” will lead to solving their problems.
Contributions of the Approaches
The emphasis on direct experiencing and doing rather than on merely talking about feelings provides a perspective on growth and enhancement, not merely a treatment of disorders. It uses clients’ behavior as the basis for making them aware of their inner creative potential. The approach to dreams is a unique, creative tool to help clients discover basic conflicts. Therapy is viewed as an existential encounter; it is process-oriented, not technique-oriented. It recognizes nonverbal behavior as a key to understanding.
Limitations of the Approaches
Techniques lead to intense emotional expression; if these feelings are not explored and if cognitive work is not done, clients are likely to be left unfinished and will not have a sense of integration of their learning. Clients who have difficulty using imagination may not profit from certain experiments.
Role Play
Role-play forms the basis of some of the therapeutic practices from a Gestalt perspective, as clients are encouraged to experience their issues in the present moment. Clients assume the identity of another, such as their mother or father, or even a different version of themselves, to help them gain fuller awareness, experience personal conflicts, resolve inconsistencies, and work through unfinished business.
Select the role play exercise best suited to someone who wants to uncover areas of conflict or tension within different parts of their personality.
Option 1: Rehearsal exercise
This exercise operates on the assumption that our continued silent rehearsal to ourselves to gain acceptance can leave us stuck and we become fearful of not playing our role well enough, leading to anxiety or stage fright. Such rehearsals can prevent us from trying new behaviours, so speaking these out loud with the counsellor can help to make the client more aware of the ways in which they boost their social roles, attempt to meet the expectations of others, and want to be accepted, approved of, and liked.
Option 2: Internal dialogue exercise
Great choice!
This exercise is used to promote integrated functioning and acceptance of all aspects of personality, including those that have been disowned or denied. An example of this is the ‘empty chair technique’, where clients switch between two chairs and use dialogue to express different parts of their personality. This process can assist the client to uncover areas of conflict or tension within different parts of their personality and lead to integration of both sides.
Option 3: Reversal exercise
This exercise is based on the understanding that underlying or latent impulses manifest in reverse symptoms and behaviours, such as personality traits that have been denied. The client is then encouraged to take the role of the very thing that causes them anxiety to help them begin to accept all aspects of their personality. For example, a client who has trouble being assertive may be asked to reverse their usual way of relating to others and take up a different role by being as assertive as they can possibly be.
Working with Dreams
With a focus on awareness of the present moment, working with dreams from a Gestalt perspective involves bringing to life dreams and reliving them as if they were happening in the present moment. The client becomes part of their own dream as they act out what occurred and acts it out with dialogue. As each part of the dream is assumed to be a projection of the self and expressions of conflicting and contradictory roles, it is generally recommended that the client makes a detailed list of everything that occurred in the dream. The client can then gradually become aware of a range of feelings, as well as their opposing sides.
Creating experiments based on here-and-now awareness
Awareness of the here and now form the basis of experiments in Gestalt therapy. Within the safety of the counselling session, these experiments aim to expand a client’s awareness and help them to discover new modes of behaviour. Counsellors may use confrontation and invite clients to examine their behaviours, attitudes, and thoughts. By assisting clients experience conflicts, concerns, or feelings in the present moment, such experiments can expand awareness and integration of different aspects of personality.
