by

Legesse Sana Dana

• The word “gestalt” is a German word
that roughly means “the whole is more
than the sum of the parts”., a
configuration or patterns of elements
so unified as a whole that it cannot be
described merely as a sum of its parts.
• The term Gestalt was coined by the
philosopher Christian von Ehrenfels in
1890, to denote experiences that
require more than the basic sensory
capacities to comprehend.
 According to the school,
understanding of psychological
phenomena such as perceptual
illusions could not be derived by
merely isolating the elementary
parts for analysis, because
human perception may organize
sensory stimuli in any number of
ways, making the whole different
from the sum of the parts.
 Gestalt psychologists suggest that the
events in the brain bear a structural
correspondence to psychological events;
indeed, it has been shown that steady
electric currents in the brain correspond to
structured perceptual events. The Gestalt
school has made substantial contributions to
the study of learning, recall, and the nature
of associations, as well as important
contributions to personality and social
psychology.
• Gestalists believe that human beings work
for wholeness and completeness in their
lives. Each person has a self-actualizing
tendency that emerges through the
beginning of self-awareness and personal
interaction with the environment.
• Self-actualization is centered in the present;
it “is the process of being what one is and
not a process of striving to become.”
(Kempler, 1973,P.262).
• The Gestalt view of human nature places
trust in the inner wisdom of people, much as
person-centered counseling does.
• Each person seeks to live interactively and
productively, striving to coordinate the various
parts of the person into a healthy, unified
whole. From a Gestalt perspective, persons are
more than a sum of their parts (Perls, 1969).
• The Gestalt view that each person is able to
change and become responsible (Hatcher &
Himelsteint, 1997). Thus, individuals are actors
in the events around them, not just reactors to
events.
• Overall, the Gestalt point of view is existential,
experiential, and phenomenological: the now is
what matters. People discover different aspects
of themselves through experience rather than
talk, and individuals’ own assessment and
interpretation of their lives at any given
moment are what matter most.
• Fritz Perls
• Born in 1893 into a Jewish Berlin
family
• Medic in WWI for Germany, MD in
1920
• Trained as a psychoanalyst
• 1933, fled Germany to Holland & S.
Africa
• 1946, went to America

Other contributors:
 Laura Perls, Fritz’s wife, and Paul
Goodman helped refine and enlarge
the original ideas.
 Jeon Fagan and Irma Lee Shepherd
(1970), developed the model still
further.
 Gestalt psychologists find it is important to think
of problems as a whole. Max Wertheimer
considered thinking to happen in two ways:
productive and reproductive.
 Productive thinking- is solving a problem with
insight.
 This is a quick insightful unplanned response to
situations and environmental interaction.
 Reproductive thinking-is solving a problem
with previous experiences and what is already
known. (1945/1959).
 This is a very common thinking. For example,
when a person is given several segments of
information, he/she deliberately examines the
relationships among its parts, analyzes their
purpose, concept, and totality, he/she reaches
the "aha!" moment, using what is already
known.
Gestalt therapy is associated with Gestalt
Psychology, a school of thought that
stresses the perception of completeness
and wholeness. In fact, the term gestalt
literally translated means “whole figure.”
Gestalt therapy arose as a reaction to the
reductionist emphasis in other schools of
counseling and psychotherapy, such as
psychoanalysis and behaviorism, which
tried to break down the personality or client
behaviors into explainable parts. In
contrast, Gestalt theory emphasizes how
people function in their totality.
• Wholeness & completeness
• Trust the inner wisdom of people
• Live integratively & productively
• People are able to change and become
responsible
• Persons are more than the sum of their parts
• Individuals are actors, not reactors
• The now is what matters
• Discovery of self occurs thru experience
rather than talk due to an overdependence
on intellectual experience
• Unfinished business – earlier thoughts,
feelings & reactions that still affect personal
functioning & interfere w/present
• No unconscious just a lack of awareness
• The more aware = more healthy
• Body signs = awareness of a need to
change behaviors
• Needs are brought to the fore and then
placed in the background when a new need
will come to the fore
• Using “I” in place of “it”, especially when
talking about one’s body
• Focus on how and what rather than why
• Convert questions into statements
• Do not diagnose
 Unexpressed feelings
 These incomplete directions do seek
completion: preoccupation,
compulsive behavior, wariness,
oppressive energy, and self-
defeating behavior, and shows in
some blockage in the body
 Impasse- stuck point
 Introjection- uncritically accepting
others’ beliefs and standards without
assimilating them to make them
congruent with who we are. Passive
incorporation.
 Projection- disowning certain aspects
of ourselves by assigning them to
the environment. Seeing in others
the qualities we refuse to
acknowledge ourselves.
 Retroflection- turning back to ourselves
what we would like to do someone else or
doing to ourselves what we would like
someone else to do to us.
 Deflection- process of distraction so that it

is difficult to maintain a sustained sense

of contact. Overuse of humor, abstract
generalization, and questions rather than
statements.
 Confluence-blurring of the differentiation
between self and the environment. High
need to be accepted and liked. Playing safe.

 In
using introjection,projection, retroflection,
deflection, and confluence, one lose contact
with the environment, and lose boundary.
 Phony layer – pretending to be something
that one is not, often involving game
playing and fantasy.
 Phobic layer – an attempt to avoid
recognizing aspects of one self that an
individual would prefer to deny.
 Impasse layer – no sense of direction and
wonder how they are going to make it in
the environment and drift into the sea of
hopelessness.
 Implosive layer – Feel vulnerable to
feelings that they have defensively built.
 Explosive layer – have intense feelings of
joy, sorrow or pain. Become authentic
with themselves and others.
• Counselors create an atmosphere
that encourages clients to explore
growth
• Therefore, counselors are personally
involved w/clients & are honest
• Counselors are exciting, energetic
and fully human
• Always use the present tense
• Address all conversations directly
• Help clients resolve unfinished
business
• Here & now, immediacy of experience
• Action, experience feelings & behaviors
• Now = experience = awareness = reality
• Past is no more, future does not exist.
Only the now exists
• Attend to both nonverbal and verbal
expression.
• Recognize that life presents choices
• Help clients become more integrated &
mature
• Bring together emotion, cognition, and
behavior
• Exercises are ready made techniques
• Experiments are made on the spot
• Dream work – become parts of the
dream, discover what is missing in the
dream
• Empty chair
• Confrontation – point out incongruities
• Asking what & how

-End-
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology
www.answers.com/topic/gestalt-psychology