Chapter 7

Gestalt Therapy

Be who you are and say what you feel because those
who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t
mind.
Dr. Seuss

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Division of Cengage Le
Chapter Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:        
• Outline the development of Gestalt therapy and Fritz Perls
• Explain the theory of Gestalt therapy including its core
concepts
• Discuss the counseling relationship and goals in Gestalt
therapy
• Describe assessment, process, and techniques in Gestalt
therapy
• Demonstrate some therapeutic techniques
• Clarify the effectiveness of Gestalt therapy
• Discuss Gestalt play therapy
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Division of Cengage Le
Overview Gestalt Therapy
Fritz Perls
• The Nature of People
• Theory of Counseling
• Counseling Method
• Cross Cultural Application
• Managed Health Care

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Division of Cengage Le
 Fritz Perls
• A native of Germany
• Childhood of questioning and rebellion
• Degree from Friedrich Wilhelm University in 1921
• Worked in South Africa for 12 years and there
formulated all the ideas he would later call Gestalt
therapy
• Lived in New York, Miami, California and British
Columbia

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Division of Cengage Le
 Gestalt
• A German term that cannot be translated exactly
into English, but explained as:

• A form, a configuration or a totality that has, as a

unified whole, properties which cannot be derived by
summation from the parts and their relationships. It
may refer to physical structures, to physiological and
psychological functions, or to symbolic units.

(English & English, 1958, p. 225)

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Division of Cengage Le
 The Nature of People
• The most important areas of concern are the
thoughts and feelings that people are
experiencing at the moment
• Normal healthy behavior occurs when people act
and react as total organisms.
• Many people fragment their lives, distributing
concentration and attention among several things
at one time

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 The Nature of People
• View of human nature is positive
• People are capable of becoming self-regulating
beings who can achieve a sense of unity and
integration in their lives
• “Lose your mind and come to your senses”
• Awareness alone can be curative
• With full awareness self-regulation develops and
the total person takes control

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Division of Cengage Le
General principles for healthy
functioning
1. Valuing the here-and-now in order to experience each
minute fully
2. Embracing self-awareness and experience,
understanding and accepting all parts of self
3. Prizing wholeness or responsibility and understanding
life is a process; as people mature they move past old
ways and become more self-sufficient, self-observing,
and self-understanding
(Fall et al., 2004)

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People cause themselves problems by
not handling their lives in these ways:
• Lacking contact with their environment.
• Confluence: incorporate themselves into
others or the environment into themselves
• Unfinished business: unfulfilled needs,
unfinished situations

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 Cause of problems
• Fragmentation: inability to find what one
needs caused fragmentation
• Top/under dog: split between what they
should do and what they want to do
• Polarities: need to resolve conflicts between
existing polarities

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Division of Cengage Le
 Five Types of Polarities
1. Physical: masculine-feminine, and
parasympathetic-sympathetic nervous
system
2. Emotional: pleasure-pain, love-hate,
excitement-depression, love-hate
3. Mental: Parent-child, feeling-reason, top
dog-underdog
4. Spiritual: intellectual doubt – dogmatism
5. Inter-Individual: man-woman, black-white,
Christian-Jew
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 Theory of Counseling
The five layers of neurosis (counseling stages)
1. Phony Layer: Trying to be what they are not
2. Phobic Layer: Aware of the fears that force the
Phony game
3. Impasse Layer: Shed environmental supports of
their game without a better way to cope with fears
and dislikes
4. Implosive Layer: Aware of how they limit
themselves and begin to experiment with new
behaviors
5. Explosive Layer: Discover unused energy tied up
maintaining a phony existence
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 Theory of Counseling
1. Body language – project thoughts onto empty
chair as significant person
2. Direct experience of the here and now –
Integration and maturation – Gestalts as new
needs
3. Help people help themselves grow up
4. Integration is creating whole person whose
behavior matches their inner state
5. People should: grow in awareness – take
responsibility for their actions – move from
environmental support to self support
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 A sampling of counseling
methods
• “I” language: Disallow “you”
as in “you know how it is”
• Substitute “won’t” for “can’t”
Insist on client taking responsibility
• Substitute “what” and “how” for “why”
“what do you feel” not “why do you feel”
• No gossiping: talk to people not about people
Use an empty chair to talk to

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 A sampling of counseling
methods
• Change questions to statements
“I should” not “do you think I should”
• Take responsibility: Right now I feel
_______and I take _______ % of the
responsibility
• Sentence completion
“I help/hurt myself when I ___________

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 Sampling of counseling
methods
• Bipolarities – Top/under dog or I should vs. I
want
o Use an empty chair for a discussion
o Client sits in one chair to defend “I should”
o Moves to another chair to discuss “I want

• My greatest weakness
o Write a paragraph on my greatest weakness
and why it is a strength

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 Decision Making

SYNERGISE

SYNTHESIZE

TOP DOG UNDER DOG

“I SHOULD” “I WANT”
COMPROMISE
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 Counseling method
Integrate thoughts and feelings
For three closest people write
• “I resent _____”
• “I demand _____” and
• “I appreciate _____”

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Division of Cengage Le
 Counseling methods
Fantasy Games for creating awareness
• Client fantasizes being an animal and
tries to understand what it feels like
• Wise person: client asks and answers
one question to/from a wise person

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Division of Cengage Le
 Counseling Methods
Dream Work
• Dreaming is an awareness of the world
• Pieces of a dream are fragments of a
personality that must be integrated
• Describe a dream – list the objects – client
gives a voice to each part and has them
converse

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Division of Cengage Le
 Gestalt Play Therapy
• Concern of therapy is the integrated
functioning of all aspects of the child so that
senses, body, emotions, and intellect are
well coordinated in a creative adjustment
• A dance that sometimes the counselor
leads and other times the child leads
• Contact is having the ability to be
completely present in a situation

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Division of Cengage Le
 Gestalt Play Therapy
• Goal is to restore the child’s natural
functioning and self-regulatory
processes
• Experiencing the contacting process
leads to integration, choice and
change

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Division of Cengage Le
 Gestalt Play Therapy
Focus on development of inner strength
and confidence in the child through
opportunities to make choices, achieve
mastery, own their projections,
participate in imaginative play, and
expel aggressive energy appropriately

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Division of Cengage Le
Cross-cultural Applications
• Works well for some and offends others (such as
cultures where emotions are not expressed)
• Dedicated to lifestyle change rather than problem
resolution: If you learn how to behave, the
problems will take care of themselves.
• Present oriented but past can be dealt with using
empty chair
• People are responsible for their lives – no victims
– discounts the past
• Counselor must (in all cases) adapt to the culture
and world view of their clients
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Division of Cengage Le
 Managed Health Care
1. Managed health care companies would
have difficulties with this approach because
of the lack of specificity
2. How do you know when therapy is finished?
When the client has achieved the open
honest manner of interaction
3. Can be viewed as instant cure because that
sometimes happens quickly

© 2011 Brooks/Cole, A
Division of Cengage Le