Fritz Perls, Laura Perls, Paul Goodman

GESTALT THERAPY

An existential form of psychotherapy that emphasizes personal responsibility & focuses upon the individuals experience in the present moment, the therapist-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a persons life & the self regulating adjustments people make as a result of their overall situation.

OVERVIEW: GESTALT THERAPY

EDWIN NEVIS: a conceptual & methodological base from which helping professionals can craft their practice. JOEL LATNER: built around two central ideas: that the most helpful focus of psychology is the experimental present moment, and that everyone is caught in webs of relationship; thus, its only possible to know ourselves against the background of our relationship to other things.

OVERVIEW: GESTALT THERAPY

MIDDLE OF THE 20TH CENTURY: Gestalt Therapy rose from its beginnings. 1960s, EARLY 1970s: rapid widespread popularity of Gestalt Therapy. 70s & 80s: Gestalt Therapy training centers spread globally but not aligned with formal academic settings. GESTALT THERAPY: anachronism

OVERVIEW: GESTALT THERAPY

Focuses more on the process rather than the content. A method of awareness practice, by which perceiving, feeling and acting are understood to be separate from interpreting, explaining and judging. Direct experience and indirect or secondary interpretation

GESTALT THERAPY: OBJECTIVE

To enable the client to become more fully and creatively alive, and to become free from the blocks and unfinished business that may diminish satisfaction, fulfillment and growth.

CONTEMPORARY THEORY & PRACTICE

Four load bearing walls : - Phenomenological Method - Dialogical Relationship - Field-Theoretical Strategies - Experimental Freedom

CONTEMPORARY THEORY & PRACTICE

Gestalt therapy theory emphasized personal experience & the experimental episodes understood as safe emergencies or experiments. 1990: the literature focused upon Gestalt therapy flourished, including the development of several professional Gestalt journals. Gestalt therapy theory has also been applied in Organizational Development, Couching work. Gestalt methods have been combined in meditation practices called Gestalt Practice.

PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD
Goal: Awareness. Reduces the effects of bias through repeated observations and inquiry. Has three steps: - the rule of epoch - the rule of description - the rule of horizontalization

THE RULE OF EPOCH

One sets aside ones initial biases and prejudices in order to suspend expectations and assumptions. Sets aside any initial theories with regard to what is presented in the meeting between therapist and client

THE RULE OF DESCRIPTION

One occupies oneself with describing instead of explaining. Implies immediate and specific observations, abstaining from interpretations or explanations, especially those formed from the application of a clinical theory superimposed over the circumstances of experience.

THE RULE OF HORIZONTALIZATION

One treats each item of description as having equal value or significance. Avoids any hierarchical assignment of importance such that the data of experience become prioritized and categorized as they are received.

DIALOGICAL RELATIONSHIP
Based on the I-Thou philosophic anthropology by Martin Buber. It assumes that individuals are made fully into people through the meeting between them. Dialogue is a special form of contact that becomes the ground for deepened awareness and self-realization.

FIELD-THEORETICAL STRATEGIES
ONTOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS: physical and environmental contexts in which we live and move. PHENOMENOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS: mental & physical dynamics that contribute to a persons sense of self, ones subjective experience not merely elements of the environmental context. CHARACTER STRUCTURE: dynamic rather than fixed in nature.

EXPERIMENTAL FREEDOM
A teaching method that creates an experience in which a client might learn something as part of their growth. Gestalt therapist is working with process rather than content, the how rather than the what. Through experiments, the therapist supports the clients direct experience of something new.

SELF

Is a phenomenological concept, existing in comparison with other. Without the other, there is no self, and how I experience the other is inseparable from how I experience the self. SELFHOOD: something that is achieved in relationship, rather than something inherently inside the person. In Gestalt Therapy, the process isnt about the self of the client being helped by the fixed self of the therapist, rather its an exploration of the co-creation of self and other in the here-and-now of the therapy.

PARADOXICAL THEORY OF CHANGE

Developed by Arnold Beisser. The more one attempts to be who is not, the more one remains the same. Change comes about as a result of full acceptance of what is, rather than striving to be different.

GESTALT THERAPY: METHODS

THE THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP: authentic, nonjudgmental, dialogic relationship between client & the therapist is the crucible of change. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD: a phenomenological attitude the therapist is open to & encourages the client to reveal who he is and how he functions in the world.

GESTALT THERAPY: METHODS

THE EXPERIMENT: experiments, carefully tailored to a clients specific wants & needs at a given situation, serve the purpose of enhancing a clients experience in the hereand-now. WORK WITH COGNITION: often hold beliefs about their lives that are erroneous, distorted & filled with contradictions. WORK WITH THE WIDER FIELD: therapist works directly with those fields that include & reciprocally affect individuals with the goal of bringing about changes to their internal dynamics as well as in their impact on others.

GESTALT THERAPY: THE CLIENTS

Gestalt therapy seems beneficial for people who are rather buttoned up when it comes to their emotions. Gestalt therapy can be used with clients of diverse cultures, races, religions and sexual orientations.

GESTALT THERAPY: TECHNIQUES

SELF DIALOGUE: a constant process of demarcation & interaction between I and me, the speakable and the unspeakable and between what is said & what is meant. ENACTMENT & DRAMATIZATION: enactment increases awareness through dramatizing some part of the clients existence by asking the client to put his feelings into actions.

GESTALT THERAPY: TECHNIQUES

GUIDED FANTASY: use to bring an experience into the here-and-now. DREAM WORK: bring dreams back to life & relive them as though they are happening now. AWARENESS OF SELF & OTHERS: having the client to become another person. HOMEWORK: asking clients to write dialogues between parts of themselves or between parts of their bodies, gather information or do other tasks that are related to & fit with what is going on in the therapy process.