Gestalt Therapy:
Introduction:
- Existential, phenomenological & process-based approach
- Individuals must be understood in context of ongoing relationship with environment
- Awareness, choice & responsibility: foundations of practice
- Initial goal: expand clients’ awareness of what they’re experiencing in present
moment. Through this awareness, change automatically occurs.
- Approach is phenomenological: focuses on client’s perceptions of reality
- existential: people are always in the process of becoming, remaking & rediscovering
themselves
- Affirms human ability for growth & healing through interpersonal contact & insight
- Focuses on here-and-now, the what and how of experiencing, the authenticity of the
therapist, active dialogic inquiry & exploration, and the I/Thou of relating
- Fritz Pearl main originator. He stressed a holistic approach to personality. He valued
examining the present situation. Focuses much more on process than on content.
- Pearls asserted that how individuals behave in the present moment is more important
for self-understanding than why they behave as they do
- Awareness involves insight & introspection. Characteristic of awareness is paying
attention to the flow of your experience & being in contact with what you’re doing
when you’re doing it. Includes: self-acceptance, knowledge of environment,
responsibility for choices & ability to make contact with their field & people in it
- Field: a dynamic system of interrelationships
- Contemporary relational Gestalt therapy stresses dialogue & the I/Thou relationship
between clients & therapists. Emphasise: therapeutic relationship & working
collaboratively with clients
Key Concepts
View of Human Nature
- Based on existential philosophy, phenomenology & field theory
- Therapy aims: awareness & contact with the environment, which consists of both the
external & internal world. The quality of contact with aspects of the external world
(other people) & internal world (part of self disowned) are monitored
- By becoming aware, clients become able to make informed choices & so to live a
more meaningful existence
- Style of doing therapy: 2 personal agendas: moving client from environmental support
to self-support & reintegrating the disowned parts of one’s personality
- People have capacity to control themselves when they’re aware of what is happening
in & around them
- Authentic changes occur from being who we are than from trying to be who we are
not. Called this: paradoxical theory of change. We’re constantly moving between who
we ‘should be’ and who are ‘are’
1
, Principles of Gestalt Therapy Theory:
- Underlying basic principles: holism, field theory, the figure-formation process &
organismic self-regulation
- Holism: whole or completion, or a form that cannot be separated into parts without
losing its essence. The whole is different from the sum of its parts. Therapists
interested in the whole person, they place no superior value on particular aspects of
individual. Focuses on: thoughts, feelings, behaviours, body, memories & dreams
- Field Theory: asserts that an organism must be seen in its environment or its context,
as part of the constantly changing field. Emphasis on a figure (those aspects of the
individual’s experience that are most relevant at any moment) or the ground (those
aspects of the client’s presentation that are often out of their awareness). Signs of this
background can be found on the surface through physical gestures, tone of voice,
demeanour & other nonverbal content. Referred to: ‘attending to the obvious’, while
paying attention to how the parts fit together, how the individual makes contact with
the environment & integration.
- The Figure-Formation Process: tracks how the individual organises experience from
moment to moment as some aspects of the environment field emerges from
background and becomes the focal point of the individual’s attention & interest.
- Organismic Self-Regulation: Figure-formation process intertwined with organismic
self-regulation, process which equilibrium/state of balance, is ‘disturbed’ by
emergence of a need/sensation/interest. Organisms do their best to regulate
themselves, given their own capabilities & resources of their environment. People can
take action & make contacts – restore equilibrium/contribute to growth/change.
Therapy reveals what is of interest to client & what they need to restore equilibrium.
Therapists direct client’s awareness to the figure that emerge from background
during therapy & use figure-formation process as guide.
Contact and Resistances to Contact:
- Contact necessary – change/growth
- Contact: made by seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and moving.
- Effective contact means: interacting with nature & other people without losing one’s
sense of individuality.
- Clear awareness, full energy & ability to express oneself needed
- Continually renewed creative adjustment of individuals to their environment
- G therapists also focus: interruptions, disturbances & resistances to contact, which
developed as coping processes – prevent us from experiencing the present in a full &
real way.
- Resistances: adopted out of our awareness. Can contribute: dysfunctional behaviour
- Refer to them: ‘contact boundary phenomena’
- 5 different kinds of contact boundary disturbances: introjection, projection,
retroflection, deflection & confluence.
- Introjection: tendency to uncritically accept others’ beliefs & standards without
making them congruent to who we are. These introjections remain alien to us
2
Introduction:
- Existential, phenomenological & process-based approach
- Individuals must be understood in context of ongoing relationship with environment
- Awareness, choice & responsibility: foundations of practice
- Initial goal: expand clients’ awareness of what they’re experiencing in present
moment. Through this awareness, change automatically occurs.
- Approach is phenomenological: focuses on client’s perceptions of reality
- existential: people are always in the process of becoming, remaking & rediscovering
themselves
- Affirms human ability for growth & healing through interpersonal contact & insight
- Focuses on here-and-now, the what and how of experiencing, the authenticity of the
therapist, active dialogic inquiry & exploration, and the I/Thou of relating
- Fritz Pearl main originator. He stressed a holistic approach to personality. He valued
examining the present situation. Focuses much more on process than on content.
- Pearls asserted that how individuals behave in the present moment is more important
for self-understanding than why they behave as they do
- Awareness involves insight & introspection. Characteristic of awareness is paying
attention to the flow of your experience & being in contact with what you’re doing
when you’re doing it. Includes: self-acceptance, knowledge of environment,
responsibility for choices & ability to make contact with their field & people in it
- Field: a dynamic system of interrelationships
- Contemporary relational Gestalt therapy stresses dialogue & the I/Thou relationship
between clients & therapists. Emphasise: therapeutic relationship & working
collaboratively with clients
Key Concepts
View of Human Nature
- Based on existential philosophy, phenomenology & field theory
- Therapy aims: awareness & contact with the environment, which consists of both the
external & internal world. The quality of contact with aspects of the external world
(other people) & internal world (part of self disowned) are monitored
- By becoming aware, clients become able to make informed choices & so to live a
more meaningful existence
- Style of doing therapy: 2 personal agendas: moving client from environmental support
to self-support & reintegrating the disowned parts of one’s personality
- People have capacity to control themselves when they’re aware of what is happening
in & around them
- Authentic changes occur from being who we are than from trying to be who we are
not. Called this: paradoxical theory of change. We’re constantly moving between who
we ‘should be’ and who are ‘are’
1
, Principles of Gestalt Therapy Theory:
- Underlying basic principles: holism, field theory, the figure-formation process &
organismic self-regulation
- Holism: whole or completion, or a form that cannot be separated into parts without
losing its essence. The whole is different from the sum of its parts. Therapists
interested in the whole person, they place no superior value on particular aspects of
individual. Focuses on: thoughts, feelings, behaviours, body, memories & dreams
- Field Theory: asserts that an organism must be seen in its environment or its context,
as part of the constantly changing field. Emphasis on a figure (those aspects of the
individual’s experience that are most relevant at any moment) or the ground (those
aspects of the client’s presentation that are often out of their awareness). Signs of this
background can be found on the surface through physical gestures, tone of voice,
demeanour & other nonverbal content. Referred to: ‘attending to the obvious’, while
paying attention to how the parts fit together, how the individual makes contact with
the environment & integration.
- The Figure-Formation Process: tracks how the individual organises experience from
moment to moment as some aspects of the environment field emerges from
background and becomes the focal point of the individual’s attention & interest.
- Organismic Self-Regulation: Figure-formation process intertwined with organismic
self-regulation, process which equilibrium/state of balance, is ‘disturbed’ by
emergence of a need/sensation/interest. Organisms do their best to regulate
themselves, given their own capabilities & resources of their environment. People can
take action & make contacts – restore equilibrium/contribute to growth/change.
Therapy reveals what is of interest to client & what they need to restore equilibrium.
Therapists direct client’s awareness to the figure that emerge from background
during therapy & use figure-formation process as guide.
Contact and Resistances to Contact:
- Contact necessary – change/growth
- Contact: made by seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and moving.
- Effective contact means: interacting with nature & other people without losing one’s
sense of individuality.
- Clear awareness, full energy & ability to express oneself needed
- Continually renewed creative adjustment of individuals to their environment
- G therapists also focus: interruptions, disturbances & resistances to contact, which
developed as coping processes – prevent us from experiencing the present in a full &
real way.
- Resistances: adopted out of our awareness. Can contribute: dysfunctional behaviour
- Refer to them: ‘contact boundary phenomena’
- 5 different kinds of contact boundary disturbances: introjection, projection,
retroflection, deflection & confluence.
- Introjection: tendency to uncritically accept others’ beliefs & standards without
making them congruent to who we are. These introjections remain alien to us
2
