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Key Figures in Gestalt Therapy

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Fritz Perls and Laura Perls, Miriam Polster and Erving Polster

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Major Focus of Gestalt Therapy

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The approach is an experiential therapy that stresses here-and-now awareness and integration of the fragmented parts of the personality. It focuses on the "what" and "how" of behavior and on the role of unfinished business from the past in preventing effective functioning in the present.

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Philosophy of Gestalt Therapy

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An existential-phenomenological approach based on the premise that individuals must be understood in the context of their ongoing relationship with the environment.

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Describe the approach of Gestalt Therapy

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The approach is designed to help people experience the present moment more fully and gain awareness of what they are doing. The approach is experiential in that clients come to grips with what they are thinking, feeling, and doing as they interact with the therapist.

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Key concepts of Gestalt Therapy

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Here and Now, Direction experiencing, awareness, and bringing unfinished business from the past into the present.

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5 Major Channels of Resistance challenged in Gestalt Therapy

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introjection, projection, retroflection, confluence, and deflection.

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Basic principles of Gestalt Therapy

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holism, field theory, the figure-formation process, and organismic self-regulation

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Therapeutic Goal of Gestalt Therapy

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attaining awareness and expanding choices.

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Describe the therapeutic relationship in Gestalt Therapy

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stresses the I/Thou relationship. The focus is not on the techniques employed by the therapist but on who the therapist is as a person and what the therapist is doing. The counselor assists clients in experiencing all feelings more fully and lets them make their own interpretations. Clients identify their own unfinished business from the past that is interfering with their present functioning.

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Role of therapist in Gestalt Therapy

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Therapist is a guide and a catalyst, presents experiments and shares observations.

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Techniques and Procedures of Gestalt Therapy

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The client is expected to play an active role. Therapists do not force change on clients, they create experiments within a context of the I/Thou dialogue in a here-and-now framework. Experiments can take many forms: setting up dialogue between a client and a significant person in his or her life; reliving a painful event; or carrying on dialogue between two conflicting aspects within an individual. Role-play can occur, empty chair technique also used.

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Contributions of Gestalt Therapy

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By encouraging direct contact and the expression of feelings, the approach de-emphasizes abstract intellectualization of one's problems. Intense experiencing can occur quickly, so therapy can be relatively brief. The approach recognizes the value of working with the past as it is important to the here and now.

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Limitations of Gestalt Therapy

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Gestalt procedures can become a series of mechanical exercise behind which the therapist as a person can hide. Therapist has the potential to manipulate the client with these powerful methods.

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Awareness

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The process of attending to and observing one's own sensing, thinking, feelings, and actions; paying attention to the flowing nature of one's present-centered experience.

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Blocks to energy

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Paying attention to where energy is located, how it is used, and how it can be blocked.

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Confluence

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A disturbance in which the sense of the boundary between self and environment is lost.

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Confrontation

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An invitation for the client to become aware of discrepancies between verbal and nonverbal expressions, between feelings and actions, or between thoughts and feelings.

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Contact

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The process of interacting with nature and with other people without losing one's sense of individuality. Contact is made by seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and moving.

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Continuum of awareness

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Staying with the moment-to-moment flow of experiencing, which leads individuals to discover how they are functioning in the world.

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Deflection

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A way of avoiding contact and awareness by being vague and indirect.

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Dichotomy

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A split by which a person experiences or sees opposing forces; a polarity (weak/strong, dependent/independent).

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Empty chair technique

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A role playing intervention in which clients play conflicting parts. This typically consists of clients engaging in an imaginary dialogue between different sides of themselves.

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Exercises

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Ready-made techniques that are sometimes used to make something happen in a therapy session or to achieve a goal.

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Experiments

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Procedures aimed at encouraging spontaneity and inventiveness by bringing the possibilities for action directly into the therapy session. Experiments are designed to enhance here-and-now awareness. They are activities clients try out as a way of testing new ways of thinking, feeling and behaving.

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Field

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A dynamic system of interrelationships.

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Field Theory

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Paying attention to and exploring what is occurring at the boundary between the person and the environment.

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Figure

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Those aspects of the individual's experience that are most salient at any moment.

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Figure-formation process

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Describes how the individual organizes the environment from moment to moment and how the emerging focus of attention is on what is figural.

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Ground

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Those aspects of the individual's experience that tend to be out of awareness or in the background.

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Holism

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Attending to a client's thoughts, feelings, behaviors, body and dreams.

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Impasse

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The stuck point in a situation in which individuals believe they are unable to support themselves and thus seek external support.

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Introjection

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The uncritical acceptance of others' beliefs and standards without assimilating them into one's own personality.

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Paradoxical theory of change

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A theoretical position that authentic change occurs more from being who we are than from trying to be who we are not.

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Phenomenological inquiry

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Through a therapist asking "what" and "how" questions, clients are assisted in noticing what is occurring in the present moment.

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Projection

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The process by which we disown certain aspects of ourselves by ascribing them to the environment; the opposite of introjection.

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Relational Gestalt Therapy

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A supportive, kind, and compassionate style that emphasizes dialogue in the therapeutic relationship, rather than the confrontational style of Fritz Perls.

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Retroflection

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The act of turning back onto ourselves something we would like to do (or have done) to someone else.

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Techniques

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Exercises or interventions that are often used to bring about action or interaction, sometimes with a prescribed outcome in mind.

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Unfinished business

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Unexpressed feelings (such as resentment, guilt, anger, grief) dating back to childhood that now interfere with effective psychological functioning; needless emotional debris that clutters present-centered awareness.

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True or False, Resistance refers to defense we develop that prevent us from experiencing the present in a full and real way.

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True.

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True or False, Blocked energy can be considered a form of resistance.

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True.

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True or False, The basic goal of Gestalt Therapy is adjustment to society.

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False.

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True or False, Recent trends in Gestalt practice include more emphasis on confrontation, more anonymity of the therapist and increased reliance on techniques.

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False.

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True or False, Dreams contain existential messages, and each piece of dream work leads to assimilation of disowned aspects of the self.

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True.

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True or False, Gestalt therapy is well suited for group counseling, especially when there is a here-and-now emphasis within the group.

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True.

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True or False, One of the functions of the therapist is to pay attention to the client's body language.

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True.

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True or False, Gestalt techniques are primarily aimed at teaching clients to think rationally.

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False.

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True or False, A major function of the therapist is to make interpretations of clients' behavior so that they can being to think of their patterns.

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False.

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True or False, Perls contends that most frequent source of unfinished business is resentment.

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True.

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The main founder of Gestalt Therapy is?

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Fritz Perls

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Name 4 focuses of Gestalt Therapy.

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1) focus is on the "what" and "how" of behavior 2) The focus is on the here and now 3) The focus is on integrating fragmented parts of the personality 4) The focus is on unfinished business from the past.

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Name 4 key concepts of Gestalt Therapy

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1) acceptance of personal responsibility 2) awareness of the present moment 3) unfinished business 4) dealing with the impasse

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According to the Gestalt view, awareness is?

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by itself therapeutic.

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The basic goal of Gestalt therapy is to help clients?

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move from environmental support to self support.

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The impasse is the point in therapy at which clients?

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do not have external support available to them, experience a sense of being stuck, are challenged to get into contact with their frustrations and accept whatever is.

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Gestalt Therapy can be best described as?

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an experiential therapy

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Gestalt Therapy encourages clients to?

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experience feelings intensely, stay in here-and-now, work through the impasse, pay attention to their own non verbal message.

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The focus of Gestalt Therapy is on?

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recognizing one's own projections and refusing to accept helplessness.

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A contribution of the Gestalt approach is that?

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It deals with the past in a lively manner.

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The process of distraction, which makes it difficult to maintain sustained contact is?

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Deflection

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The process of turning back to ourselves what we would like to do to someone else is?

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Retroflection

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The tendency to uncritically accept others' beliefs without assimilating or internalizing them is?

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Introjection

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The process of blurring awareness of the boundary between self and environment is?

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Confluence

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Name 4 limitations of Gestalt Therapy as it is applied to working with culturally diverse populations.

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1) Clients who have been culturally conditioned to be emotionally reserved may not see value in experiential techniques 2) Clients may be "put off" by the emphasis on expressing feelings 3) Clients may be looking for specific advice on solving practical problems 4) Clients may believe showing one's vulnerability is being weak.

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