Gestalt Therapy

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Gestalt Therapy

• EDCE 655
• Theories Techniques II

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Fritz Perls

• Realized the importance of viewing humans as a
  whole rather than as a sum of discretely
  functioning parts through his work at the
  Goldstein Institute for Brain-Damaged Soldiers in
  Frankfurt
• Established the New York Institute for Gestalt
  Therapy (1952)

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Gestalt View of Human Nature

• Therapy aims at integrating the sometimes
  conflicting dimensions within all people
• Individuals are capable of dealing with their
  life problems themselves, especially if they are
  fully aware of what is occurring in the present
• Gestalt Theory of Change
• The more we try to be who what we are not, the
  more we stay the same

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Therapeutic Goals

• Attaining awareness of self senses coupled with
  greater choice responsibility
• Assuming ownership of experiences
• Developing skills acquiring values that will
  permit the satisfaction of needs without
  violating the rights of others
• Moving from outside support to increased internal
  support

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Gestalt Propositions

• A person tends to seek closure
• A person will complete Gestalts in accordance
  with his/her own needs
• A persons behavior is a whole which is greater
  then the sum of its parts
• A persons behavior can be meaningfully
  understood only in context
• A person experiences the world in accordance to
  the principles of figure ground

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Counselors Function Role

• Assist the client in developing their own
  awareness experiencing how that are now
• Focuses on the clients feelings, awareness at
  the moment, body messages, energy, avoidance,
  clocks to awareness
• Paying attention to body language
• Be aware of gaps in attention awareness of
  nonverbal expression
• Incongruence between verbal nonverbal messages
• Emphasize relationship between language patterns
  personality
• It talk
• You talk
• Questions
• Language that defines power
• Clients metaphors

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Counselor / Client Relationship

• Emphasis on person-to-person relationship between
  counselor client
• Genuine I/Thou relationship
• Both counselor client are changed by their
  interaction

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Clients Experience in Counseling

• Clients are ACTIVE participants who make their
  own interpretations meanings
• Client Integration Sequence
• Discovery
• Clients achieve new realizations about themselves
  or acquire a new perspective
• Accommodation
• Clients recognize that they have a choice
• Assimilation
• Clients learn how to influence their environment

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The NOW

• Emphasis on the here now
• power is in the present
• Counselor utilizes what how questions to
  focus clients on the present
• Counselors goal is to help clients make contact
  with their experience in a vivid immediate
  manner rather than simply talking about it
• Counselor are interested in the past if it
  directly impacts their feelings behaviors
• experiences in the past are brought into the
  present as much as possible

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Unfinished Business

• Unfinished Business Unexpressed feelings
• Remains to interfere with the effective contact
  with oneself others until one faces deals
  with the unexpressed emotions
• Expressed frequently in some blockage with the
  body
• Impasse (stuck point)
• Situation in which people believe themselves to
  be incapable of supporting themselves
  subsequently seeking support from others

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Avoidance

• A method that people employ to prevent themselves
  from facing unfinished business from
  experiencing the uncomfortable emotions
  associated with it
• Counselors encourage the expression in the
  present moment those emotions that have never
  been directly experienced before

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Layers of Neurosis

• The phony
• The phobic
• The impasse
• The implosive
• The explosive

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Contact Resistances to Contact

• Effective contact with the environment stimulates
  inevitable change
• Resistances to contact challenged in Gestalt
• Introjection
• Projection
• Retroflection
• Deflection
• Confluence

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Energy Blocks to Energy

• Emphasis on where energy is located, how it is
  used, how it can be blocked
• Blocked energy is perceived as a type of
  resistance
• Client attention focuses on how their resistance
  is expressed in their body, then clients
  exaggerate the bodily symptoms to gain insight on
  how their energy is being diverted in these
  activities

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The Gestalt Experiment

• Counseling sessions are perceived as a series of
  experiments which are a creative adventure
  developed collaboratively between counselor
  client
• The experiment is a method to reveal an internal
  struggle by making the struggle an actual process
• The experiment is a medium through which clients
  experience the emotions associated with the
  internal struggle rather than merely talking
  about them

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Preparation for Gestalt Experiments

• Counselors should personally experience the power
  of Gestalt experiments feel comfortable
  implementing them in therapy
• The counselor relationship the necessity of
  trust are the foundations for utilizing any
  technique

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Role of Confrontation

• By using Gestalt techniques, counselors must be
  willing to be active at times challenging
• Self-confrontation by clients as they challenge
  themselves
• It is imperative in effective confrontation to
  RESPECT the client

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The Dialogue Exercise

• A role playing technique
• Encourages the dialogue between 2 opposing poles
  in ones personality
• Promotes a higher level of integration
  acceptance of the 2 polarities
• i.e., parent vs. child ego states

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Making the Rounds

• Group Technique
• Requires asking a person to approach others in
  group to either say or do something
• Promotes
• Individual confrontation
• Risk taking
• Disclosure of self
• Experiment with new behavior
• growth

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I Take Responsibility for

• Counselor asks a client to make a statement
  then adds
• and I take responsibility for it
• Promotes
• Increased recognition acceptance of the
  clients feelings
• Decreased projection of their emotions onto others

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Playing the Projection

• Counselor asks client to role play certain
  assertions that he/she makes about other people
• Increases awareness of how he/she sees clearly in
  others the very things he/she does not want to
  see accept in the self

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Reversal Technique

• Counselor asks the client to role play the
  opposing side of the personality
• Permits the contact with pieces of the self that
  have been denied submerged

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Rehearsal Exercise

• Counselor asks client to share his/her internal
  rehearsing to make him/her aware of how much
  energy preparation is involved in bolstering
  their social roles

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Exaggeration Exercise

• Client is asked to exaggerate a nonverbal
  movement or gesture repeatedly which intensifies
  the emotions connected to it
• Wants clients to become aware of the subtle
  signals they are communicating through body
  language

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Staying with the Feeling

• Counselor encourages the client to stay with the
  retain unpleasant feelings from which the client
  would prefer to escape

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Gestalt Dream Work

• The royal road to integration
• The counselor encourages the client to relive
  act out the dream in the present tense
• Each part of the dream is understood as a
  projection of the self
• All the different parts of the dream are
  expression of ones contradictory inconsistent
  sides
• By entering a dialogue between the opposing
  sides, one becomes more aware of the range of
  ones emotions

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Gestalt Cycle of Experience
Withdrawal
Sensation
Contact
Awareness
Mobilization of Energy
Action
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Layers of NeurosisPealing the Onion of Adult
Personality

• It is necessary to strip off 5 layers of neurosis
  to reach the true personality
• The Phoney
• Living up to the fantasy someone else has created
• One reacts to others inauthentically
• When one gets past this stage he/she experiences
  pain
• The Phobic
• An attempt to avoid pain of seeing self clearly
• Resistance to accepting self the way we are pops
  up
• The Impasse
• The point where we are stuck in our own
  maturation
• We feel dead
• Nothing can get past this but must in order for
  growth
• The Implosive
• We experience this deadness
• We implode into ourselves
• Expose our authentic selves
• The Explosive
• We let go of phoney roles pretenses
• Release energy we have been using to be fake

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Contributions to Multicultural Counseling

• Can be advantageous if appropriately timed
• Experiments can be tailored to fit the unique way
  in which an individual perceived interprets
  his/her culture
• Gestalt techniques can allow the client the
  counselor to break down certain cross-cultural
  barriers between them
• Effective in helping people integrate the
  polarities within themselves

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Limitations to Multicultural Counseling

• Some clients who have been culturally conditioned
  to keep their feelings reserved may not do well
  with the high level of intense feelings brought
  about by the techniques used
• Some clients are culturally conditioned that they
  are not to express their emotions to their
  parents
• As in the empty chair technique may require

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Limitations Criticisms of Gestalt Therapy

• The classic style of GT has a deemphasis on the
  cognitive factors of personality
• GT discourages the counselor from teaching
  clients
• Why should counseling exclude information giving,
  making suggestions, cognitive processing,
  explanations, interpretations?
• The counselor must have a high level of personal
  development

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Cautions about Techniques

• Techniques are not for all clients
• when, with who, in what situation?
• Techniques may be problematic if used with less
  organized, more severely disturbed, or psychotic
  clients
• There is a potential danger in using these
  techniques because they are powerful
• The counselor must be sensitive, use appropriate
  timing, use inventiveness, exhibit empathy
  respect for the client
• GT takes much skill should be used cautiously
  with much training from experienced individuals

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Linda In Crisis Over Her Pregnancy

• Assume that you are a counselor in a community
  mental-health clinic, that you have a Gestalt
  orientation, that the counselor at the local
  high school tells you about Linda, a 15-year-old
  client he has seen several times. He feels that
  she needs further counseling, but he is limited
  by a school policy that does not permit personal
  counseling of any duration. Here is what you lean
  about her from the counselor.
• BACKGROUND DATA
• Linda comes from a close-knit family, in
  general she feels that she can seek her parents
  out when she has problems. But now she says that
  she just cannot turn to them in this time of
  crisis. Even though she her boyfriend had been
  engaging in sexual intercourse for a year without
  using birth control measures, she was convinced
  that she would not get pregnant. When she did
  lean that she was pregnant, she expected that her
  16-year-old boyfriend would agree to get married.
• He did not agree, he even questioned whether he
  was the father. She felt deeply hurt angry over
  this. On the advice of a girlfriend she
  considered an abortion for a time. But she
  decided against it because she felt that she
  could not deal with the guilt of terminating a
  life within her. But she felt this to be totally
  unacceptable, because she was sure she could not
  live knowing that she had created a life then
  abandoned the child. She considered having her
  baby becoming a single parent. Yet when the
  counselor pointed out all the realities involved
  in this choice, she could see that this potion
  would not work unless she told her parents
  lived with them, which she was sure she could not
  do. Her pregnancy is moving toward the advanced
  stages, her panic is mounting

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Questions for Reflection

• What do you imagine would be your initial
  reactions responses to the counselors account?
  What might your first words me to Linda after you
  were introduced to her? What do you think you
  would most want to say to her?
• What might be some of your goals with Linda?
• As some point you might work with Lindas
  feelings of anger hurt toward her boyfriend.
  What Gestalt techniques can you think of to help
  her explore these feelings? What techniques could
  you use to work with her feelings of guilt over
  not having lived up to her parents high
  expectations? What other Gestalt approaches might
  you use (with what expected outcomes) to explore
  with Linda her other feelings associated with
  being pregnant?
• As you proceed you become aware of the following
  body messages
• Whenever she talked about her fear of telling her
  parents expresses her guilt over letting them
  down, her voice changes to a very soft almost
  pleading tone.
• Her mouth is extremely tight when she mentions
  her boyfriend her eyes become moist
• She often has teary eyes a slight smile at the
  same time
• Can you think of Gestalt techniques that you
  would build on to work with the body messages?
  How might you use her nonverbal cues as a way of
  helping her experience her feelings more fully?
• What are the limitations, if any, of staying
  within a Gestalt framework in this case?
• What are some advantages of using a Gestalt
  perspective in this case?