GESTALT THERAPY

FREDERICK S. (“FRITZ”) PERLS, MD, PhD (1893–1970)

● main originator and developer of Gestalt therapy.
● Born in Berlin, Germany, into a lower-middle class Jewish family, he later identified
himself as a source of much trouble for his parent
● In 1916 he joined the German Army and served as a medic in World War I.
● His experiences with soldiers who were gassed on the front lines led to his interest in
mental functioning, which led him to Gestalt psychology.
● After the war Perls worked with Kurt Goldstein at the Goldstein Institute for
Brain-Damaged Soldiers in Frankfurt.
● Perls and several of his colleagues established the New York Institute for Gestalt
Therapy in 1952
● He was viewed variously as insightful, witty, bright, provocative, manipulative, hostile,
demanding, and inspirational

LAURA POSNER PERLS, PhD (1905–1990)

● born in Pforzheim, Germany, the daughter of well-to-do parents
● By the time Laura began her practice as a psychoanalyst she had prepared for a career as
a concert pianist, had attended law school, achieved a doctoral degree in Gestalt
psychology, and made an intensive study of existential philosophy with Paul Tillich and
Martin Buber
● Laura and Fritz were married in 1930 and had two children while living and practicing
in South Africa.
● Laura continued to be the mainstay for the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy after
Fritz abandoned his family to become internationally famous as the traveling minstrel
for Gestalt therapy.
● paid a great deal of attention to contact and support, which differed from Fritz’s
attention to intrapsychic phenomena and his focus on awareness.
● She taught that every Gestalt therapist needs to develop his or her own therapeutic style.

INTRODUCTION

Gestalt therapy: an existential, phenomenological, and process-based approach created on the

premise that individuals must be understood in the context of their ongoing relationship with
the environment
● Initial goal: for clients to gain awareness of what they are experiencing and how they
are doing it. Through this awareness, change automatically occurs
● Phenomenological: focuses on the client’s perceptions of reality
● Existential: it is grounded in the notion that people are always in the process of
becoming, remaking, and rediscovering themselves.

1
 GESTALT THERAPY

○ Gestalt therapy gives special attention to existence as individuals experience it

and affirms the human capacity for growth and healing through interpersonal
contact and insight
● This approach focuses on the here and now, the what and how, and the I/Thou of
relating
● Perls stressed a holistic approach to personality
● Perls valued examining the present situation: Perls asserted that how individuals behave
in the present moment is far more crucial to self-understanding than why they behave as
they do.
● focuses much more on process than on content
● Awareness: usually involves insight and sometimes introspection, but Gestalt therapists
consider it to be much more than either.
● Self-acceptance, knowledge of the environment, responsibility for choices, and the
ability to make contact with their field (a dynamic system of interrelationships) and the
people in it are important awareness processes and goals, all of which are based on a
here-and-now experience that is always changing.
● lively and promotes direct experiencing rather than the abstractness of talking about
situations.
● Gestalt practitioners value being fully present during the therapeutic encounter with the
belief that growth occurs out of genuine contact between client and therapist.

Contemporary Gestalt Therapy - stresses dialogue and relationship between client and
therapist, sometimes called relational Gestalt therapy
● this model includes more support and increased kindness and compassion in therapy as
compared to the confrontational and dramatic style of Fritz Perls
● Style: supportive, accepting, empathic, dialogical, and challenging
● Emphasis: the quality of the therapist–client relationship and empathic attunement
while tapping the client’s wisdom and resources

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

Fritz Perls (1969a) practiced Gestalt therapy paternalistically [a master at intentionally frustrating
clients to enhance their awareness.]
● grow up, stand on their own two feet, and “deal with their life problems themselves”
● two personal agendas:
○ moving the client from environmental support to self-support and;
○ reintegrating the disowned parts of one’s personality.

The Gestalt view of human nature is rooted in existential philosophy, phenomenology, and field
theory
● Therapy aims not at analysis or introspection but at awareness and contact with the
environment.

2
 GESTALT THERAPY

● The quality of contact with aspects of the external world (for example, other people) and
the internal world (for example, parts of the self that are disowned) are monitored.
● The process of “reowning” parts of oneself that have been disowned and the unification
process proceed step by step until clients become strong enough to carry on with their
own personal growth

A basic assumption of Gestalt therapy is that individuals have the capacity to self-regulate
when they are aware of what is happening in and around them.
● If the therapist is able to stay with the client’s present experience and trust in the
process, the client will move toward increased awareness, contact, and integration

The Gestalt theory of change posits that the more we work at becoming who or what we are not,
the more we remain the same
● Paradoxical theory of change: we change when we become aware of what we are as
opposed to trying to become what we are not.

Beisser saw the role of the therapist as one of assisting the client to increase awareness, thereby
facilitating reidentification with the part of the self from which he or she is alienated

PRINCIPLES OF GESTALT THERAPY

HOLISM
Gestalt: German word meaning a whole or completion, or a form that cannot be separated into
parts without losing its essence
● All of nature is seen as a unified and coherent whole, and the whole is different from the
sum of its parts.

Emphasis may be on a figure (those aspects of the individual’s experience that are most salient
at any moment) or the ground (those aspects of the client’s presentation that are often out of his
or her awareness).
● attending to the obvious: physical gestures, tone of voice, demeanor, and other
nonverbal content

FIELD THEORY
Field theory: grounded on the principle that the organism must be seen in its environment, or
in its context, as part of the constantly changing field.
● everything is relational, in flux, interrelated, and in process.
● the entire situation of the therapist, the client, and all that goes on between them. The fi
eld is made and constantly remade

THE FIGURE-FORMATION PROCESS

Figure-formation process: describes how the individual organizes experience from moment to
moment.

3
 GESTALT THERAPY

● tracks how some aspect of the environmental field emerges from the background and
becomes the focal point of the individual’s attention and interest.

ORGANISMIC SELF-REGULATION
The figure-formation process is intertwined with the principle of organismic self-regulation, a
process by which equilibrium is “disturbed” by the emergence of a need, a sensation, or an
interest.
● What emerges in therapeutic work is associated with what is of interest to or what the
client needs to be able to regain a sense of equilibrium.
○ The goal is to help the client to obtain closure of unfinished situations, destroy
fixed gestalts, and incorporate more satisfying gestalts.

THE NOW
One of the main contributions of the Gestalt approach is its emphasis on learning to appreciate
and fully experience the present moment.

" power is in the present" (Polster and Polster, 1973)

● As clients direct their energy toward what was or what might have been or live in
fantasy about the future, the power of the present diminishes.

Phenomenological inquiry: involves paying attention to what is occurring now.

● To promote “now” awareness, the therapist encourages a dialogue in the present tense
by asking questions like these: “What is happening now? What is going on now?" etc.

One of the aims of Gestalt therapy is to help clients become aware of their present experience
● When the past seems to have a signifi cant bearing on clients’ present attitudes or
behavior, it is dealt with by bringing it into the present as much as possible.
○ “bring the fantasy here” or “tell me the dream as though you were having it
now,”

UNFINISHED BUSINESS
When figures emerge from the background but are not completed and resolved, individuals are
left with unfinished business, which can be manifested in unexpressed feelings such as
resentment, rage, hatred, pain, anxiety, grief, guilt, and abandonment.
● Unfinished business persists until the individual faces and deals with the unexpressed
feelings.
● The effects of unfinished business often show up in some blockage within the body.
○ they tend to result in some physical sensations or problems.
impasse: or stuck point, is the time when external support is not available or the customary
way of being does not work.
● The counselor assists clients by providing situations that encourage them to fully
experience their condition of being stuck

4
 GESTALT THERAPY

● By completely experiencing the impasse, they are able to get into contact with their
frustrations and accept whatever is, rather than wishing they were different

CONTACT AND RESISTANCE TO CONTACT

Contact is made by seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and moving. Effective contact means
interacting with nature and with other people without losing one’s sense of individuality
● continually renewed creative adjustment of individuals to their environment

Prerequisites for good contact:

1) clear awareness
2) full energy, and;
3) The ability to express oneself

After a contact experience, there is typically a withdrawal to integrate what has been learned.
● Gestalt therapists talk about the two functions of boundaries: to connect and to separate.
Both contact and withdrawal are necessary and important to healthy functioning.

Gestalt therapists also focus on interruptions, disturbances, and resistances to contact, which
were developed as coping processes but often end up preventing us from experiencing the
present in a full and real way.
● Resistances: possess positive qualities as well as problematic ones.
○ adopted out of our awareness and when they function in a chronic way, can
contribute to dysfunctional behavior
five different kinds of contact boundary disturbances that interrupt the cycle of experience:
introjection, projection, retroflection, deflection, and confluence.

1) Introjection: is the tendency to uncritically accept others’ beliefs and standards without
assimilating them to make them congruent with who we are
● If we remain in this stage, our energy is bound up in taking things as we find
them and believing that authorities know what is best for us rather than working
for things ourselves.
2) Projection: is the reverse of introjection. In projection we disown certain aspects of
ourselves by assigning them to the environment
● blaming others for lots of our problems
● we avoid taking responsibility for our own feelings and the person who we are,
and this keeps us powerless to initiate change.
3) Retroflection: consists of turning back onto ourselves what we would like to do to
someone else or doing to ourselves what we would like someone else to do to or for us.
● tend to inhibit themselves from taking action out of fear of embarrassment, guilt,
and resentment
○ People who self-mutilate or who injure themselves, for example, are often
directing aggression inward out of fear of directing it toward others.

5
 GESTALT THERAPY

4) Deflection: is the process of distraction or veering off, so that it is difficult to maintain a

sustained sense of contact.
● overuse of humor, abstract generalizations, and questions rather than statements

5) Confluence: involves blurring the differentiation between the self and the environment.
● involves the absence of conflicts, slowness to anger, and a belief that all parties
experience the same feelings and thoughts we do.

interruptions in contact or boundary disturbance: refer to the characteristic styles people

employ in their attempts to control their environment through one of these channels of
resistance.

The premise in Gestalt therapy is that contact is both normal and healthy, and clients are
encouraged to become increasingly aware of their dominant style of blocking contact and their
use of resistance

ENERGY AND BLOCKS TO ENERGY

In Gestalt therapy special attention is given to where energy is located, how it is used, and how
it can be blocked.

Blocked energy: is another form of defensive behavior.

● It can be manifested by tension in some part of the body, by posture, by keeping one’s
body tight and closed, by not breathing deeply, by looking away from people when
speaking to avoid contact, by choking off sensations, by numbing feelings, and by
speaking with a restricted voice, etc.

One of the tasks of the therapist is to help clients identify the ways in which they are blocking
energy and transform this blocked energy into more adaptive behavior
● Rather than trying to rid themselves of certain bodily symptoms, clients can be
encouraged to delve fully into tension states.

THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

THERAPEUTIC GOALS
“Because of the complexity of therapeutic work, a well-grounded methodology is essential. . . .
The six methodological components we consider vital or integral to Gestalt therapy are: (a) the
continuum of experience, (b) the here and now, (c) the paradoxical theory of change, (d) the
experiment, (e) the authentic encounter, and (f) process-oriented diagnosis” (Melnick and Nevis
2005)

Despite not being focused on predetermined goals for their clients, Gestalt therapists clearly
attend to a basic goal—namely, assisting the client to attain greater awareness, and with it,
greater choice.

6
 GESTALT THERAPY

● Awareness: includes knowing the environment, knowing oneself, accepting oneself, and
being able to make contact.
○ With awareness , they have the capacity to face and accept denied parts as well as
to fully experience their subjectivity.
○ They can experience their unity and wholeness.
○ important unfinished business will emerge and can be dealt with in therapy.
○ emerges within the context of a genuine meeting between client and therapist, or
within the context of I/Thou relating

Gestalt therapy is basically an existential encounter out of which clients tend to move in certain
directions. Through a creative involvement in Gestalt process, Zinker (1978) expects clients will
do the following:
● Move toward increased awareness of themselves
● Gradually assume ownership of their experience (as opposed to making others
responsible for what they are thinking, feeling, and doing)
● Develop skills and acquire values that will allow them to satisfy their needs without
violating the rights of others
● Become more aware of all of their senses
● Learn to accept responsibility for what they do, including accepting the consequences of
their actions
● Be able to ask for and get help from others and be able to give to others

THERAPIST'S FUNCTION AND ROLE

Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman (1951)
- stated that the therapist’s job is to invite clients into an active partnership where they can
learn about themselves by adopting an experimental attitude toward life in which they
try out new behaviors and notice what happens
Yontef and Jacobs (2008)
- indicate that Gestalt therapists use active methods and personal engagement with clients
to increase their awareness, freedom, and self-direction rather than directing them
toward preset goals.

Gestalt therapists do not force change on clients through confrontation. Instead, they work
within a context of I/Thou dialogue in a here and-now framework.
An important function of Gestalt therapists is paying attention to clients’ body language.
● These nonverbal cues provide rich information as they often represent feelings of which
the client is unaware
● therapist needs to be alert for gaps in attention and awareness and for incongruities
between verbalizations and what clients are doing with their bodies
○ “What do your eyes say?” “If your hands could speak at this moment, what
would they say?” “Can you carry on a conversation between your right and left
hands?”

7
 GESTALT THERAPY

The Gestalt counselor places emphasis on the relationship between language patterns and
personality.
● Gestalt approach focuses on overt speaking habits as a way to increase clients’
awareness of themselves, especially by asking them to notice whether their words are
congruent with what they are experiencing or instead are distancing them from their
emotions.

Aspects of language that Gestalt therapists might focus on:

● “It” talk: When clients say “it” instead of “I,” they are using depersonalizing
language
○ counselor may ask them to substitute personal pronouns so that they will
assume an increased sense of responsibility
○ “It is difficult to make friends, ” into ”I have trouble making friends.”
● “You” talk : tends to keep the person hidden.
● Questions : have a tendency to keep the questioner hidden, safe, and unknown
○ counselor may ask clients to change their questions into statements (to
assume responsibility)
● Language that denies power: adding qualifi ers or disclaimers to their statements
○ Experimenting with omitting qualifi ers such as “maybe,” “perhaps,”
“sort of,” “I guess,” “possibly,” and “I suppose” can help clients change
ambivalent messages into clear and direct statements.
○ Asking clients to substitute “won’t” for “can’t” often assists them in
owning and accepting their power by taking responsibility for their
decisions.
● Listening to clients’ metaphors: By tuning into metaphors, the therapist gets rich
clues to clients’ internal struggles.
○ Beneath the metaphor may lie a suppressed internal dialogue that
represents critical unfinished business or reactions to a present interaction
■ For example, to the client who says she feels that she has been put
through a meat grinder, the therapist would ask: “What is your
experience of being ground meat?” or “Who is doing the
grinding?”
○ The art of therapy consists of assisting clients in translating the meaning
of their metaphors so that they can be dealt with in therapy.

CLIENT'S EXPERIENCE IN THERAPY

The general orientation of Gestalt therapy is toward dialogue
● The dialogic attitude carried into Gestalt therapy originally by Laura Perls creates the
ground for a meeting place between client and therapist.

8
 GESTALT THERAPY

Clients in Gestalt therapy are active participants who make their own interpretations
and meanings. It is they who increase awareness and decide what they will or will not do with
their personal meaning.

Three-stage integration sequence that characterizes client growth in therapy

1) Discovery: Clients are likely to reach a new realization about themselves or to acquire a
novel view of an old situation, or they may take a new look at some significant person in
their lives
2) Accommodation : involves clients’ recognizing that they have a choice
● trying out new behaviors in the supportive environment of the therapy office,
and then they expand their awareness of the world
3) Assimilation: involves clients’ learning how to infl uence their environment.
● clients feel capable of dealing with the surprises they encounter in everyday
living
● taking a stand on a critical issue
● clients develop confidence in their ability to improve and improvise
○ Improvisation: is the confidence that comes from knowledge and skills.
● clients have learned what they can do to maximize their chances of getting what
is needed from their environment.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THERAPIST AND CLIENT

● Gestalt practice involves a person-to-person relationship between therapist and client.
● Therapists are responsible for the quality of their presence, for knowing themselves and
the client, and for remaining open to the client.
● Therapists are also responsible for establishing and maintaining a therapeutic
atmosphere that will foster a spirit of work on the client’s part.
● therapists allow themselves to be affected by their clients and that they actively share
their own present perceptions and experiences as they encounter clients in the here and
now.
● that the person of the therapist is more important than using techniques.
● Therapy is a two-way engagement that changes both the client and the therapist

APPLICATION: THERAPEUTIC TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES

THE EXPERIMENT IN GESTALT THERAPY

Exercises: are ready-made techniques that are sometimes used to make something happen in a
therapy session or to achieve a goal. They can be catalysts for individual work or for promoting
interaction among members of a therapy group.
- used to elicit emotion, produce action, or achieve a specific goal.

9
 GESTALT THERAPY

Experiments: grow out of the interaction between the client and therapist, and they emerge
within this dialogic process. They can be considered the very cornerstone of experiential
learning.
- useful tools to help the client gain fuller awareness, experience internal confl icts, resolve
inconsistencies and dichotomies, and work through an impasse that is preventing
completion of unfinished business.
- Frew (2008) defines the experiment as a method that shifts the focus of counseling from
talking about a topic to an activity that will heighten the client’s awareness and
understanding through experience
- flows directly from psychotherapy theory and is crafted to fit the individual as he or she
exists in the here and now (Melnick and Nevis 2005)
- PURPOSE: assist an individual in active self-exploration
- Gestalt experiments are a creative adventure and a way in which clients can express
themselves behaviorally.
- occur in the context of a moment-to-moment contacting process between therapist and
client
- aimed at facilitating a client’s ability to work through the stuck points of his or her life.

Gestalt experiments can take many forms:

1. imagining a threatening future encounter;
2. setting up a dialogue between a client and some significant person in his or her
life;
3. dramatizing the memory of a painful event;
4. reliving a particularly profound early experience in the present;
5. assuming the identity of one’s mother or father through role playing;
6. focusing on gestures, posture, and other nonverbal signs of inner expression; or
7. carrying on a dialogue between two conflicting aspects within the person

PREPARING CLIENTS FOR GESTALT EXPERIMENTS

● It can be most useful for trainees to personally experience Gestalt methods as a client.
● Counselors establish a relationship with their clients, so that the clients will feel trusting
enough to participate in the learning that can result from Gestalt experiments.
● If clients are to cooperate, counselors must avoid directing them in a commanding
fashion to carry out an experiment
● Gestalt therapists expect and respect the emergence of reluctance on a client’s part. The
therapist’s aim is not to eliminate clients’ defenses but to meet clients wherever they are.
● Gestalt experiments are designed to expand clients’ awareness and to help them try out
new modes of behavior. Within the safety of the therapeutic situation, clients are given
opportunities and encouraged to “try on” a new behavior. This heightens the awareness
of a particular aspect of functioning, which leads to increased self-understanding

THE ROLE OF CONFRONTATION

10
 GESTALT THERAPY

Yontef (1993) refers to the Perlsian style as a “boom-boom-boom therapy” characterized by

theatrics, abrasive confrontation, and intense catharsis. He implies that the charismatic style of
Perls probably met more of his own narcissistic needs than the needs of his clients.

According to Yontef (1999), the newer version of relational Gestalt therapy has evolved to
include more support and increased kindness and compassion in therapy. This approach
“combines sustained empathic inquiry with crisp, clear, and relevant awareness focusing”

Confrontation can be done in such a way that clients cooperate, especially when they are
invited to examine their behaviors, attitudes, and thoughts.
● does not have to be aimed at weaknesses or negative traits; clients can be challenged to
recognize how they are blocking their strengths.

GESTALT THERAPY INTERVENTIONS

THE INTERNAL DIALOGUE EXERCISE

Splits in personality function.

● Top Dog: righteous, authoritarian, moralistic, demanding, bossy, and manipulative
○ the “critical parent” that badgers with “shoulds” and “oughts” and manipulates
with threats of catastrophe.
● Under Dog: manipulates by playing the role of victim: by being defensive, apologetic,
helpless, and weak and by feigning powerlessness.
○ passive side, the one without responsibility, and the one that finds excuses.

The tyrannical top dog demands that one be thus-and-so, whereas the underdog definitely
plays the role of disobedient child. As a result of this struggle for control, the individual
becomes fragmented into controller and controlled.
● The conflict between the two opposing poles in the personality is rooted in the
mechanism of introjection, which involves incorporating aspects of others, usually
parents, into one’s personality

Empty-chair technique: a role-playing technique in which all the parts are played by the client
● one way of getting the client to externalize the introject
● Using two chairs, the therapist asks the client to sit in one chair and be fully the top dog
and then shift to the other chair and become the underdog.
● The goal of this exercise is to promote a higher level of integration between the polarities
and conflicts that exist in everyone.
● The aim is not to rid oneself of certain traits but to learn to accept and live with the
polarities.

MAKING THE ROUNDS

11
 GESTALT THERAPY

Making the rounds: is a Gestalt exercise that involves asking a person in a group to go up to
others in the group and either speak to or do something with each person.
● The purpose is to confront, to risk, to disclose the self, to experiment with new behavior,
and to grow and change.

THE REVERSAL EXERCISE

● the therapist could ask a person who claims to suffer from severe inhibitions and
excessive timidity to play the role of an exhibitionist
● The theory underlying the reversal technique is that clients take the plunge into the very
thing that is fraught with anxiety and make contact with those parts of themselves that
have been submerged and denied.
● This technique can help clients begin to accept certain personal attributes that they have
tried to deny.

THE EXAGGERATION EXERCISE

In this exercise the person is asked to exaggerate the movement or gesture repeatedly, which
usually intensifies the feeling attached to the behavior and makes the inner meaning clearer.

Examples of behaviors that lend themselves to the exaggeration technique are:

● trembling (shaking hands, legs)
● slouched posture and bent shoulders
● clenched fists
● tight frowning
● facial grimacing
● crossed arms

STAYING WITH THE FEELING

At key moments when clients refer to a feeling or a mood that is unpleasant and from which
they have a great desire to flee, the therapist may urge clients to stay with their feeling and
encourage them to go deeper into the feeling or behavior they wish to avoid.

THE GESTALT APPROACH TO DREAM WORK

The Gestalt approach does not interpret and analyze dreams. Instead, the intent is to bring
dreams back to life and relive them as though they were happening now.

The dream is acted out in the present, and the dreamer becomes a part of his or her dream

The suggested format for working with dreams includes:

● making a list of all the details of the dream
● remembering each person, event, and mood in it, and then becoming each of these parts
by transforming oneself, acting as fully as possible and inventing dialogue.

12
 GESTALT THERAPY

All of the different parts of a dream are expressions of the client’s own contradictory and
inconsistent sides, and, by engaging in a dialogue between these opposing sides, the client
gradually becomes more aware of the range of his or her own feelings.

According to Perls, the dream is the most spontaneous expression of the existence of the human
being. It represents an unfinished situation, but every dream also contains an existential
message regarding oneself and one’s current struggle.

Perls asserts that if dreams are properly worked with, the existential message becomes clearer. If
people do not remember dreams, they may be refusing to face what is wrong with their life.

APPLICATION TO GROUP COUNSELING

If members have anxieties pertaining to some future event, they can enact these future concerns
in the present. This here-and-now focus enlivens the group and assists members in vividly
exploring their concerns.

Gestalt therapy employs a rich variety of interventions designed to intensify what group
members are experiencing in the present moment for the purpose of leading to increased
awareness

When one member is the focus of work, other members can be used to enhance an individual’s
work. Through the skill of linking, the group leader can bring a number of members into the
exploration of a problem

These experiments need to be tailored to each group member and used in a timely manner; they
also need to be carried out in a context that offers a balance between support and risk

Gestalt leaders are actively engaged with the members, and leaders frequently engage in
self-disclosure as a way to enhance relationships and create a sense of mutuality within the
group. Gestalt leaders focus on awareness, contact, and experimentation

To increase the chances that members will benefit from Gestalt methods, group leaders need to
communicate the general purpose of these interventions and create an experimental climate.
Leaders are not trying to push an agenda; rather, members are free to try something new and
determine for themselves whether it’s going to work.

GESTALT THERAPY FROM A MULTICULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

STRENGTHS FROM A DIVERSITY PERSPECTIVE

One of the advantages of drawing on Gestalt experiments is that they can be tailored to fit the
unique way in which an individual perceives and interprets his or her culture

13
 GESTALT THERAPY

Gestalt therapy is particularly effective in helping people integrate the polarities within
themselves (Beneficial in bicultural clients that are experiencing a struggle to reconcile what
appear to be diverse aspects of the two cultures in which they live)

SHORTCOMING FROM A DIVERSITY PERSPECTIVE

Gestalt methods tend to produce a high level of intense feelings. This focus on affect has some
clear limitations with those clients who have been culturally conditioned to be emotionally
reserved

Other individuals have strong cultural injunctions prohibiting them from directly expressing
their emotions to their parents

SUMMARY AND EVALUATION

● Gestalt therapy is an experiential approach that stresses present awareness and the
quality of contact between the individual and the environment.
● The major focus: assisting the client to become aware of how behaviors that were once
part of creatively adjusting to past environments may be interfering with effective
functioning and living in the present.
● The goal of the approach: to gain awareness.
● Therapeutic aim: to assist clients in exploring how they make contact with elements of
their environment.
● Change occurs through the heightened awareness of “what is.”
● The therapist has faith that self-regulation is a naturally unfolding process that does not
have to be controlled.
● With expanded awareness, clients are able to reconcile polarities and dichotomies within
themselves and proceed toward the reintegration of all aspects of themselves.
● The therapist works with the client to identify the figures, or most salient aspects of the
individual–environmental field, as they emerge from the background.
● The Gestalt therapist believes each client is capable of self-regulating if those figures are
engaged and resolved so others can replace them.
● The role of the Gestalt therapist: to help clients identify the most pressing issues, needs,
and interests and to design experiments that sharpen those figures or that explore
resistances to contact and awareness.
● Gestalt therapists are encouraged to be appropriately self-disclosing, both about their
here-and-now reactions in the therapy hour and about their personal experiences (Yontef
& Jacobs, 2008).

CONTRIBUTIONS OF GESTALT THERAPY

One contribution of Gestalt therapy is the exciting way in which the past is dealt with in a lively
manner by bringing relevant aspects into the present.

14
 GESTALT THERAPY

Through the skillful and sensitive use of Gestalt interventions, practitioners can assist clients in
heightening their present-centered awareness of what they are thinking and feeling as well as
what they are doing

The focus is on growth and enhancement rather than being a system of techniques to treat
disorders, which refl ects an early Gestalt motto, “You don’t have to be sick to get better.”

By seeing each aspect of a dream as a projection of themselves, clients are able to bring the
dream to life, to interpret its personal meaning, and to assume responsibility for it.

LIMITATIONS AND CRITICISMS OF GESTALT THERAPY

For Gestalt therapy to be effective, the therapist must have a high level of personal
development.
● There is a danger that therapists who are inadequately trained will be primarily
concerned with impressing clients.

Yontef and Jacobs (2008) maintain that the competent practice of Gestalt therapy requires a
strong general clinical background and training, not only in the theory and practice of Gestalt
theory but also in personality theory, psychopathology, and knowledge of psychodynamic

SOME CAUTIONS
Inept therapists may use powerful techniques to stir up feelings and open up problems clients
have kept from full awareness only to abandon the clients once they have managed to have a
dramatic catharsis. Such a failure to stay with clients and help them work through what they
have experienced and bring some closure to the experience can be detrimental and could be
considered as unethical practice.

15