ABOUT GESTALT THERAPY

Our lives are happening in present moments of experiencing. We sit at the computer, talk with each other, do the grocery shopping, worry about the bills, remember past times, on and on. The intent of any therapy or counseling is to improve our quality of experience, to increase satisfaction and reduce suffering. The Gestalt therapist is focused on the way individuals participate in their moments of experience.

The client comes to therapy focused on a dilemma such as reducing anxiety, alleviating depression, conquering a destructive habit, resolving a relationship conflict, or enhancing performance. The focus of the Gestalt therapist is on the manner of the client’s functioning, both within the context of the dilemma and in the therapy itself. Rather than providing the client with a solution to their dilemma, the Gestalt therapist intends to illuminate with the client the manner in which he or she is participating. We bring attention to habituated ways of behaving, amplifying for the client what he or she does. In this fashion the client examines what is and isn’t working well in life.

The therapist may notice, for example, that the client refers to himself as stupid or his concerns as foolish. As this is brought to the client’s attention he may recognize this life long tendency to judge himself. He may even recognize the similarities between his self treatments and the way a parent treated him in childhood. In therapy, as he more deeply experiences his harsh internal critic and his victim self that accepts it, he has the opportunity to develop in himself a more understanding and realistic self-evaluator.

In another example the therapist may notice the client’s tendency to cut off her emotional expression, such as apologizing for tears. As attention is brought to this habit, the client may recognize a pattern of restricting emotional expression and that she carries along with her many unfinished emotional situations. Perhaps in her youth too much exuberance or tears invited a harsh reaction from the adults in her world. As attention is brought to the constricted emotions perhaps the client can soften into real emotional expression, cleansing tears or unrestrained laughter and experience the relief of following emotions all the way through.

The method of Gestalt therapy is to bring close attention to the experience of the client. Robert Hall, M.D., Gestalt therapist and teacher, said, “The entire journey can be described as the process of returning our attention, again and again and again from the internal discussion about our lives to the vivid experience of here and now. That way, we learn about the reality of things (2000).” The therapist notices how the client is connected to or resists his inner world, how he connects to or denies the world around him, and how he mobilizes or inhibits himself.

Guided by Gestalt theory and any other knowledge of human behavior the therapist invites the client’s attention to some aspect of his functioning. Together, the client and therapist create a way for the client to experiment in the therapy session. Gestalt therapy is experiential learning. Joseph Zinker (1977) said it this way:

"The experiment is the cornerstone of experiential learning. It transforms talking about into doing, stale reminiscing and theorizing into being fully here with all one’s imagination, energy and excitement . . .experiment can involve every sphere of human functioning: however, most experiments have one quality in common - they ask the client to express something behaviorally, rather than merely cognize an experience internally."

Gestalt experiments are limited only by the creativity, imaginations, and resistances of both the client and the therapist. An experiment may be as simple as asking a client to pause and bring attention to the breath, or a constriction in the throat or some other aspect of experience. Elaborate experiments may invite the client to imagine bringing other people into the room and re-enacting episodes from life. Or the client may be invited to enact some part of themselves such as anger or shyness.

As the experience unfolds, the attention of the client is directed to actual behavior. Clients are invited to deeply experience themselves, the ways in which they are succeeding and the ways in which they limit themselves and are preventing growth and effectiveness. These are the opportunities to try new and modified behavior in the therapy itself.

Several elements distinguish Gestalt from other therapies and can enhance any therapist’s effectiveness. The Gestalt therapist learns to attend to the client’s behavior in the therapeutic interaction, to recognize clinically significant behavior as it occurs and to engage immediate behavior for therapeutic growth. Gestalt therapy is participative and the Gestalt therapist learns to use their whole being in the therapy. Necessarily then Gestalt training emphasizes the difference between therapist behavior that actually serves client growth versus that which merely serves the therapist. The Gestalt therapist learns how to create therapeutic experiments which provide the opportunity for therapeutic growth. Any therapeutic approach can be made more powerful by helping the client experience rather than merely talking about experience.

Underlying all Gestalt therapy is inviting the client’s awareness, over and over again, to actual experience. The therapist insists that the client brings his attention to the unfolding experience moment to moment. In the therapy the client practices and learns to bring this mindfulness to life, this non-judgmental observation of the ongoing stream of internal and external events as they arise. This is the same practice of mindfulness that has recently found its way into cognitive behavioral and other approaches to therapy.

If you have a further interest in Gestalt therapy please click here for GESTALT TRAINING or for our WORKSHOPS, or you may want to check some of these resources:

Association for the Advancement of Gestalt therapy at www.aagt.org (click here)

The Gestalt Page at www.gestalt.org (click here)

Fritz Perls. The Gestalt Approach and Eyewitness to Therapy, 1973

Claudio Naranjo. Gestalt Therapy: The Attitude and Practice of an Atheoretical Experientialism, 1993

In the text above, the following were referenced:
Robert Hall. Out of Nowhere, Running Wolf Press, 2000.
Joseph Zinker. Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy, 1977

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