Gestalt Therapy

Dream work

Aims to bring dreams back to life and experience them in the present. Dreams are rein-acted.

Limitations of Gestalt Therapy

Approach has potential for leaders to abuse powerful techniques Not useful for clients who have difficulty abstracting or imagining Emphasis on therapist authenticity and self-disclosure is frowned upon by other approaches, come clients may find this too overpowering High focus on emotion may pose limitations for clients who have been culturally conditioned to be emotionally reserved.

What are the cornerstones of Gestalt Therapy practice?

Awareness Choice Responsibility

Staying with the feeling

Clients natural desire to escape of avoid fearful or unpleasant feelings. The therapist asks the client to stay with the feeling they are trying to avoid.

Rehearsal Technique

Clients rehearse externally to clients to avoid stage fright

What was Fritz Perls style of therapy?

Confrontive and dramatic

What is "resistance to contact/boundary disturbances" in Gestalt Theory?

Defences we develop to prevent us from experiencing the fully present ie. coping mechanisms

Application to group therapy

Encourages direct experience and action Here and now focus allows members to bring unfinished business to the present Members try out experiments within the group setting Leaders can use linking to include members exploration of a particular individuals problem Leaders design experiments for the group while focusing on awareness and contact Leaders engage in the group and self-disclosure to form a sense of mutuality and to enhance the relationship

(Principles of Gestalt Theory) Organismic Self-regulation

Equilibrium is disturbed by appearance of a need, sensation or interest. However individuals regulate themselves by taking action that will restore equilibrium.

What is Gestalt Therapy?

Existential, phenomenological & process-based approach created on the premise that individuals must be understood in the context of their ongoing relationship with the environment.

What is "unfinished business?"

Feelings about the past are unexpressed. unfinished business persists until we deal with the expressed feelings & if not dealt with are expressed in bodily reactions such as physical sensations or problems.

What is the initial goal of Gestalt Therapy?

For clients to gain awareness of what they are experiencing and doing now. (Promotes direct experiencing rather than abstractness of talking about situation)

Who coined Gestalt Therapy?

Fritz (Frederick) Perls, Laura Perls

What are the basic principles that underlie Gestalt theory?

Holism Field Theory Figure Formation Process Organismic self-regulation

(Principles of Gestalt Theory) Figure Formation Process

How an individual organises experiences from moment to moment. Foreground: Figure Background: Ground

What is "Contact" in Gestalt Theory?

Interacting with nature and people without losing ones individuality i.e.. hearing, seeing, smelling, touching & moving

What is resistance in "Gestalt theory? (operates outside of awareness)

Introjection - accepting others beliefs in an uncritical manner & incorporating info from the environment rather than identifying our needs Projection - Rejecting aspects of ourselves & attributing them to the environment Retroflection - doing to ourselves what we would like to do to others/wants others to do to us Deflection - distracting ourselves so it becomes hard to sustain sense of contact Confluence - blurring the differentiation between our internal experience and outer reality

Exaggeration Exercise

Makes client become more aware of the subtle cues they send out via body language. This is achieved by getting the client to exaggerate certain movements.

Reversal technique

Particular symptoms & behaviours frequently represent the reverse of underlying or latent impulses. Therapist encourages client to take the role of the very thing that causes them anxiety. i.e. being very assertive

Internal dialogue exercise

Promote integrated functioning & acceptance of all aspects of personality even those aspects which have been disowned or denied. ie. empty chair technique

Making the rounds

Requires the client to approach others in the group and interact with them.

What was Laura Perls (et al. Erving, Miriam Polster & Joseph Zinker) style of therapy?

Supportive, kind & compassionate

(Principles of Gestalt Theory) FIELD THEORY

The client's environment which consists of therapist & client & all that is between. Organisms must be seen in its environment or context (field) because everything is relational, interrelated & in a process.

What is "the now?"

The concept that the present is more important than the past. The therapist aims to bring the client into the now as they cannot change the past.

6 components of Gestalt Therapy Methodology

The continuum of experience There here and now The paradoxical theory of change the authentic encounter process-orientated diagnosis

(Principles of Gestalt Theory) HOLISM

The full range of human functioning including thoughts, feelings, behaviours, body, language & dreams. Being whole or compete without separate parts.

Gestalt Therapy has 4 key concepts, what are they?

There here & now Direct experiencing Awareness Bringing unfinished business from past to present

The experiment in Gestalt Theory

Used to elicit emotion, facilitate action or achieve goals