Gestalt & Behavior Therapy

Frederick S. "Fritz" Perls, MD, PhD

Gestalt Therapy

 "Awareness, Choice, and Responsibility"

Frederick "Fritz" Perls was the main originator and developer of Gestalt therapy.  Gestalt therapy is 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.

Key Concepts

View of Human Nature

• Clients are manipulative and avoid responsibility
• Clients and Therapists are viewed as interdependent
• People have the ability to self regulate
• People change when they become aware of who they are

 Four Basic Principles 

• Holism - Nature is seen as a unified and coherent whole, and the whole is different from the sum of its parts.
• Field Theory - One must become and understand it's part of the ever changing environment.
• Figure-Formation Process - How one views the organization of their environment
• Organismic Self-Regulation - Taking action or responsibility to achieve equilibrium when a want or need arises.

The Now

• The present moment is the most significant in Gestalt Therapy.  Past and Future focus is an avoidance
• Phenomenological inquiry is coming into contact with the present moment, asking what and how rather than why.
• When the past arises, it must be brought into present tense

Unfinished Business

• When figures emerge from the background but are not completed and resolved, individuals are left with this
• Can create grief, guilt, unexpressed feelings, resentment, etc.
• Is brought forward and may interfere with the present
• Must be faced and dealt with to prevent persistence

Contact and Resistance to Contact

• Contact is necessary for change and growth to occur 
• Good contact requires clear awareness, full energy, and the ability to express oneself without losing ones individuality
• There are 5 main kinds of contact boundary disturbances
• Introjection - to uncritically accept others' beliefs and standards without assimilating them to make them congruent with who we are
• Projection - to disown certain aspects of ourselves by assigning them to the environment, the opposite of introjection
• Retroflection - 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
• Deflection - the process of distraction or veering off, so that it is difficult to maintain a sustained sense of contact
• Confluence - blurring the differentiation between the self and the environment.

Energy and Blocks to Energy

• Special attention given to where energy is located, how it is used, and how it can be blocked
• Blocked energy is another form of defensive behavior
• This energy must be addressed and recognized 
• Energy must be transformed into effective productive behavior

 

 Goals of Therapy

The basic goal of therapy is an existential encounter out of which clients tend to move in certain directions.  Moving towards increased awareness of themselves, assuming ownership of their experiences, develop self-satisfaction without violating others, awareness of all senses, accepting responsibility for what they do, and learn to be able to ask for help and get help from others as well as having the ability to give to others.

Therapist's Role 

Engaging with clients to assist them in developing their own awareness and experiencing how and who they are in the present moment.  They also create a safe space for clients to explore themselves and try out new behaviors as well as encouraging their clients to bring their thoughts experiences and feelings to the present, and to the surface.  Therapist's must also pay close attention to body language patterns as well as language patterns to ensure that the client is focusing on the present.  Therapist's treat the clients as equal and does little talking, mostly listening, and reminding and encouraging to focus on the present.

Techniques and Processes

• Experiments are developed from interaction between therapist and client.  They are aimed at helping the client to learn by experience, and the client is typically surprised by what they have learned.  The experiments are typically spontaneous and one-of-a-kind.  The experiment are designed to bring out internal conflict by making the struggle an actual process to help the clients gain fuller awareness, experience internal conflict, resolve inconsistencies, and work through an impulse.
•  The Internal Dialogue exercise may also be called the empty chair exercise.  The therapist asks the client in one chair to portray one personality, while moving to the other chair to become the opposite personality while verbalizing.  This helps the client to accept and integrate both sides of the issue.  This helps clients get in touch with feelings that they may be denying.  
• Making the Rounds exercise involves going around the room and speak to or do something to or with each person in the group.  The purpose is to confront, risk, disclose themselves, experiment with new behavior, and to grow and change. 
• The rehearsal exercise addresses the need to be approved, accepted, and liked.  Speaking out loud the silent rehearsal that we sometimes go through in our heads.
•  The reversal exercise is basically grabbing the bull by the horns and taking a plunge into the very thing that is creating the anxiety or that is being denied.
• The exaggeration exercise focuses on body movements, gestures, postures, and movements that may communicate significant meaning.  They are asked to exaggerate the action and repeat it over and over which usually intensifies the feeling attached to the bahavior thus making it easier for the client to grasp and understand.
• Staying with the feeling is encouraging clients to dive deep into fearful stimuli and unpleasant feelings.  Facing and experiencing feelings takes courage and is a mark of willingness to endure the pain necessary for personal growth.
• Gestalt theory does not interpret dreams but brings dreams to life, and walks through them, and helps the client to experience the feelings the dream caused and understand the feelings they have.  The dream is assumed to be a projection of oneself, it is talked through as though it is currently occurring in the present to help the client actively and presently deal with the feelings they have.