GESTALT APPROACH
There is nothing as practical as
a good theory
-Kurt Lewin.
Excitement , awareness, contact, and dialogue are all
crucial elements that came to life in the therapeutic
encounter. Defining and describing theoretical concepts,
however, cannot capture the excitement and vitality that
is the vehicle for good contact, deepening of awareness
and the powerful choices one can access with all their
multi-dimensional ramifications.
The Beginners:
Max Wertheimer
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Immanuel Kant
Ernst Mach
Wolfgang Kohler
The word Gestalt:
Gestalt means, Whole form approach", sought to define
principles of perception-seemingly innate laws which
determined the way in which the object is perceived.
The German word Gestalt cannot be translated into an
equivalent, single English term. It encompasses a wide
variety of concepts: a shape, a pattern, a whole form, and a
configuration.
It is a theory of mind and brain that proposes that the
operational principle of the brain is holistic, parallel, or
that the whole is different than the sum of its parts.
Gestalt therapy is a holistic, process-oriented, dialogical,
phenomenological, existential, and field theoretical
approach to human change with the centrality of contact,
awareness, and personal responsiveness and
responsibility.
The Gestalt Effect refers to the form forming capability of
our senses, particularly with respect to the visual recognition
of figures and whole forms instead of just a collection of
simple lines and curves.
It is a unique blend of psychoanalysis, humanistic
psychology, existentialism, Eastern religions and Gestalt
Psychology, based on the premise that individuals must find
their own ways of life and accept personal responsibility if
they hope to achieve maturity, developed by Frederick Perls
in 1920.
Gestalt example is that of a soap bubble, whose spherical
shape is not defined by a rigid template, or a mathematical
formula. A therapist addresses the person as a functional,
organismic whole that strives towards higher levels of
potentiality, actualization and integration within and as part
if its organism/environment [Link] focus was on health and
not on pathology.
The Origins:
The whole concept was developed by
Wertheimer,Koffka and Kohler.
Perls met these pioneers in 1920s
The basic idea of Gestalt came from Goldstein and
Kurt Lewin.
Max Wertheimer is credited as the founder of the
movement.
It also has its roots in the theories by Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe, Immanuel Kant and Ernst
Mach.
The philosophical roots lie in the theories of
existential philosophy, phenomenology, holism and
humanism.
Characteristics:
Its a confrontive and active approach.
It deals with the past with bringing relevant aspects of the
ones past into the present.
The approach encourages direct contact and expression of
feelings and de-emphasizes abstract intellectualizing about
ones problems.
Attention is given to non-verbal and body messages.
It refuses to accept helplessness as an excuse for not
changing.
It puts the emphasis upon the client to find his or her own
meanings and make his or her own interpretations.
In a very brief times, clients can intensify experience their
feelings via some of the gestalt exercises.
Assumptions:
The psychologically healthy person is a whole person, a
person in whom all parts interact to form one.
A person can never be experienced part from the
environment and the others who populate it. To abstract
oneself from the environment and others is a meaningless
mental exercise.
Distinction among thoughts, feelings and actions is artificial
since all are part of an integrated process.
A person is mind and body always operated psychologically
and biologically when should be unified.
Past, present and future cannot be separated.
The key to psychological well-being is allowing oneself to live
in the now, fully aware.
In Perls words,
Now=Experience=Awareness=Reality.
The Gestalt View of Human Nature
Biological Field Theory:
The field concept believes that all the organisms
exist in environmental contexts with reciprocal influences
on each other. No organism can be reduced to separate
components but can only be understood in its organized,
interactive, interconnected and independent totality.
Theory of the Organism:
An organism is an ordered whole, intrinsically self
regulating individual, seeking growth towards maturity
and the fulfilment of its nature. Organismic behaviour is
purposive and goal-seeking, not random.
Concept of contact:
Contact, as the "livelihood of growth, is paramount for
survival and change. It is understood as the responsive
meeting with the other(environmental and internal others,
i.e., alienated aspects, blocked feelings, thoughts, and
memories, whatever is not integrated and therefore
experienced as other.
Whole-making Capacity:
Human beings are all whole-makers, synthesizers of a
wide variety of bodily, perceptual, cognitive, behavioural
and existential gestalts.
Goals:
Challenge the client to move from environment support to
capable of self support- a by product of increased awareness
and discovery of potentials.
Helping the client to find out how the client is prevented from
realizing the full measure of his potentials and to make life
richer and live each moment freshly and fully.
Get the client to re-own self to move from stagnation to
growth.
Indentifying and resolving the unfinished business, the client
becomes aware of self-defeating patterns and real needs,
desires and goals and lives life without anxiety, guilt and
depression.
Helping the individual find his or her centre within and
whenever happens becomes a passing parade and assimilates
and understands that the individual is related to whatever
happens.
Assisting to attain awareness as a curative
and changing personality tool. With
awareness they have the capacity to face and
accept denied parts of the feelings and to get
in touch with the subjective experiences and
with reality.
Making the client to become unified and
whole.
Role Of the Therapists:
Building Relationship: The relationship between the practitioner
and client is central to awakening this awareness.
Observation: The total being of the person is observed and
focuses on the clients feelings.
The therapist should use his personhood as an instrument of
therapeutic change by using his own experience as an essential
ingredient in the therapy process.
The therapist primary role is to confront, frustrate and
challenge the client so that through the growing awareness, the
client comes to accept responsibility and becomes self-reliant.
Enabling the client to become mature, making the transition
from external to internal support by locating the impasse
means helping to face threatening and uncomfortable self.
Help the client to get through the impasse as he attempts to
maneuver his environments. Make them find meaning in their
survival.
Providing situations and encouragement to
experiencing the blockage, clients get into contract
with their frustrations.
Helping to master their own resources and to
discover that they can well do on their own.
Therapist function as a projection screen for
the client to recognize what is missing or loop
holes in their personalities.
Enable to work through their fears, neurotic
anxiety and the persuasion built that they lack
coping capacity.
Techniques and applications:
1. Shuttle Technique: The therapist directs the clients attention
back and forth from one experience to the other.
2. The Top Dog-Under Dog Dialogue: One voice is of the Top
Dog, Superego and that of the Under Dog, Id.{ From Freuds
Principles}
3. The Empty Chair Technique: The client is asked to voice an
internal, historical or imaginary dialogue.
4. Dream work: Dreams are re experienced as projection of
different , conflicting sides of oneself. Dreams are assumed to
represent things that are missing in our lives, things we avoid
doing but that need to be integrated into our daily lives if we are
to be a whole.
5. Feeding Sentences: Client is given a sentence to say that pull
together the diverse elements of his experience in a way that
reals previously hidden elements.
6. Rehearsal: By voicing his or her concerns, fears, needs,
desires or fantasies out loud, the client comes to understand
and express them more satisfactorily.
7. Reversal: The client is asked to experiment with the reverse
feelings, need, desire or fantasy.
8. Stop Trying to be Sane: Human beings are conditioned to
act rationally no matter how they really feel.
9. Being the Elements: The client is instructed to become the
various elements of a story, dream, fantasy or the like.
[Link]: The client is as ked to exaggerate a feeling or
action to better experience.
[Link] the Obvious: Obvious behaviours of the client are
often important.
[Link] the rounds: It involves requesting a person in a
group to make the rounds to others in the group and either
speak to or do something with each person.
13.I Have a Secret: This technique permits exploration of
feelings of guilt and shame.
[Link] the Projection: the dynamics of projection
consist of ones seeing clearly in others the very things
one does not want to see and accept within oneself. In
this one discovers the degree of inner conflict.
15. Staying with the feelings: The therapist urges
the client to stay with the feelings which is unpleasant
from which there is a great urge to flee. By facing
confronting and experiencing , they develop the
courage as well as the willingness to endure thus gain
the newer levels of growth.
Limitations:
This approach is not grounded on a solid theory.
It tends to be anti-intellectual to the point that
cognitive factors are discounted.
It stresses responsibility to self but denies ones
responsibility towards others.
The therapists can misuse his power and thus prevent
a client form becoming autonomous.
People often react negatively to some techniques.
It is unsystematic, conceptually rigid approach to
intervention.
Clients gain insights from an authoritarian
practitioner.
Conclusion:
Gestalt therapy is toward the clients assumption of more
and more responsibility for themselves, for their
thoughts, feelings and behaviour. It is they who achieve
increasing awareness and decide what they will or will
not do with their personal learning.
Unfortunately there has been a paucity of research on
Gestalt therapy over the years. Some Gestalt therapists
argue that the complexity of the Gestalt approach is the
main reason why the research has not been thoroughly
advanced.
Very recently practitioners within the Gestalt community
created an organization, a Gestalt Research
Consortium, to change the current underrepresentation of research in Gestalt therapy.
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