Gestalt Therapy explained: An overview
Gestalt (“shape” in German) is a fascinating approach to psychotherapy. It is particularly unique in that it is extremely experiential: It posits that therapy can best happen if the client “experiences” as authentically as possible a certain situation to draw from it valuable insights and new ways to see the world.
Gestalt is very much a “here and now” therapeutic protocol, unconcerned with the history or long-past traumas. It is in this way, at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to “depth” therapies such as Freudian psychoanalysis or Rogerian PCA therapies.
It is not even much concerned with the “content” of what the patient consciously expresses, more with how, their body language, acting and behaving in the moment, and inter-personal contrast. It considers that social beings such as humans are all vested in a variety of social relations and webs, and that they define more than anything how we see ourselves. Finally Gestalt is particularly interesting and unique in that it questions our entire cognition, oft at root level.
For example, these drawings are often used to illustrate how our perception is “guided” by a variety of visual cues:
What is observable in the drawings above is that our vision itself is a dynamic process. Far from the objectivity we imagine, our vision alone is heavily guided by a variety of principles and “keys”. If we can be swayed so much, just how far are we from a true experience? How many unhelpful biases and wonky lenses have WE developed unconsciously about life at large? In any way, across all of our relations, the meaning we accord them, the lessons we drew from traumas, the feelings we harbor, the self esteem we see ourselves with?
Experiencing situations in the moment:
Gestalt is an existential-experiential form of counselling which emphasizes personal responsibility focusing upon the individual’s experience in the present moment, the counsellor/counsellee relationship, the environmental contexts of a person’s life, and the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of their overall situation.
Gestalt believes that the most helpful focus of counselling or facilitating is the experiential present moment, and that everyone is caught in webs of relationships; thus, it is only possible to know ourselves against the background of our relationship to the other.
Gestalt: Genesis and influences
Historically Gestalt as a school of thought rather than a therapeutic model yet was forged from influences dating as far back as the turn into the 20th century. Around 1900-1920’s leading researchers in the fields of physics and mechanics, optics started throwing a very new light on the natural world.
Energy, relativeness of time or space, quantum physics and mechanics, every major scientific field seemed suddenly turned upside-down. Far from the predictable, proportional newtonian physics, the world started emerging as infinite, a matter of perception, of relativeness and contrast. Shaken to the core by enormous molecular activity and non-linear states.
Outside, anarchy (as a political influence) and the tremors of the first world war were shaking the old order. The theater of the absurd would also soon play a part, putting the human in the center stage, his quirks and unhelpful traits magnified dramatically.
Gestalt ideas, psychology and school of thought at large would soon be crushed by the waves of history during WW2, only to re-emerge with a vengeance on the other side of that cataclysm. The 60’s and 70’s explosion in social sciences, sociology as well as large scale epistemology (studying biaises in cognition) owe a lot to Gestalt trailblazers.
Gestalt therapy: Origins as a model
Fritz Perls coined the term ‘Gestalt Therapy’ to identify the form of psychotherapy he developed with his wife Laura in the 1940s and 1950s. Perls became associated with the Esalen Institute in 1964 and lived there until 1969. The core of the Gestalt Therapy process is enhanced awareness of sensation, perception, bodily feelings, emotions and behaviours, in the present moment.
Relationship is emphasized, along with contact between the self, its environment, and the other. Edwin Nevis (Nevis, E., 2000, in Gestalt therapy: Perspectives and Applications. Edwin Nevis (ed.), Cambridge, MA: Gestalt Press.) described Gestalt therapy as “a conceptual and methodological base from which helping professionals can craft their practice.” Gestalt is built upon two central ideas: Experience and Relationships.
Gestalt Therapy: Contemporary practice
Gestalt therapy requires what is known as bringing a client into “safe emergency”: A state in the session where the therapist/client will fully enter an interaction, emotions and all. It requires psychic energy from the therapist, and courage from both. Only then can the therapist observe the client fully, with little bias and can then report, feedback, inform the client as to possible gaps in perception.
Gestalt is not concerned with what the client is saying so much. Gestalt is more interested in how they say it, how does it look in simple terms, what is happening and being done? What did the client actually think, and feel, in that present moment?
Gestalt is not so concerned with what the client can consciously say, or on how terrible things were, or might have been, or should have been. It focuses on the present emotion. It is in this way, pretty removed from Rogerian and humanistic type therapy which focus solely on what is being said.
Gestalt & Awareness
Another overlap, or another way to understand Gestalt is through the lens of awareness. Gestalt therapy in effect a type of awareness practice that aims to separate direct and indirect experience.
By becoming gradually more aware of how they behave, appear, act in the real world, clients develop self-awareness and self-acceptance. As a result they also enhance their ability to stay more grounded to their experience without as much distortion and hurt from past experiences, unhelpful traumas and erroneous lessons they drew.
Gestalt aims to make the client more aware and more creative, so they can acquire more helpful awareness, liberate themselves from unwarranted baggage. As a result of this clear vision, that they may now also become more active in their life, more solution oriented. To remove, in short, all the real life hurdles that new awareness have not so the client can experience full fulfilment, and growth.
Put differently the aim of Gestalt is to become aware of your own cognitive and behavioural shape. The aim of the Gestalt approach is for a person to discover, explore and experience his or her own shape, pattern and wholeness. Analysis may be part of the process, but the aim of Gestalt is the integration of all disparate parts. In this way people can let themselves become totally what they already are, and what they potentially can become.
Fundamental propositions of Gestalt
• Awareness leads to change.
• The aim of the counsellor is to help clients to become more aware of their own process (their functioning).
• This heightened awareness will produce a greater understanding of what is needed, what choices are open, and will ultimately produce more effective decision making and action.
• The awareness-raising process produces greater personal ownership and responsibility.
• Our emerging, dominant needs organise our field of perception.
• We perceive in wholes (“Gestalten”) and seek to gain closure around issues (Zeigarnik effect and Law of Pragnanz – see below).
• We need to give meaning to our perceptions and experience.
• Learning occurs through the examination of here and now experience.
Assessment from a Gestalt perspective:
• Self-assessment of the counsellor is part of the process.
• All assessment is relational. Part of your task is to check your ability to work with the client(s), your self-support and the ability to awaken self-support in the client(s).
A video of a Gestalt session with founder Fritz Perls (1965)
We include this video as it shows the founder of Gestalt describe his as well as a live, real session with a volunteer. This is an example of what a whole school of modern Gestalt practitioner would describe as “official” but old, dogmatic Gestalt without proper therapeutic protocol. It is cringe worthy at times, and one can wonder how much exactly that volunteer learned about herself.
Fritz Perls himself was wildly original and often inappropriate. His approach seems to overlap with the contours of his own temperament, notoriously abrupt and controversial. He was callous in social dealings and admitted enjoying some of the reactions he caused. He famously declared that he saw no problem with a therapist having sex with a client (and did it with at least one, Marty Fromm, who also ended up cooking and doing laundry runs for him). It goes without saying that modern Gestalt practice is a lot safer and structured than that.
Without further ado, the big many himself, walking you first through his method before illustrating. It is an extreme, and highly personal example of Gestalt, and in many ways of its worst traits, but it seems still worth illustrating “worst case scenario” of a Gestalt session:
Awareness = Equal present time = Reality
