Chap 8 Lecture Notes PDF

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Chap 8 Wednesday, April 7, 2021

11:13 AM

Gestalt Therapy Introduction •

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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. The initial goal is for clients to expand their awareness of what they are experiencing in the present moment. The approach is phenomenological because it focuses on the client’s perceptions of reality and existential because it is grounded in the notion that people are always in the process of becoming, remaking, and rediscovering themselves. Fritz Perls was the main originator and developer of Gestalt therapy. The Gestalt approach focuses much more on process than on content. This process involves Gestalt therapists putting themselves as fully as possible into the experience of the client without judgment, analyzing, or interpreting, while concurrently holding a sense of one’s individual, independent presence. Self-acceptance, knowledge of the environment, responsibility for choices, and the ability to make contact with their field (a dynamic system of interrelationships) and the people in it are important awareness processes and goals. Clients are expected to do their own seeing, feeling, sensing, and interpreting, as opposed to waiting passively for the therapist to provide them with insights and answers. Contemporary relational gestalt therapy stresses dialogue and the I/Thou relationship between client and therapist. Therapists emphasize the therapeutic relationship and k ll b i l i h li i h f

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work collaboratively with clients in a search for understanding. Gestalt therapy is an experiential approach in that clients come to grips with what and how they are thinking, feeling, and doing as they interact with the therapist. Gestalt practitioners value being fully present during the therapeutic encounter with the belief that growth occurs out of genuine contact between client and therapist.

Key Concepts •

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The process of “reowning” parts of oneself that have been disowned and the unification process proceed step by step until clients can carry on with their own personal growth. By becoming aware, clients become able to make informed choices and thus to live a more meaningful existence. Perls’s style of doing therapy involved two personal agendas: moving the client from environmental support to self-support and reintegrating the disowned parts of one’s personality. A basic assumption of Gestalt therapy is that individuals have the capacity to self-regulate when they are aware of what is happening in and around them. The therapist is attentive to the client’s present experience and trusts in the process, thereby assisting the client in moving toward increased awareness, contact, and integration. Paradoxical theory of change. We are constantly moving between who we “should be” and who we “are.” Gestalt therapists ask clients to invest themselves fully in their current condition rather than striving to become who they should be.

Principles of Gestalt Therapy •

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Holism: Because Gestalt therapists are interested in the whole person, they place no superior value on a particular aspect of the individual. Gestalt practice attends to a client’s thoughts, feelings, behaviors, body, memories, and dreams. Field Theory: asserts that the organism must be seen in its environment, or in its context, as part of the constantly

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changing field. Emphasis may be on a figure (those aspects of the individual’s experience that are most salient at any moment) or the ground (those aspects of the client’s presentation that are often out of his or her awareness). Figure-formation process: tracks how the individual organizes experience from moment to moment as some aspect of the environmental field emerges from the background and becomes the focal point of the individual’s attention and interest. Organismic Self-regulation: The figure-formation process is intertwined with the principle of organismic selfregulation, a process by which equilibrium is “disturbed” by the emergence of a need, a sensation, or an interest.

Contact and Resistance to Contact •

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Contact is made by seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and moving. Effective contact means interacting with nature and with other people without losing one’s sense of individuality. Gestalt therapists also focus on interruptions, disturbances, and resistances to contact, which were developed as coping processes but often end up preventing us from experiencing the present in a full and real way. Introjection is the tendency to uncritically accept others’ beliefs and standards without assimilating them to make them congruent with who we are. Projection is the reverse of introjection. In projection we disown certain aspects of ourselves by assigning them to the environment. ○ Those attributes of our personality that are inconsistent with our self-image are disowned and put onto, assigned to, and seen in other people; thus, blaming others for lots of our problems. Retroflection consists of 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. ○ This process is principally an interruption of the action phase in the cycle of experience and typically

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involves a fair amount of anxiety. Deflection is the process of distraction or veering off, so that it is difficult to maintain a sustained sense of contact. ○ We attempt to diffuse or defuse con-tact through the overuse of humor, abstract generalizations, and questions rather than statements. Confluence involves blurring the differentiation between the self and the environment. ○ As we strive to blend in and get along with everyone, there is no clear demarcation between internal experience and outer reality. ○ Confluence in relation-ships involves the absence of conflicts, slowness to anger, and a belief that all parties experience the same feelings and thoughts we do.

The Now •

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One of the main contributions of the Gestalt approach is its emphasis on learning to appreciate and fully experience the present moment. Phenomenological inquiry involves paying attention to what is occurring now. Gestalt therapists recognize that the past will make regular appearances in the present moment, usually because of some lack of completion of that past experience.

Unfinished Business •

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When figures emerge from the background but are not completed and resolved, individuals are left with unfinished business, which can be manifested in unexpressed feelings such as resentment, rage, hatred, pain, anxiety, grief, guilt, and abandonment. The impasse, or stuck point, occurs when external support is not available or the customary way of being does not work. The therapist’s task is to accompany clients in experiencing the impasse without rescuing or frustrating them. Gestalt therapy is based on the notion that individuals have a

striving toward actualization and growth and that if they accept all aspects of themselves without judging these dimensions they can begin to think, feel, and act differently.

Energy and Blocks to Energy •

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When energy is blocked, in may result in unfinished business. In Gestalt therapy special attention is given to where energy is located, how it is used, and how it can be blocked. Blocked energy is another form of defensive behavior. It can be manifested by tension in some part of the body, by posture, by keeping one’s body tight and closed, by not breathing deeply, by looking away from people when speaking to avoid contact, by choking off sensations, by numbing feelings, and by speaking with a restricted voice, to mention only a few. One of the tasks of the therapist is to help clients find the focus of interrupted energy, identify the ways in which they are blocking energy, and transform this blocked energy into more adaptive behaviors. Clients can be encouraged to recognize how their resistance is being expressed in their body.

Therapeutic Process Therapeutic Goals • Basic goal—namely, assisting the client to attain greater awareness, and with it, greater choice. Awareness includes knowing the environment, knowing oneself, accepting oneself, and being able to make contact. • Without awareness clients do not possess the tools for personality change. With awareness they have the capacity to face, accept, and integrate denied parts as well as to fully experience their subjectivity. • The Gestalt approach helps clients note their own awareness process so that they can be responsible and can selectively and discriminatingly make choices. Awareness emerges within the context of a genuine meeting (contact) between client and therapist.

Therapist Function and Role • The therapist’s job is to invite clients into an active partnership where they can learn about themselves by adopting an experimental attitude toward life in which they try out new behaviors and notice what happens. • Gestalt therapists use active methods and personal engagement with clients to increase their awareness, freedom, and self-direction rather than directing them toward preset goals. • Gestalt therapists value self-discovery and assume that clients can discover for themselves the ways in which they block or interrupt their awareness and experience. • Therapist functions as a guide and a catalyst, presents experiments, and shares observations, the basic work of therapy is done by the client. • The therapist’s task is to create a climate in which clients are likely to try out new ways of being and behaving. • Gestalt therapists do not force change on clients through confrontation. Instead, they work within a context of I/Thou dialogue in a here-and-now framework. • Gestalt therapists is paying attention to clients’ body language. These nonverbal cues provide rich information as they often represent feelings of which the client is unaware. • By focusing on language, clients are able to increase their awareness of what they are experiencing in the present moment and of how they are avoiding coming into contact with this here-and-now experience. Client's Experience • The general orientation of Gestalt therapy is toward dialogue, an engagement between people who each bring their unique experiences to that meeting. • Gestalt therapists do not make interpretations that explain the dynamics of an individual’s behavior or tell a client why he or she is acting in a certain way because they are not the

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experts on the client’s experience. Clients in Gestalt therapy are active participants who make their own interpretations and meanings. It is they who increase awareness and decide what they will or will not do with their personal meaning. "Polster described a three-stage integration sequence that characterizes client growth in therapy. ○ The first part of this sequence consists of discovery. Clients are likely to reach a new realization about themselves or to acquire a novel view of an old situation, or they may take a new look at some significant person in their lives. ○ The second stage of the integration sequence is accommodation, which involves clients’ recognizing that they have a choice. Clients begin by trying out new behaviors in the supportive environment of the therapy office, and then they expand their awareness of the world. ○ The third stage of the integration sequence is assimilation, which involves clients’ learning how to influence their environment. At this phase clients feel capable of dealing with the surprises they encounter in everyday living. At this phase clients have learned what they can do to maximize their chances of getting what is needed from their environment.

Relationship pf Therapist and Client • Gestalt practice involves a person-to-person relationship between therapist and client. Therapists are responsible for the quality of their presence, for knowing themselves and the client, and for remaining open to the client. • Therapists are responsible for establishing and maintaining a therapeutic atmosphere that will foster a spirit of work on the client’s part. It is important that therapists allow themselves to be affected by their clients and that they actively share their own present perceptions and experiences as they encounter clients in the here and now. • Gestalt therapists not only allow their clients to be who they

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Gestalt therapists not only allow their clients to be who they are but also remain themselves and do not get lost in a role. Therapists are expected to encounter clients with honest and immediate reactions, and therapists share their personal experience and stories in relevant and appropriate ways. The therapist’s attitudes and behavior and the relationship that is established are what really count. Many contemporary Gestalt therapists place increasing emphasis on factors such as presence, authentic dialogue, gentleness, more direct self-expression by the therapist, decreased use of stereotypic exercises, and greater trust in the client’s experiencing. Therapists must be in tune with both their clients and themselves.

Therapeutic Techniques and Procedures The Experiment • Exercises are ready-made techniques that are some-times used to make something happen in a therapy session or to achieve a goal. They can be catalysts for individual work or for promoting interaction among members of a therapy group. • Experiments, in contrast, grow out of the interaction between client and therapist, and they emerge within this dialogic process. • In Gestalt therapy, an experiment is an intervention and active technique that facilitates the collaborative exploration of a client’s experience. • Clients explore their awareness process and discover how their thinking, feeling, sensing, and behaving either works for them or does not. • Experiments are not designed to achieve a particular goal but occur in the context of a moment-to-moment contacting process between therapist and client. • Gestalt experiments can take many forms: imagining a threatening future encounter; setting up a dialogue between a client and some significant person in his or her life; dramatizing the memory of a painful event; reliving a

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dramatizing the memory of a painful event; reliving a particularly profound early experience in the present; assuming the identity of one’s mother or father through role playing; focusing on gestures, posture, and other nonverbal signs of inner expression; or carrying on a dialogue between two conflicting aspects within the person. It is essential that counselors establish a relationship with their clients, so that the clients will feel trusting enough to participate in the learning that can result from Gestalt experiments.

The Role of Confrontation • Confrontation is set up in a way that invites clients to examine their behaviors, attitudes, and thoughts. Therapists can encourage clients to look at certain incongruities, especially gaps between their verbal and nonverbal expression. Therapy Interventions • Exercises are preplanned activities that can be used to elicit emotion, pro-duce action, or achieve a specific goal. • Experiments, in contrast, are spontaneously created to fit what is happening in the therapeutic process and can be useful tools to help clients gain fuller awareness, experience internal conflicts, resolve inconsistencies and dichotomies, and work through impasses that prevent completion of unfinished business. • Internal Dialogue Exercise: Gestalt therapists pay close attention to splits in personality function. A main division is between the “top dog” and the “underdog,” and therapy often focuses on the war between the two. • Empty Chair: a vehicle for the technique of role reversal, which is useful in bringing into consciousness the fantasies of what the “other” might be thinking or feeling. • Future Projection: an anticipated event is brought into the present moment and acted out. • Making the Rounds: Making the rounds is a Gestalt exercise that involves asking a person in a group to go up to

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others in the group and either speak to or do something with each person. ○ The purpose is to confront, to risk, to disclose the self, to experiment with new behavior, and to grow and change. Reversal Exercise: Certain symptoms and behaviors often represent reversals of underlying or latent impulses. Rehearsal Exercise: When clients share their rehearsals out loud with a therapist, they become more aware of the many preparatory means they use in bolstering their social roles. More on page 117

Group Counseling •

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A main goal of the Gestalt group is to heighten aware-ness and self-regulation through interactions with one another and the group itself. Gestalt therapy encourages direct experience and actions as opposed to merely talking about conflicts, problems, and feelings.

Multicultural •

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Gestalt therapy can be a useful and effective approach with clients from diverse backgrounds because it takes the clients’ context into account. Gestalt therapists strive to approach each client in an open way. By bracketing their own values, Gestalt therapists remaining receptive to how clients’ realities differ from their own....