Chap 8 part 1 - Lecture notes 4 PDF

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Chap 8 part 1 Monday, April 19, 2021

9:39 AM

Gestalt Therapy Introduction •

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Gestalt therapy is an existential, phenomenological, and processbased 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 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 ih h h i

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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 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.

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Organismic Self-regulation: The figure-formation process is intertwined with the principle of organismic self-regulation, 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 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....