1. Gestalt Therapy

2. Questions?
What key concepts do you know in terms of Gestalt therapy?

3. View of Human Nature: people are
self-reliant
spontaneous
capable of self-regulation
able to reintegrate the disown parts of themselves
striving toward actualization and growth

4. The present (here and now)
Directly Experience rather than talking about situations
Becoming the hurt child rather than talking about childhood trauma experiences.
Ask “what” and “how” instead of “why”
The power is in the present.
However, many people focus on past mistakes and engage in endless plans for the future

5. Unfinished Business (UB)
Definition: Feelings about the past are unexpressed
May be of anger, hatred, guilt, fear…
May be memories and fantasies
Interfere with effective contact
Tend to result in physical symptoms
By working through unfinished business, the preoccupation with the past is complete.

6. Contact & Resistance to contact
CONTACT – interaction with nature and other people without losing one’s individuality
Contact is necessary for change to occur
RESISTANCE TO CONTACT – the defenses that prevent us from experiencing the present fully
Clients are encouraged to become increasingly aware of their dominant style of blocking contact

7. Contact Boundary Disturbances
Clients are encouraged to become increasingly aware of their dominant style of blocking contact
Introjection: uncritically accept others’ view without reviewing them
Children often take parents’ opinions as fact
Projection: disown certain aspect of ourselves by assigning them to others
Feeling anger may lead a person to project anger onto others
Retroflection: doing to ourselves what we want to do to others,
Biting one’s nails can be a substitute for aggression toward others

8. Energy and blocks to energy
Attend to where energy is located, how it is used, and how it can be blocked
Blocked energy is a form of resistance
Recognize how their resistance is being expressed in their body
feeling numb
Exaggerate their tension and tightness in order to increase awareness

9. Therapeutic Goals: helping clients
to enhance awareness
to depend on themselves
to bring the past or future into the present
to achieve integration of the whole person
Verbal behavior, nonverbal behavior, feelings, thoughts, perceptions.…

10. Therapist’s function and Role
Increase clients’ awareness
Attend to the present moment
Attend to verbal, nonverbal, and inconsistent message
Help clients to experience their being “stuck”
Make “I” statement
It is difficult to make friendsI have trouble making friends

11. The Therapeutic Relationship
Therapeutic relationship is important for the therapy to be effective
Be empathetic, genuine, and understanding
Share therapists’ experiences to clients in “here-and-now”
Apply the notion of “use of self” in therapy

12. Therapeutic Change
Not making progress is due to fear of change (Perls, 1969)
Exploring the reluctance
The Change Process: three-stage (Polster, 1987)
Discovery (get a new perspective)
Accommodation (learn that they have a choice)
Assimilation (change their environment)

13. Therapeutic techniques and procedures
The experiential work
Use experiential work in therapy to work through the stuck points and gain new insights
Preparing client for experiential work
Obtain permission from clients
Be sensitive to cultural differences
Respect resistance

14. Therapeutic techniques and procedures
The internal dialogue exercise
Top dog (critical parent) and underdog (victim)
Empty-chair (two sides of themselves)
Making the rounds
Go around to each person and say “What makes it hard for me trust you is……”
Reversal exercise
Reverse the typical style (e.g., behave as negative as possible)

15. Therapeutic techniques and procedures
Rehearsal exercise
Share the rehearsals out loud with a therapist
Exaggeration exercise
Exaggerate gesture or movement, which usually intensifies the feelings attached to the behavior
Staying with the feeling
Go deeper into the feelings they wish to avoid

16. Therapeutic techniques and procedures
The Gestalt approach to dream work
Do not interpret or analyze dreams
Bring dream back to the present life as though they are happening now
Every person or object in the dream represents a projected aspect of the dreamer
Dreams serve as an excellent way to discover personality
Not rememberingrefuse to face what it is at that time

17. Research on Gestalt Therapy
Compare with a waiting list control or no treatment, Gestalt therapy is effective
In general, results are similar among Gestalt therapy, P-C therapy, or CBT.
Leslie Greenberg and colleagues conducted a series of research on empty chair technique
Across studies, the empty chair technique is helpful by reducing self-criticism and increasing self-understanding.

18. From a multicultural perspective
Contributions
Work with clients from their cultural perspectives
Limitations
Focus on “affect” may not be appropriate
Asians value emotion self-control
Direct expression of the negative feelings to their parents is not appropriate.

19. Summary and Evaluation--contribution
Enhance awareness
Attend to verbal and nonverbal cues
Directly experience rather than talking about it
Focus on growth and enhancement
See each aspect of a dream as a projection of themselves

20. Summary and Evaluation-limitation
Limitations
Ineffective therapists may manipulate the clients with powerful experiential work
Some people may need psycho-education