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Theory and Design in Counseling and Psychotherapy
Susan X Day , Iowa State University and University of Houston
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CHAPTER 7: Gestalt Therapy
Chapter Review
Fritz Perls, the dominant figure in Gestalt therapy, drew terminology from Gestalt psychology and loosely applied research on perception to broader descriptions of human experience. As such, the Gestalt concept of figure/ground perception is explained as the person focusing on a figure in the forefront of a scene while the background is shapeless and less distinct. For Perls, our habits of interacting with our environment establish what elements we choose to fade into the background of our consciousness, and our needs organize what we pay attention to as the priorities shaping the foreground. Perls's definition of the figure/ground concept expands the original Gestalt psychologists' research and uses the concept as a description of awareness, the central principle of Gestalt therapy. The purpose of therapy for this approach is to increase the client's awareness of self, and the counselor's role is to facilitate the process of self-discovery. Continuing the figure/ground concept, the focus of the foreground and the faded background would be ever shifting for the fully aware person who maintains full consciousness of self and the world around him. The counselor would consistently encourage the client to describe inner awareness asking, "What are you doing?" "What are you feeling?" "What do you want?" Counseling also helps the client determine what she is avoiding and what expectations she brings to her experiences.
Full awareness of self allows fragmented pieces of experience to come together into a whole, whereas socialization requires people to suppress natural and spontaneous parts of themselves against the flow of an organismic internal process. The Gestalt approach seeks to heal the splitting of the human psyche that divides perceptions into false polarities. The person who has only learned to deny and disown internal conflicts is unable to resolve "unfinished business" from the past. To promote understanding of internal blocks, Gestalt terminology sometimes depicts easily understood scenes that imply the emotional struggle described. Top-dog is the social self who tries to control the resistant natural self, called the under-dog, in a dynamic similar to the conflicts between the superego and id from psychoanalytic thought. Catastrophic expectations is a Gestalt term that dramatizes the child's experience of natural wonderment, but then he learns to expect punishment and rejection. Instead of learning to navigate between personal and external pressures, adults retain the top/under-dog dynamic, always vacillating between extremes, or forever stuck in a limbo between choices. Gestalt therapy exaggerates the internal drama, bringing the polarities into awareness, so experiences can be owned by the person and integrated into a holistic sense of self.
The Gestalt approach emphasizes contact, an awareness of the moment, of the person connecting to the here and now. Counselors seek to facilitate client experiences in session rather than only talk about what life is like. Counseling also draws attention to boundaries, or the lines
between one person and other human beings, believing that only the person herself can create an authentic experience and determine the course of her own life. Consequently a client may need to endure frustration and ambivalence before growth can occur, although therapeutic support may help. Clients' descriptions of their emotions may be drawn out to accentuate the experience as counselors ask questions such as, "Tell me what the pain is like," or clients are told, "Stay with the feeling." When clients reach an impasse, they must draw on their own inner resources to find their own unique experience. Counselors are true to their honest reactions to client behavior, modeling a mature and centered adult. So, counselors may act bored when clients deflect contact, project anger onto others, sound phony, or demonstrate introjection, expressing others' viewpoints.
The goal is for clients to experience ever deepening layers of the their true selves, to identify real-life choices and to manage external influences so that authenticity can be maintained. To facilitate self-awareness, counselors frequently note body language, and encourage clients to try something, anything, new to become newly aware. Language is consistently framed with the person as the responsible subject, rather than nebulous "shoulds," "have tos," or "can'ts." Role-plays are common Gestalt techniques, particularly the empty chair method. Two chairs are placed facing one another with each representing a side of a polarized issue, different people, or aspects of the self. The client takes the role of one side at a time, moving from one chair to the other and acting out the experience of the two sides. Themes from dreams can be experienced using the empty chairs. Psychodrama improvisations could be enacted with group members playing different parts and the client and counselor serving as the directors. In groups, another technique is the hot seat: one group member sits in a prominent place and works with the therapist, while others watch the work as spectators or participate by offering the hot seat client additional feedback.
Gestalt therapists share a common philosophy, but the techniques or format for counseling is not consistent among practitioners. Instead creative adaptations are seen as expressive of each therapist's style and of following the cues of the moment. All Gestaltists do intend to expand the client's awareness, to encourage the client to live in the moment, to overcome blocks to self-experiencing, and to assume self-responsibility for creating an authentic life. Gestalt techniques work particularly well with clients who are rigidly wedded to socialized messages regarding self-expression and behavior. Many women following a feminine stereotype can benefit by methods that encourage self-awareness. Family interaction patterns can be tied to Gestalt definitions of boundary problems. Although Gestalt conceptualizations do not assume that past traumas unconsciously control clients, the counselor could facilitate reexperiencing a disturbing event to integrate the unfinished business into a complete sense of self. Psychosomatic complaints are treated as a part of holistic experiencing and can be the focus for awareness techniques.
However, the goal of encouraging the true self's full expression makes many of the techniques inappropriate for sociopathic and narcissistically oriented clients. Indeed, the emphasis on a self-orientation is seen by some as denying the interconnections between people. Gestalt therapy is also criticized as anti-intellectual and philosophically sloppy. The loose creativity of adapting whatever technique for any client situation denies the professionalism of taking into account empirical validation for counseling practice. Consequently, few psychologists claim the Gestalt as their sole theoretical orientation, but many utilize some of the concepts and techniques within the context of other theoretical approaches.
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