Gestalt Therapy
Counseling Theory & Techniques
Defining Gestalt:
The German Foundation
 German word meaning pattern, whole or
configuration…
 In German it’s also used as a verb…
 To “gestalt” something is to endeavor to grasp
it as a whole
 Painting
 Social Event
 Etc.
Definitions continued…
“A unified physical, psychological, or
symbolic configuration having properties
that cannot be derived from its parts”
(American Heritage Dictionary)
In essence, gestalt refers to the “whole being
greater than the sum of its parts.”
Definitions through the eyes of
Perls…
 Perls described his view of human nature by noting that the
person or organism always works as a whole: We have not a
liver or a heart. We are liver and heart and brain and yet,
even theis is wrong ---- we are not a summation of parts but a
coordination of the whole. We do not have a body, we are a
body, we are somebody”
 “Gestalt counseling is being in touch with the obvious, the
human being, the wholeness of his/her frailties, strengths,
weaknesses, joys, and sorrows.
 “Reality is nothing but the sum of all awareness as you
experience the here and now.”
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Fritz Perls 1893 - 1970
Berlin-Jewish-lower middle class
Problem child, failed 7th grade twice & expelled
MD in Psychiatry
After WWI-worked in hospital for Brain Damaged
Soldiers-realized view humans as a whole rather than
sum of discreet parts
Analysis with Reich-Body work model
1946-came to USA
Big Sur, California – Esalen Institute
Married Laura Perls in 1930
Founded New York Institute of Gestalt Therapy
Perls Working with GLORIA
 Click on picture to start video.
Other names associated with GT
“The Berlin Three”
 Max Wertheimer (1880-1943):
focus on client awareness
 Kurt Koffka (1886-1941):
concerned with definition of gestalt
 Wolfgang Kohler (1887-1967):
focused on humanness
Twenty Principles for Understanding
Gestalt Therapy
1. Deals with the Whole Person in his or her
life situation
2. It pays equal attention to
1. Theory
2. Attitude
3. Method
(three legs to the stool of effective work)
3. It is an existential approach…
 It assists the client in experiencing his or
her existence and way of being in the
world more fully
 Asserts that the client must assume full
responsibility
4. It is a phenomenological
approach…
 It helps the client personally discover and
experience what he/she is doing
 Counselor does NOT offer interpretation
 Does NOT tell the client what is going on
with them
 Focuses on the client’s perception of reality
5. It is a depth approach
 Based on exploration and discovery rather
than a program for change
 Change emerges from the work, often in
unexpected ways
6. Paying attention to the “obvious” is a
central working principle.
 Rather than attending primarily to the
verbal content, the counselor constantly
scans for postures, mannerisms, tiny
facial twitches, changes in tone of voice
and other cues
7. Promotes developing a capacity for
awareness in the present
 If the client becomes aware of what he/she
is doing NOW, also increases the capacity
to do something else instead.
8. Addresses unfinished business
 Neurosis involves acting NOW in ways that
fit old situations in the past
 As those situations are re-experienced in the
present, the person becomes free to respond
appropriately NOW
9. It is enactive
 Problems are not just “talked about” but
described or enacted in the present
 Parallel to psychodrama and social skills
training
10. Attention to “Holes in the
Personality”
 Holes are places where the client has hangups and does not allow life energy to flow
 By recovering those parts, previously
disowned parts of the self are reintegrated
11. Attention to assisting client in
developing underdeveloped capacities
 An essential part of work is exploring
disowned sources of power or emotional
expressions the client previously learned
were unacceptable
12. Focus on the client’s experience of
being “disembodied”
 Assists client in regaining full-body
experience
 Perls drew from his previous studies (Reich
and Goldstein), his background in theater,
and his wife’s experiences in modern dance
13. Discovery of how contact
boundaries are violated
 Good contact = recognizing, honoring, and
respecting where I leave off and you begin,
and visa versa
 Defense mechanisms include projection,
introjection, retroflection, confluence,
deflection and minimization
14. The dominant need will emerge in the
foreground and become “figure”
 When the need is sufficiently resolved, it
will fade into the background
 Another important need will then move into
the foreground as the figure
15. Dialogue is a central
working principle
 Examples include
 Client and “Another person”
 Two conflicting sides of the self
 Using “hot seat” and “empty chair”
16. “Neon arrows” will point to
matters of central importance
 May be either verbal or nonverbal
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Facial twitch
A tear
A voice change
Quick verbal reference to a family situation
(called hit-and-run)
17. Every dream contains
one or more messages
 Identifying each element of the dream can
unveil some dimension of the dreamer
 Gestalt dream work often “shuttles” back
and forth between dream and current
realities and dilemmas
18. Suppressive, expressive and
integrative techniques
 Suppressive: methods of the stopping the
client from engaging in avoidances &
distractions
 Expressive: making thinking, feeling, acting
or using the body more visible
 Integrative: bringing together sides of the
self that have been fragmented
19. Letting go of “shoulds”
 Rather than trying to live out other people’s
programs for the client, discover his/her true
reactions and preferences
20. The goal is organismic selfregulation
 Responding appropriately to all the
messages the client’s mind/emotions/body
is giving about what he/she wants to do now
within the context of the situation
Techniques
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The Internal Dialogue Exercise
Making the Rounds
The Reversal Exercise
The Rehearsal Exercise
The Exaggeration Exercise
Staying with the Feeling
Dream Work
Multicultural Considerations
 Approach can be implemented in a
culturally-aware manner
 Difficult to use with clients culturally
conditioned to be emotionally reserved
 Important to consider cultural ramifications
of directly addressing parents and people of
power