Dr. Nicole M.

Randick, ATR-BC, LPC, NCC

Adler Graduate School
 Fritz Perls
o Viewed humans as a whole rather than
as a sum of discretely functioning parts.

Laura Perls
o Paid a great deal of attention to contact and support,
which differed from Fritzs attention to intrapsychic
phenomena and his focus on awareness.

Gestalt: form, figure, pattern, or whole

 Past Present
Reductionistic Holistic
Deterministic Phenomenological
Unconscious Disowned parts
Energy system seeking Energy system seeking
homeostasis or homeostasis or
completion completion
(repetition compulsion) (Closure)

faculty.uca.edu/lglenn/gestalt.ppt
 Gestalt Therapy draws on classical Gestalt psychology's
notion that all stimuli (data) that is presented to us by the
environment is essentially "raw" or neutral.
The raw mass of data is then organized and shaped by the
perceiver into "wholes" which we call "gestalts.
All experience becomes a co-creation.
Life is a creative process

http://www.gestalt-annarbor.org/gestalt_therapy.htm
 Existential, phenomenological, and process-based approach
Individuals must be understood in the context of their
ongoing relationship with the environment
Goal help clients to gain awareness of what they are
experiencing and how they are doing it.
People are always in the process of becoming, remaking,
and rediscovering themselves.
Contemporary:
o Relational Gestalt Therapy - Stresses dialogue and
relationship between client and therapist
 Usually involves insight and sometimes introspection.
Self-acceptance, knowledge of the environment,
responsibility for choices, and the ability to make contact
with their field or interrelationships.
Promotes experiencing rather than the abstractness of
talking about situations.
 Clients avoid self-reliance and are not willing to accept their
own perceptions as valid.
Clients are looking to others for the answers.
Moving client from environment support to self support.
Clients become able to make informed choices and live
more meaningful existence when they become aware.
Reintegrating disowned parts of self.
Paradoxical theory of change:
o We change when we become aware of what we are as opposed to
trying to become what we are not.
http://boulderrelationshiphealing.com/my-services/individual-therapy-2/
 Holism: Gestalt is a German word meaning whole or
complete
o Figure: aspects of an individuals experience that are most salient
o Ground: out of awareness
Field Theory: everything is relational, in flux, interrelated,
and in process
Figure-Formation Process:
o How an individual organizes experiences from moment to moment
Organismic self-regulation:
o Process by which equilibrium is disturbed by a need/interest
o Goal is to help client to obtain closure of unfinished business
 Our power is in the present
Nothing exists except in the now
The past is gone and the future has not yet arrived.
For many people the power of the present is lost.
They may focus on their past mistakes or engage in endless
resolutions and plans for the future.
 Feelings about the past that are unexpressed
These feelings are associated with distinct
memories and fantasies.
Feelings not fully experienced linger in the
background and interfere with effective contact.
Result: Preoccupation, compulsive behavior,
wariness oppressive energy and self-defeating
behavior.
The Impasse (stuck point)
o avoiding experiencing threatening feeling, imagining something
terrible will happen.
 Contact:
o Interacting with nature and with other people without
losing ones individuality
Resistance to Contact:
o The defenses we develop to prevent us from
experiencing the present fully
 Introjection:
o uncritically accept others beliefs
Projection:
o disowning certain aspects of our selves (
Retroflection:
o turning back onto ourselves what we would like to do to
others (i.e. cutting)
Deflection:
o distraction or veering off (i.e. speak through others)
Confluence:
o blurring the differentiation between the self and
environment (absence of conflicts)
 Attain awareness and greater choice.
o Knowing the environment; knowing oneself; accepting
oneself; and being able to make contact.
o Clients note their own awareness process so that they
can be responsible to make choices
o Awareness emerges with in the context of the I/Thou
relationship
o With awareness the client is able to recognize denied
aspects of the self and move toward reintegration of all
its parts.
o Gestalt is an insight, experiential, and action-oriented.
 Move toward increased awareness of self
Gradually assume ownership of experience
Develop skills and acquire values that will allow clients to
satisfy their needs without violating the rights of others
Become more aware of all of senses
Learn to accept responsibility, including accepting the
consequences of actions
Move from outside support toward increasing internal
support
Be able to get help from others and give to others
 Create (as a joint venture) experiments (i.e. experiences)
inviting here & now awareness
The therapist is a catalyst to increased awareness
The therapist works in an I/Thou context (joint venture) to
search for blocks to awareness exhibited in non-verbal
ways.
Pay attention to body language and nonverbal cues and
language patterns and personality
o I.e. It talk: instead of I talk = depersonalizing language
 Discovery
o Reaching a new realization about self
Accommodation
o Recognizing that there are choices
Assimilation
o Learning how to influence environment
 The experiment in Gestalt Therapy
Preparing clients for experiments
Internal dialogue exercise
Rehearsal exercise
Reversal technique
Exaggeration exercise
 Exercises - ready-made techniques for specific purposes.
o (i.e.) Making the rounds in a group

o Empty chair dialogue

o Role reversals

Experiments - spontaneous, one-of-a-kind, and evolving

from the interaction in the moment
o Miriam Polster (1987) - intended to bring out some kind
of internal conflict
 Experiments:
o Helping people become more aware
o Help people make the changes they most desire
Therapist must be sensitive to clients needs
Requires clients active role in self-exploration
Work best when therapist is respectful
Therapist must be flexible with techniques and tailor them
to the client
Therapist must know what works best in and out of session
 Confrontation:
o Anything that invites awareness that is blocked
o Therapists encourage clients to look at certain
incongruities
o Can be done with client cooperation
o Does not have to be aimed at weaknesses or negative
traits
o Yontef (1999) In favor of including more support and
increased kindness and compassion in therapy that can
drive inquiry
 The goal is to promote a higher level
of integration between the polarities
and conflicts that exist in everyone.
o I.e. Top Dog and Underdog
o Empty Chair Technique
Externalize the introject
Taking turns
Discourages clients from
disassociating the feeling
 Talking to others to elicit confrontation, to take risk, to
disclose the self, to experiment with new behavior, to grow,
to change.
Increased awareness that comes from saying something
involving blocked awareness aloud (often repeatedly) to
another person.
Examples:
o Use when clients have an issue with reaching out to
others.
o Nobody here cares about me
 Reversal of an underlying or latent impulse
This exercise is sometimes useful when a person has
attempted to deny or disown a side of his or her personality.
o One who plays the role of tough guy may be covering
up a gentle side.
o One who is always excessively nice may be trying to deny
or disown negative feelings toward others.

http://www.offnotes.com/lets-build-a-pleasant-personality.htm
 Much of our thinking is rehearsing.
We rehearse, in fantasy, performances we think we are
expected to play.
rehearse out loud
o Helps clients become aware of the preparatory mean
they use in bolstering social roles
o Increase awareness of degree of approval, acceptance
one seeks
 Strengths
o Can be used in conjunctions with clients cultural views and beliefs
systems
o Gestalt therapists check out their own biases and views before
working with clients
o Helps people integrate the polarites within themselves
Shortcomings
o Methods tend to produce a high level of intense feelings
o Too much focus on affect
 Corey, G. (2005). Theory and practice of counseling &
psychotherapy (7th ed). Belmont, CA: Thompson
Brooks/Cole.
Day, S. X. (2004). Theory and design in counseling and
psychotherapy. Boston: Lahaska Press/Houghton Mifflin
Company.
faculty.uca.edu/lglenn/gestalt.ppt
http://www.gestalt-annarbor.org/gestalt_therapy.htm
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