GESTALT

THERAPY
Foundation
of Gestalt
Therapy

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 FRITZ PERLS (1893-1970)
• Friedrich Salomon Perls
• Born in a Jewish ghetto on the outskirts of
Berlin on July 08, 1893
• Studied and acted with the Reinhard School of
Drama, earning money to pay for most of his
education.
• He earned his M.D. degree from the Friedrich
Wilhelm University in 1921.

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• He was in psychoanalysis with Karen Horney, Clara
Happel, and Wilhelm Reich and studied with Helene
Deutsch at the Psychoanalytic Institute in Vienna.
• In 1934, he founded the South African Institute for
Psychoanalysis in Johannesburg.
• In 1936, he flew to Czechoslovakia to deliver a
paper to the Psychoanalytic Congress.
• He spent 12 years in South Africa, during which he
formulated all the basic ideas underlying what he
would call Gestalt Therapy.
• At 53, he moved his family to New Year, where the
“formal birth” of Gestalt therapy took place.

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• In late 1951, Perls, book Gestalt Therapy:
Excitement and Growth in the Human
Personality was published.
• He moved to Canada and established his own
Gestalt Institute of Canada at Cowichan on
Vancouver Island in British Columbia in 1969.
• Fritz Perls died of advanced pancreatic cancer.

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What is a
Gestalt
Therapy?

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  People are capable of becoming self-regulating beings
View who can achieve a sense of unity and integration in their
of lives.
 Yontef and Jacobs (2008), “there is no meaningful way to
Huma understand a person if that human is considered apart
from the person’s interactions with environment or
n interpersonal relations”.
Natur  The foundations of Gestalt therapy are being whole and
regulating one’s self.
e  Gestalt therapy helps individuals know themselves, their
strengths, and self-sufficiency ( Seligman, 2006)
 Gestalt therapy stresses wholeness, integration, and
balance.

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GOALS OF GESTALT
THERAPY

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Most • Promoting attention, clarity, and awareness
important • Helping people live in the here and now
goals of • Encouraging people’s wholeness,
Gestalt
integration, and balance
therapy:
• Promoting self-sufficiency, actualization,
and meaningful contact and development
skills to manage life

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PRINCIPLES OF
GESTALT
THERAPY
THEORY

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PRINCIPLE
S OF HOLISM
GESTALT  The whole is greater than the sum of its
THERAPY parts. The emphasis is on the aspects of
THEORY
the individual that are most “figural” or
salient at any moment and to
integration, how the parts fit together,
and how the individual makes contact
with the environment.

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PRINCIPLE
S OF FIELD THEORY
GESTALT
THERAPY
 The organism must be seen in its
THEORY environment, or in its context, as part
of the constantly changing field.
 Gestalt therapists pay particular
attention to and explore what is
occurring at the boundary between the
person and the environment

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PRINCIPLE THE FIGURE-FORMATION
S OF PROCESS
GESTALT
 How the individual organizes experiences from
THERAPY
THEORY moment to moment.
 It tracks how some aspect of the environmental
field emerges from the background and
becomes the focal point of the individual’s
attention and interest.
 The need of an individual at a given moment
influence this process. ( Frew, 1997)

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PRINCIPLE
S OF
GESTALT
THERAPY ORGANISMIC SELF-REGULATION
THEORY

 Describes the nature of the relationship

between the individual and the
environment.

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 CORE
CONCEPTS

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AWARENES
• Seligman (2006) states that it is the hallmark of wellness as
S well as the goal of counseling.
• Self-regulation requires awareness or focused attention
involves full use of all the senses.
• People with high level of awareness of their needs and their
environment know which problems and conflicts are
resolvable and which are not.
• In Perl’s theory , the key to successful adjustment is the
development of personal responsibility for one’s life and
responsibility to one’s environment.

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 ▹ The interaction of the person with the
CONTACT environment in Gestalt therapy.
▹ Is the process of knowing about a need and
trying to fulfill that need by engaging with the
environment.
▹ Contact Boundaries – humans interact with
their environment. The Psychological contact
boundaries are the exchange between the
person and resources within the environment.

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 ▹ The self is in the process of becoming
SELF ▹ Self emerges as the person has the experiences
and develops the sense of “who I am and who I
am not” or “me”.
▹ Carroll (2009) explains that all our interactions
involve adjusting to the contact between what
is me and what is not me.
▹ In a healthy person, self is always changing,
transforming by taking in what nourishes and
rejecting what obstructs growth.

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 ▹ All parts of the person work in a well-coordinated,
wholesome manner.
INTEGRATIO People cause themselves additional problems by not
N handling their live appropriately in the following 6
Categories:
1. Lacking contact with the environment
2. Confluence
3. Unfinished Business
4. Fragmentation
5. Top dog/underdog
6. Polarities

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THE HERE- ▹ The emphasis is on learning to
AND-NOW appreciate and fully experience the
present.
▹ Focus imbued the person with potency,
involvement, and liveliness
▹ In Gestalt therapy, the participants
bring past problem situations into the
present by reenacting the situation as if
it were occurring now.
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 ENERGY ▹ Unexpressed emotions can create a
AND kind of blockage within the body.
BLOCKS TO ▹ Gestalt therapists pay attention to
ENERGY
bodily experience on the assumption
that unexpressed feelings may result in
some physical sensations or problems.

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COUNSELING
METHODS

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 Fundamen
tals of
Counseling 1. Pay attention to the range of awareness
Method: 2. Commit to the here-and-now
3. Take responsibility for personal thoughts,
actions, feelings, and sensations
4. Have meaningful communications
5. Avoid questions
6. Take risks
7. Accept personal responsibility for change

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Process

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PROCES  Highlights the awareness process, the
S range of a person’s experiences

 Gestalt counseling emphasizes the

immediate interaction between
practitioner and client.

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 1. The clients learn the here-and-now
PROCES focus rather than the there-and-then
S

2. Exploring the problems

3. Counselors continue to support change

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EXPERIMENTS
AND
TECHNIQUES

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Reversal
Clients speaks the opposite of any thought,
feeling, or action to bring into awareness the
Place your screenshot here
other end of the continuum.

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Bipolarities
• Perls applies the term different thinking to
the concept of thinking in terms of
opposites. Much of everyday life appears
to be spent resolving conflicts posed by
competing polarities, such as “ I should”
and “I want” when one is confronted with a
difficult decision.

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TOP DOG VERSUS UNDERDOG

 The top dog is righteous, aurthoritarian, and

knows best. The top dog is a bully and works
with “you should” and “you should not”.
 The underdog manipulates by being defensive or
apologetic, wheedling, and playing crybaby. The
underdog works with “I want” and makes excuses Place your screenshot here
such as “I try hard” and “I have good
intentions”The underdog is cunning and usually
gets better of the top dog because underdog
position appeals to the pleasure-seeking side of
our personality.

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The Empty Chair
Technique

• Often is used to resolve a conflict between

people or within a person.
• The Empty Chair is a powerful
Place your screenshot here
interventions for working with clients of all
ages who are in conflicts with third party
who is not present in the session

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Greatest Weakness

• Clients are asked to name their greatest

weakness and write a short paragraph on Place your screenshot here
how this weekness is really their greatest
strenght.

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Resent, Demand and
Appreciate: The Integration of
Opposing Thoughts, Feelings
and Beliefs

• Helps clients become more aware of the

mixed feelings they have about others, how
it is possible to resent and appreciate a
person at the same time, and how opposing
thoughts and feelings can be integrated.

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 Hello!
I am Reena Rose Bacalando
BSSW AS2-1
DISCUSSANT
MSR 301
TFri 10:30-12: 00 PM

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Thank You For
Listening!
You can find me at @itsenana01 &
@enarose091399@gmail.com

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