The Gestalt Approach (EG) It is a holistic approach; That is, it perceives objects, and especially living beings, as wholes. In Gestalt we say that “the whole is more than the sum of the parts.” Everything exists and acquires meaning within a specific context; nothing exists by itself, isolated.
Along with systemic therapy, EG is essentially a way to live life with your feet firmly on the ground. It is not intended to guide the individual along the path of the esoteric or of enlightenment. It is a way of becoming fully, freely and openly in this world; accepting and taking responsibility for what we are, without using more resources than appreciating the obvious, what IS. EG is in itself a lifestyle; hence it is more appropriate to call it “approach”, which is a broader term, rather than “therapy”, which restricts its possibilities of application to the clinical. Next, in Psychology-Online, we tell you everything about the Gestalt psychotherapy: concepts, principles and techniques.
What is Gestalt psychotherapy: definition
Gestalt psychotherapy is one of the models framed in the movement of humanistic psychology. Fritz and Laura Perls, two of the pioneers of this therapy, define it as the philosophy of the obvious, in that its objective is to capture what is evident at a given moment.
To make the right one Gestalt definitionit is important to know that expressions such as “awareness therapy“, “contact therapy” either “here and now therapy”. Thus, the primary objective is to help the person become aware (both cognitively and emotionally) of how they avoid a part of a reality, which may seem traumatic. The therapist’s role will be to prepare the person to face unpleasant things, that is, to help them gain a good contact with their reality.
Bases of therapy and the Gestalt institute
Gestalt is a German term, without a direct translation into Spanish, but which approximately means “shape“, “whole“, “setting“. The form or configuration of anything is composed of a “figure” and a “background“. For example, at this moment for you, the letters constitute the figure and the white spaces form the background; although this situation can be reversed and what is figure can become the background.
The phenomenon described, which is located at the level of perception, also involves all aspects of experience. This is how some situations that concern us and are located at the current moment in the status of figure, can become in other moments, when the problem or need that caused it to arise disappear, in situations of little significance, then passing into the background. This occurs especially when a Gestalt is managed to “close” or conclude; then it withdraws from our attention towards the background, and from said background a new Gestalt arises motivated by some new need. This cycle of opening and closing Gestalts (or Gestalten, as they say in German) is a permanent processwhich occurs throughout our entire existence.
Goals of gestalt therapy
For Gestalt therapy The therapist is his own instrument and, in turn, prioritizes improvisation over a corpus of intervention techniques guided and experimentally corroborated. The insistence that therapy is both an art and a science presupposes that improvisation and creativity are at the service of therapeutic goals, and that not only the therapist’s intuition is needed, but also the assimilation of deep theoretical knowledge that allows this to emerge. intuition appropriately. When we talk about Gestalt psychotherapy, its concepts, principles and techniques, it is essential to focus on the objectives, these are the following:
1. The purpose of the model is to mature
The goal of therapy is to grow and mature. We could understand that maturing is following Pindar’s advice, “becoming what you are.” Perls describes the maturation process as “turning cardboard people into real people.” Rank understands the mature person as the “creative artist” or Erich Fromm as a person who lives from “being” and not from “having”, in short a mature person is a “leader without being a rebel” (Fritz Perls) and since he is capable of living in relation to his own center, he does not need to live relying on things.
2. Dare to grow
The price to achieve the maturation process is to honestly accept unpleasant situations. We do not grow because fears hold us in a state of infantilism and prevent us from seeking alternatives to provide answers to the difficulties that arise.
We could propose that it is “take the bull by the horns“, with the awareness that each bullfighter has his own peculiar way of fighting the challenges of his own experiences. The therapist does not have an interpretive function, as in psychoanalysis, but rather a questioning task. Like maieutics, which Socrates bequeathed to us, it is about bringing to light everything that belongs to us, both the joys and the sadnesses, through questions. Questions are about “looking from a certain point of observation” to discover new perspectives of one’s own and others’ reality. Once we have been able to see new perspectives, it is about making decisions, about being the protagonists of our own life script.
3. The growth process
We have all experienced simultaneous needs and have paid preferential attention to the one that is most essential to survive. Certainly, we can find people who, in the name of the freedom of their people or the fight against infidels, are capable of sacrificing their own biological existence, but it usually seems that there are two basic tendencies in every living creature: to survive and to grow. Thus, at a given moment several needs may occur at the same time and several elements may be present in the environment to satisfy some of them and elements may not be present to satisfy others.
Heraclitus understood the vital flow when he stated “that you can’t bathe twice in the same river”. We cannot bathe in the same waters, although we can realize – awareness – the waters we tread and, to a large extent, we are responsible for our journey. While we swim we satisfy our needs, while at the same time we feed our load of unpleasant tastes. Our hump of unpleasantness is nourished by unmet needs or interruptions in the gestalt cycle of satisfaction of needs.
4. The gestalt cycle of need satisfaction
The gestalt cycle has seven phases:
- The phase of sensations It is a bodily and passive phase, which is defined by the stimuli that affect our senses.
- The second phase is awarenesswhere sensations are interpreted and cognitive and emotional factors intervene.
- The third phase is energization in which a series of volitional and affective elements arise that energize the subject, through internal emotional movement, pressuring him towards achieving the goal.
- The fourth phase is that of action in which the subject seeks a change in relation to the environment.
- The fifth phase is contactin it the intense encounter occurs with the element of the environment that had been selected.
- The sixth phase is satisfactionthat once the need has been satisfied, a feeling of homeostasis, calm and consummation of the process appears with the resolution of the problem.
- Finally, the phase of withdrawal where an energetic mutation occurs that leads to the abandonment of the object of contact, that is, a kind of “digestion of the experience.”
Bases of Gestalt psychotherapy
The Gestalt Approach has received the influence of the following currents:
- Freud’s psychoanalysis, taking up and reformulating his theory of and work with dreams.
- The existential philosophy, which rescues confidence in the potential inherent to the individual, respect for the person and responsibility.
- Phenomenology, from which it takes its attachment to the obvious, to immediate experience and to awareness (insight).
- Gestalt psychology, with its theory of perception (figure-ground, Law of good form, etc.).
- Eastern religions, and especially Zen Buddhism.
- Psychodrama, by JL Moreno, from which he adopts the idea of dramatizing experiences and dreams.
- W. Reich’s muscular shell theory.
- The theory of Creative Indifference, by Sigmund Friedlander, from which he extracts his theory of polarities.
- Systemic therapy and family constellations
The EG is not only the sum or juxtaposition of the aforementioned doctrines and approaches, but also their creative integrationits elevation to a new plane, carried out by Fritz Perls, creator of the Gestalt Approach.
The fact of realizing or Awareness
This is the key concept on which the EG is based. In short, realizing is coming into contact, naturally, spontaneously, in the here and now, with what one is, feels and perceives. It is a concept somewhat similar to that of insight, although it is broader; a kind of organized chain of insights. There are three Zones of Realization or Awareness:
- Awareness of the outside world: That is, sensory contact with objects and events that are outside oneself in the present; what I see, touch, feel, taste or smell at this moment. It is the obvious, what is presented to us by itself. At this moment I see my pen sliding over the paper forming a word, I hear the noise of cars passing along the avenue, I smell the perfume of a young woman passing by me, I feel the taste of a fruit in my mouth.
- Realizing the inner world: It is the actual sensory contact with internal events, with what happens on and under our skin. Muscle tensions, movements, uncomfortable sensations, itching, tremors, sweating, breathing, etc. At this moment I feel the pressure of my index finger, middle finger and thumb on my pen when writing; I feel like I’m putting the weight of my body on my left elbow; I feel my heart beating, my breathing heaving, etc.
- Fantasy Realization, the Intermediate Zone (ZIM): This includes all mental activity that takes place beyond the present: all the explaining, imagining, guessing, thinking, planning, remembering the past, anticipating the future, etc. Right now I’m wondering what I’ll do tomorrow morning, will it be something useful, well? In Gestalt all this is unreality, fantasy. It’s not tomorrow yet, and I can’t know or say ANYTHING about it. It’s all in my imagination; It is pure and simple speculation, and the healthiest thing is to assume it as such.
The here and now: mindfulness and gestalt
It is really difficult to accept that everything exists in the momentary present. The past exists and matters onlyas part of present reality; things and memories that I now think of as belonging to the past. The idea of the past is useful sometimes, but at the same time I must not lose sight of that, which is an idea, a fantasy that…