Gestalt therapy uses the method of realize (or “awareness”) prevailing perceiving, feeling and acting. The client (or patient) learns to become more aware of what he is doing. In this way, he develops her ability to accept herself and to experiment “the here and now“without the interference of the fixed responses of his past.
Goals of Gestalt therapy
The goal of Gestalt therapy, apart from helping the client (or patient) to overcome symptoms, is to enable the person to become more complete and creatively alive and free from blockages and unfinished business that diminish optimal satisfaction, self-actualization, and growth. For all these reasons, it is why it is located within the category of humanistic therapies.
How Gestalt therapy works
In Vertices Psychologists we apply Gestalt psychotherapy both independently and integrated into our Integrative Psychotherapy methodology. Gestalt is fundamentally based on the following concepts and methods:
- The here and now: Live and feel the present. Live and feel reality.
- Realizing (“awareness”): it is the client (or patient) who has to realize what is happening to him. It is only necessary to be conscious to change (if desired) a behavior.
- Accept what one is: do not look for idols, do not accept the “shoulds”, be responsible for your own actions.
- Emphasize the how or the why rather than the why: How do I feel? How do I feel in this situation? How do I feel now? Why am I doing this? What is the use of feeling this way?
It is preferred to use the term client what a patient, since a patient is someone sick who goes to be cured by another, while a client is another term neutral, which only indicates that it is someone who goes to the therapist’s office. In this type of therapy, the patient is the one who must “self-heal“, the psychologist only guides and helps him to achieve it, acting rather as an external observer and not so much as “the one who heals“.
The gestalt therapist has the function of guiding the client (or patient) to become aware of their situation (realizing or “awareness”). During the therapeutic process, there is a permanent interaction of me, you, us, breaking the usual dichotomy of other therapist-patient psychotherapies. The client can express himself verbally as well as with gestures and movements.
Also a characteristic of this therapy is the use of first persongiven that one of the strengths of Gestalt therapy is, as mentioned above, taking responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings and actionsso that the client does not tend to hide using a collective subject.
The term of thehot chair (“hot chair”) is usually used in association with the application of Gestalt therapy, it basically consists of the mental creation of a characterwith which you want to confront a problem and, later, assume your role, to later answer in the client’s place with the role that belongs to him.