COUN110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Fritz Perls, Gestalt Therapy, Laura Perls
Gestalt Therapy
Emotional-Focused Therapy
Overview
• Founded by Frederick “Fritz” Perls and collaborators Laura Perls and Paul Goodman
• Synthesis of 1940s and 1950s cultural and intellectual trends
• Alternative to behaviorism and classical psychoanalysis
• Uses a process-based postmodern field theory
• Treats what is subjectively felt in the present and what is objectively observed as real
and important
• Integrates affective, sensory, cognitive, interpersonal, and behavioral components
• Develops client’s awareness and repertoires of awareness and behavioral tools
• Focuses on enhanced awareness
o The emphasis is on what is being done, thought, and felt at the present moment
(the phenomenality of both client and therapist), rather than on what was, might
be, could be, or should have been
Gestalt Approach
• Approach focuses on here-and-now experiencing and present awareness – provoking
• With awareness, clients are able to change
• Therapists suggest experiments that are performed by clients
• The approach emphasizes the I/Thou dialogue.
• The focus is on doing rather than “talking about.”
Basic concepts
• The word gestalt has no literal English translation, but refers to a perceptual whole or
configuration of experience
• Holism: humans are self-regulating and growth oriented
• Field Theory: addresses how context influences experiencing
o physical and environmental contexts in which we live and move
(phenomenological)
o mental and physical dynamics that contribute to a person’s sense of self, one’s
subjective experience (ontological)
• Paradoxical Theory of Change (Beisser, 1970)
o the more one tries to become who one is not, the more one stays the same
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• Provide client opportunities to understand & discover him / herself
o awareness experiments and personal (client) disclosure
o frustrate the client so s/he acts out
o consciousness raising
o focus on non-verbal – non verbal display is truer than words
o Not to explain things to patient or interpret
• Health is largely a matter of being whole, and healing occurs when one is made whole
again
• Organismic self-regulation
o requires knowing and owning what one senses, feels emotionally, observes, needs
or wants, and believes
• Embodiment
o contact with own body experience
• Contact
o being in touch with what is emerging here and now, moment-to-moment
• Conscious awareness
o focusing of attention on what one is in touch with
• Experimentation
o trying something new in order to increase understanding
• Results in Maturation
o from manipulating environment for support
o to reliance on own resources
Client
o recovers lost potential
o integrates polarities
o behaviour’s confident
o supports self emotionally, economically
Awareness Processes
• Gestalt therapy focuses on the continuum of one’s flow of awareness - not a single
fixed thing, but a changing thing
• Patterned processes of awareness become foci for the work of therapy – how we engage
with our awareness
• Develops clarity about one’s thinking, feelings, decisions, and process in the current
moment
• Awareness cultivates empowerment through access to oneself and clarifying
confusions
• Gestalt therapists impart respect, compassion, and commitment to client’s subjective
reality
View of Human Nature
• Therapy aims at awareness and contact with the environment (internal & external)
• Process of ‘reowning’ parts of oneself
• Individuals have the capacity to self regulate
• The more we work at becoming who or what we are not, the more we remain the same
• Who we should be vs. who we are
Stage of Neurosis
• Pearls presented 5 stages that a client passes through to achieve change:
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o Phony stage- governed by a lot of “should’s” (how they should be) and trying to
live up to this. - what im expected to be
o Phobic stage – realisation of unhappiness, and confusion as to why – lead to
disappiont and wonder why we arent what we expected
o Impasse stage – feeling stuck, unable to move forward
o Implosive layer – phony layer begins to collapse – recognise expectation have
flaws
o Explosive layer – emergence of authentic sense of self
Theory of Personality
• “there’s no meaningful way to consider any living organism apart from its interactions
with its environment……” (Wedding & Corsini, 2014, pg. 309)
• Focus on differentiating from others as well as contact/connecting with others
• Contact between humans dominates the formation our of personality
• We maintain boundaries to connect and separate from others
• Contact and withdrawal from others allows needs to be met
• Too much or too little contact with others can lead to personality dysfunction
• Self-regulate between contact and withdrawal from others
• Contact when nourishing, but reject/withdrawal when harmful
• Being able to differentiate between the two leads to personal growth
• Under optimal conditions, there is ongoing movement between connecting and
withdrawal
• Disturbances in boundaries between self and others can lead to:
o Isolation –
▪ Fails to allow close contact to emerge
▪ contact is repeatedly blocked, not allowing for contact and therefore no
fulfilment of needs
• Confluence –
o Blurring of the differentiation between self and the environment
o Involves:
▪ Absence of conflicts
▪ Slowness to anger
▪ A belief that all parties experience the same feelings and thoughts we do.
o High need to be accepted and liked
▪ need to withdraw is blocked, leading to a lack of separate identity
• Introjection –
o when things (ideas, identify, beliefs) are taken in without awareness, leading to
lack of integration
o Passive incorporation of what the environment provides rather than clearly
identifying what we need or want
• Projection –
o Reverse of introjection
o when phenomenon that occurs within the self is falsely attributed to another to
avoid awareness of one’s own experience
o Attributes of self are inconsistent with our self – image are disowned and
‘projected’ onto others (thus attributing blame externally).
The NOW
• Focus is on appreciation and experiencing of the present
• Focus on past / future – a way of avoiding situations in the present
• Energy used to focus on the past / future, diminishes the power of the present
Unfinished Business
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Client recovers lost potential integrates polarities: behaviour"s confident, supports self emotionally, economically. Stage of neurosis: pearls presented 5 stages that a client passes through to achieve change, phony stage- governed by a lot of should"s (how they should be) and trying to live up to this. There"s no meaningful way to consider any living organism apart from its interactions with its environment (wedding & corsini, 2014, pg. Isolation : fails to allow close contact to emerge contact is repeatedly blocked, not allowing for contact and therefore no fulfilment of needs, confluence , blurring of the differentiation between self and the environment. Fixed gestalts: many incomplete gestalts originate in childhood, perls used the term premature closure when an experience was interrupted in a way. If they are not recognized and completed, they will affect us throughout our lives that shuts down the natural response: may be replaced with some other behaviour.
