About Gestalt Therapy

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="0bc085a3.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Arial" ><B>Gestalt Counseling & Training Institute</B></FONT><B>    </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Gestalt Counseling Training Institute"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id48.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Counseling and Therapy"><U>Counseling and Therapy</U></A>   |   <A HREF="body_mind.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="BodyMind Therapies"><U>Body-Mind Therapies</U></A>   |   <A HREF="training.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Training in Gestalt Therapy"><U>Training in Gestalt Therapy</U></A>   |   <A HREF="etherapy.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="ETherapy!"><U>E-Therapy!</U></A>   |   <A HREF="staff.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Professional Staff"><U>Professional Staff</U></A>   |   <A HREF="calendar.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Calendar of Events"><U>Calendar of Events</U></A>   |   <A HREF="mission.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Mission Statement"><U>Mission Statement</U></A>   |   <A HREF="fees2c.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Reimbursement Schedule"><U>Reimbursement Schedule</U></A>   |   <A HREF="contact.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact Us"><U>Contact Us</U></A>   |   <A HREF="map.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Map and Directions"><U>Map and Directions</U></A>   |   <B>About Gestalt Therapy</B>   |   <A HREF="holistic_therapy.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="About Holistic Therapy"><U>About Holistic Therapy</U></A>   |   <A HREF="links.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Gestalt Links"><U>Gestalt Links</U></A>   |   <A HREF="join.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Join Our Mailing List"><U>Join Our Mailing List</U></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" background="0bdd2e83.jpg"> <div> <IMG SRC="0c7a9d20.jpg" border=0 width="169" height="210" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" background="0be07073.jpg"> <div> <I>About Gestalt Therapy</I></div> <div> <I><B> <A NAME="definition"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B></I><A HREF="#definition_of_gestalt" TITLE="About Gestalt Therapy"><U><I><B>Definition</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <I><B> <A NAME="values_and_principles"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B></I><A HREF="#the_values_and_principles_1" TITLE="About Gestalt Therapy"><U><I><B>Values and Principles</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <I><B> <A NAME="historical_roots"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B></I><A HREF="#gestalt_therapy_1" TITLE="About Gestalt Therapy"><U><I><B>Historical Roots</B></I></U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="0c542f00.png" border=0 width="322" height="240" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <I><B> <A NAME="definition_of_gestalt"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B></I><I><B>Definition of Gestalt</B></I></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <I><B>Ge·stalt: </B></I></div> <div> <I><B>A configuration so unified as a whole that its properties </B></I></div> <div> <I><B>cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts.</B></I></div> <bR> <div> <I><B>Gestalt Therapy: </B></I></div> <div> <I><B> A psychotherapeutic approach that supports the process of </B></I></div> <div> <I><B>developing awareness of the intrinsic nature of one's True Self.</B></I></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <I><B>"</B></I><I><B> <A NAME="gestalt_therapy"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B></I><I><B>Gestalt therapy is existential, experiential and experimental. But what techniques you use to implement that and to apply it, that depends to the greatest extent on your background, on your experiences professionally, in life, your skills and whatever. The Gestalt therapist uses himself and herself with whatever they have got and whatever seems to apply, at the time, to the actual situation: a patient, a group, a trainee, whatever."</B></I><I> </I><I><B>Laura Perls, Co-founder of Gestalt Therapy </B></I></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Gestalt is guided by a belief that through the practices of awareness, nonjudgement and self-acceptance, one discovers his or her true nature. The Taoist concept of "Wu-Wei" (non-action) suggests that heaven will manifest its will for us in a spontaneous manner WHEN WE LEARN TO JUST "BE"</B><B>." - Sheree Johnson, Senior Therapist</B></div> <bR> <div> Gestalt Therapy is an experiential therapy emphasizing what is happening in the here and now to help individuals become more self-aware and learn responsibility for and integration of thoughts, feelings, and actions.</div> <bR> <div> 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". These subjectively structured wholes (gestalts), not the raw data, comprise what is then called "experience". Everything that is experienced through thoughts, feelings, memories, sensations, associations, culture, gender, appetite, desire, impulses, needs, and so forth, influences the way a person experiences reality. Thus all of experience becomes a <I><B>co-creation</B></I>. Because individuals are so unique, Gestaltists believe that no two people will ever view the same experience the same way.</div> <bR> <div> The Gestalt Therapist views life (the way we play, work, live, make love, die, etc.) as a "creative process". Therapy becomes a modality to objectively examine the way individuals, couples, groups and systems creatively adapt to their environment. Change occurs by heightening awareness and modifying the behaviors that impede the process of effective adaptation.</div> <div> <A HREF="#definition" TITLE="About Gestalt Therapy"><U><B>back to top</B></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <B> <A NAME="the_values_and_principles_1"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" ><B>Values and Principles</B></FONT></div> <div> The values and principles that govern training and therapeutic practices offered at Gestalt-Ann Arbor are based on those developed by the<A HREF="http://www.gestaltcleveland.org/" TARGET="_blank" TITLE="http://www.gestaltcleveland.org/"><U> Gestalt Institute of Cleveland</U></A>. Some of these primary values are stated as follows:</div> <bR> <div> * Gestalt Therapy recognizes the creative processes inherent within all of life.</div> <div> * Therapy is a process of transformation and transcendence.</div> <div> * The relationship between the therapist and the individual/couple/group is one of <I><B>mutual</B></I> transformation.</div> <div> * The individual is viewed as an integration of mind-body-spirit, in the process of contact with, and creative adjustment to, his environment. It respects the individual's defenses (resistance) as the process of "creative adjustment". </div> <div> * The couple is a system with multiple levels of phenomenon simultaneously in action and synergistically interacting.</div> <div> * The system evolves over time through successive phases which can be defined operationally.</div> <div> * Individual and systemic change, as a growth process, requires insight (awareness) and experiential action which is specific and focused upon the figural tension in order to be integrated into system patterns and processes.</div> <div> * Change in one level of system will have a "ripple effect" at other levels.</div> <div> * Systemic processes are holographic and the present event is the contemporary manifestation of multiple levels of the past.</div> <div> * Contact is the essential experience for growth and change.</div> <div> * Awareness of process is the best hope for change. </div> <div> * Value the present moment.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Gestalt Therapy Foundational Beliefs </B></div> <bR> <div> <I><B>Field Theory</B></I> </div> <div> Field theory originally derived from the work of Kurt Lewin (1951) and is our primary way of looking at the world. Simply stated, all reality is viewed within the context of the sum total of many subsets (desires, environment, economics, relationships, etc.) and it is accepted that all of these variables influence, impact and overlap holographically.</div> <bR> <div> <I>As psychotherapists and agents of change, we look at how the system, be it individual, couple, family, or culture, organizes itself. We learn to examine phenomena both broadly and narrowly... without judgment and, to the extent possible, without prejudice. Our lens can shift from the precise notation of the flicker of an eyelid, to a sweeping social and even global perspective. (Melnick)</I></div> <bR> <div> <I><B>Phenomenology</B></I> </div> <div> Gestaltists believe that one can only know what one experiences. "Phenomenology" reflects the various levels of awareness and the degree of focus that people attend to as they give meaning to their lives. The concept further accepts the uniqueness of each individual and considers all perspectives legitimate.</div> <bR> <div> With the phenomenological approach to therapy, one also adopts a method in which the observation and description of data (phenomenon) become paramount to therapeutic process. As much as possible, the therapist avoids interpretation and assumption and relys on the process of feedback to be the tool to bring about awareness and consequential change or adaptation.</div> <bR> <div> <I><B>Dialogue</B></I> </div> <div> Because Gestaltists believe that all experience is co-created, dialogue is used as a method to encourage the open engagement of two phenomenologies(the therapist and the client). Appropriate self-disclosure of the therapist through dialogue helps to encourage authenticity within the relationship and also serves to create a shared language of meaning. The intent is to allow growth through the field of interpersonal transaction.</div> <bR> <div> <I><B>Figure/Ground</B></I> </div> <div> The Gestalt approach has been heavily influenced by the Gestalt psychology of perception (e.g., Kohler, 1947) from which it borrowed the important concept of figure/ground. Although the Gestalt psychologists talked of figure and ground in relation to perceptual phenomena, Gestalt therapists have applied it more broadly. They see it as relevant to all functions of the individual, of intimate systems such as couples and families, and of larger systems such as organizations and cultures.</div> <bR> <div> Basically, as we experience the environment, a primary form, or "figure," stands out and is organized against its background, or "ground." The ground in contrast to the figure is unbounded and formless (Polster and Polster, 1973). It includes past experience, physiology, beliefs, constructs, culture, and so on, with its main function being to provide context.</div> <bR> <div> As a figure emerges from the ground, it draws attention for a varied, but always finite, length of time. Eventually, when it no longer holds the focus (because of some form of completion or perhaps competition from another figure), it recedes back into the ground where it is, one hopes, reintegrated in such a way as to make new meaning. Gestalt therapists have spent much time articulating this process of figure formation and destruction (Perls et al., 1951). (A version of this process, the cycle of experience, is utilized by Matzko to describe the process of addiction in this issue.) Dysfunction, according to Gestalt theory, involves a chronic interruption or blockage in the natural flow of figure/ground formation.</div> <bR> <div> <I><B>Resistances as Creative Adjustment</B></I> </div> <div> In Gestalt therapy every symptom or defense is viewed as an attempt to solve a problem through creative adjustment. However, when these adjustments, originally spontaneous, fitting, and developmentally correct, become acontextual and chronic, the figure/ground process becomes distorted. These response patterns (known as resistances) include projection, retroflection, introjection, confluence, and egotism. Unlike some other approaches, Gestalt therapy does not seek to remove or interpret them but instead seeks to bring them into awareness, with the goal of supporting new organization and self-regulation by the individual. More recently, some Gestalt therapists have preferred to use the phrase "contact styles," which subsumes the old label of resistance and stresses instead the individual's patterns of contacting the self, the other, or the environment (Wheeler, 1991).</div> <bR> <div> <I><B>The Gestalt Cycle of Experience</B></I> </div> <div> The Gestalt Cycle of Experience is a process description of the phases an individual/couple/family/system moves through in developing an aroused state of tension, and the behavioral and psychological creative adjustments produced to reduce the tension through need fulfillment. It is a conceptual tool used to view an ongoing event, incident, or interaction while the experience in process. Chronic interruption of this process constitutes thematic "stuckness". </div> <div> (Gestalt Institute of Cleveland)</div> <bR> <div> <I><B>Gestalt Cycle of Experience</B></I> </div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="045aa010.png" border=0 width="426" height="513" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="#definition" TITLE="About Gestalt Therapy"><U><B>back to top</B></U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <I><B> <A NAME="gestalt_therapy_1"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B></I><I><B>Historical Roots</B></I></div> <bR> <div> <I>Gestalt Therapy began as part of a collective consciousness shared by several pioneers, four of whom are highlighted here, as it is their influence that helps to shape the model used at Gestalt-Ann Arbor: Laura Perls, Fritz Perls, Paul Goodman, and Isadore From. The shaping and sculpting of the Gestalt Therapy model(s), and the breath that later gave life and rhythm to this movement, arose out of their passions, trials, hardships, joys, burdens, resistances, collective intelligence, creativity, and what seemed to be a deep, insatiable longing to understand all that was called "life". A detailed study of each of their backgrounds would give the reader only a glimpse of a character full of color and dynamism who seemed often fearless, sometimes frightened, and always full of rebellion and compassion. Each of them chose to sidestep conventionality in favor of people or experiences which seemed challenging, interesting or different. They blended psychology with art, dance, theatre, radical (sometimes anarchic) political and social ideologies to create their unique view of the Gestalt. In varying degrees, Eastern Spiritual thought and practice, (for example, Fritz Perls' quest for the meaning of life led him to Japan for a brief study of Zen), was also a part of the unique fusion called Gestalt Therapy.</I></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="04181b40.jpg" border=0 width="129" height="180" ALIGN="LEFT" HSPACE="10" VSPACE="0">Fritz Perls and his wife, Laura Posner Perls, both psychoanalytically-trained, fled Nazi Germany in the late 1930's and developed many of their early ideologies in Gestalt Psychology as a therapeutic modality while living in South Africa. They moved to the United States in 1946 and eventually established the first Gestalt Institute in New York City (1952), and later, the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland (1953).</div> <bR> <div> Laura's experimental work at the Institute for Brain-Injured Veterans in Berlin, under the guidance of her mentor, Kurt Goldstein, led her to embrace fully the orgasmic view of existence. She saw the basic human experiences of movement, eating, study, play, etc, as the teachers of other human qualities such as patience, awareness and assimilation. Laura Perls was the first to place emphasis on the body process as a<IMG SRC="042abac0.jpg" border=0 width="171" height="172" ALIGN="RIGHT" HSPACE="10" VSPACE="0"> primary variable of the Gestalt experience.</div> <bR> <div> Perls first book, <I><U>Ego, Hunger and Aggression</U></I>, originated as a position paper to be presented at the 1936 Conference in Czechoslovakia. Perls hoped to expand upon the fundamental theories of psychoanalysis, particularly the theory of anal development and the concepts forming libido theory. His expectations, according to Laura, was that his arguments would be readily accepted and in fact, would serve to support his effort in becoming well-known in the psychoanalytic community. Perls' radical ideas were totally rejected by the Freudian community. </div> <bR> <div> Fritz Perls is credited with much of the development of "awareness theory". His work emphasized a phenomenological and subjective approach to therapy, based on the notion that many of us split off our experience (thoughts, sensations, emotions) that are uncomfortable. A primary goal of his therapeutic style was to move people into owning their experience, which would aid the mending of their fragmented view into a healthy gestalt (or whole). Perls' book, <I><U>Gestalt Therapy Verbatim</U></I><I>, </I>is an interesting description of this approach drawn from transcripts of his work. </div> <bR> <div> <I>"Just as neurotic behavior is notorious for being predictable, healthy behavior is equally notorious for not being predictable... when you're both agreed that the patient is aware that it is he or she that walks into my room and he or she that talks to me -- which would mean an absence of projections, introjections, retroflections -- then the therapy is through." Isadore From</I></div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="043798f0.jpg" border=0 width="121" height="143" ALIGN="LEFT" HSPACE="10" VSPACE="0">Isadore From was a student at the New York School of Social Research in 1945, studying under Leo Strauss and William Troy, when he was referred to Fritz Perls for psychotherapy. From became a Gestalt Therapist by default when he followed Fritz Perls to California in 1948. (From said that Perls literally pushed him into a room with a client, who happen to be a relative of Fritz's, and told him to "just do it"!") Perls and From shared an office on Hollywood Boulevard, and after one year, Fritz went back to New York and From inherited his clientele. From would return to New York a couple years later to become instrumental in the formation of the Gestalt Institute of New York.</div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="0447f9e0.jpg" border=0 width="127" height="158" ALIGN="RIGHT" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="20"></div> <div> Paul Goodman was, perhaps, one of the greatest philosophical minds of our times. Best-known for his book, <I><U>Growing Up Absurd</U></I>, published in 1960, Goodman was often described as "utopian" in his theoretical outlook and philosophy. He was the prototypical starving artist, discouraged and marginalized, rarely making ends meet to support his wife and two children. Midlife found him overwhelmed with uncertainty. He wrote in a journal: "I am at a loss, in our great city, how to do anything at all that could make an immediate difference in our feeling and practice (and so in my own feeling and practice). Therefore I have ceased to want anything..." It was at this time that he met Fritz and Laura Perls and became one of the first students at the New York Institute. Perls' ideas blended well with Goodman's and they were soon involved in a rich collaboration to co-author the writing of the 1951 edition of <U>Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality.</U></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="#definition" TITLE="About Gestalt Therapy"><U><B>back to top</B></U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>