Humanistic · 1951
Gestalt Therapy
Change occurs when interrupted experience becomes living awareness and recovers contact, self-regulation and closure.
Gestalt Therapy is a phenomenological, experiential and field-oriented psychotherapy that understands the person as an organism in continuous relation with their environment, organised by processes of contact, withdrawal, need, excitement, action and assimilation. Emerging with Fritz Perls, Laura Perls and Paul Goodman from the publication of Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality in 1951, it combines influences from Gestalt psychology, phenomenology, existentialism, psychoanalysis, Kurt Goldstein's organismic theory, experimental theatre, cultural criticism and direct clinical practice. Its core does not consist in interpreting the past from outside, but in increasing awareness of what the person experiences, does, avoids, interrupts and updates in the here and now. Suffering is understood as an interruption of contact and a loss of organismic self-regulation: needs that fail to form a clear figure, impulses that become blocked, emotions that are deflected, injunctions swallowed without assimilation, aspects of oneself projected onto others, aggression turned against oneself, fusions that erase the self–other boundary, and unfinished business that continues to organise present experience. Gestalt intervention works through phenomenological description, in-session experiments, dialogue, the body, enactment, the empty chair, polarities, authentic therapeutic contact, taking responsibility and exploring interruptions of the contact cycle. Change appears when the person can perceive more accurately what is happening, sustain excitement without blocking it, own their acts and needs, integrate polarities of the self, complete unfinished gestalts and recover livelier, more flexible and more responsible forms of contact with themselves, with others and with the world.
Theory of change
A person changes when they increase awareness of their present experience, recognise how they interrupt contact and can complete in a lived way the unfinished gestalts that were blocking their self-regulation.
Core ideas
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Awareness is the engine of change
Gestalt Therapy holds that psychological change arises when the person increases their awareness of what they are living, doing, avoiding and blocking in the present moment. Becoming aware is not abstract introspection but integrated consciousness of body, emotion, thought, impulse, need and relationship; as it becomes figure, the experience can be completed and self-regulated. Reference: Perls, F., Hefferline, R., & Goodman, P. (1951). Gestalt Therapy; Yontef, G. (1993). Awareness, Dialogue and Process.
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The self emerges at the contact boundary
Gestalt understands the self as a dynamic function of contact between organism and environment, not as a fixed internal structure. Identity is organised in how the person feels, chooses, differentiates themselves, approaches, withdraws and assimilates experience within a concrete field. Reference: Perls, F., Hefferline, R., & Goodman, P. (1951). Gestalt Therapy.
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Suffering is maintained by interruptions of contact
Symptoms are understood as rigidified ways of interrupting the contact sequence: swallowing injunctions without assimilating them, projecting one's own material onto the other, turning impulses against oneself, merging, deflecting or abandoning the figure before completing it. Therapy restores fluidity in contact. Reference: Perls, F., Hefferline, R., & Goodman, P. (1951). Gestalt Therapy; Polster, E., & Polster, M. (1973). Gestalt Therapy Integrated.
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The here and now is the operative place of change
Personal history matters in Gestalt to the extent that it appears now as emotion, gesture, narrative, blockage, fantasy or pattern of contact. Therapeutic work brings past and future into the session so that they can be lived, differentiated and transformed as present experience. Reference: Perls, F. (1969). Gestalt Therapy Verbatim.
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The body reveals interruptions before they can be explained
Cut-off breathing, a clenched jaw, a weakened voice, an avoidant gaze or an interrupted movement show how the person organises their experience before they can name it. Gestalt bodywork gives access to emotion, impulse and need without reducing them to verbal explanation. Reference: Perls, F. (1969). Gestalt Therapy Verbatim; Joyce, P., & Sills, C. (2018). Skills in Gestalt Counselling & Psychotherapy.
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The experiment replaces closed interpretation
The Gestalt therapist creates experiential situations so that the patient can observe, live and try out something new, rather than receive an explanation about themselves. The experiment turns the implicit into the visible and allows the person to learn from direct experience. Reference: Zinker, J. (1977). Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy; Perls, F. (1969). Gestalt Therapy Verbatim.
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Internal polarities call for integration
Psychological conflict is usually organised as a struggle between rigid poles of the self, such as demanding and avoidant, strong and vulnerable, dependent and autonomous. Gestalt seeks to have each pole heard, differentiated and recognised until a wider, integrated position can appear. Reference: Perls, F. (1969). Gestalt Therapy Verbatim; Polster, E., & Polster, M. (1973). Gestalt Therapy Integrated.
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Responsibility opens agency without assigning blame
Taking responsibility in Gestalt means recognising how the person takes part in their experience, their avoidances and their forms of contact. This authorship denies neither history nor context; it makes it possible to recover room for choice where before there seemed to be only automatism, passivity or guilt. Reference: Perls, F., Hefferline, R., & Goodman, P. (1951). Gestalt Therapy; Perls, F. (1969). Gestalt Therapy Verbatim.
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The therapeutic relationship is a field of real contact
The therapist's presence, authentic dialogue, attunement, careful confrontation and the repair of ruptures form part of the field in which the patient actualises their modes of contact. The relationship is not a neutral frame but a living space in which experience can become conscious and be transformed. Reference: Yontef, G. (1993). Awareness, Dialogue and Process; Wheeler, G. (1991). Gestalt Reconsidered.
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Closure allows experience to be assimilated and vitality recovered
An unfinished gestalt keeps energy trapped in repetition, tension, fantasy or unfinished business. When the experience can be expressed, completed and withdrawn, the organism assimilates what has been lived and becomes available for new figures, new needs and more flexible forms of contact. Reference: Perls, F., Hefferline, R., & Goodman, P. (1951). Gestalt Therapy; Latner, J. (1973). The Gestalt Therapy Book.
Influences
- Gestalt psychology
- Phenomenology / Hermeneutics
- Existentialism
- Classical psychoanalysis
- Kurt Goldstein's organismic psychology
- Bodywork and the theory of aggression
- Theatre and experimental art
- Social and community criticism
Key references
- Perls, F. (1947). Ego, Hunger and Aggression.
- Perls, F., Hefferline, R., & Goodman, P. (1951). Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality.
- Perls, F. (1969). Gestalt Therapy Verbatim.
- Perls, L. (1992). Living at the Boundary.
- Polster, E., & Polster, M. (1973). Gestalt Therapy Integrated.
- Latner, J. (1973). The Gestalt Therapy Book.
- Zinker, J. (1977). Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy.
- Wheeler, G. (1991). Gestalt Reconsidered.
- Yontef, G. (1993). Awareness, Dialogue and Process.
- Joyce, P., & Sills, C. (2018). Skills in Gestalt Counselling & Psychotherapy.