Gestalt Therapy

Front 1

Philosophy

Back 1

Based on the premise that individuals must be understood in the context of their ongoing relationship with the environment. Designed to help people fully experience the present and gain awareness of what they are doing. Clients are assumed to have capacity to do their own seeing, feeling, sending and interpreting. Growth occurs through the I/Thou relationship which is the context for experiments.

Front 2

Key Concepts

Back 2

Here and now, direct experiencing, awareness and bringing unfinished past business into the present. Basic principles of holism, field theory, figure-formation process, organismic self-regulation. Attention to the body and non-verbal cues. Resistance is challenged (introjection, projection, retroflection, confluence and deflection.)

Front 3

Goals

Back 3

Attaining awareness and expanding choices. Initial goal is to expand awareness of what clients are experiencing in the present moment including knowing the environment and oneself, accepting oneself and being able to make contact. With awareness the client can reintegrate the denied aspects of the self.

Front 4

Therapeutic Relationship

Back 4

Stressing the I/Thou relationship and the therapist as a person. Contemporary (relational) Gestalt stresses presence, authentic dialogue, gentleness, direct self-expression by the therapist and trust in the client's experiencing. Client is seen as expert on their own experiencing and the therapist lets client make own interpretations. Client does the identifying of unfinished business that is interfering with present experiencing by bring them to the present and re-experiencing them.

Front 5

Techniques

Back 5

Therapist is a guide/catalyst and invites client to try experiments to increase awareness, freedom and self-direction rather than moving towards preset goals. Collaborative process of experiential learning.

Reliving painful events, caring dialogues between conflicting aspects within, role playing, playing out all parts of dreams, empty chair technique.

Front 6

Applications

Back 6

Not for severely disturbed individuals. Good for couples and families, elementary and secondary classrooms and clinical applications.

Front 7

Awareness

Back 7

Process of attending to and observing ones own present-centered experience.

Front 8

Blocks to Energy

Back 8

Paying attention to where energy is located, how it's used and how it can be blocked.

Front 9

Confrontation

Back 9

Invitation for client to become aware of discrepancies between verbal and nonverbal expressions, feelings and actions, thoughts and feelings.

Front 10

Contact

Back 10

Process of interacting with others and nature without losing ones sense of individuality.

Front 11

Continuum of Awareness

Back 11

Staying with the moment-to-moment flow of experiencing leading to discovery of how individual is functioning in the world.

Front 12

Deflection

Back 12

A way of avoiding contact and awareness by being vague and indirect.

Front 13

Dichotomy

Back 13

Split by which a person experiences or sees opposing forces, a polarity

Front 14

Dream Work

Back 14

Bringing dreams back to life as though they are happening presently.

Front 15

Emotion-focused Therapy

Back 15

Practice of therapy informed by understanding the role of emotion in psychotherapeutic change

Front 16

Empty-chair Technique

Back 16

Role playing where client plays conflicting parts in an imaginary dialogue between different sides of themselves.

Front 17

Exercises

Back 17

Ready-made techniques that are sometimes used to make something happen in therapy or to achieve a goal.

Front 18

Experiments

Back 18

Procedure aimed at encouraging spontaneity and inventiveness by bringing the possibilities for action into the therapy session. Designed to enhance here and now awareness. Activities as a way of testing new ways of thinking, feeling and behaving.

Front 19

Field

Back 19

A dynamic system of interrelationships.

Front 20

Field Theory

Back 20

Paying attention to and exploring what is occurring at the boundary between the person and the environment.

Front 21

Figure

Back 21

Aspects of experiencing that are most salient at any moment.

Front 22

Figure-formation Process

Back 22

Describes how individual organizes the environment from moment to moment and how the emerging focus of attention is on what is figural.

Front 23

Ground

Back 23

Aspects of awareness that tend to be out of awareness or in the background.

Front 24

Holism

Back 24

Attending to client's thoughts, feeling, behaviors, body and dreams.

Front 25

Impasse

Back 25

Stuck point in a situation in which individuals believe they are unable to support themselves and seek external support.

Front 26

Introjection

Back 26

Uncritical acceptance of others' beliefs and standards without assimilating them into one's personality.

Front 27

Organismic self-regulation

Back 27

Tendency to take actions and make contacts that will restore equilibrium or contribute to change.

Front 28

Paradoxical theory of change

Back 28

Theoretical position that authentic change occurs more from being who we are than from trying to be who we are not.

Front 29

Phenomenological Inquiry

Back 29

Through "what" and "how" questioning, clients assisted in noticing what is occurring in the present moment.

Front 30

Projection

Back 30

Process by which we disown certain aspects of ourselves by ascribing them to the environment.

Front 31

Relational Gestalt Therapy

Back 31

Supportive, kind and compassionate style emphasizing dialogue in the relationship (as opposed to confrontational style of Fritz Perls.)

Front 32

Retroflection

Back 32

Act of turn back onto ourselves something we would like to do or have done to someone else.

Front 33

Unfinished Business

Back 33

Unexpressed feelings dating back to childhood that now interfere with effective psychological functioning/clutters present-centered awareness.