ge·stalt or Ge·stalt
(g -shtält , -shtôlt , -stält , -stôlt ); n. pl. A physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts.
So what does that have to do with therapy?
Consider this… you are a being, a whole being, who is greater than merely the sum of all your parts. You have a heart, kidneys, lungs, a brain, but you are not you by way of merely adding up all of these pieces. You are also made up of your emotions, your physicality, sexuality, and your experiences prior to this moment. Gestalt Therapy’s goal is to help you live fully, as that whole being.
What is Gestalt Therapy?
Gestalt therapy is a psychotherapeutic approach developed by Frederick S. Perls and others in the 1940’s. Perls, better known as ‘Fritz”, originally a Freudian analyst, was influenced by the principles of Gestalt psychology and existential philosophy and drew from sources in medicine and psychiatry. Gestalt’s insights form part of the basis for the human potential movement that began in the 1960’s and continues to expand its influence. Increasingly, Gestalt has been a means to achieve the personal growth of the healthy individual and in recent years has also proven to be of great value in educational and organizational contexts. It is a therapy that takes into account the whole individual and is concerned with both mind and body. The therapy, however does not involve a renovation of the whole. Gestalt Therapy addresses the obstacles to the functioning of that whole in the context of the present.
Gestalt therapy is a psychotherapy, which, in its purest application, addresses only what is happening in the moment. Individuals who have been accustomed to talking about themselves, their past, their problems, their dreams, and their ideas about themselves and others, find the method very frustrating in the beginning. The comfort of confining these issues in one’s thinking and fantasy is not so easy for the individual to sacrifice. The Gestalt approach is to bring into awareness, in the moment, the more obvious discrepancies in the person’s presentation of themselves and response to others. Here the anxiety becomes available to the individual to experience or to resist. These occurrences are a vital part of the change process.
In contrast to many other therapies, Gestalt therapy includes the neurosis as a necessary element in the change process. The behaviours or symptoms that are deemed undesirable or unsatisfactory are essential elements in the therapy process, both in individual and group therapy. The Gestalt therapist is trained to address these moments with the client or group participant with skill and creativity. How the individual resists contact in the here and now, or how they resist change, is the rich resource from which the therapist draws interventions that are original, efficient, and effective.
Perls’ basic premise was that life happens in the present – not in the past or the future – and that when we are dwelling on the past or fantasizing about the future we are not living fully. Through living in the present we are able to take responsibility for our responses and actions. To be fully present in the here and now offers us more excitement, energy, and courage to live life directly.
