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A powerful experiential psychotherapy focusing on contact
and awareness in the here and now. Gestalt Therapy provides
a system of concepts describing the structure and organization
of living in terms of aware relations. In gestalt psychology
terms, this means the application of the phenomenological
method: looking at 'what is', not at some abstract theoretical
explanation. The crucial therapeutic tool used by Perls
in his reworking of gestalt theory is just this ability
of the person to contact his on-going presentness.
Gestalt Therapy is based on the fact: that psychosis also
occurs in connection with organic brain disturbances as
the reduced function of this important organ means an impasse
situation for the individual that psychosis also develops
in healthy persons who are subjected to severe deprivation
(thirst, prison etc.).
Gestalt therapists believe their approach is uniquely capable
of responding to the difficulties and challenges of living,
both in its ability to relieve us of some measure of our
misery and by showing the way to some of the best we can
achieve. These academic gestalt theoreticians made available
contributions to perception and cognitive psychology, but
they neglected the wider realms of personality, psychopathology,
psychotherapy (except for some of the social-psychological
work of field theorist Kurt Lewin).
THEORY: The theory of Gestalt therapy has three
major sources. First is psychoanalysis, which contributed
some of its major principles concerned with the inner life.
Humanistic, holistic, phenomenological and existential writings,
which center on personal experience and everyday life, constitute
a second source. Gestalt psychology, the third source, gave
to Gestalt therapy much more than its name. Though Gestalt
therapy is not directly an application or extension of it,
Gestalt psychology's thoroughgoing concentration on interaction
and process, many of its important experimental observations
and conclusions, and its insistence that a psychology about
humans include human experience have inspired and informed
Gestalt therapy.
Gestalt therapy was founded in the socio-cultural context
of humanistic psychotherapies. It was Friedrich (Fritz)
Perls (1893-1970), whose intuition gave rise to this form
of therapy together with his wife, Laura (Lore) Perls (1905-1990),
née Posner. They were both German Jews, trained in
psychoanalysis and Gestalt psychology. Together they fled
from National Socialism in 1933, first to Amsterdam, then
to South Africa and subsequently to the United States, where
their theoretical and practical insights were further developed
by a group of American intellectuals with a deep knowledge
of psychoanalysis. Of these the most outstanding were Paul
Goodman, Isadore From, Paul Weisz, Lotte Weisz, Elliot Shapiro,
Alison Montague and Sylvester Eastman. The theoretical foundation
of this new school of psychotherapy, which originally was
named "concentration therapy", had emerged originally
as a revision of drive theory. Fritz and Laura Perls' new
approach, stimulated by Paul Goodman's (1911-1972) social
philosophy in New York, developed further as Gestalt Therapy.
What is special about gestalt therapy is its stress on the
structure of the experimental moment. By here and now we
mean concrete actuality, how the person contacts his existence
at this very instant - his awareness, posture, breathing,
tone of voice, gestures, facial expressions, etc.. Although
many therapists talk about treating the whole person, in
actuality they seemed to be concerned primarily with verbal
material, or in some cases biographical data or psychodiagnostic
classification of test protocols. In gestalt therapy, the
face to face encounter fosters this working with the whole
person. Focusing on the 'gestalt' - how the person forms
his figures and grounds. And helping him become more aware
of it.
Benefits/Contraindications
See professional
for information.
Training/Licensing
See Gestalt
Therapy website.
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