Gestalt Therapy
Goal: "Promoting attention, clarity, and awareness. Helping people live in the here and now. Improving people's sense of wholeness, integration, and balance" (Seligman & Reichenberg, 2014, p. 209).
Basic Principles of Gestalt Therapy
View of Humankind
Wholeness, Integration, and Balance
Holistic approach that emphasizes integration & balance in people's lives
People cannot be separated from their environment or divided into parts
Integrating Polarities
(Seligman & Reichenberg, 2014, p. 202-07)
View of Humankind
- Perls had an optimistic and empowering view of people and placed importance on self-actualization
- Gestalt therapy helps people develop awareness, inner strength, and self-sufficiency.
Wholeness, Integration, and Balance
Holistic approach that emphasizes integration & balance in people's lives
People cannot be separated from their environment or divided into parts
Integrating Polarities
- People view themselves and their world in terms of polarities or extremes
- To achieve wholeness, people must become aware of their polarities and integrate them; especially with the mind and body
- Live our lives in the here and now - like driving a car, using our best judgment to react to our constantly changing needs
- Sudden & important changes in our understanding of events
- How a person relates to their environment both inside and outside of their body.
- Two polarities of the ego boundary: identification and alienation.
- Perceptions can change, influence our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and differ for every person.
- Our lives are always changing
- Through awareness of and identification with all aspects of self, we can successfully deal with flux
- Homeostasis: complete all unfinished situations in the sequence of survival importance
- Essential element of emotional health
- It is the hallmark of the healthy person and a goal of treatment
- Facilitated by use of experiments: here-and-now focus & process statements
- Contact with environment is one of the most important
- Contact is made through seven functions: looking listening, touching, talking, moving, smelling and taste
- There are also 5 layers of contact and growth: phony layer, phobic layer, impasse layer, implosive layer, explosive layer.
- Another way to increase awareness is to live in the moment and be conscious of the present moment rather than remaining tied to the past or trying to control the future
(Seligman & Reichenberg, 2014, p. 202-07)