Dr.V.

Veera Balaji Kumar

Psychologist & Soft skills Trainer
and
Frederick “Fritz” Salomon Perls
 Trained as a psychiatrist
 Worked with Kurt Goldstein, a principal figure of
the holistic school of psychology, who studied
the effects of brain injuries on WWI veterans
 Trained in psychoanalysis with Karen Horney
and Wilhelm Reich
Laura Perls
 Trained as a psychologist
 Worked with Gestalt psychologist Max
Wethheimer
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 Gestalt Therapy Institutes internationally
 Virtually every major city in the U.S. has at least one
Gestalt Institute
 Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy
formed to govern adherence to gestalt principles
 International Gestalt Therapy Association newly
formed
 Four Major Journals
 International Gestalt Journal
 British Gestalt Journal
 Gestalt Review
 Australian Gestalt Journal
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 Focused on process (what is happening) rather than on
content (what is being discussed)

 Gestalt comes from the German word for “whole”

 Focused on the person’s experience in the here and now

 Holism and field theory are interrelated in gestalt theory

 Organismic self-regulation requires knowing and

owning

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“Gestalt” - 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.
Gestalt therapy has its root in gestalt psychology,
Zen Buddhism, Taoism, existential philosophy
and phenomenology.

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 Studies the audio-visual perception and an
individual’s learning process through these
perceptions.
 During the process, there is an, “aha”, “now I
see it”, or “now I understand”.
 Problems or issues can be handled better if
we look at them as a whole i.e. the entire
situation, instead perceiving the elements or
bits.
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 Some Basic Principles of
Gestalt Therapy Theory

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Gestalt Therapy is best considered as a form of
existential therapy
The focus is on the …
 what and how of behavior (not why).
 here-and-now.
 integrating fragmented parts of the
personality.
 unfinished business from the past.

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  In contrast to psychoanalysis, Gestalt
Therapy emphasized the potential of the
here and now.
 Individuals are seen as organisms interaction
with their immediate environment in a way
that allow them to self-actualize.
 We sense and feel with our senses and
intuitions. Then, we become aware of our
needs – Biological, Psychological, Relational
or Spiritual.
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 Awareness of one’s biological needs like, hunger,
breathing, thirst, sex and excretions comes with
listening to our body.
 Our end-goals emerge. It stands out from the
background noise and comes to the foreground
(figure).
 We act on our environment continually to satisfy
our needs. We become complete while our needs
are satisfied. We become wholes or gestalts.

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 Awareness of five sensations and actions
related to the senses & expressing oneself.
 Awareness of both physical and emotional
feelings e.g. sweating revealing nervousness.
 Awareness of wants and desires and referring
these with our future e.g winning a lottery.
 Awareness of values and assessments;
respect of others’ values; social and spiritual
issues.
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All of nature is seen as a unified whole. The
whole is different from the sum of its parts.
We can only be understood to the extent that
we consider all the dimensions of human
functioning.
No superior value is place on any one aspect of
the individual.
Gestalt therapy attends to clients’ thoughts,
feelings, behaviors, body, relationships, and
dreams.
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Field - A set of mutually interdependent elements
 The organism must be seen in its environment (context), as part of the
constantly changing field.

 Everything is relational, in flux, interrelated, and in process.

 Gestalt therapists pay attention to what is occurring at the boundary between
the person and the environment.
The purpose of a boundary is to separate and connect us to others
Lewin thought of an individual as a complex energy field, a dynamic system
of needs and tensions that directs perceptions and actions.
 Behavior (B) is a function (f) of a person (P) interacting with an
environment (E).
B = f(P,E)
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 The phenomenological perspective asserts
that all reality is subjectively interpreted
 Objective reality, as defined by a gestalt
therapist, is non-existent

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“Insight is a patterning of the perceptual field in such a
way that the significant realities are apparent; it is
the formation of a gestalt in which the relevant
factors fall into place with the respect to the whole”
Heidbreder, 1933
 Gestalt Theory recognizes that background and
forefront change fluidly
 Patient’s conflicts are regulated to background
and are brought to forefront through therapy

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 Describes how the individual organizes the
environment from moment to moment.
 The undifferentiated field is called the background
(or ground), and the emerging focus of attention is
called the figure.
 The figure-formation process tracks how some
aspect of the environmental field emerges from the
background and becomes the focal point of the
individual’s attention.
 The dominant needs of an individual at a given
moment influence this process.
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Holism -The idea that individuals are growth
oriented, self-regulating and only
understandable within the context of their
environment

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The essential nature of the individual’s
relationship with the environment is
interdependence, not independence.

Individuals have the capacity to self-regulate

in their environment

Individuals can re-own the parts of themselves

they have disowned.

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 People are inclined to towards growth and
self regulation
 Conditions can impede growth
 People define themselves in relation to others

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Organismic Self-regulation

“There is only one thing that should control:

the situation … If you understand the
situation you are in and let the situation you
are in control actions, then you learn to
cope with life.”
-- Fritz Perls

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Human regulation is either
 Organismic
 Acknowledgement of what is
 Choosing and learning happen holistically
 A natural integration of mind and body

 “Shouldistic”
 What one thinks should or should not be
 Cognition reigns – overly intellectual

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Consciousness and Unconsciousness
 View is radically different from Freudian view
 In gestalt therapy, the concept of unconscious is
replaced by the concepts of awareness and
unawareness

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Disturbances at the Boundaries -
 Experiences that are blocked creates isolation
Creative Adjustment
 Creative balance between changing the environment and
adjusting to current conditions
 According to Gestalt therapy psychological adjustment
requires an awareness of our need states
 Achieving a balance between individual needs and the
environment reflects creative adjustment
Maturity
 Good gestalt describes a perceptual field organized with
clarity and good form
 Results from creative adjustment

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Disrupted Personality Functioning
 Mental illness is the inability to form clear figures in the moment

Polarities
 Maladjustment occurs when polarities become rigid and are
seen in dichotomies
 Positive mental health is seen as the ability for an individual to
shift between figure and ground, in other words to be able to
deal with competing concepts like life and death which are
considered polarities

Resistance
 Gestalt Therapists see resistance as the process of opposing the
formation of a threatening figure
 A gestalt therapist would view resistance as an attempt to
maintain psychological integrity
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 Body and Mind
 Self & external world
 Emotional and Real
 Infantile & mature
 Biological and Cultural
 Spontaneous Vs Deliberate
 Personal and Social
 Love and aggression
 Unconscious And conscious
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 avoid experiencing threatening feelings.
 experience a sense of "being stuck.“
 imagine something terrible will happen.
When a client remains stuck in nonfunctional ways of
thinking and behaving, a gestalt therapist would
say the client is experiencing impasse

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 Ask “what” and “how” instead of “why”
 Our “power is in the present”
 Nothing exists except the “now”
 The past is gone and the future has not yet arrived
 For many people, the power of the present is lost
 They may focus on their past mistakes or engage in
endless resolutions and plans for the future

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  Feelings about the past are unexpressed
 These feelings are associated with distinct memories
and fantasies
 Feelings not fully experienced & they linger in the
background and interfere with effective contact
 Pay attention on the bodily experience because if
feelings are unexpressed they tend to result in
physical symptom
 Result:
 Preoccupation, compulsive behavior, oppressive
energy and self-defeating behavior
 Solution: get in touch with the stuck point
(impasse).

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  The relationship between "me" and others.
 Contact involves feeling a connection with
others or the world outside oneself while
maintaining separation from it.

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 The point of connection and separation of the
organism/individual from objects or others.
Polster & Polster have identified four points of
I-boundaries
 Body-boundaries : those that restrict sensations or
place them off limits.
 Value-boundaries : those values we hold that are
resistant to change.
 Familiarity-boundaries: events that were acquainted
but never challenged or may not be thought of.
 Expressive-boundaries: learnt at an early age like we
learn to talk softly, not to yell or not to whine, not to
touch etc.
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 CONTACT – The gestalt term describing an
individual's ability to focus on the here and now.
 Interacting with nature and with other people without losing
one’s individuality
 Contact (connect) and Withdrawal (separate)

 RESISTANCE TO CONTACT – the defenses we develop to

prevent us from experiencing the present fully
 Five major channels of resistance:
▪ Introjection • Deflection
▪ Projection • Confluence
▪ Retroflection
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  Introjection: uncritically accept others’ belief and
standards without thinking whether they are
congruent with who we actually are.
 Projection: the reverse of introjection; we disown
certain aspect of ourselves by assigning them to
others and the environment
 Retroflection: turning back to ourselves what we
would like to do to someone else
 Directing aggression inward that we are fearful to
directing toward others.

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  Deflection: The process of distraction, or fleeting
awareness that makes it difficult to maintain sustained
contact. A way of avoiding contact and awareness by
being vague or indirect.
 e.g., overuse of humor
 Confluence: less differentiation between the self and the
environment.
 e.g., a need to be accepted---to stay safe by going
along with other and not expressing one’s true feeling
and opinions.
 e.g., A parent and a child become so enmeshed that
the child can no longer experience a sense of
separate identity.
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 Pay attention to where energy is located, how it is
used, and how it can be blocked
 Blocked energy (resistance):
 Tension some part of the body; numbing feelings,
looking away from people when speaking, speaking with
a restricted voice
 Recognize how their resistance is being expressed in
their body
 Exaggerate their tension and tightness in order to
discover themselves

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 Perls et al define Psychology as the study of
creative adjustments. To renew transition b/w
novelty and routine, resulting in assimilation and
growth.
 So, Abnormal Psychology is the study of the
interruption, inhibition or other accidents in the
course of creative adjustments.
 Perls preferred the term “growth disorders”
rather than neuroses – a path. Person is actually
‘stuck’ in the natural process of growth and
maturation.

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 In order to achieve psychological maturity one must
strip off five layers of psychopathology. Like “Peeling
an onion” layer by layer.
 Phony layer: the way we react to others in a stereotypical
and inauthentic ways, playing games and getting lost in our
social roles – daughter, son, mother, father, communist,
Hindu, Christian, Muslim. A pseudo social existence.
 Phobic layer: attempts to avoid emotional pains
associated with seeing aspects of oneself that one prefers to
deny. Fear of crucifixion for being outside the society’s
expectations. Catastrophic expectations from childhood.
 Impasse
 Implosive layer
 Explosive
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  Impasse: the point where we are ‘stuck’ and we
feel a sense of deadness and nothingness.
 Implosive layer: at this level we expose our
defenses and begin to make contact with our
genuine self.
 Explosive : Final stage when we let go of phony
roles and pretenses be releasing a tremendous
amount of energy that we have been holding in
by pretending to be what we are not.
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 Gestalt Therapy

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 Goal is for the client to have increased
awareness of what they do, how they do it
and how they can change or accept
themselves
 Gestalt psychotherapy is focused on process
rather than on content

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Initial goal is for clients to gain awareness of
what they are experiencing and doing now
 Promotes direct experiencing rather than the
abstractness of talking about situations
 Therapist directs clients to “bring the fantasy
here”
 Rather than talk about a childhood trauma the
client is encouraged to become the hurt child

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Main Gestalt Therapy Principles
 Awareness
 Direct experience
 Contact
 Relationship
 Experimentation
 Phenomenological focusing

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1. Inclusion
 Putting oneself as fully as possible into the
experience of the other without judging,
analyzing or interpreting while simultaneously
retaining a sense of one’s separate, autonomous
presence
 Represents phenomenological trust in immediate
experience
 Provides a safe environment and strengthens the
client’s self-awareness
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2. Presence
 The Gestalt Therapist expresses their observations,
preferences, feelings, personal experience and
thoughts to the client
 Therapist is modeling phenomenological reporting
 Enhances client’s trust and use of immediate
experience to raise awareness

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3. Commitment to dialogue
 Contact refers to something that happens in
an interaction
 Therapist allows contact to happen rather
than making contact happen

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4. Dialogue is lived
 Dialogue is something done
 “Lived” emphasizes the
excitement/immediacy of the process
 Mode of dialogue can vary. Examples might
include dance, song, art, words, movement

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 The Gestalt therapist pays attention to the
client's nonverbal language.
 Stay with it
 Enactment
 Exaggeration
 Loosening and Integrating
 Guided Fantasy
 Body Techniques
 Therapist Disclosures
 Reversal technique
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Awareness
 Being in touch with one’s existence, with what is
 Gestalt Therapy focuses on creation of an awareness
continuum where what is of primary concern and interest to
the organism, the relationship, the group or society becomes
the gestalt and into the foreground
 Primary concerns are fully faced, worked through, sorted
out, changed, or eliminated
 As one becomes aware of and faces concerns they can
become the background which leaves the foreground free
for the next primary gestalt

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Stay with it
 Therapist encourages client to follow a report of awareness with the
instruction: “Stay with it” or “Feel it out”
Enactment
 Therapist asks the client to act out feelings or thoughts to increase
awareness
 Gestalt therapy's empty chair technique, in which a patient is
encouraged to express feelings to others or themselves in a symbolic
manner enactment
Exaggeration
 A special form of enactment where the therapist asks the client to
exaggerate some feeling, thought, or movement to feel it more intensely

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Loosening and Integrating
 Therapist asks the client to imagine the opposite of
whatever is believed to be true
 Integrating techniques bring together processes – the
client keeps alert
 Examples might include asking a client to put words to
crying; identifying where in the body one feels an emotion;
Or asking a client to express positive and negative feelings
about the same person

Guided Fantasy
 Therapist encourages visualizing rather than enacting

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Body Techniques
 Therapist provides ideas about how the client can increase awareness of
their body functioning
 Examples would be teaching the client breathing exercises or to hold
the body in a certain posture while feeling a certain emotion

Therapist Disclosures
 Therapist uses “I” statements judiciously to enhance therapeutic contact
and the client’s awareness
 Requires wisdom to know when to self disclose
 Therapists may share what they are experiencing in their senses or
emotions

 In most types of therapy, the therapist may not reveal

considerable amounts of information about themselves. In
gestalt therapy, therapist disclosure is considered
appropriate if done judiciously
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A Gestalt technique that is most useful when a
person attempts to deny an aspect of his or
her personality (such as tenderness)

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Ask the client to become all parts of his or her
own dream. The client interprets and
discovers the meaning of the dream for
himself or herself.

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 The basic goal of Gestalt therapy is attaining
awareness, and with it greater choice.
 Awareness includes knowing the environment,
knowing oneself, accepting oneself, and being able to
make contact.
 Stay with their awareness, unfinished business
will emerge.

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 Dialogue b/w client and therapist is stressed.
 The therapist has no agenda, no desire to
get anywhere
 The therapist understands that the essential
nature of the individuals relationship with the
environment is interdependent, not
independent.
 Therapy is a spontaneous; here and now
experience

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 Increase clients’ awareness
 Pay attention to the present moment
 Pay attention to clients’ body language,
nonverbal language, and inconsistence b/w
verbal and nonverbal message (e.g., anger and
smile)
 “I” message

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Pay attention to language patterns.

Language can both describe and conceal

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1. “It” talk – “it” instead of “I” (depersonalizing
language) e.g., “It is difficult to make friends”
instead of “I have difficulty making friends”

2. “You” talk – “you” instead of “I” (global and

impersonal)

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3. Questions - keep the questioner hidden, safe,
and unknown.

4. Language that denies power – qualifiers and

disclaimers such as “perhaps”, “sort of”, “I
guess”, “possibly”, “I suppose”

5. “I can’t ” talk – instead of “I won’t”

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6. Listening to metaphors
- It’s hard for me to spill my guts
- I don’t have a leg to stand on
- I feel like a have a hole in my soul
- I feel ripped to shreds
- I feel like I’ve been put through a
meat grinder

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6. Listening to metaphors
Seek to translate the meaning of these
metaphors into manifest content so that
it can be dealt with in therapy.

e.g., “What is your experience of being

ground meat?” “Who is doing the
grinding”

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7. Listening to language that uncovers the story
(fleshing out the flash).

Clients often use language that is elusive yet

significant clues to a story that illustrate their
life struggles. Clients slide over pregnant
phrases but alert therapist can help flesh out
their story line.

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 General orientation is dialogue
 Therapist  no interpretation that explain
why they are acting in certain ways.
 Client  making their own interpretation
 Three-stage (Polster, 1987)
 Discovery (increasing awareness)
 Accommodation (recognizing that they have a
choice)
 Assimilation (influencing their environment)

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  Person-to-person
 The quality of therapist-client relationship
 Therapists knowing themselves
 Therapists share their experience to clients in the
here-and-now
 Therapist Use of self in therapy

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 The experiential work
 Use experiential work in therapy to work through the
stuck points and get new insights
 Preparing client for experiential work
 Get permission from clients
 Be sensitive to the cultural difference (e.g., Asian cultural
value: emotional control). Know when to leave the client
alone.
 Respect resistance

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 Increase awareness about the incongruence between
mind and body (verbal and nonverbal expression)

 The internal dialogue exercise – Pay close attention

to splits in personality function.
 Top dog - is righteous, authoritarian, moralistic,
demanding, bossy. The critical parent that badgers w/
“shoulds” &“oughts”

 Underdog – manipulates by playing the role of a

victim: defensive, apologetic, helpless, weak, and
feigning powerlessness.
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 The internal dialogue exercise
The top dog demands thus-and-so while
the underdog defiantly plays the role of
disobedient child.
As a result of this struggle for control,
the individual becomes fragmented into
controller and controlled.

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 The internal dialogue exercise
The conflict between top dog and underdog
is rooted in the mechanism of introjection
which involves incorporating aspects of
others, usually parents, into one’s ego
system.
It is essential that clients become aware of
toxic introjections that poison the system
and prevent personality integration.

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 1. The internal dialogue exercise
The empty chair – is one way of getting
the client to externalize introjects.
Use two empty chairs. Ask the client to
sit in one chair and be fully the top dog
and then shift to the other chair and
become the underdog.

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  As introjects surface the client can
experience the conflict more fully.
 The conflict can be resolved by the
clients acceptance and integration of
both sides.
 this technique helps clients get in touch
with a feeling or a side of themselves
that they may be denying.

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  Rather than talking about the conflicted
feeling, they intensify the feeling and
experience it fully.
 Further, by helping the clients realize that
the feeling is a very real part of
themselves, the intervention discourages
them from disassociating the feeling.
 the goal of this exercise is to promote a
higher level of integration between the
polarities and conflicts that exist in
everyone.
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 Making the rounds
 The purpose is to confront, to risk, to
disclose the self, to experiment with new
behavior, and to grow and change.
 Is most useful when a person attempts to
deny an aspect of his or her personality (such
as tenderness)

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 Example – A group member does not
participate.
Experiment - Go around to each person and
say “What makes it hard for me trust you
is……” OR
“I’d like to make contact with you but I’m afraid
of being rejected [or accepted]”

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3. Reversal exercise
 Reverse the typical style (e.g., a pessimist is directed to
act like an optimist, a critical negative client is directed to
act positive)
 Plunge into the very thing that is fraught with anxiety and
make contact with those parts of themselves that have
been denied.
 Goal – e.g., accept positive and negative side.
 May get stuck when rehearsing silently or internally
 Share the rehearsals out loud with a therapist

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 4. Exaggeration exercise
 Helps client become aware of the subtle
signals and cues they are sending through
body language.
 Exaggerate a gesture or movement repeatedly,
which usually intensified the feelings attached
to the behavior and makes the inner meaning
clearer.

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 Movements, postures, and gestures may
communicate significant meanings, yet the cues
may be incomplete.
 So the client is asked to exaggerate the movement
or gesture repeatedly, which usually intensifies the
feeling attached to the behaviors and makes the
meaning clearer.
 e.g., trembling (shaking hands, legs), slouched
posture, clenched fists, tight frowning, crossed
arms, etc. Then the therapist asks the client to put
words to the movements.
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5. Staying with the feeling
 Clients may want to avoid unpleasant feelings.
 At key moments when the client attempt to flee
from the feeling the therapist may ask the client to
stay with the feeling they wish to avoid.
 Go deeper into the feelings they wish to avoid
 Facing, confronting, and experiencing feelings
not only takes courage but is also a mark of a
willingness to endure the pain necessary for
unblocking and making way for newer levels of
growth.
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6. The Gestalt approach to dream work
 Not interpret or analyze dreams
 Bring dream back to life as though they were
happening now
 The dream is acted out in the present to become different
parts of the dream
 Projection: every person or object in the dream represents
a projected aspect of the dreamer.
 Royal road to integration
 Dreams serve as an excellent way to discover personality
 ‘Don’t remember’ refuse to face what it is at that time

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 Contributions
 Work with clients from their cultural perspectives
 Limitations
 Focus on “affect”
▪ Asian cultural value: emotional control
▪ Prohibiting to directly express the negative feelings to
their parents.

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it enables intense experiencing to occur quickly.

it can be a relatively brief therapy.

it stresses doing and experiencing, as opposed

to talking about problems.

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 experience feelings intensely.
 stay in the here-and-now.
 work through the impasse.
 pay attention to their own nonverbal
messages.

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keep themselves from facing unfinished
business.
keep from feeling uncomfortable emotions.
keep from having to change.

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 A joint venture
 An existential encounter
 An I/Thou interaction

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 Ineffective therapists may manipulate the
clients with powerful experiential work
 Some people may need psycho-education
 Clients who have been culturally conditioned to
be emotionally reserved might not see value in
experiential techniques.
 Clients may be "put off" by a focus on catharsis.
 Clients may believe that to show one's
vulnerability is to be weak.
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 Anxiety
 Depression
 Perfection driven
 Phobic
 Crisis intervention
 Groups
 Couples

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 Psychosomatic disorders including migraine, spastic
neck and back pain
 Does not rely heavily on formal diagnostic evaluations
and research methodology
 Gestalt Therapists do not believe that a statistical
approach can tell the individual client or therapist what
works for him or her
 All interactions are seen as experiments involving
calculated risk taking
 Caution when attempting to treat psychotic,
disorganized, personality disorders, or severe mental
illness. Should not be used with these disorders unless
a long-term commitment is possible
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