gestalt ppt klinik 2

GESTALT THERAPY

Gestalt Therapy an existential approach, focuses on creating a
therapeutic environment in which the client gets “in touch” with
unfinished issues by “presentizing”, reexperiencing, and
intergrating such experiences into current awareness. Regardless of
past experiences, what is important is the client’s interpretation of
those events in the here and now.

KEY CONCEPTS OF GESTALT THERAPY

Gestalt therapy works through the interconnection of key concepts. These offer
insight into the process involved in therapy sessions between the therapist and
the client.

● Person-Centred Awareness:
Focusing on the future, and imagining it divorced from the present and
the past is considered essential. The process follows an individual
experience in a way that does not involved seeking out the
unconscious, but staying with what is present and aware.

● Respect :
Providing a balance of support and challenge is key to helping those
taking part to feel comfortable about opening up and
acknowledging areas of resistance

KEY CONCEPTS OF GESTALT THERAPY

● Creative experiment and discovery :
There is a range of experimental methodology used by therapist to
test client’s experience, involve highly creative and flexible
techniques to help them open up an acknowledge
hidden feelings.

● Emphasis on experience :
Focuses on experience in terms of an individuals emotions,
perceptions, behaviours, body sensation, ideas and
memories. Therapist encourages the client’s
to “experience” in the here and now.

KEY CONCEPTS OF GESTALT THERAPY

● Social Responsibility :
The gestalt approach recognises that humans have a social
.responsibility for self and others. It demands respect for all
people and acknowledges that everyone is different.
Encourages individuals to adopt an egalitarian
approach to social life.

● Relationship :
Relating is considered central to human experience. Gestalt therapy
considers individuals as “whole” they have a good relationship with
themselves and others around them. The interpersonal
relationship between the individual and therapist that
is developed and nurtured in sessions is
a key guiding process if therapy.

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Therapeutic Goals
• Move towards increased awareness of themselves.
• Gradually assume ownership of their experience.
• Develop skills and acquire values that will allow them to satisfy their needs

without violating the rights of others.
• Learn to accept responsibility for what they do, including accepting the

consequences of their action.
• Move from outside support toward increasing internal support.
• Be able to ask for and get help from others and to give to others

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Therapist’s Function and Role
• Therapist’s notice what is in the foreground and the background
• Pay attention to the client’s body language.
• Focus on the language :

* “it” talk – client says it instead of I
* “you” talk – client is asked to use I to make it more specific to the client
* questions – this can hide the client
* language that can denies power – by adding qualifiers or disclaimers

(“but” , I guess)
* listening to the client’s metaphors – can clue into the client’s internal

struggle.
* listening for language that uncovers a story – because you can get an
idea

of their struggle.

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Client’s experience in Therapy

• They are active participants who make their own interpretations and
meaning

• Discovery : new view of old situation
• Accommodation : Client’s recognizing that they have a choice
• Assimilation : Client’s learning how to influence their environment.

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Relationship Between Therapist and Client

• Therapist need to allow themselves to be effected by their clients
• Therapist share experience in the here and now
• Therapist do not manipulate clients
• Therapist give feedback

THERAPEUTIC TECHNIQUES

The experiment in Gestalt Therapy

• Contact with an authentic therapist is needed
• Experiment grow out of the interaction between client’s and therapist
• Experiment can take many forms :

- Dramatizing the memory of a painful event
- Setting up a dialogue between client and some significant person

in their life
• Can be considered the cornerstone of experiential learning
• Therapy sessions : a series of experiments which are avenues for

clients to learn experientially
• Experiments are spontaneous one of a kind and relevant to a particular

moment

THERAPEUTIC TECHNIQUES

The experiment in Gestalt Therapy

• Gestalt therapists invite clients to engage in experiments that lead to
fresh emotional experiencing and new insight

• Bring struggles to life inviting clients to enact them in the present
• Crucial that experiments be tailored to each individual and used in

timely manner
• Also must be carried out in a context that offers a balance between

support and risk

THERAPEUTIC TECHNIQUES

► Preparing clients for experiments

• Counselor need to know when to leave client alone
• Counselor need to know when to introduce experiments
• Experiments depend on person problems, what the person is

experiencing
• Clients active role in self-exploration
• Respectful of the clients cultural background
• Counselor need to be flexible

► Role of Confrontation

• It is important to be direct and confrontational
• It can be done in an inviting manner and not harshly

THERAPEUTIC TECHNIQUES

Preparing Clients for Experiment - Role of Confrontation
Specific Techniques

Empty Chair Exaggeration Guided
exercise Fantasy

Playing the Rehearsal Staying with
projection exercise Feeling

Gestalt Internal Reversal
Approach to dialogue Technique
Dream Work exercise

SPECIFIC TECHNIQUES

• Empty – Chair Techniqeus :
- When client speak to an empty chair as if it were another

person or another part of the client
- used to help the client get in touch with other views or other
aspects of self

• Exaggeration Exercise :
- Aims the client to become more aware of the subtle signals

and cues they are sending through boy language.
Guided fantasy :

- Client is encouraged to visualize here and now experiences
• Playing the Projection

- Client is asked to play the role of the person who they are not
connecting with

SPECIFIC TECHNIQUES

• Making the rounds
- Go to each person in the group and talk to them

. Internal dialogue exercise
-To bring about integrated functioning and acceptance of aspects of
one’s personality that have been disowned and denied

• Rehearsal exercise
- asking the client to do the opposite of their behaviors

• Staying with feeling

-urges the client to stay with their feelings and encourage them to
go deeper into the feeling or behavior they wish to avoid

SPECIFIC TECHNIQUES

• Gestalt Approach to Dream work :
- does not interpret and analyze dream

- It brings back the dream to life and relieve them as though they
are happening now.

-the dream is acted out in the present, and the dreamer becomes
part of his/her own dream.
• The Reversal Exercise
-to represent reversals of underlying and latent impulses

-“plunging the client into the part of themselves that have been
submerged and denied”

-to help clients accept certain personal attributes that they try to
deny

Gestalt Therapy is considered particularly
valuable for helping to treat a wide
range of psychological issues,
especially
as it can be applied as a long-term
therapy or as a brief and
focus approach.

G

GESTALT THERAPY
INTERVENTIONS

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➢ Emphasizes helping people incorporate and
accept all aspects of life.

➢ Helps client focus on resolving areas of
unfinished business.

➢ The approach is flexible and not limited to a
few technique.

➢ Primary emphasizes on doing rather than
talking

➢ Appropriate for certain affective disorder,
anxiety states, somatoform disorder, etc.
Gestalt is versatile.

Group Leader Role and Function

● Creates experiments to help members tap their resources
● Focuses on awareness, contact, and experimentation
● Actively engaged with group members and frequently

self-discloses
● Creates an atmosphere and structure conducive to the members’

creativity and innovation
● Less emphasis on technique, more emphasis on direct

self-expression, presence, authentic dialogue, and the
client-therapist relationship
● Contacts with group members on an “I/Thou” basis
● Serves as an “artist involved in creating new life” according to
Polster and Polster (1973) (Corey, 2008, p. 290).
● Uses his/her own experience as an essential component of the
therapy process.

Stages of Group Therapy

● First Stage

● Identity and Dependence
● Group members (with the therapist’s help) explore questions
they have about their identity within the group

● Second Stage

● Influence and Counterdependence
● Group members grapple with issues of influence, authority,
and control

● Third Stage

● Intimacy and Interdependence
● Real contact occurs within and among the group members.
● Members are helped to recognize their unfinished business not
worked through in the group.
● Group leader no longer the ultimate authority, but serves as a
resource or consultant.

Gestalt in School Groups

● Art & Storytelling
● Empty Chair
● Topdog-Underdog
● Techniques are limited within some adolescent groups

● Here and Now
● Dream Work

● Emphasis on building quality therapeutic relationships

Gestalt in Multicultural Groups

● World View
● Phenomenological
● Emphasis on non-verbal expression
● Use of imagery and fantasy*

● Speak in native tongue

● Solid understanding of the limitations of Gestalt
techniques in dealing with diverse populations

Strengths

● Quality of contact
● Authentic relationship and dialogue
● Emphasis on field theory, phenomenology, and

awareness
● Creativity and spontaneity
● Integration of theory, practice, and research
● Present-centered methodology
● Focus on the body (affect, non-verbals)

Limitations

● Elicitation of emotions
● Misuse of power
● Competency of the therapist or group leader
● Rigidity and Pushiness in therapy
● Misapplication of methodology

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