Relational

Gestalt therapy
Click to add Text

Joanna Kato M.Sc. psychologist.,

Gestalt therapist, supervisor, trainer
 Gestalt picture
Click to– add
figure and ground
Text
Figure does not exist without the ground
It is the ground that allows the figure to form
Figure and ground are in an intertwined relation
– one does not exist without the other.
 Founders of the Gestalt
approach F. and L. Perls
Gestalt is more than the sum of its parts
here and now
empty chair
dream work
creative adjustment
unfinished business
 Goal of therapy

• Increasing awareness
• Through exploring – how is it, how does
he behave, how and what does he feel?
When does he feel? What are his
experiences? What is he aware of?
• What is the meaning he gives to his
experiences ?
 Gestalt questions
• What ?
• Who ?
• When ? Why?
• Where ?
• How ?
 theory
• Therapeutic approach (F. L. Perls)
• Holistic, humanistic
• Field theory (K. Lewin)
• phenomenology (E. Husserl)
• existentialism (J. P. Sartre)
• dialogue (M. Buber)
• Organism – environment exchange
• Creative adjustment
• Paradoxical theory of change (A. Beisser)
• Contact cycle
• Contact interruption
1950 -1970 narcissistic society

• Social changes
dignity and trust to
individual experience
emerging need was to
rediscover oneself
Focus in therapy -
awareness, expressing
emotions
what was supported in therapy:

self-regulation and separation from bonds,

at the cost of caring for what happens at
the contact boundary with the other
Resulted as search for intimate bonds
outside the family (groups)
 Field theory

• Everything is of the field, everything is

constantly in flux and intertwined.
The field has a history, events happen
again and again. Every movement in the
field causes a change. All elements in the
field are interrelated.
In contemporary Gestalt
Therapy
The field is the entire situation of the therapist, the
client and all that goes on between them.
The field is made and constantly remade.
The therapist is not detached, objective, separated
from the field but rather a part of it.
The field is organized, and therapy involves the
mutual investigation of how it is organized.
Gestalt therapists work in the “here and now” and
explore the immediate, present field.
The therapist attends to explore different parts of the
field.
No one knows the field directly
We collect information through sensory data
(seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching,
movement, speech)
And make meaningful wholes based on the
past experience
We connect to the world
through our senses
Field theory applies to the therapy system –
therapist/client especially to the relation
between them
Field theory is a way of seeing “human
beings in their context, in their
relationships”
Phenomenology

Phenomenon – what can be observed and

described

Methodology of Gestalt is the

phenomenological description leading to
awareness
Phenomenology depends on

Position in the field

How do we use the sensory apparatus
Teeth – to chew, to assimilate or reject, to
make what is not me – me (physically,
intellectually and emotionally)
We take in the environment, de-structure it
to fully make it part of ourselves
Phenomenology is the individuals perception
of the field /each person’s image and
understanding of the field/
My phenomenology depends on my position
in the field and on my rhythm of contact
and withdrawal (organism – environment)
We develop our phenomenology through the
senses. Through senses we can be
connected or separated from the world
 Phenomenology

• Is Gestalt methodology
• We observe and describe what we
experience without interpreting so much
• The client is the expert of his experience
Organism environment

We are in a constant process of exchange

between the organism and the
environment.
The place where the organism and the
environment meet is the contact boundary
The contact boundary
Α place where the self
unfolds
A place where the
organism and the
environment meet
Does not belong only to
the environment, nor
only to the organism
We stay there with
senses and awareness
 Dialogue

• I– Thou
• A real encounter with all the persons
«being»
• The relation is horizontal
• The meeting between client and therapist
is sharing phenomenologies, sharing
perspectives. The meeting is a co creation.
 Dialogue

• “In the beginning was the relation “

 Martin Buber
 From the 1990 to 2010
liquid society
• Lack of caring and welcoming
relations
• experiencing the absence of
intimate, constitutive
relationships
time of great migratory
movements -
many people were unable to
rely on the intergenerational
tradition for support and a
sense of rootedness
globalization of communication,
pc best friend
• Gestalt specifics
• support the physiological process of contact by
supporting what happens between you and me
• “breathe and feel what happens at the
boundary” J.M. Robin
• Support the ground of the experience by
identifying, which contact modality the client
uses to form and support the figure
• Support the process (of contact) not the client
emerging ego
 Supporting ground
• “What we need in our liquid society is to re - own the
sure ground,
• to feel our body and what we feel when our feet are on
the ground,
• to stay with the experience of our senses,
• not to stand as a figure in front of another figure (child
against father, student against teacher, etc.), but to feel
that we can rely on the ground where we stand.” M.Spagnuolo Lobb

• The experience of ground comes from previous

relationships
 Gestalt today
• Treatment focuses on the space co created the
patient and by the therapist and aims not to
satisfaction of individual needs but to make a
new pattern of contact which makes spontaneity
possible
• This development of Gestalt therapy is very
close to last development in psychoanalysis in
particular the studies of Donna Orange, Georgr
Atwood and Robert Storolov and of Daniel Stern
 References
• Francesetti G., Roubal J. Gecele M. (2012) Gestalt Therapy in Clinical Practice. From

Psychopatology to the Aesthetics of Contact. Franco Angeli Edizioni

• Ginger S., (1995) La Gestalt, l’ art du contact – Nouvelle approche optimiste des raport
humain, Marabat
• Houston G., 1995, The Now Red Book of Gestalt, Barnwell’s Print Ltd., Norfolk
• Mann D., Gestalt therapy 100 Key Points and Techniques, 2010 Routledge
• Robine J. M. ed. 2001, Contact and Relationship in a Field Perspective, L’exprimerie IFGT,
Bordeaux
• Perls F., 1969 Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, Real People Press
• Polster E. M., 1974, Gestalt Therapy Integrated, Vintage Books Edition
• Spagnuolo Lobb M., 2013, The Now for Next in Gestalt Therapy, Franco Angeli Edizioni
• Yontef G. M., 1993 Awareness, Dialogue and Process The Gestalt Journal 3, 1,