GESTALT THERAPY BY FRITZ PERLS

Fritz Perls (1893-1970).

- Jewish trained psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

- Influenced by major figures of psychoanalysts including: Freud, Jung and Rank.
- Viewed Gestalt Approach as a humanistic approach designed to promote human growth and
potential, but not a quick fix because it would require time, dedication and skill.

View of Personality

- People create meanings in their lives as a whole and not in segmented experiences.
- An illustration to this view is that we see a picture as a whole and not an organized segment of
colours and shapes.
- All perceptions are similarly organized.
- Each person’s experience of reality depends on how he/she perceives his/her world.

Key Concepts

Figure and Ground

Gestalt is concerned with how people deal with their internal experiences in relation to the others and
the things in their environment.

Figure: A person’s needs at any given time such as hunger, thirst, emotional, relationship or esteem
needs.

Ground: This is the awareness that the person has about his/her need.

- Needs keep emerging (figures) against the person’s awareness (ground) and the work/task of
this person is to deal with the most important need that emerges.
- When a pressing need is met, another pressing one emerges.
- A person is said to be ineffective/with problems when he/she addresses very many activities or
preoccupations without meeting any properly/fully.

The Here and Now

Gestalt is focused on the client’s feelings and experiences as at now. If the client remembers of the past
experiences, he/she is encouraged to experience it as at now (awareness).

- Materials described as hurting or disturbing from past experience are addressed on how they
are affecting the client at moment of therapy through probing or exploration.

Wholeness

Gestalt views wholeness as vital.

 - It refers to the total experiences: Physical/sensory/emotional/intellectual.
- Therapy aims to integrate all these with an aim to encourage the client to become more aware
of self and work towards assimilation of all their component parts.
- The client may express something different from what he behaviourally expresses.

Shoulds and Should’t

These are prohibition and rules which clients could have inherited from childhood.

Clients refer to behaviours/thoughts/feelings in relations to should and shouldnts.

- In childhood should/shouldnts were probably accepted without questions but in adulthood they
may never be seriously considered thus creating a conflict.
- Perls used the terms topdog and underdog to refer to such kind of conflicting personality.
- Topdog refer to the righteous part of personality that is judgemental, and bullying. He viewed
people as spending a lot of time placating or trying to please this internalized “parent” part of
personality.
- Undedog is viewed as that insecure, manipulative ingratiating and lackin in conviction.
- A person suffering from topdog is under the pressure of always wanting to please resulting to
damages of alienating self from self feelings.
- Suffering from underdog causes a person incapable of dealing in a straight forward way with
todog’s demands. They frequently result to procrastination or rationalization to evade the strict
demands.
- Gestalt emphasize on integration of these conflicting parts by encouraging the clients to accept
the parts as valid parts of self. This way pressure and conflict diminishes while insight and
integration are increased.

Layers of Neurosis

According to Perls, these are the ways in which people avoid awareness of self.

- Five layers of neurosis: phony, phobic, impasse, implosive and explosive.

Phony: This is the first layer which is the inauthentic way we relate to others.

Phobic: A point where we resist to see of ourselves which might cause emotional disturbance or
pain.

- Aspect of real self is denied and self-acceptance forfeited.

Impasse: It is characterized with a feeling of nothingness or emptiness.
- It marks an attitude of avoidance or a sense of being stuck.
- At this level, a person seeks to manipulate the environment and others instead of acting with
maturity, and accepting personal responsibility.
- NB: Gestalt views it impossible to overcome difficulties by resisting them, and regards impasse
layer as a source of many problems even in therapy.
 Implosive: Perls viewed this as death layer and says that it becomes activated when one allows
him/herself to come into contact with the feelings of deadness.
- Explosive: Perls believed this the experience behind the implosive layer whereby the person
experiences catharsis as one comes in touch with real self.
- Catharsis is experienced in forms of grief, anger or great joy.
- NB: Inability to experience appropriate feelings is a cause of emotional problems for many
clients.
- Growth process takes time and the goal of therapy is to help the client become independent and
more from environmental support to self-support.

Resistance: Resistance is the defences that people use to prevent real or authentic contact with
others and with the environment in general.

- It prevents the person from identifying and mobilizing own innate resources and energy.
- Also prevents one from utilizing reserves of energy .
- It inhibits healthy participation in the present (here and now)

Dreams:

- Dreams are royal road to integration.

- They are spontaneous art form through that express various fragmented parts of self.
- Each element of the dream represent an aspect of the dreamer.
- The dreamer is requested to become each part of the dream element.
- Dream is brought back to life by the client.
- In acting the parts of the dream, the client explores what is happening in her life as indicated in
the dream i.e. her lived fears, worries, behaviors etc.
- The counselor helps the client to integrate and make a choice for her destiny.

Empty Chair

In exploration of dreams, the client can use two-empty chairs. Sit on one and address parts of the
dream as if they are sitting on the chair.

- Empty chair can be used in other context such as in bereavement where the client speaks to the
deceased person as a person sitted on the other chair.
- Separate parts of unfinished businesses can be addressed and integrated.

Therapeutic Techniques

- Dialogue exercise.
- Role playing.
- Dialogue with parts of personality.
- Staying with feelings.
- Focus on language use.
- Focus on body signs.
- Relieving unfinished businesses.
- Taking responsibility for self.

Goals of Therapy

- Help client integrate feelings, thoughts and behaviours i.e attain congruence.
- Help client deal with issues as at here and now.
- Help client remove layers of neurosis.
- Help client integrate parts of personality.
- Help client remove resistance.
- Help client address unfinished past businesses.
Reference

Colledge, R. (2002). Mastering counseling theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Corey, G. (2005). Theory and practice of counseling psychology. (ed.7). USA: Thomson
Brooks/Cole.

Hough, M. (2010). Counseling skills and theory. (ed.3). London: Hooder Education An
Hachette UK Company.
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