GESTALT THERAPY

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Pre-publication draft for study purposes only;
copyright goes to Wiley & Sons–please quote from published version

Philip Brownell, M.Div., Psy.D.

New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy
philbrownell@logic.bm

Author Bio:
Philip Brownell is a clinical psychologist and gestalt therapist in private practice in Bermuda. His
scholarly work includes issues related to the evolution of psychotherapy, practice-based research
networks, spirituality, and gestalt therapy. He has written and edited several books and contributed
numerous chapters and articles. He conducts training in gestalt therapy internationally and is active in
several professional organizations and groupings of psychologists and psychotherapists.

Word Count: 1491

Abstract

Gestalt therapy is an evidence-based approach originally conceived of by Frederick Perls, Laura

Perls, and Paul Goodman as a revision of psychoanalysis. Gestalt therapy's growth model is consistent
with positive psychology. The multi-faceted options available to a gestalt therapist cluster around the
four main tenets of its theory, unified in a process of contacting within the therapist-client field. Contact
is defined as meetings of various kinds between self and other in which the therapist can follow the
emerging experience of the client, engage the client in dialogue, purposefully address some aspect of
the client's field, and/or negotiate an experiment. It is at once experiential/experimental, dialogical,
field-oriented, and phenomenological. The general theory of change is paradoxical–people become
what they might be by being what they are. This entry explains gestalt therapy in terms of its
originators, philosophical base, view of persons, view of pathology, and approach to psychotherapy.

Main Text

Gestalt therapy is an evidence-based approach effective with numerous populations and

disorders (Yontef & Jacobs, in press), used in individual, couples, and group psychotherapy, and
applied to organizational consulting. It was originally conceived as a revision of psychoanalysis. Its
more contemporary forms are consilient with relational systems psychoanalysis, existential and
phenomenological, interpersonal, mindful, and acceptance-based approaches to psychotherapy. It also
assimilates advances in neuroscience and human development, and its evidence base is growing as
gestalt therapists develop increasingly nuanced and practice-based research.

Contemporary gestalt therapy is far from the technique-drive approach many believe it to be. Its
theory is interlaced, interwoven, and a unity. It is at once experiential/experimental, dialogical, field
oriented and phenomenological. One cannot do gestalt therapy without doing all those things
simultaneously even though a therapist might at any given moment focus on one or the other. That is,
the therapist's intentional object/figure of interest might be the relationship between therapist and
client, but that is happening in the field in which each brings factors into their meeting, the meeting is
some form of contacting, it is unpredictable and experiential, and it surely, in itself, creates new
experience for each of them (as individuals). Each of them, as selves, more fully emerge and manifest
their being through such contact.

As Peter Philippson described this, the basis for the gestalt approach is self and other “…
emergent from relationship and contact. From the sensory experience at the boundary of interaction:
the skin, the senses, a process of identification and alienation creates a figure and a background, an I
and a you.” (Personal communication, August 24, 2012, used by permission).

Originators
Frederick Perls, Laura Perls, Paul Goodman, and Isadore From can be considered the
formational quadrangle responsible for what became known as gestalt therapy (Paul, Frederick, and
Laura for theory development, and Isadore largely for his influence in training). They chose the term
“gestalt therapy” for its associations with gestalt psychology and its perceptual and field-based features,
but it was considered existential and phenomenological from the beginning. Laura had studied with
Kurt Goldstein, whose holistic approach to neuropsychology revolutionized brain science (He claimed
that people could not study brain functions outside of the patient in whom the brain existed, and people
could not study such a person outside of the environment in which the person functioned.). Frederick
was an analytic psychiatrist educated in Germany, and after he and Laura married, being Jewish, they
immigrated to South Africa to escape the Nazi threat. It was there that Frederick became influenced by
the holistic thinking of Jan Smuts. Frederick (1992) wrote Ego, Hunger, and Aggression, with Laura's
help, and together they called their approach “concentration therapy.” After the war, the Perls moved to
New York, where they met Paul Goodman and Isadore From. Goodman was a social activist and
writer, and From had been a student of phenomenology. In the original gestalt study group in New York
the originators refined their thinking and chose a new name for the approach; eventually Frederick
joined Ralph Hefferline (a behaviorist) and Goodman to write what became the seminal text for gestalt
therapy (Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1951), and Isadore From became an influential early trainer for
new students of gestalt therapy. As they extended their influence, they helped create gestalt institutes in
Cleveland and Los Angeles. Over time Frederick moved to California to demonstrate gestalt therapy at
the Esalen Institute while Laura and Isadore, along with Richard Kitzler, continued building the New
York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. The work of gestalt therapy's originators bore fruit as it spread all
over the world through the creation of post-graduate level training institutes and associations of
practitioners (such as the Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy, Gestalt Australia and
New Zealand, and the European Association for Gestalt Therapy).

Philosophical Base
Gestalt therapy examines the patterns in the way events and behavior take place; it is a process-
oriented approach reminiscent of its eastern religious and philosophical influences in Buddhism and
Taoism. More importantly, gestalt therapy is based on the positive existential thinking of Soren
Kierkegaard and subsequent existentialists (the person is revealed, and one is known to self and other,
through authentic action) and on the hermeneutic phenomenology that came from Edmund Husserl,
Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It is concerned with the meaningful experience of an
embodied, worlded, and situated subject. Because of gestalt therapy's emphasis on contact in the
environment, between the subject and the environmental other, it also includes the intersubjective,
relational, and dialogical thinking of Martin Buber and finds relevance in the ethical implications of
alterity, as formulated in the thinking of Emmanuel Levinas. Kurt Lewin's work applying field theory
to the social sciences was a method for understanding causal relationships in a person's situation, and
gestalt therapy has developed from Lewin and other field theorists a sophisticated understanding of the
way culture, history, economic conditions, geo-political factors, infant development, attachment,
parenting, and countless other situational elements influence a person's experience and behavior.
Finally, the “... American pragmatism of William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead, with
their emphasis on such things as experience and practical engagement with the world,...” also was a
major influence. (Dan Bloom, personal communication, August 26, 2012, used by permission).

View of Persons
Related to the philosophical considerations mentioned previously is the thinking of organismic
theorists such as Kurt Goldstein, who viewed people as whole organisms. People are embodied,
situated, and engaged in cognitive, affective, physical, and spiritual processes that influence how they
make meaning out of experience, organize their worlds, and self-regulate in relation to other people and
constantly changing circumstances. As such they are free to respond and responsible for their decisions,
actions, behaviors, and subjective experience.

View of Pathology
The crisp formation of figures of interest, intentional objects, or gestalts and the concomitant
satisfying of interests, meeting of needs, and dissolving of gestalts is how gestalt therapy defines
health. It is a matter of fluidly contacting in order to thrive. “In gestalt therapy organisms have an
innate orientation toward growth, assimilation of the novel, and self-regulation...when figures of
interest are not allowed to emerge and they are interrupted or misdirected, then there is a disturbance in
awareness and contact that leads to suffering and dysfunction” (Brownell, in press).

Approach to Psychotherapy
Gestalt therapy's growth model is consistent with positive psychology. The multi-faceted
options available to a gestalt therapist cluster around the four main tenets of its theory, unified in a
process of contacting within the therapist-client field. That process illuminates the patterns and
sequences people use to make meaning (Resnick, 2012). The therapist can follow the emerging
experience of the client, engage the client in dialogue, purposefully address some aspect of the client's
field, and/or negotiate an experiment. The general theory of change is paradoxical–people become what
they are not yet by actualizing in the moment what they are; awareness of what is leads to what might
yet be. The process is dynamic, existential, phenomenological, and non-deterministic.

SEE ALSO: Sigmund Freud, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard, Kurt Goldstein,
Kurt Lewin, Martin Buber, Existentialism, Phenomenology, Field Theory, Humanistic Psychology

References

Brownell, P. (in press) Assimilating/integrative: The case of gestalt therapy. In T. Plante (Ed.)
Abnormal psychology through the ages, 3 volumes, np. (Westport, CT: Greenwood/ABC-CLIO).
Perls, F. (1992) Ego, hunger, and aggression. Highland, NY: Gestalt Journal Press.
Perls, F., Hefferline, R. & Goodman (1951) Gestalt therapy: Excitement and growth in the
human personality. Guernsey, England: Souvenir Press.
Resnick, B. (2012) Introduction to training films. Gestalt Associates Training Los Angeles
(www.gatla.org).
Yontef, G. & Jacobs, L. (in press) Gestalt therapy. In R. Corsini & D. Wedding (Eds.). Current
Psychotherapies, 10th edition, Chapter 9, np. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Further Study

Brownell, P. (2008) (Ed.) Handbook for theory, research, and practice in gestalt therapy.
Newcastle, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Brownell, P. (2010) Gestalt therapy: A guide to contemporary practice. New York, NY:
Springer Publishing.
Brownell, P. (2012) Gestalt therapy for addictive and self-medicating behaviors. New York,
NY: Springer Publishing.
Crocker, S. (1999) A Well-lived life: Essays in gestalt therapy. Cambridge, MA: Gestalt Press.
Feder, B. & Frew, J. (2008) Beyond the hot seat revisited: Gestalt approaches to group.
Metairie, LA: Gestalt Institute Press.
Jacobs, L. & Hycner, R. (2010) (Eds.) Relational approaches in gestalt therapy. Cambridge,
MA: Gestalt Press.
Levine, T.B-Y. (2012) (Ed.) Gestalt therapy: Advances in theory and practice. London & New
York: Routledge.
Mann, D. (2010) Gestalt therapy: 100 key points & techniques. London & New York:
Routledge.
Nevis, E. (1987) Organizational consulting: A gestalt approach. Cleveland, OH: GIC Press.
Philippson, P. (2009) The emergent self: An existential-gestalt approach. London, England:
Karnac Books.
Staemmler, F-M. (2012) Empathy in psychotherapy: How therapists and clients understand
each other. New York, NY: Springer Publishing.
Woldt, A. & Toman, S. (2005) (Eds.) Gestalt therapy history, theory, and practice. London,
England: Sage Publications.
Yontef, G. (1993) Awareness, dialogue, and process: Essays in gestalt therapy. Highland, NY:
Gestalt Journal Press.

Key Words

Existentialism, Phenomenology, Frederick Perls, Paul Goodman, Laura Perls, Martin Buber, Kurt
Lewin, Kurt Goldstein, Contact, Field Theory, Dialogue, Relationship, Intersubjectivity, Hermeneutics,
Experiment, Experience, Self-Regulation, Paradoxical Theory of Change, Psychotherapy, Gestalt
Therapy