Gestalt Therapies

Gestalt Theory
Key Terms:
Experiential Epistemological Relativism Field
Field Theory Experience Here-and-now
Field Relativity Paradoxical Theory of Change Organismic self-regulation
Contact Conscious Awareness Experimentation
Figure/Ground Awareness Cycle Undifferentiation
Figure Focus Figure Sharpening Scanning
Action Anchoring Contact Interruptions
Deflecting Proflecting Retroflecting
Projection Introjection Confluence
Contact Cycle Contact Intimacy
Confluence Isolation Withdrawal
Discussion Questions:
1. What types of epistemology do you see in Gestalt theory?
2. What types of causality do you see in Gestalt theory?
3. What contradictory elements do you see in Gestalt theory?
4. What are the limitations of Gestalt theory?
5. Is Gestalt theory morally relativistic or dogmatic?
6. What are different “experiments” you could do to increase client’s contact with their experience?

Fundamental Assumption 1: Experience is relative.
Fundamental Assumption 2: We exist in a context comprised of culture, language biology, and history.
Fundamental Assumption 3: We are holistic creatures in that we are inherently growth
oriented, self-regulating, and only comprehensible in our contexts.
Fundamental Assumption 4: Only the present affects our behavior. Past and future are
irrelevant. It is only our understanding of them and our feelings about them in the
present that matter.

Experiential: The nature of Gestalt therapy is inherently experiential. It is not about offering insight into a client’s unconscious dynamics, but rather helping them attune themselves to all that they are experiencing. When we fully experience, we are better aware and more informed about how we should be living. It is all about the expansion of awareness.

Epistemological Relativism: Therapists in Gestalt do not interpret or “objectively” view a client’s situation, because reality is relative to the observer (eraser or the religious symbol of an obscene god). Instead, relativists try to understand the nature of their client’s reality and respect that reality. But, that reality is theirs, not ours, and we have no position by which we can assume that our reality is “better” or “more realistic” than theirs.

Context is very important in gestalt theory.
1. Gestalt theory is very Formal-Causal
a. Two faces or a vase?
b. A desk or a table?
c. Sexual harassment or joking between coworkers?
2. Experience occurs in context and is sensible in context
a. These contexts are called fields
b. Fields are defined as a combination of mutually interdependent elements that are so interconnected that the slightest change in one leads to a change in the whole.
1. Society is a field
2. A family is a field
3. A therapy context is a field
4. An individual is a field
A. Our understanding of our past and present is greatly influenced by our current context.
B. Field theory postulates that there are fields in fields in fields, mutually contextualizing and “causing” each other. You cannot understand an individual without understanding their context as completely as you can.
1. Born of philosophy, but only tested by science . . .
C. Experience is very important, because it is the experience, or the subjective thoughts and feelings that exist in the present moment which are informative and therapeutic. Hearing a person’s story of their past does not inform about the past, but rather informs their experience of the past in the present moment. As the context of the present changes, so does their experience of their past.
D. Experience takes place in the here-and-now, the present absolute moment that cannot be transcended. Our understandings are determined by the field in the here-and now. All of our experiences are then relative to our field, and all of our fields differ.
3. Paradoxical Theory of Change: The more one tries to become what one is not, the more one stays the same. (Existentialism anyone?) This perpetuates fragmentation of personality and disorders of thought and mood.
4. Organismic self-regulation: Knowing and owning what our experience is. We must identify with what we sense, feel, emote, observe, need, want, and believe. True growth starts with conscious awareness of our experience, both in terms of how people effect us and how we effect others. This growth is furthered by being in contact with what is really happening, and being honest with yourself about what you will do and what you won’t. (For absolutely relative reasons.)
A. Living in the “should be” or “might be” or “better be” distracts from the immediacy of being and hampers growth. One isn’t aware of where one is, one is elsewhere. Quote from Yoda?
1. Gestalt therapy aims at self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and growth by immersion in current existence, aligning awareness, and experimenting with what is actually happening in the moment.
5. Gestalt therapy emphasizes Contact, conscious awareness, and experimentation.
A. Contact is being in touch with what is and what is emerging here and now, moment by moment, experiencing it more fully or deeply.
B. Conscious Awareness: All that we are aware of in an explicit way in the here and now. All that we are in touch with and “know” in a conscious way.
1. Awareness is our focused attention to a situation we are already conscious of. This typically happens interpersonally, when contact occurs, we focus our awareness on that contact, what is going on, and what our experience is more fully.
a. My wanting to strangle BJ. Feeling the frustration, focusing on the feeling, increasing contact with it, my awareness of old habits surfacing again after so many years, furthering my growth, understanding, and need to clarify with him.
b. Feelings of anxiety, distance, anger, aggression, all need to be focused on so that contact with them is possible and awareness can be fostered (especially with therapists).
C. Experimentation: The techniques we use to further our awareness, trying something new to feel or experience more fully. We may be doing something we’re not aware of, unable to articulate a feeling coursing through us, or snap into a response habit (aggression) that we need to be aware of. So, the therapist helps us experiment to increase our awareness of them.
D. Figure/Ground: The figure becomes that which we’re aware of in the ground (background) that contextualizes it.
1. Singer/Schacter study on epinephrine: The feelings of increased heart-rate, respiration, emotional upset, and sweating was the figure. The ground was the context of who the participant was sitting with. If they were sitting with a calm person, they interpreted the feeling in terms of anxiety. If they were sitting with an angry person, they attributed their own feelings to anger. The ground contextualizes the figure in terms of thought, emotion, and bodily processes.
E. Clients and therapists can become more aware of what is going on (can make better sense of the figure) if they go through what is called an awareness cycle. Many clients are stuck somewhere in the awareness cycle, and as counselors we need to help them through the process.
1. Undifferentiation: No problem present, everything’s kosher, you’re fully engaged in the “ground”
2. Figure Focus: You’re aware that there might be a problem, and you begin to focus on it so it stands out from the ground.
3. Figure Sharpening: You define the problem and your awareness of it, so the problem become “figural” i.e. it stands out more sharply from the ground.
4. Scanning: You scan the environment for solutions to the problems or resources to meet your needs.
5. Action: You find a solution to the problem or a resource to meet your need and you act upon it.
6. Anchoring: You enjoy the feeling of having met your needs, having solved the problem, and you disengage with the figure.
7. Undifferentiation: Then you’re back engaged in the “ground”
F. One of the issues that happen is contact interruptions, or those things that we use to block our awareness from unpleasant or intense affect. These are particularly noticeable in the interpersonal realm.
1. Deflecting: Disengaging from, and pushing away the full meaning of an event or the weight of the affect associated with an interaction.
a. Refusing a compliment, laughing at a tragedy
2. Proflecting: Doing for yourself what you wish others would do for you, but you won’t ask.
a. Taking care of yourself, giving yourself gifts or soothing compliments
3. Retroflecting: Doing for others what you wish others would do for you, but you won’t ask.
a. Taking care of others, serving others, soothing others, feeding/nurturing others, with the subtle wish that others would do the same for you.
4. Projecting: Just like the psychoanalytic term, you interpret other’s thoughts and behaviors in terms of your own issues, desires, and motivations.
a. Avoid contact by viewing others as hostile, weak, etc.
5. Introjecting: Absorbing what others have to say without critical reflection or responsibility. This could be issues of identity, morality, or culture
a. Those that go to the same church their parents did without ever thinking about doctrines.
b. Those that swallow other’s definitions for them and live accordingly
6. Confluence: Paradoxical over-contact that involves the dissolution of two or more egos into one another.
a. There can be no contact if two egos are undifferentiated.

G. Many clients go through what is called the Contact Cycle that the counselor would be
well advised to help them break. It perpetuates interpersonal difficulty both for the
therapist as well as in the lives of the client.
1. Contact: This is where there is a meaningful and affect-laded moment
connecting two (or more) people
a. “From the moment I met her, we felt so strongly about each other we
knew we were soul mates”
2. Intimacy: The intensity of the contact and affect-laden togetherness increases,
and each member of the dyad/group share ever increasing intimate activities or
information and become far closer
3. Confluence: This is where the problem starts to come in. Both/all parties
begin to dissolve into one another, losing their personal identity feeling what the
other feels, thinking what the other thinks (or trying to)
a. The “undifferentiated ego mass”
4. Withdrawal: This is where the confluence becomes overwhelming and the
organismic processes rebel at the subsumption of identity.
a. Usually there’s lots of sparks and nastiness here
5. Isolation: Post-relationship loneliness with the feeling “it’s better to be alone
than to go through rejection/drama like that again”
a. It never seems to last very long . . .