Gestalt Therapy
Gestalt Therapy is a part of Humanistic Psychology (or Third Force), which is characterized by not only treating diseases, but also developing human potential.
La publication, en 1951, de la Gestalt Therapy : Excitement and Grow in the Human Personality (connue également sous le nom de PHG, initiales de ses auteurs), écrite par Paul Goodman et le professeur de psychologie de l´Université de Chicago, Ralph Hefferline, à partir d´un manuscrit de Fritz Perls, établit les bases fondamentales de la thérapie Gestalt.
The publication, in 1951, of Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (also known as PHG, for its authors’ initials), written by Paul Goodman and Chicago University professor, Ralph Hefferline, based on a text by Fritz Perls, establishes the main basis for Gestalt Therapy.
Gestalt Therapy focuses on processes rather than on contents. It emphasizes what is happening, what is being thought and felt at the present moment rather than the past. In this sense, the here and now is what is discussed, but not in order to put aside a person’s background; rather, this background is seen from the present standpoint—how past events affect and are lived today. A person is who he or she is, among other factors, because of what the person has lived.
From this perspective, the phenomenological approach and the awareness method are used, paying attention to perceptions, emotional impacts, and what we do with it—the way we act. The therapist gives back to the patient precisely that—leaving aside prejudices and assuming the position of “not knowing,” not assuming anything. The idea of it is for persons to be aware about the impact he or she has and the way he or she is impacted by the environment; to raise awareness about the way they do things and the way they experience them with what can be seen as responses fixated in the past which today make no sense; and to discover new ways, which can be more useful, for doing—learning to adapt and adjust to each situation.
Gestalt Therapy is also an heir of Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory, from which it extracts that the organism (in this case, the individual) is inseparable, indivisible from its surrounding environment, and it is affected by it. Gestalt stops seeing the individual in isolation and considers him or her as yet another element in the situation; so, the person creates and is created by the situation, is played by it and plays a role in it.
The goal of the Gestalt Therapy is to help patients in their problems, making them more aware about how they have arrived to the point they are in and allowing them to learn how to do things in a different way; thus, returning to them the capacity of choosing what option they want to face life with, broadening the patients’ field of possibilities and not reducing them to just a few options (addictions, depression, anxiety, etc.). Thanks to it, the person can know himself or herself better and recover the creativity that was lost.
La publication, en 1951, de la Gestalt Therapy : Excitement and Grow in the Human Personality (connue également sous le nom de PHG, initiales de ses auteurs), écrite par Paul Goodman et le professeur de psychologie de l´Université de Chicago, Ralph Hefferline, à partir d´un manuscrit de Fritz Perls, établit les bases fondamentales de la thérapie Gestalt.
The publication, in 1951, of Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (also known as PHG, for its authors’ initials), written by Paul Goodman and Chicago University professor, Ralph Hefferline, based on a text by Fritz Perls, establishes the main basis for Gestalt Therapy.
Gestalt Therapy focuses on processes rather than on contents. It emphasizes what is happening, what is being thought and felt at the present moment rather than the past. In this sense, the here and now is what is discussed, but not in order to put aside a person’s background; rather, this background is seen from the present standpoint—how past events affect and are lived today. A person is who he or she is, among other factors, because of what the person has lived.
From this perspective, the phenomenological approach and the awareness method are used, paying attention to perceptions, emotional impacts, and what we do with it—the way we act. The therapist gives back to the patient precisely that—leaving aside prejudices and assuming the position of “not knowing,” not assuming anything. The idea of it is for persons to be aware about the impact he or she has and the way he or she is impacted by the environment; to raise awareness about the way they do things and the way they experience them with what can be seen as responses fixated in the past which today make no sense; and to discover new ways, which can be more useful, for doing—learning to adapt and adjust to each situation.
Gestalt Therapy is also an heir of Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory, from which it extracts that the organism (in this case, the individual) is inseparable, indivisible from its surrounding environment, and it is affected by it. Gestalt stops seeing the individual in isolation and considers him or her as yet another element in the situation; so, the person creates and is created by the situation, is played by it and plays a role in it.
The goal of the Gestalt Therapy is to help patients in their problems, making them more aware about how they have arrived to the point they are in and allowing them to learn how to do things in a different way; thus, returning to them the capacity of choosing what option they want to face life with, broadening the patients’ field of possibilities and not reducing them to just a few options (addictions, depression, anxiety, etc.). Thanks to it, the person can know himself or herself better and recover the creativity that was lost.