1. Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy
Chapter8: Gestalt Therapy

2. Questions?
What key concepts do you know in terms of Gestalt therapy?

3. View of Human Nature Self-reliance and reintegration
Dialogue b/w client and therapist (therapist has no agenda
Spontaneous; here and now experience
Human nature is rooted in existential philosophy, phenomenology, and field theory
Individuals have the capacity to self-regulate in their environment
The process of “reowning” parts of oneself that have been disowned

4. The Now
Existential & Phenomenological – it is grounded in the client’s “here and now”
Initial goal is for clients to gain awareness of what they are experiencing and doing now
Promotes direct experiencing rather than the abstractness of talking about situations
Rather than talk about a childhood trauma the client is encouraged to become the hurt child

5. The Now Ask “what” and “how” instead of “why”
Our “power is in the present”
Nothing exists except the “now”
The past is gone and the future has not yet arrived
For many people, the power of the present is lost
They may focus on their past mistakes or engage in endless resolutions and plans for the future

6. Unfinished Business Feelings about the past are unexpressed Result:
These feelings are associated with distinct memories and fantasies
Feelings not fully experienced linger in the background and interfere with effective contact
Pay attention on the bodily experience because if feelings are unexpressed they tend to result in physical symptom
Result:
Preoccupation, compulsive behavior, wariness oppressive energy and self-defeating behavior
Solution: get in touch with the stuck point.

7. Contact and Resistances to Contact
CONTACT – interacting with nature and with other people without losing one’s individuality
Contact (connect) and Withdrawal (separate)
RESISTANCE TO CONTACT – the defenses we develop to prevent us from experiencing the present fully
Five major channels of resistance:
Introjection • Deflection
Projection • Confluence
Retroflection

8. Contact and Resistances to Contact
Introjection: uncritically accept others’ belief and standards without thinking whether they are congruent with who we are
Projection: the reverse of introjection; we disown certain aspect of ourselves by assigning them to the environment
Retroflection: turning back to ourselves what we would like to do to someone else
Directing aggression inward that we are fearful to directing toward others.

9. Contact and Resistances to Contact
Deflection: A way of avoiding contact and awareness by being vague or indirect.
e.g., overuse of humor
Confluence: less differentiation between the self and the environment.
e.g., a need to be accepted---to stay safe by going alone with other and not expressing one’s true feeling and opinions.
Clients are encouraged to become increasingly aware of their dominant style of blocking contact

10. Questions
Please provide examples for each five resistance to contact?

11. Energy and blocks to energy
Pay attention to where energy is located, how it is used, and how it can be blocked
Blocked energy (resistance):
Tension some part of the body; numbing feelings, looking away from people when speaking, speaking with a restricted voice
Recognize how their resistance is being expressed in their body
Exaggerate their tension and tightness in order to discover themselves

12. Therapeutic Goals
Increasing Awareness and greater choice
Awareness includes knowing the environment, knowing oneself, accepting oneself, and being able to make contact.
Stay with their awareness, unfinished business will emerge.

13. Therapist’s function and Role
Increase clients’ awareness
Pay attention to the present moment
Pay attention to clients’ body language, nonverbal language, and inconsistence b/w verbal and nonverbal message (e.g., anger and smile)
“I” message

14. Client’s Experience in Therapy
Therapist  no interpretation
Client  making their own interpretation
Three-stage (Polster, 1987)
Discovery (increasing awareness)
Accommodation (recognizing that they have a choice)
Assimilation (influencing their environment)

15. Relationship Between Therapist and Client
The quality of therapist-client relationship
Therapists knowing themselves
Therapists share their experience to clients in the here-and-now
Therapist Use of self in therapy

16. Therapeutic techniques and procedures
The experiential work
Use experiential work in therapy to work through the stuck points and get new insights
Preparing client for experiential work
Get permission from clients
Be sensitive to the cultural difference (e.g., Asian cultural value: emotional control)
Respect resistance (e.g., express emotionsfear of lose control, could not stop, or weakness)

17. Therapeutic techniques and procedures
Increase awareness about the incongruence between mind and body (verbal and nonverbal expression)
The internal dialogue exercise
Making the rounds
Rehearsal exercise
Exaggeration exercise
Staying with the feeling
The Gestalt approach to dream work

18. Therapeutic techniques and procedures
The internal dialogue exercise
Top dog (critical parent) and underdog (victim)
Empty-chair (two sides of themselves)
Making the rounds
Go around to each person and say “What makes it hard for me trust you is……”
Rehearsal exercise
Reverse the typical style (e.g., behave as negative as possible)

19. Therapeutic techniques and procedures
Rehearsal exercise
May get stuck when rehearsing silently or internally
Share the rehearsals out load with a therapist
Exaggeration exercise
Exaggerate gesture or movement, which usually intensified the feelings attached to the behavior and makes the inner meaning clearer.
Staying with the feeling
Go deeper into the feelings they wish to avoid

20. Therapeutic techniques and procedures
The Gestalt approach to dream work
Not interpret or analyze dreams
Bring dream back to life as though they were happening now
The dream is acted out in the present to become different parts of the dream
Projection: every person or object in the dream represents a projected aspect of the dreamer.
Royal road to integration
Dreams serve as an excellent way to discover personality
No remember-refuse to face what it is at that time

21. From a multicultural perspective
Contributions
Work with clients from their cultural perspectives
Limitations
Focus on “affect”
Asian cultural value: emotional control
Prohibiting to directly express the negative feelings to their parents.

22. Summary and Evaluation
Contributions
Present-centered awareness
Pay attention on verbal and nonverbal cures
Bring conflicts or struggles to actually experience their conflict and struggles
Focus on growth and enhancement
See each aspect of a dream as a projection of themselves
Increase awareness of “what is”
Empirical validation for the effectiveness

23. Summary and Evaluation
Limitations
Ineffective therapists may manipulate the clients with powerful experiential work
Some people may need psycho-education