Gestalt Therapy

Gestalt Therapy

Gestalt therapy is a unique existential and experiential psychotherapy, which is co-founded by Fritz Perls, Laura Perls and Paul Goodman. Gestalt therapy was forged from various influences in the times and lives of the founders: physics, Eastern religion, existential phenomenology, Gestalt psychology, psychoanalysis, theatrical performance, systems and field theory (Mackewn, 1997). Perls’s style of doing therapy involved to personal agendas; moving the client from environmental support to self-support and reintegrating the disowned parts of one’s personality (Corey, 2009).

The interesting concept of Gestalt therapy, which is unique from other therapies, is that individuals have self-regulation. Therapy aims not at analysis or introspection, but at awareness and contact with the environment (Corey, 2009). If the therapist is able to stay with the client’s present experience and trust in the process, the client will move toward increased awareness, contact, and integration (Brown, 2007).

Gestalt therapy concept is on the “what” and “how” in helping the client with the “here” and “now” for clients to review their awareness of themselves. This type of awareness aids the therapeutic goal of client awareness of moments in their life and to develop the aptitude to make choices. One of the aims of Gestalt therapy is to help clients become aware of their present experience (Corey, 2009). When clients speak about their past, the therapist may ask them to reenact it as though they were living it now. The therapist directs clients to “bring the fantasy here” or “tell me the dream as though you were having it now,” striving to help them relive what they experienced earlier (Corey, 2009).

A therapist’s main purpose is to create a good quality relationship with the client. The therapist relationship with the client is to find out what they want, ask about their choices, encourage them to evaluate their present behavior, support them to make plans for...