What is Gestalt Therapy?
Gestalt Therapy is an experiential and humanistic approach to psychotherapy that focuses on the present moment and emphasizes responsibility, self-awareness, and integration of the whole self. Gestalt therapy promotes self-discovery, authentic self-expression, and the exploration of unfinished business.
Fritz Perls and his wife, Laura Perls, founded the Gestalt movement. Other important influential figures in the development of Gestalt therapy include Paul Goodman and Ralph Hefferline.
How does IH Psychotherapy utilize Gestalt Therapy?
At our practice, we incorporate the principles and techniques of Gestalt Therapy to help clients explore and understand themselves holistically. In line with Gestalt Therapy, we believe that healing and growth occur through integrating all aspects of the client’s experience -thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviours. This bottom-up approach helps clients become more aware of their present-moment experience and gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their patterns of behaviour.
What are the tenets of Gestalt Therapy?
1. Focus on the present moment: Gestalt therapy emphasizes the importance of being fully present in the here and now. It encourages individuals to pay attention to their thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviours that occur in the present moment to gain insights and promote change.
2. Holistic perspective: Gestalt therapy views individuals as holistic beings, and believes that their thoughts, behaviours, feelings and physical sensations are interconnected and influence each other.
3. Awareness and responsibility: Gestalt therapy emphasizes self-awareness and personal responsibility. Clients are encouraged to take ownership of their thoughts, feelings, actions, and choices, recognizing that they can make their own decisions and create change in their lives.
4. Unfinished business and integration: Gestalt therapy focuses on exploring and completing unresolved experiences or unfinished business from the past. The goal is to integrate these experiences into the present to promote personal growth and wholeness.
5. Utilizing techniques and experiments: Gestalt therapists often employ various techniques and experiments to facilitate the exploration and expression of different aspects of the self. These may include guided imagery, empty chair technique, dream work, body awareness exercises, and creative activities like journaling or drawing. These techniques help clients gain fresh insights, deepen self-awareness, and foster personal growth.
What issues does Gestalt Therapy address?
Gestalt therapy is used to treat a range of mental health concerns, including anxiety and stress-related disorders, depression, relationship difficulties, self-esteem and identity issues, trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), behavioural issues, body image concerns, and grief and loss.
What does research show about the effectiveness of Gestalt Therapy?
Here are examples of some findings that demonstrate the effectiveness of Gestalt Therapy.
1. Results from a peer-reviewed paper illustrate that Gestalt Therapy is an effective and acceptable clinical model and is comparable to therapeutic approaches such as humanistic-experiential modalities (Raffagnino, 2019).
2. Six of the seven studies that were examined in the research reported that Gestalt therapy increases some positive outcomes when evaluated against other therapeutic modalities (Hender, 2001).
3. Results from a study revealed that Gestalt therapy increased divorced women’s self-efficacy (Saadati & Lashani, 2013).
It’s important to note that research outcomes may vary across different populations and issues, and further research is ongoing to explore the effectiveness of Gestalt Therapy in different contexts. It’s always advisable to consult a trained professional and consider multiple sources of evidence to make informed decisions about therapy approaches.
References
Hender, K. (2001). Is Gestalt therapy more effective than other therapeutic approaches? Centre for Clinical Effectiveness. Retrieved from https://www.med.monash.edu.au/publichealth/cce/
Raffagnino, R. (2019). Gestalt therapy effectiveness: A systematic review of empirical evidence. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2019.76005
Saadati, H., & Lashani, L. (2013). Gestalt therapy on self-efficacy of divorced women. Social and Behavioural Sciences, 84, 1171-1174. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.06.721