NU 665 Gestalt Therapy
Gestalt Therapy Goal - Answersto provide a context that enables members to increase their awareness of
what they are experiencing and the quality of the contact they are making with others. Moment-to-
moment awareness of one's experiencing, together with the almost immediate awareness of one's
blocks to such experiencing, is seen as therapeutic in and of itself (pp. 292).
Basic goal of Gestalt therapy is increased awareness, which in and of itself is seen as curative or growth
producing
Gestalt Therapy - AnswersExistential-phenomenological approach based on the premise that individuals
must be understood in the context of their ongoing relationship with the environment. Group members
are able to come to grips with what and how they are thinking, feeling, and doing as they interact with
others in the group
Encourages clients to accept responsibility for who they are and for what they are doing and to learn to
distinguish perceiving, feeling, and acting from other intellectual functions and attitudes.
Affirms the human capacity for growth and healing through interpersonal contact and awareness. This
approach is phenomenological in that it emphasizes how we see the world, how we contribute to
creating our experience, and how we organize our world and ourselves.
Contemporary Gestalt Therapy - Answerscalled relational Gestalt therapy, includes more support and
increased kindness and compassion in therapy
Gestalt therapy- holism: - AnswersThe whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Gestalt practice attends to a client's thoughts, feelings, behaviors, body, and dreams as they become
figural or move into the foreground for clients. We can only be understood if we take into consideration
all dimensions of human functioning
Gestalt group therapy: Awareness: - Answersrequires self-knowledge, responsibility for choices, contact
with the environment, immersion in current experience, self acceptance, and the ability to make contact
,Gestalt group therapy: the here and now - Answersimportant of members being able to appreciate the
present- present centeredness to increase awareness and bring about change
Gestalt group therapy: Unfinished Business: - AnswersIncludes unexpressed feelings—such as
resentment, hate, rage, pain, hurt, anxiety, guilt, shame, and grief—and events and memories that linger
in the background and clamor for completion.
Unless these unfinished situations and unexpressed emotions become figural and are dealt with, they
will interfere with present-centered awareness and with our effective functioning (p. 298)
Gestalt group therapy: contact: - Answersis made by seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and moving.
Types of contact in gestalt group therapy: introjection, projection, retroflection, deflection, confluence
Introjection - Answersinvolves the tendency to accept others' beliefs and standards uncritically without
assimilating them and making them congruent with who we are.
Projection - Answersdisowning certain aspects of ourselves by ascribing them to the environment. (bases
of transference)
Retroflection - AnswersThe act of turning back onto ourselves something we would like to do (or have
done) to someone else.
Deflection - AnswersInterruption of awareness so that it is difficult to maintain a sense of contact.
Example: overuse of humor or questions instead of statements
Confluence - AnswersBlurring awareness between self and environment. Style of contact that is
characteristic of group members who have a high need to be accepted and liked; they will have difficulty
having their own thoughts or speaking for themselves
Gestalt: Past - AnswersTo live more fully in the present, clients need to identify and deal with anything
from the past that interfere with current functioning. By re-experiencing past conflicts as if they were
, occurring in the present, clients expand their level of awareness and are able to integrate denied and
fragmented parts of themselves, thus becoming unified and whole.
Participants bring past problem situations into the present by reenacting the situation as if it were
occurring now.
Gestalt: Dreams - AnswersGestalt therapy does NOT interpret and analyze dreams (pg. 314-315). The
intent is to bring the dream back to life, to recreate it, and to relive it as if it were happening now. Group
members are asked to tell the dream as if it were happening in the present, identify with a segment of
the dream and narrate their dream from a subjective perspective.
Advantages of this approach is increasing group cohesion, great potential for dealing with unfinished
business with other group members and linking one member's work with others (pg. 316).
Gestalt: Experiments - AnswersIn Gestalt group experiments, members are invited to try out some new
behavior (behavior modeling) and to pay attention to what they experience
a group experiment is a creative happening that grows out of the group experience; as such it cannot be
predetermined, and its outcome cannot be predicted
"Experiments emerge organically and seamlessly in the moment-to-moment contact between a
counselor and a client, and they are discovered within that dialogic process"
Examples include: dramatizing a painful memory, imagining a dreaded encounter, playing one's parent,
creating a dialogue between two parts within oneself, attending to an overlooked gesture, or
exaggerating a certain posture.
Empty Chair Technique
Group leaders do not interpret dreams but assist in active self exploration
Gestalt: Present - AnswersEmphasis on learning to appreciate and fully experience the present. The past
is gone, and the future has not yet arrived, whereas the present moment is lively and exciting.
Gestalt Therapy Goal - Answersto provide a context that enables members to increase their awareness of
what they are experiencing and the quality of the contact they are making with others. Moment-to-
moment awareness of one's experiencing, together with the almost immediate awareness of one's
blocks to such experiencing, is seen as therapeutic in and of itself (pp. 292).
Basic goal of Gestalt therapy is increased awareness, which in and of itself is seen as curative or growth
producing
Gestalt Therapy - AnswersExistential-phenomenological approach based on the premise that individuals
must be understood in the context of their ongoing relationship with the environment. Group members
are able to come to grips with what and how they are thinking, feeling, and doing as they interact with
others in the group
Encourages clients to accept responsibility for who they are and for what they are doing and to learn to
distinguish perceiving, feeling, and acting from other intellectual functions and attitudes.
Affirms the human capacity for growth and healing through interpersonal contact and awareness. This
approach is phenomenological in that it emphasizes how we see the world, how we contribute to
creating our experience, and how we organize our world and ourselves.
Contemporary Gestalt Therapy - Answerscalled relational Gestalt therapy, includes more support and
increased kindness and compassion in therapy
Gestalt therapy- holism: - AnswersThe whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Gestalt practice attends to a client's thoughts, feelings, behaviors, body, and dreams as they become
figural or move into the foreground for clients. We can only be understood if we take into consideration
all dimensions of human functioning
Gestalt group therapy: Awareness: - Answersrequires self-knowledge, responsibility for choices, contact
with the environment, immersion in current experience, self acceptance, and the ability to make contact
,Gestalt group therapy: the here and now - Answersimportant of members being able to appreciate the
present- present centeredness to increase awareness and bring about change
Gestalt group therapy: Unfinished Business: - AnswersIncludes unexpressed feelings—such as
resentment, hate, rage, pain, hurt, anxiety, guilt, shame, and grief—and events and memories that linger
in the background and clamor for completion.
Unless these unfinished situations and unexpressed emotions become figural and are dealt with, they
will interfere with present-centered awareness and with our effective functioning (p. 298)
Gestalt group therapy: contact: - Answersis made by seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and moving.
Types of contact in gestalt group therapy: introjection, projection, retroflection, deflection, confluence
Introjection - Answersinvolves the tendency to accept others' beliefs and standards uncritically without
assimilating them and making them congruent with who we are.
Projection - Answersdisowning certain aspects of ourselves by ascribing them to the environment. (bases
of transference)
Retroflection - AnswersThe act of turning back onto ourselves something we would like to do (or have
done) to someone else.
Deflection - AnswersInterruption of awareness so that it is difficult to maintain a sense of contact.
Example: overuse of humor or questions instead of statements
Confluence - AnswersBlurring awareness between self and environment. Style of contact that is
characteristic of group members who have a high need to be accepted and liked; they will have difficulty
having their own thoughts or speaking for themselves
Gestalt: Past - AnswersTo live more fully in the present, clients need to identify and deal with anything
from the past that interfere with current functioning. By re-experiencing past conflicts as if they were
, occurring in the present, clients expand their level of awareness and are able to integrate denied and
fragmented parts of themselves, thus becoming unified and whole.
Participants bring past problem situations into the present by reenacting the situation as if it were
occurring now.
Gestalt: Dreams - AnswersGestalt therapy does NOT interpret and analyze dreams (pg. 314-315). The
intent is to bring the dream back to life, to recreate it, and to relive it as if it were happening now. Group
members are asked to tell the dream as if it were happening in the present, identify with a segment of
the dream and narrate their dream from a subjective perspective.
Advantages of this approach is increasing group cohesion, great potential for dealing with unfinished
business with other group members and linking one member's work with others (pg. 316).
Gestalt: Experiments - AnswersIn Gestalt group experiments, members are invited to try out some new
behavior (behavior modeling) and to pay attention to what they experience
a group experiment is a creative happening that grows out of the group experience; as such it cannot be
predetermined, and its outcome cannot be predicted
"Experiments emerge organically and seamlessly in the moment-to-moment contact between a
counselor and a client, and they are discovered within that dialogic process"
Examples include: dramatizing a painful memory, imagining a dreaded encounter, playing one's parent,
creating a dialogue between two parts within oneself, attending to an overlooked gesture, or
exaggerating a certain posture.
Empty Chair Technique
Group leaders do not interpret dreams but assist in active self exploration
Gestalt: Present - AnswersEmphasis on learning to appreciate and fully experience the present. The past
is gone, and the future has not yet arrived, whereas the present moment is lively and exciting.
