Understanding How Gestalt Therapy Began.
I think in order to understand Gestalt therapy, we need to look at the creator, and that would be Fritz Perls. Fritz Perls was born in 1893 in Berlin into a middle class family, he saw himself as mostly trouble for his parents, and he managed to fail the seventh grade twice. He was expelled from school because of difficulty with authority figures, if anyone has looked at the German school system; they have strict guidelines, in fact. At the start of every class, the classroom doors lock, and if you are late to class, you are not allowed in until the class comes back from their first break. Fritz Perls despite his lack for authority did manage to receive his medical degree, and in 1916, he joined the German army and he served as a medic during WW1. After the war he decided to work with brain damaged soldiers in Frankfurt Germany. It was this experience that helped Fritz see humans as a whole and not just as functioning parts, it was than that Fritz Perls decided to go to Vienna and start his psychoanalytical training but when he came to the United States, he moved away from psychoanalytical traditions, and in 1952, he established the institute for Gestalt therapy in New York City. Towards the end of his career he settled in Big Sur California, and he did workshops and seminars. Fritz Perls was one of those people that most people described as being either harshly confrontive, or they saw him in awe for his experiences, and others saw him as insightful, witty, bright and provocative. He wrote his autobiography “In and out of the garbage pale” in 1969, and one year later in 1970, he died of heart failure (Corey. G Theory and Practice Of Counseling & Psychotherapy, seventh edition).
The Goal Of Gestalt Therapy.
So, what are the goals of Gestalt therapy? Gestalt therapy is about the now and the present, the Gestalt approach is to put emphasis on the present moment, and if you focus on the past, it can prevent you from coming to terms with the present. Gestalt therapy asks “what” and “how” questions and avoids asking “why” questions, and it can be difficult to keep someone in the present and now because clients will begin to talk, and they will start to reflect on the past, and the goal of Gestalt is, that when the client starts to talk about sadness and pain and the things that are making them confused being able to keep all of that in the present, and making the client work towards a solution that will move them forward tomorrow (E. Polster and Polster, 1973). Gestalt therapy makes you more aware of your environment and it helps a person to understand him or herself better, and Gestalt teaches a person to accept him or herself, and Gestalt helps people make better contact with other people. In order for a person to change their personality, they need to have self-awareness because without that, you cannot face and accept change within you, and Gestalt therapy is designed to teach awareness (Jacobs, 1989; Yontef; 1993). Gestalt therapy if done right will move a person also in the direction of assuming responsibility for their own actions, instead of making other people responsible for their thoughts and feelings. A person will develop skills and acquire values, and they will learn to ask for and get help from others, and they will eventually be able to help others themselves (Zinker, 1978). Gestalt is considered to be existential because it deals with the philosophical movement and it views the individual, the self and the experiences of an individual as well. The philosophy part is the freedom and accepting the choices that we make.
Existential therapy focuses on one person, and that is you as an individual. Human beings are alone in the world, and when we feel loneness, those feelings tend to make us think us that we are meaningless as well, so one of things that we have to do to move forward is to take the meaningless that we are feeling, and make it meaningful. Gestalt is not about self-doubt, it is about self-confidence. An example of existential would be the famous line of Stuart Smalley’s character on Saturday Night Live, where he starts everyday out by looking in the mirror and saying to himself “I’m going to do a terrific show today, and I’m going to help people because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me”. That is all Gestalt therapy is, it is having the self-confidence everyday to tell your self those few words. Gestalt is about the present and now and not about the past.
Your Purpose In This World.
If you do not believe that you have a purpose in this world and that you do not belong anywhere in society, than a therapist is going to have a hard time helping that individual because in order for a therapist to be successive, they must first understand where you see yourself in the world, and they have to understand your thoughts and feelings and understand where you see your place in society, and if you do not see yourself as a part of society, it is very difficult to bring that person into the present and now. And it will be difficult to remove them from feeling like they are lost in the world and that they will never be able to find their way back. A person who is suffering from loneliness, and isolation tends to believe their world has become broken. In order for Gestalt to work, a person has to become depersonalized, which means that they are going to have to interact with others, and that person is going to have to stop covering up their problems and start facing them. Gestalt therapy gets a person thinking about themselves in positive ways, it changes their thinking from ” I guess I can do that”. ” I will try and do that”. ” I think I can do that”, into ” I can do that”. I will do that”. ” I know I can do that”. It is not uncommon for a person to feel estranged from nature, so that person has to rediscover their world, and they have to begin to see the world as meaningful. It is up to an individual to see the openness of the world, and the possibilities for themselves, or they can accept the world as closed, and continue living in the past, instead of the present and now. (May, R. The Discovery Of Being: Writings in Existential Psychology, Pg 117,118,119,120,121,122,123,124,125)
I love Gestalt therapy because you can have a lot of problems, you can believe the world is against you, and unlike other therapies, where you build up to the problems and eventually come to a solution that is going to help you deal with your current situations. Gestalt therapy is designed for you to take all your problems and all your beliefs about the world and except responsibility in the present and now and not look back, and take an I can attitude and move forward. Gestalt therapy does not build into the problems and it does not find a solution for dealing with your current situations, you are either going to go into Gestalt therapy taking responsibility for everything, and not blaming others for your pitfalls in life, and if a person is unable to that, than they are going to have to look at other therapies.
Gestalt is in your face therapy, and it is not for everyone. A Gestalt therapist does not feel sorry for you or your life or your the choices you have made, and
if you go into Gestalt therapy and start blaming other people for your problems, the therapist is going to turn it around on you. Gestalt therapy has one main purpose, and that is to make the individual take responsibility for their own life and the choices that they have made, and the choices that they are going to make.
The weaknesses of Gestalt therapy are not everybody is ready to take responsibility for their own lives and the choices that they have made, and if someone does Gestalt and they are not ready for it, it could send a person into serious depression, and it can make a person really believe they do not belong in this world, and that they are the fault of their own problems. In order for Gestalt to work, a person has to be 100% committed to taking responsibility and control of their own lives.
The strengths of Gestalt therapy, if a person is ready to face everything head on and not look back; they can have a whole new outlook on life. The final stage in Maslow’s pyramid is self actualization, that is no different than Gestalt therapy because once you reach that stage, you are now in control of your own life, your own choices, and your own future, and you stop relying on other people, and you stop placing blame for why your life is the way it is.
