Gestalt Therapy (Fritz Perls) Flashcards

A humanistic approach that focuses on helping people to self-actualize or to become more fully themselves. However, the techniques are more emotionally provocative and confrontational than the person-centered approach.

Gestalt counselors believe that every emotion has a physiological component. When a person is cut off from the awareness of an emotion or part of the self, this becomes expressed in the body, usually as a tightening or dysfunction somewhere.

• Phony layer- Should
• Phobic layer - Fearful or doubtful of change
• Impasse Layer- Feel stuck
• Implosive layer- Empty inside, lost, which opens one to the present moment
• Explosive layer- Lets go of old pretenses, releasing authentic action

The primary vehicle for change in Gestalt counseling. The counselor uses their whole personhood to make a real and authentic contact with the client.

The counselor is fully in the present moment with the client, living in the now, where past and future fade away. Counselors encourage clients to explore the tightness in their breathing, the spontaneous feelings that arise as they share what is on their mind, and whatever seems to bubble up during the counseling hour.

Counselor is willing to be a role model for imperfection and thus a role model for the processes of integrating polarities. Not hiding behind a professional veneer, and instead they boldly go where many counselors will not.

Process in which an exchange of understanding occurs between the performer and performed or the performer and the audience

Assess figure/ground dynamics (context for “problem”)

All experience involves “contact”. These are distortions in perception of self and other.

Gestalt counselors view people as a never-ending sequence of this or complementary parts, as adult versus child, strong versus weak, loving versus hateful.

Parts of the self that one rejects.

Gestalt counselor view these as a form of neurotic self-regulation, meaning that the person is regulating emotions in unhealthy ways. Gestalt counselors confront persons living in this way and encourage them to make more authentic choices that are not fear-based or based on social pressure.

Refers to any incompletely expressed feeling, which most often takes the form of resentment.

Acts as imperfect role model.

Gestalt experiment, which involves inviting the client to take action in the room by creating a “safe emergency”. An experiment may involve having this conversation by speaking aloud to an imagined person in an empty chair, sharing things the person is too afraid to say to the imagined person directly.