Gestalt Therapy
Seven principles form the basis of Gestalt therapy.
- Everything flows and is in motion, everything is process. Processes always take place in a certain environment (or field).o Everything flows and is in motion, everything is process. Processes always take place in a particular environment (or field).
Each field splits into elements called "gestalt." A gestalt is characterized by foreground aspects delineated from background aspects. A gestalt is characterized by difference from its surroundings, while at the same time integrating into the entire field. This process of integrating the gestalt into the field is called gestalt formation.
Contact is appreciation of the difference between foreground and background; This difference is determined by the functioning of the contact boundary.
Awareness is necessary in making contact; it is also the most central process in gestalt therapy.
Awareness and contact lead to the experience that can be integrated. Experience is characterized by process, awareness and contact. Experience and process can only be established by contact.
The goal of gestalt therapy is to promote creative adjustment. This creative adaptation emerges in contact with other people.
Man exists only through his connection with others.
GESTALT therapy
Importance of the therapeutic relationship:
The therapist tries to enter the world of the other, while simultaneously preserving his own world, without prejudice and without judgment.
The client feels:
- accepted and valued as a person
- he gets a sense of affirmation in his own identity
- he learns to accept his own feelings
- he is going to feel less alienated from himself
- he is going to gain confidence in his own feelings.
Through the therapist's empathetic response, the client comes into contact with parts of himself that he previously had no awareness of or avoided contact with.
Experiencing reality, the contact boundary and working with focused awareness, helps the client get closer to their own experience.
Resistance is seen as a blocking dialogue, to which both parties contribute. The therapist can make the stalling dialogue the topic of conversation.
In the impasse, the client is stuck and tries to block the progress of treatment through various avoidances. The impasse is usually connected with fantasies of the client about himself and about what could happen if he were to continue. Usually in his fantasy there is a catastrophe hanging over his head.
Making an appointment
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