Gestalt - what is it? This question is asked by many modern people, but not everyone can find the right answer. The word Gestalt itself is of German origin. Translated into Russian, it means “structure”, “image”, “form”.
In psychiatry, this concept was introduced by the psychoanalyst Frederick Perls. He is the founder of gestalt therapy.
Frederick Perls was a practicing psychiatrist, so all the methods he developed were primarily used to cure mental disorders, including psychosis, neurosis, etc. However, the gestalt therapy method was very widespread. What is it, soon psychologists and psychiatrists working in various fields became interested. Such a wide popularity of gestalt therapy is due to the presence of a reasonable and understandable theory, a wide selection of methods for working with a client or patient, as well as a high level of effectiveness.
Main advantage
The main and biggest advantage is a holistic approach to a person, which takes into account his mental, physical, spiritual and social aspects. Gestalt therapy instead of focusing on the question “Why is this happening to a person?” replaces it with the following: "What does a person feel now and how can this be changed?". Therapists working in this direction are trying to focus people's attention on the awareness of the processes that occur to them "here and now." Thus, the client learns to be responsible for his life and for everything that happens in it, and, therefore, for making the desired changes.
Perls himself considered Gestalt as a whole, the destruction of which leads to fragments. The form tends to be single, and if this does not happen, the person finds himself in an unfinished situation, putting pressure on him. People often have a lot of unfinished gestalt, which is not so difficult to get rid of, it is enough to see them. A huge advantage is that for their discovery there is no need to delve into the bowels of the unconscious, but you just need to learn to notice the obvious.
The Gestalt approach is based on principles and concepts such as integrity, responsibility, the emergence and destruction of structures, incomplete forms, contact, awareness, "here and now."
The most important principle
A man is an integral being, and it cannot be divided into any components, for example, into the body and psyche or into the soul and body, since such artificial devices cannot positively affect his understanding of his own inner world.
Holistic gestalt consists of a person and the surrounding space, while mutually influencing each other. For a better understanding of this principle, you can turn to the psychology of interpersonal relationships. It provides an opportunity to clearly monitor how much influence society has on an individual. However, changing himself, he affects other people, who, in turn, also become different.
The Moscow Gestalt Institute, like many others, includes the concept of “contact” as a key concept. A person is constantly in contact with something or with someone - with plants, the environment, other people, information, bioenergy and psychological fields.
The place in which the individual is in contact with the environment is usually called the boundary of contact. The better a person feels and the more flexibly he can adjust the contact difference, the more successful he is in meeting his own needs and achieving his goals. However, this process is characterized by characteristic features that lead to disruption of the productive activity of the individual in different areas of interactions. Gestalt therapy Perls aims to overcome such violations.
The principle of occurrence and destruction of gestalt structures
Using the principle of the emergence and destruction of gestalt structures, one can easily explain the behavior of an individual. Each person arranges his life depending on his own needs, to which he gives priority. His actions are aimed at meeting the needs and achieving existing goals.
For a better understanding, a few examples can be considered. So, a person who wants to buy a house, saves money to buy it, finds a suitable option and becomes the owner of his own home. And the one who wants to have a child, directs all his strength to achieve this goal. After the desired is achieved (the need is satisfied), gestalt is completed and destroyed.
The concept of incomplete gestalt
However, not every gestalt reaches its completion (and further - destruction). What happens to some people and why do they constantly form the same type of unfinished situation? This question has been of interest to specialists in the field of psychology and psychiatry for many years. This phenomenon is called incomplete gestalt.
Specialists, whose place of work is one or another gestalt institute, were able to recognize that the lives of many people are often filled with constantly repeating typical negative situations. For example, a person, despite the fact that he does not like to be exploited, constantly finds himself in precisely such situations, and one who does not have a personal life, comes into contact with people unnecessary to him again and again. Such “deviations” are connected precisely with incomplete “images,” and the human psyche will not be able to find peace until they reach their logical end.
That is, a person with an incomplete "structure", at a subconscious level, constantly strives to create a negative incomplete situation only to resolve it, and finally close this question. A gestalt therapist artificially creates a similar situation for his client and helps him find a way out of it.
Awareness
Another basic concept of gestalt therapy is awareness. It is worth noting that the intellectual knowledge of a person about his outer and inner world has nothing to do with him. Gestalt psychology connects awareness with being in the so-called “here and now” state. It is characterized by the fact that a person performs all actions, guided by consciousness and being alert, and does not live a mechanical life, relying solely on a stimulus-reactive mechanism, as is characteristic of an animal.
Most of the problems (if not all) appear in a person’s life for the reason that he is guided by the mind, and not consciousness. But, unfortunately, the mind is a rather limited function, and people who live only by it do not even suspect that in fact they are something more. This leads to the replacement of the true state of reality by the intellectual and false ones, as well as to the fact that the life of each person proceeds in a separate illusory world.
Gestalt therapists around the world, including the Moscow Gestalt Institute, are convinced that in order to solve most problems, misunderstandings, misunderstandings and difficulties, a person only needs to achieve awareness of his internal and external reality. A state of awareness does not allow people to do badly, succumbing to gusts of random emotions, because they are always able to see the world around them as they really are.
Responsibility
From the awareness of a person, another useful quality is born for him - responsibility. The level of responsibility for one’s life directly depends on the level of clarity of the person’s awareness of the surrounding reality. It is common for a person to always shift responsibility for his failures and mistakes to those around him or even higher forces, but everyone who manages to take responsibility on himself takes a big leap on the path of individual development.
Most people are not at all familiar with such a concept as gestalt. What is this, they learn already at the reception of a psychologist or psychotherapist. The specialist identifies the problem and develops ways to resolve it. For this, gestalt therapy has a wide variety of techniques, among which there are both its own and borrowed from such types of psychotherapy as transaction analysis, art therapy, psychodrama, etc. According to the gestaltists, any methods can be used within their approach, which serve as a natural continuation of the therapist-client dialogue and enhance awareness processes.
The here and now principle
According to him, everything really important is happening at the moment. The mind takes a person to the past (memories, analysis of past situations) or to the future (dreams, fantasies, planning), but does not give the opportunity to live in the present, which leads to the fact that life passes by. Gestalt therapists urge every client to live “here and now” without looking into the illusory world. All the work of this approach is connected with the awareness of the present moment.
Types of gestalt technician and contracting
All techniques of gestalt therapy are conditionally divided into “projective” and “dialogue”. The former are used to work with dreams, images, imaginary dialogs, etc.
The second is a painstaking work, which is carried out by the therapist at the border of contact with the client. The specialist, having tracked the interruption mechanisms of the person with whom he works, turns his emotions and experiences into part of his environment, after which he brings them to the border of contact. It is worth noting that gestalt techniques of both types are intertwined in work, and a clear distinction between them is possible only in theory.
The procedure of gestalt therapy, as a rule, begins with a reception such as contracting. This direction is characterized by the fact that the specialist and the client are equal partners, and the latter bears no less responsibility for the results of the work carried out than the first. This aspect is just stipulated at the stage of conclusion of the contract. At the same moment, the client forms his goals. It is very difficult for a person who constantly avoids responsibility to agree to such conditions, and already at this stage he needs to be worked out. At the stage of concluding a contract, a person begins to learn to be responsible for himself and for what happens to him.
"Hot chair" and "empty chair"
The “hot chair” technique is one of the most famous among therapists whose work place is the Moscow Gestalt Institute and many other structures. This method is used in group work. A “hot chair” is a place where a person sits who intends to tell those present about his difficulties. During the work, only the client and the therapist interact with each other, the rest of the group members silently listen, and only at the end of the session they talk about how they felt.
Gestalt techniques also include the “empty chair”. It is used to place a person significant to the client with whom he can conduct a dialogue, and it is not so important whether he is alive at the moment or has already died. Another purpose of the "empty chair" is a dialogue between different parts of the person. This is necessary when the client has opposing attitudes that give rise to intrapersonal conflict.
Concentration and experimental gain
The Gestalt Institute calls its original technique concentration (focused awareness). There are three levels of awareness - internal worlds (emotions, bodily sensations), external worlds (what I see, hear), and also thoughts. Remembering one of the main principles of gestalt therapy "here and now", the client tells the specialist about his awareness at the moment. For example: “Now I am lying on the couch and looking at the ceiling. I just can not relax. My heart is beating very hard. I know that there is a therapist next to me. ” This technique enhances the sense of the present, helps to understand the ways of removing a person from reality, and is also valuable information for further work with him.
Another effective technique is experimental amplification. It consists in the maximization of any verbal and non-verbal manifestations that are hardly recognized by him. For example, in the case when the client, without realizing it, often begins his conversation with the words “yes, but ...”, the therapist can offer him to start each phrase this way, and then the person realizes his rivalry with others and the desire to always leave the last word for himself .
Work with polarities
This is another method that Gestalt therapy often resortes to. Technicians in this industry often seek to identify opposites in the individual. Among them, working with polarities occupies a special place.
For example, a person who constantly complains that he doubts himself, the specialist suggests introducing himself confidently, and from this position try to communicate with people around him. It is equally useful to have a dialogue between your insecurity and confidence.
For a client who does not know how to ask for help, a gestalt therapist offers to turn to group members sometimes even with very ridiculous requests. This technique makes it possible to expand the zone of awareness of the individual by including in it a previously inaccessible personal potential.
Dream work
The indicated technique is used by psychotherapists of various directions, but the original gestalt technique has its characteristic features. Here, the specialist considers all elements of sleep as parts of the human personality, with each of which the client must be identified. This is done to appropriate their own projections or get rid of retroflexions. In addition, no one has abolished the use of the here and now principle in this technique.
So, the client should tell the therapist about his dream as something happening in the present tense. For example: “I am running along a forest path. I’m in a great mood and I rejoice at every moment spent in this forest, etc. ” It is necessary that the client describes his dream “here and now” not only in his own name, but also on behalf of other people and objects present in the vision. For example, “I am a winding forest path. A man is running for me now, etc. ”
Thanks to its own and borrowed techniques, gestalt therapy helps people get rid of stereotypes of thinking and all kinds of masks, establish trustful contact with others. The Gestalt approach takes into account heredity, experience acquired in the first years of life, the influence of society, but at the same time calls on everyone to take responsibility for their own life and for everything that happens in it.
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