Gestalt Psychotherapy Techniques

In it Gestalt Approach dreams are seen as projections of the dreamer’s personality, from your experiential field; They are parts of your experience that are alienated or not assimilated and that manifest in dream images as existential messages. All the elements of the dream, whether they represent other people, ideas that are not our own or places that we do not know, are linked to our experience; They must be seen as something of our own, as our own expressions, which belong to us, but which are detached from us.

In line with the Gestalt principles and rules, dream work must be carried out at all times, transferring the responsibility for revealing its meaning to the dreamer himself, not assuming it by the therapist by showing off with “brilliant” interpretations and comments that are of no use. In principle, it should be adopted as an axiom that only the person who dreams is the only one authorized to know, for himself, what his dreams mean. Any other interpretation from the outside, in Freudian style, undermines the respect that the client deserves and does little to help them.

Dreams, like all experiences, must be experienced rather than explained. Dreaming itself is a passive process; Dreams “happen to us” and therefore remain separated from us, like something foreign, without knowing what they want to tell us and without using their energy. By their very nature, dreams are avoidance of contact with what happens to us; They are repressed, “unconscious” experiences, which for various reasons do not constitute figures while we are awake. When dreams are experienced, using the various gestalt techniques, the passive role they play changes direction, and they become something “we do”, and we can assume our responsibility for them.

With the dream job in Gestalt At least two objectives are pursued: 1) Make it easier for the client to determine what existential message their dream carries, and 2) Reincorporate said alienated experience into their personality.

The techniques used are the same as those commonly used in group or individual therapy: bring the dream to the present and here; narrate it in the first person (it is advisable to start the story with the phrase “this is my existence” or “this is my life” to facilitate identification with what is being narrated), initially as it happened, and then, in a second story, focusing on the various elements that appear. The subject must “be” everything that appears in his dream. If he dreams of a rough sea, then he himself must be the sea, its agitation, the fish it contains, the algae, the sand, the sky that covers it, the clouds…, feel as such, represent them, in such a way. that by acting them out – as in an individual psychodrama where the client plays all the roles, including that of librettist – he can access their message, understand them, see how they are associated with his life, and incorporate them into himself. The therapist limits himself, first, to containing his interpretative impulses and listening carefully to what is said, and then to guiding the client through the dream, making him stop at the parts that, according to his experience, may be important, so that I experienced them; in the unfinished Gestalten that emerge in the story; in what you experience and, above all, in what you avoid experiencing (here I draw attention to hidden polarities: also work with the opposite of what is presented in the dream story; for example, if in the dream everything is a green and spring meadow, the subject can be placed imaginatively in a sterile desert and in the middle of a sand storm, thus hidden things will emerge that are cautiously avoided and opposites will be experienced).

At all times you should ask yourself: What do you feel? What do you realize? What does that remind you of? How is this or that thing linked to your life? What do you avoid? With whom are you right now? Where are you?, etc., in such a way that we facilitate the subject’s awareness.

Finally, if we have done a good job, without interfering with our own expectations and desires to discover “big issues” to feel good, in the process, “without pushing the river” by forcing things, it is very likely that the client will be able to realize something constructive for him and thus facilitate his growth.

We should not despair if we do not achieve great insight; What is important is that the subject has reincorporated, to some degree, her dream – or better, the experience that her dream contains – into his person; He has reassimilated his energy. That, in itself, is therapeutic and very valuable.

As in the case of dreams, compared to the so-called “defense mechanisms “The Gestalt approach takes a very peculiar and creative position. If we remember well, Fritz Perls was closely linked to the psychoanalytic movement in Germany. He was analyzed and received training in analytical psychotherapy with the main Freudians of his time (Karen Horney, Helen Deuscht , Wilhelm Reich, etc.); he even met Freud himself, in a brief meeting that was rather frustrating (and even traumatic) for the old Fritz (see Inside and Out of the Garbage Jar, his autobiography), and he was a founder from the Psychoanalytic Institute of South Africa, the country where he arrived while fleeing the Nazis in 1933. For this reason, his interest in this topic and in the previous one (dreams) is explainable, although it should not be mistakenly assumed that it is nothing more than a simple copy or plagiarism of psychoanalysis.

In Gestalt, defense mechanisms, rather than protecting the Self from threatening internal drives or external threats, are conceived as ways of avoiding contact, both internal and external; as self-interruptions of the cycle of experience (see offprint No. 02).

As seen, the organism – the totality of body and mind that we all are – regulates itself through successive cycles of seven phases or stages (rest, sensation, formation of figure, mobilization of energy, action, contact and rest ). In the various spaces that mediate between the phases of the cycle, self-interruptions, with the purpose of avoiding pain, suffering, not feeling, not living, separating from what is threatening in oneself, fleeing from the phobic layer, etc. Hence the word “defense”.

Fritz Perls (and Laura, his wife, co-founder of Gestalt Therapy) described up to five mechanisms: introjection, projection, confluence, deflection and retroflexion. Salama and Castanedo, in their book Manual of psychodiagnosis, intervention and supervision for psychotherapists (1991), mention the variants that the various authors (Goodman, Latner, Polster, Petit, Pierret) have proposed in terms of order and number of the mechanisms, to propose themselves a list, perhaps excessive, of eight: desensitization, projection, introjection, retroflexion, deflection, confluence, fixation and retention. What is interesting and novel about the contribution of these authors (although it still requires greater verification and refinement) is their attempt to develop a Gestalt psychopathology which seeks to understand emotional problems from interruptions in the cycle of experience.

In order not to get into controversies about which proposal is the most appropriate, we will stick to Perls’ proposal for the exhibition, including, as we consider appropriate, one of the phases of Salama and Castanedo.

• Desensitization (Salama and Castanedo), which occurs between sensation rest, consists of blocking the sensations of both the external and internal environment, not feeling what comes from the body; This stimulates the process of intellectualization by which the lack of sensory contact is attempted to be explained through rationalizations. His characteristic phrase would be “I don’t feel.”
• The projection (F. Perls), occurs between sensation and figure formation. It consists of transferring what one feels or thinks, but which for various reasons (especially due to the action of the introjects “you must not”) cannot accept in oneself, to others: “Hating is bad,” says the mother; The child hates his father, but since “one should not hate” he becomes alienated from that feeling and throws the ball at the feared and threatening father: “You hate me, you are the bad one.” His characteristic phrase is “Because of you.”
• Introjection (F. Perls), mediates between the formation of figure and mobilization of energy for action. Here the subject “swallows” everything they are given without chewing it enough; External influences are swallowed up without making the necessary criticism and selection, according to his personal needs. The subject suffers a true burden of commands, orders, influences, imagos, etc., unquestionable, which in themselves fulfill a parasitic function but which the subject mistakenly assumes as his own, as norms and moral values. “Do this”, “Don’t do this”, “You shouldn’t”, “You should”, etc. Introjects prevent the free flow of impulses and the satisfaction of needs: don’t be aggressive, don’t fornicate, keep your virginity, you don’t tell the mother that…blah, blah, blah. Important: behind every introject there are important figures for us and unfinished Gestalten in relation to them. His phrase is “I must think about it or do it like this.”
• Retroflexion (F. Perls), occurs between mobilization of energy and action. It is the opposite of projection. The subject does not dare to act on his desires or impulses through the action of introjects again, so he directs them at himself because this is less dangerous: he harms himself by becoming depressed; develops psychosomatic disorders; is devalued, etc. His phrase is “I hate myself so I don’t hate you.”
• The Deflection (Laura Perls), occurs between action and contact. It consists of establishing a cold, innocuous, non-threatening contact; as if you touched things with gloves or tweezers to avoid damage or burns. It is also the tempered expression of emotions: doing it “politely.” There is no insult… irony or jokes are made; one does not claim or fight for one’s own… one resents; one does not love oneself… one “esteems” oneself. On a verbal level it is quite clear; euphemisms are an obvious example of deflective hypocrisy: he died because he died; making love for fornicating, etc. Other ways are to act cynical, indifferent, intellectual, rationalize everything. His phrase is “I throw the stone and hide my hand.”
• The confluence (F. Perls), also occurs between action and contact. The subject to be accepted or not enter into discussion with important figures simply mimics them; weakens the limits of his I to merge with the other. Thus, without criticism or questioning, other people’s decisions, ideas, and lifestyles are adopted. A comfortable position is adopted where one abdicates one’s own responsibility, the ability to make decisions, to always “agree.” Confluents are people “without character or personality”, “passive”, who practice learned hopelessness or identification with the feared aggressor. His phrase is “Accept me, I don’t argue.”

In Gestalt Therapy works with three kinds of techniques basically:

• The Suppressive Ts.
• The Expressive Ts.
• The Integrative Ts.

Suppressive Techniques

They basically aim to avoid or suppress the client’s attempts to evade the here/now and their experience; That is to say, the aim is for the subject to experience what he does not want or what is hidden in order to facilitate his realization. Among the Main Suppressions we have:

• Experiencing nothingness or emptiness, trying to make the “sterile void become a fertile void”; Do not flee from the feeling of emptiness, integrate it into yourself, live it and see what arises from it.
• Avoid “talking about” as a way of escaping what is. Talking must be replaced by experiencing.
• Detect the “shoulds” and rather than suppress them, it is better to try to determine what may be behind them. The “shoulds” as well as the “talk about” are a way of not seeing what one is.
• Detect the various forms of manipulation and the “as if” games or roles that are played in therapy. Also, rather than suppressing them, it is better to experience them, make the subject aware of them and the role they play in her life. Among the main forms of manipulation we can find: questions, answers, asking for permission and demands.

Expressive Techniques

The aim is for the subject to externalize what is internal, to realize things that he possibly carried within himself all his life but that he did not perceive. Basically three things are looked for:

Express the unexpressed:

• Maximize expression, giving the subject an unstructured context so that they can confront themselves and take responsibility for what they are. You can work with imaginary inductions of unknown or strange situations, so that fears and unfinished situations emerge. Non-expressive action can also be minimized.
• Ask the client to express what they are feeling.
• Do the rounds, have the subject express what he wants to each member of the group or give him a phrase to repeat to each one and experience what he feels.

Finish or complete the expression:

Here we seek to detect unfinished situations, things that were not said but could have been said or done and that now weigh on the client’s life. One of the best-known techniques is the “empty chair”, that is, working imaginatively on the problems that the subject has with living or dead people using role-playing. Imaginary inductions can also be used to reconstruct the situation and experience it again in a healthier way, expressing and experiencing everything that was avoided the first time.

Find the address and make the direct expression:

• Repetition: The intention of this technique is to make the subject notice some action or phrase that could be important and realize its meaning. Examples: “repeat the phrase again”, “make that gesture again”, etc.
• Exaggeration and development: It is going beyond simple repetition, trying to get the subject to put more emphasis on what they say or do, loading it emotionally and increasing its meaning until they realize it. Also, from a simple repetition the subject can continue developing its expression with other things to facilitate awareness.
• Translate: It consists of taking some non-verbal behavior to the verbal level, expressing in words what is done. “What does your hand mean”, “If your nose could talk what would it say”, “Let your genitals speak”.
• Performance and identification: It is the opposite of translating. The subject is intended to “act” her feelings, emotions, thoughts and fantasies; Let him put them into practice so that he identifies with them and integrates them into her personality. It is very useful in dream work.

Integrative Techniques

These techniques seek to ensure that the subject incorporates or reintegrates into his personality his alienated parts, his holes. Although suppressive and expressive techniques are also integrative in some ways, here there is more emphasis on incorporating experience.

• The intrapersonal encounter: It consists of the subject maintaining an explicit, live dialogue with the various parts of his being; between the various intra-psychic subegos. For example, between the “I should” and the “I want”, his feminine side with the masculine, his passive side with the active, the smiling and the serious, the top dog with the bottom dog, etc. The “empty chair” technique can be used, exchanging roles until both parties in conflict are integrated.
• Assimilation of projections: The aim here is for the subject to recognize the projections it emits as its own. To do this, he can be asked to pretend that he lives what is projected, to experience his projection as if it were really his. Example: Q: “My mother hates me.” T: “Imagine that you are the one who hates your mother; how do you feel about that feeling? Can you honestly recognize that that feeling is really yours?”

It is important to remember that these procedures or techniques are only a support to achieve therapeutic objectives, but do not constitute Gestalt Therapy in themselves. What is important, what is truly therapeutic, is the “gestatic attitude” adopted, the recognition of the importance of the process, and respect for the client’s individual rhythm. Don’t push the river, let it be. Nor does applying the techniques stereotypically mean assimilating the philosophy implicit in the Gestalt Approach.

We must be careful not to confuse Gestalt therapy with an easy-to-learn and easy-to-execute approach; as if it were a therapy in which desire and “spontaneity” are enough to be a good therapist. A similar perception led Gestalt therapy to a serious crisis in the sixties and seventies, when many believed that by attending a couple of workshops they could be considered gestalt therapists. We do not want Gestalt to appear to other currents or approaches as something unserious, suitable for people without training and without clinical experience.

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Gestalt psychotherapy techniques we recommend that you enter our Clinical Psychology category.