Gestalt Therapy: What Is It And What Principles Is It Based On?
Many times we associate psychotherapy with a form of intervention that can only be useful for people with serious psychological or health problems.
This may be due to the confusion that exists when differentiating concepts such as psychology and psychiatry, or due to the way in which the media and audiovisual fictions portray psychotherapists: people who only enter the scene to help unhappy people, who do not achieve their goals and who, in many cases, are at risk of social exclusion.
However, this is not the case. Among other things, because there are psychological approaches whose objective is to provide the necessary therapeutic tools so that people can tend to self-realization and to the creation of meaning for their own actions. This is the case of Humanistic Psychology, within which we find a well-known type of therapy: Gestalt Therapy.
The Gestalt Therapyeither Gestalt therapyis a type of psychological therapy that falls within the category of Humanistic Psychology in the sense that it assumes the way in which humanistic thinking conceives the human being, his goals and his range of needs and potentialities. Furthermore, as its name indicates, collects the theoretical principles of the Gestalt psychology and uses them to propose a form of psychotherapy.
The main people responsible for the development of this type of psychotherapy are authors such as Paul Goodman , Isadore From and, especially, Fritz Perls and Laura Perls. Since the consolidation of Gestalt Therapy in the mid-20th century, much work has been done to extend its applicability beyond clinical psychology as we classically understand it, and that is why it is possible to find forms of this therapy in interventions on communities, organizations or specific work dynamics.
In short, Gestalt Therapy has flourished, spreading to a large number of social and human areas to put Gestalt principles into practice in all types of objectives. That is why, although this type of therapy is related to the idea of ​​personal development, it is not limited to the scope of the classic psychological consultation, but can be understood as a tool to redefine lifestyles in their entirety.
You can learn more about Fritz Perls and his thoughts by entering this article:
The principles of Gestalt Therapy
Gestalt Therapy emphasizes the way in which the things we experience are mentally formulated, rather than worrying about the content of what happens to us. This means that from this type of therapy the importance lies on the shape in which something is experienced, and not so much in that “something” itself. We do not intervene from questions like “what happens to us?”, but rather from “how does it happen to us and how do we experience it?” It is an approach that highlights the role of subjective sensations, since it is based on the approaches of Humanistic Psychology.
This emphasis on processes over content and subjective over objective can be deployed in three theoretical principles: “here and now” experimentationthe awareness and the responsibility.
1. Here and now
From Gestalt Therapy it is assumed that Human beings perceive everything that happens to us as a unified experience. This means, among other things, that our idea of ​​what the future and the past are like are nothing more than projections of how we live in the present. In short, by working on our way of thinking about the present we will be intervening on our ways of considering the future to come and the way in which we look back to review the past.
This idea, by the way, is supported by research that made the psychologist famous. Gordon H. Bower.
2. Awareness
In Gestalt Therapy it is essential to take note of what happens to oneself. Only in this way will it be possible to detect new ways of formulating the experience of the here and now in terms that bring us closer to self-realization.
Looking at our own experiences and thoughts allows us, on the one hand, to be better at recognizing our style when experimenting, and on the other, to have more decision-making power when it comes to changing our way of seeing things. In other words, it could be said that being honest with our way of experiencing allows us to develop better Emotional Intelligence.
3. Responsibility
Becoming aware of one’s own actions and styles of experiencing things also implies assuming the consequences of those choices. By accepting errors and hypothesizing risks, autonomy is gained. This opens the range of options and conception of meanings in which one can act, from an existential perspective.
Irresponsibility is considered the result of an illusion, a denial of the present and a refusal to become aware. That is why Gestalt Therapy emphasizes the need to assume responsibilities, not only to improve coexistence with others, but to be freer and more capable of giving meaning to our lives.
In short, Therapists who subscribe to Gestalt Therapy understand that their interventions must focus on the autonomy and potential of the person. A good way to experience what happens can help you know how to guide yourself through that jungle of possible options, of ways of conceiving your own existence.
Gestalt Therapy has been harshly criticized, among other things, for not having a specific unit of analysis, with which it is possible to work experimentally without getting lost in words without clear definitions. This fact, which has to do with the attempt to approach the subjectivity of this form of intervention (starting from rigid definitions could leave out part of the patients’ reality, according to this perspective) means that the effectiveness of the intervention cannot be guaranteed either. therapy.
On the other hand, The markedly eclectic character of Gestalt Therapy also creates suspicions since it does not base its proposals on a unified and systematized theoretical system, as the behaviorist perspective attempts to do, for example. Furthermore, his inspiration in Freudian psychoanalysis, based on the idea that there are parts of the psyche that come into conflict, is also seen as part of a heritage of thought that falls outside of science.
