Gestalt Therapy
Gestalt Therapy
Gestalt therapy is a therapeutic approach in psychology that helped foster the humanistic theories of the 1950s and 1960s and that was, in turn, influenced by them. In Gestalt philosophy, the patient is seen as having better insight into himself or herself than the therapist does. Thus, the therapist guides the person on a self-directed path to awareness and refrains from interpreting the patient’s behaviors. Awareness comprises recognition of one’s responsibility for choices, self-knowledge, and ability to solve problems.
Its originators, Frederick S. (Fritz) Perls (1893–1970) and Laura Perls (born Lore Posner, 1905–1990), were born in Germany and studied psychology there. They fled Germany during the Nazi regime, moving to South Africa and then to New York City. They were both initially influenced by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic approaches and by Wilhelm Reich’s Orgonomic psychotherapy. Their later ideas on Gestalt therapy broke with the psychoanalytic tradition, moving toward existentialism and, ultimately, humanism.
In New York City the Perls founded the Gestalt Therapy Institute in 1952. Their novel technique in therapy was to face the patient, in contrast to the typical Freudian technique of sitting behind a reclining person. The face-to-face positioning permitted the therapist to direct the patient’s attention to movements, gestures, and postures so the patient could strive to gain a fuller awareness of his or her immediate behaviors and environment. Another well-known approach introduced in Gestalt therapy is the so-called “empty chair technique,” in which a person sits across from and talks to an empty chair, envisioning a significant person (or object) associated with psychological tensions.
By using these techniques, the Perls believed, the patient would be able to gain insight into how thoughts and behaviors are used to deflect attention from important psychological issues and would learn to recognize the presence of issues from the past that affect current behavior. The aim was for the patient to experience feelings, not to gain insight into the reasons for them, as psychoanalysts favored.
In the evolution of their therapy, Laura and Fritz Perls differed in some of their approaches. Laura emphasized more direct, physical contact and movement than Fritz did, and the contact favored by Fritz Perls was more symbolic than physical.
Gestalt therapy took its name from the school of academic psychology called Gestalt psychology. Perls asserted that Gestalt psychology had influenced the development of his ideas, but the Gestaltists claimed that there was no connection between the two. Later scholars suggested a common substrate linking the academic Gestalt psychology of Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967), and Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) and the Gestalt therapy of the Perls and their collaborators Ralph Hefferline (1910–1974) and Paul Goodman (1911–1972). This commonality involved appreciation of the whole rather than a reductionistic approach to understanding psychological phenomena and behavior.
Gestalt therapy took form in the 1950s and 1960s, when humanism first flourished. The optimistic theory promulgated by the Perls was quite compatible with the ideas of other humanistically oriented psychologists such as Carl Rogers (1902–1987). Its influence has waned since the 1980s, although current therapies have been influenced by the humanistic and optimistic outlook of the theory and by some of the interactive techniques developed by the Perls and their followers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Levitsky, Abraham, and Frederick S. Perls. 1982. The Rules and Games of Gestalt Therapy. In The Essential Psychotherapies: Theory and Practice by the Masters, eds. Daniel Goleman and Kathleen Riordan Speeth, 143–154. New York: New American Library.
Perls, Frederick S., Ralph F. Hefferline, and Paul Goodman. 1951. Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. New York: Dell.
Reisman, John M. 1991. A History of Clinical Psychology. 2nd ed. New York: Hemisphere Publishing.
Bernard C. Beins