What is Gestalt Therapy and What Does it Look Like for Me?

Gestalt therapy is a form of practicing therapy that is centered around awareness and collaboration. The main tenets of Gestalt therapy are phenomenology, dialogue, field theory and experimentation. This article will go into each of those and what that could look like for you when in sessions with a Gestalt therapist. 

Phenomenology

This is the awareness piece. Phenomenology, from the philosophical term, is a fancy way of phrasing the belief that your experience in the present is the most important indicator of our sense of self. It is incredibly easy to lose a sense of awareness in our day to day lives. We are thinking about the work project we have coming up at the end of the month, that awkward date that we had last week, all while trying to read a book or fold the laundry. Anyone who has ever tried a meditation practice knows how our thoughts enter in and out, often about past or future events, while we are trying to stay in the present. 

Creating a sense of awareness and presence is key to better understanding ourselves. This awareness includes everything from our emotional feelings, our physical sensations, and anything else that is happening right now in this present moment. Our physical sensations can be the ones that are most obvious to us: hunger, tiredness, a physical pain, or they can be less obvious such as a slight tension in the temples of your eyes (which could be an indicator of holding back tears.) We often may even fidget out of our awareness like playing with your hands, bouncing your leg, or picking up your coffee every time you're nervous. These are not to be judged, but to be noticed and inform our sense of ourselves.

Dialogue

Gestalt therapy is a collaborative process. It is not prescriptive, nor is it interpretive. Your therapist doesn't necessarily know better than you on any given subject and won't be telling you what you "should" do. What interests us more is where you are in your life and the processes that have gotten you to be doing what you are doing. 

Field Theory

"What does my childhood have to do with my current situation?" "That doesn't seem relevant, why are you asking that?" Those are just a couple of the questions that therapists often hear in which the answer has to do with field theory. Field theory is Gestalt's way of describing how the environment we are exposed to influences how we see the world now. 

Childhood is one broad example of what is in our "environmental field," beginning from conception and including details that are sometimes considered trivial such as which of the neighborhood schools you went to and the temperment of the kids in your class. Where you grew up, how you were parented, your genetics, the time in history that you were born, and so much more make up the field in which we construct a sense of the world and the sense of self. Our experience is derived from many different contexts, rooted in layers of history and perspective. Your "field" is very complex albeit somewhat predictable (i.e based in laws of physics.) However it can be unpredictable in the way we meet one another emotionally. 

Your therapist may ask you confusing questions at times, to get a better sense of your world and sense of self. The work of therapy is to hold this context in mind, balancing between new emerging needs and the environment presenting new possibilities or a lack of possibilities.

Experimentation

Experiments are common in Gestalt therapy and are often utilized based on the style of the clinician. Gestalt therapists are as varied as therapists are, which are as varied as people are, so the way in which your therapist conducts an experiment with you may be different than the way in which someone else will.

Some examples of possible experiments in therapy are:

• role playing a situation or talking to a person not present (aka The Empty Chair)

• embodying a certain feeling in the moment and exploring differences and similarities

• giving voice to a body part or an experience

• using volume to better express feelings

Conclusion

Gestalt therapy is a broad experiential modality that borrows some aspects of psychoanalytic and behavioral therapies, but bringing them into an experience in the moment of the session. Gestalt therapists are focused on the here and now and utilize the relationship between client and counselor to facilitate change outside of the therapy office.

All of our clinicians use aspects of Gestalt therapy and many of them have trained with the Gestalt Associates for Psychotherapy in NYC. If you'd like to book an appointment with any of our clinicians, please contact us and let us know what you're interested in working on. You can check out our bios here or make an appointment below. We look forward to working with you.

References

Mann, Dave. Gestalt Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques. New York, NY, Routledge, 2010.

Perls, Frederick S., et al. Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. 1951.