What Is Gestalt Therapy And How Can It Help You?

Medically reviewed by Nikki Ciletti
Updated March 20, 2024by Regain Editorial Team

"Gestalt" is the German word for "shape" or "form," and in Gestalt psychology, it refers to the idea of an organized whole or shape seen as more than the sum of its parts. In turn, the Google dictionary defines gestalt therapy as "a psychotherapeutic approach (that) focuses on insight into gestalt in patients and their relations to the world, and often uses role-playing to aid the resolution of past conflicts."

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What is gestalt therapy?

Gestalt therapy was largely developed by Frederick S. Perls, MD, commonly known as Fritz, Lore Perls, Ph.D., and Paul Goodman, Ph.D. The following are the main principles that underlie gestalt theory.

Context affects experience

Gestalt therapy is based on the notion that no person is an isolated being or object but that everyone exists and functions in a context. Every person's life is their context or gestalt, which is connected to and influenced by their unique environment and loved ones, as well as their unique memories and life experiences.

Therefore, a Gestalt therapist usually believes that they cannot fully understand you as a person unless it is in the context of your connections. You are seen and known in and through the bigger picture of your life and your unique experience of it.

Here and now

Gestalt therapists also understand that your context (or life) influences your life experiences. For this reason, the therapeutic process tends to focus mainly on your experiences, such as your feelings, emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations, as they are at the moment. The process also focuses on how they are connected to your environment, family, past, etc. This is done through techniques and exercises that can be performed one-on-one or in a group. 

Through the gestalt process, a therapist aims to guide you to become more aware of your immediate experiences, feelings, and emotions to help you become more self-aware. There is usually no digging into the past, with in-depth mental analyses of traumatic events or such. The process's main aim is to show you how your perceptions, thoughts, and behaviors influence your life and mood and how erroneous perceptions can make you unhappy.

Nobody is objective

Gestalt theory accepts that no person is completely objective, including the therapist, who is influenced by their own unique context, as their client is by theirs. By accepting that your (the client's) experiences are true and valid for you, the therapist uses understanding, unconditional acceptance, and empathy to ensure positive therapeutic outcomes.

Nobody can be forced to change

Since Gestalt therapy accepts your experiences as valid and true for you, one of its most important characteristics is that therapists do not aim to change you. According to Gestalt theory, outer change can only take place if or when a person's inner environment has changed. This is accomplished through developing your awareness of your reality at the moment and taking responsibility for it.

Taking responsibility for your own life experience may feel daunting because a common response is to project our problems onto external causes and blame them. With gentle guidance from the therapist, gaining self-awareness and taking ownership of experiences can be among the most empowering aspects of Gestalt therapy.

Cycle of experience

In Gestalt therapy, the self is not usually seen as a fixed or static thing but rather as something perpetually changing and evolving. This evolution occurs in response to how you connect with your environment, family, past, etc. Gestalt theory illuminates these changes via a process it calls the “cycle of experience,” which Perls also referred to as the “organismic or world metabolism.”

This describes the instinctive process we all engage in to achieve inner balance and can be divided into the following constituents:

  1. Sensation
  2. Awareness
  3. Mobilization
  4. Contact
  5. Satisfaction
  6. Withdrawal

The most commonly used example to illustrate the cycle of experience is the act of eating. You feel hungry (sensation), you acknowledge the sensation (awareness), you find food (mobilization), you eat the food (contact), your hunger is gone and you feel satiated (satisfaction), and you are done with eating and don't think about it any longer (withdrawal).

Perls theorized that if the cycle of experience is disrupted or arrested through internal or outside influences, a person will always seek ways to heal the disruption or complete the cycle to satisfy the original need, and in this way, achieve balance or equilibrium. In practical terms, this can be demonstrated when someone continues to replay certain dramas in their life.

How is this disruption of the cycle of experience explained in psychological terms?

Let's suppose a young boy feels the need for closer contact with his mother. He reaches out to her and tries to hug her. For unknown reasons, the mother pushes him away and repeatedly rejects his bids for affection. Since the boy has no way of knowing why his mother repeatedly pushes him away (which could be as innocent as her having a cold and not wanting him to catch it), the boy perceives that she doesn't want physical contact with him.

Because he doesn't want to feel the pain of rejection again, the boy creates his reason for the rebuff, such as "There's something wrong with me; I'm not worthy of women's love" or "It is not OK to hug women."

The disruption that took place in the boy's cycle of experience was at the point of contact.

The reason why the mother refused to hug the boy is not usually a focus in gestalt therapy, but how he experienced or perceived the rebuff often is. This is because especially these early-life interruptions can remain with us throughout our lives and affect all our experiences. According to Gestalt theory, we unconsciously seek to mend or heal the interrupted process but most often only repeat the original trauma. This is due to the influence of the conceptions of “reasons” we created for ourselves, often referred to as “unfinished business” in gestalt therapy.

A gestalt therapist often uses this map, the cycle of experience, to determine where and how the process has been disrupted. This can provide information for diagnosis and suggest which treatment plan to follow.

Some techniques used in gestalt therapy

Gestalt theory tends to use exercises and techniques to elicit a response from the client or “make something happen” in the therapeutic situation to raise self-awareness. To this end, a therapist may use any number of exercises or techniques.

Experiments

Experiments as an exercise may involve role-playing, enactment, homework, etc. For example, a person who feels very shy and awkward on romantic dates may be given the experimental task of starting a conversation with a date. Simply thinking about what to say is likely to promote self-awareness and give the person more confidence in dating situations.

Empty chair

The Empty Chair method is probably one of the best-known techniques used in Gestalt therapy. This method aims to facilitate dialogue between you and others or between different parts of your personality. The therapist places two chairs facing each other. One chair represents you or your personality, and the other represents somebody else or an opposing part of your personality. You may be guided to alternate roles and swap chairs as you do so.

The therapist's role is sometimes to observe as the dialogue develops, or they may suggest sentences to say or tell you when to change chairs. They may also call your attention to what you say or ask you to exaggerate certain words or actions. The purpose is to elicit emotional responses or conflicts so that these can be resolved.

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Topdog-underdog

A therapist may use this technique when they notice two opposing opinions or attitudes in you. The idea is that you distinguish between these parts and take on the role of each in a dialogue. Your inner tyrant, the Top Dog, will likely struggle for control with the Disobedient Child, the Underdog.

Bodytalk

According to Gestalt theory, because it’s not only your thoughts and emotions but also your body that’s important to evoke a sense of wholeness, gestalt therapy guides you through using your body as a vehicle for communication. The therapist may ask, for instance, where you “feel” the emotions in your body. An answer might be “tightness in my chest” or “pain in my abdomen.” This, again, may bring you closer to self-awareness.

Exaggeration of a habitual, mostly unconscious movement, such as drumming your fingers on your leg or pulling on your hair, may help identify the emotions related to the movement and give valuable insight into a stressor or trigger.

Other techniques

Other techniques used in gestalt therapy include the empowering use of language by the therapist, dream analysis, fantasy or guided imagery, and confrontation or the act of inducing frustration.

Talking to an online gestalt therapist

If you’re interested in trying gestalt therapy but feel hesitant to go to a therapist’s office, you might try online therapy, which studies have shown to be just as effective as traditional in-person therapy. With Regain, you can talk to a Gestalt therapist from the comfort of your own home or anywhere with an internet connection. You can connect with a therapist via audio or video chat, in addition to contacting them in between sessions via in-app messaging. 

Takeaway

Gestalt therapy can be a valuable tool to help you accept and gain insight about yourself. If you’d like to try this therapeutic method, you can be matched with a Regain therapist with training and experience in gestalt therapy. Whatever you’re going through, you don’t have to face it alone. Take the first step and reach out to Regain

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