Theory and Practice of Contemporary Psychotherapies

Gestalt in A Nutshell Video Transcript

Hi, I'm going to give you gestalt in a nutshell. Firstly, gestalt is about awareness. That means that we bring things from the past and from the future into the present, because it's in the present that really feelings exist, that we feel the feelings. It's in the present that our body experience and sensations are occurring. It's in the present that we really experience aliveness. It's in the present when we make choices and choices are very important in gestalt, increasing the sense of choicefulness. Gestalt therapy brings all this into the present, and that allows us to do something different. We use awareness to do that. The tool of awareness, a classic gestalt question is, "What are you aware of now?" That leads us very quickly and very deeply into the heart of a person's experience.

Second aspect of gestalt is dialogue. Dialogue, two-way, it's about you and me. It's not just me drilling down and asking you questions, me the therapist, you the client. It's not me the expert giving you advice or trying to fix you. Dialogue really is about an exchange between two people. I'm learning in the process about myself and about you, as much as you're learning. There's a kind of humility involved with that. We call it in gestalt the I-Thou. It's a real meeting of persons. That builds the relationship, and the relationship is the second area of gestalt, which is understood to be very important because it's the therapeutic relationship. Really it doesn't matter whether it's gestalt or other modalities, that is one of the main predictors of success and change.

Third, the field, we say field theory. We're interested in wholism. Gestalt was originally the holistic philosophy. It came out of a lot of interesting work in the early part of the 20th Century. Basically we're looking at not just the individual, we're looking at the context. We're trying to understand the person by understanding their culture, their family, the why to society, the forces that are influencing them. That gives us a sense of the interconnectedness of things. That's a profound way of understanding life, and it's a much deeper way of understanding people. That balances with the individual focus of awareness, the interpersonal focus of dialogue, and the interconnected focus of the field.

Finally, we have experiment. In gestalt, we do the gestalt experiment, which is one of the things gestalt is famous for. This can be colorful, it can be enjoyable, it can be fun. It can also be very challenging. The point of the experiment is to bring all the things that are difficult or challenging or we're stuck in, to bring them into the present and to work with them in relationship in a way which helps the person take the next step. They actually in the therapy get the experience of change. That's a wrap for gestalt in a nutshell.