Gestalt Therapy

6 Pages 1545 Words

Gestalt Therapy


When using Gestalt therapy, a therapist does not give any diagnosis of mental illnesses, rather the focus is on the here and now. While concentrating on the present, the focus for the client is on the disturbance of contact and the self. The Gestalten Contact Cycle consists of; fore contact, contact, final contact and post contact. Humans are living organisms that are figure, use ground and interact with their environment. If a person does not stay in connection with body and mind, it can cause many problems that lead to the disturbance of contact. The disturbance of contact is made up of: Introjects; what other people have said to us early in life that we have always carried with us, Projects; fantasy, or making up how people view us, Retroflection; is what we do against our self or stopping what you really want to say, this stops creativity, Confluence; unawareness of practicing sameness, not choosing for self, and healthy confluence which is knowing how to choose for the self. The self is made up of the Ego function which is choosing what is best, Id function which is urges, needs, drives and impulses, and the Personality function which is how a person views him/her self.
Gestalt therapy is designed for clients to lead their therapeutic process. The client must seek their own resolutions and get excited about their own life. A key concept of this therapy is to have the client take acceptance of responsibility act on unfinished business from the past and directly work with it now instead of just talking about it. The goal is to challenge the client to move from environment support to self-support and assist the client in gaining awareness of movement-to-movement experiences. With awareness, the client is able to gain power, understanding, and control of all parts of the self.
The therapist assists the client in experiencing more fully all feelings and enables the client to make his or her own interpretati...