Further down the Gestalt

This article deals with the revolution that is Gestalt Therapy. it allows us all to realise that all is but a lens through which we see the World. That change occurs when see, hear, touch, taste or smell a new reality. Literally another world is posssible.

The central question of Gestalt therapy both in terms of theory and practice is how both individuals and groups change in the direction of health, wholeness and growth and attempt to challenge both stasis and blockage . I will analyse and describe how the paradoxical theory of change lies at the heart of the central approaches, theories and methods of Gestalt therapy.

In Gestalt theory the therapist is not the central agent that makes change happen. Instead the therapist is an agent in the quest to create conditions that maximise the possibility for growth to occur when it has been arrested or limited and that further possibilities are needed for healing and growth. The therapy trusts orgnismic self-regulation more than therapist directed change. Rather than aiming to move the client to be different, the Gestalt therapist aims to meet the client as they are by using an increased awareness of the present, including figures that start to emerge ( thoughts, feelings, impulses and others) that the person might or might not allow to organise new behaviour.

Laura Perls stated that she was profoundly influenced by a personal meeting with Martin Buber and that the true essence of Gestalt Therapy was the relationship formed between therapist and client. . Flew (1990 states that “gestalt therapy acknowledges and recognises that from the first meeting-of the client and therapist both acknowledge and recognise each humanity. It is here that the most fertile ground work is established “.( Cited Philosophy for beginners 1990) With this present centred awareness, change is allowed to happen without the therapist aiming for a pre-set goal. The paradoxical theory of change lies at the heart of Gestalt therapy. The paradox is that the more one tries to be who one is not, the more one stays the same. ( Beisser 1970) When individuals identify with their whole self, when they acknowledge that whatever aspect arises in the “here and now”, then the conditions for wholeness and growth are created. 

When people do not identify with parts of who they are, inner conflict is created and the whole of the persons resources cannot go into needed interactions of both the self and with others. When people identify with their mode of restraint and identify their basic feelings, they disown that which is needed for motivating energy and direction. When people identify with their impulses and disown their modes of restraint, they disown what they need for safe, sane and healthy behaviour.

When people try not to change, the more they resist natural changes in self and in the environment then the more they will change in relating to the changing conditions . Thus psychological health is largely a matter of identifying with the whole self and using to a maximum the self for necessary tasks in the environment Thus this paradoxical theory of change is closely related to the fundamental principles of Gestalt therapy, Field theory, phenomenology and dialogical existentialism. 

Elements can also be seen as being influenced by Zen.(Crocker 2005) Unlike Freud who saw the dream as the Royal road to the unconscious Perls saw the dream as the Royal road to integration. Thus the dream fits clearly into field theory and becomes a new aspect to notice in the foreground of the client.

The Gestalt therapist focuses on the client becoming aware and increasingly able to be aware as needed to notice whatever forces are operating in the personal/environmental field.. To be aware of theses forces and to own them, is to own the choices made. The Gestalt therapist prefers to create the conditions for self awareness that will support natural change rather than become an agent of programmed behavioural change. In Gestalt therapy model of change, significant increase in awareness occurs by virtue of dialogical contact.

The therapist strives to establish contact as a whole person to the whole person of the client : as the client experiences him or her self. Out of this existential meeting, new awareness and growth occur. In turn, the growth in awareness supports further contact.

The paradoxical theory of change is based on the ability of human beings to self regulate in a manner that achieves the best possible adjustment in the context in which they live, Gestalt therapy is a holistic theory that believes that people are inherently self regulating, oriented towards growth, and cannot be validly understood apart from their environment Thus Gestalt therapy theoretically sees people as part if an organismic environmental field. This contrasts with a conventional view point that people exist separately but also have relations with one another.

The Gestalt therapy view is that this conventional isolated person is only an abstraction out of the field and pout of this organismic environmental field. People only exist as part of a relational field they are “of the field.” In may therapist the viewpoint exists that it can only be meaningful to consider individuals without considering their context. In other words it is only meaningful to view others are just added and dispensable considerations. In Gestalt therapy, people can only live and be meaningfully understood in relationship to their context. People exist, are born, grow, deteriorate and die as part of this organismic environmental field.

The whole field determines change or stasis.. The basic sense of self as a phenomenon of the field is constructed by the individual and the environment. The individual and the environment are co-creators of each other. Identity is formed and maintained, expanded and contracted by the whole field, by mutual construction of the individual and the rest of the organismic environmental field.

The sense of “I” is formed by contact with and differentiation from the rest of the organism environmental field by the processes of the contact boundaries. Self and others create boundaries that connect people to other people and also maintains autonomous identities. Martin Buber ( 1965, 1970) states that”I” can only exist as a relationship of I -Thou or I-It. Winnicott(1960) stated that there is no mother or child, there is only the mother child unit. In therapy the field is largely the therapist and the client as the agency delivering change.

Field theory is essential to understand the Gestalt theory of change it comprises the organismenvironmental field, the paradoxical theory of change and a holistic belief in organismic self regulation. Gestalt therapy field theory is a viewpoint on how the world is organised, how it works and how change happens.( Malcolm Parlett 2005) The following principles of field theory are an integral part of the theory of change.

Firstly change is a function of the whole context in which a person lives. Therefore the awareness work in therapy must attend to the whole context in which the client lives and the whole context of the therapy. Gestalt therapy is interested in all of the factors that determine the course of human change whoose outlook of change in therapy is a result of the whole client-therapist field. ( Perls et al 1951/1994; Jaconbs 1995a, 1995

Secondly change anywhere in the field affects all subsystems of the field. The elements of the field are interdependent and subordinate to the whole and are regulated by their function in the whole. Although individuals function separately in some sense they are always dependent on each other and upon the whole. Any change in the complex relational events that compose the organism-environmental field affects all other parts of the field. A change in one member of a family or group will effect very other member of the family or group. In the field of the therapist and client, a change in one will affect the other. (Yomtef 1993)

Thirdly, Gestalt therapy focuses on the subjective awareness of the client , the interaction in sessions, and also on an understanding of the whole context of forces that is the background of the everyday life of the client. Where the past experiences of an individual is still effecting the current field the operation of those processes, thoughts, affects and habits must also become part of the achieved understanding.

Fourthly change in Gestalt therapy must be seen as part of a temporal/spatial process. The forces of the field are in flux, movement and change and this change temporally and spatially are all part of one understanding. Process therefore refers to the dynamics of this change in time and space. Change is not just a change in structure, a spatial viewpoint nor is just a change in dynamics atemporal viewpoint.These forces are events that happen and move through time and space.This means that change happens as a function of the who;le field and of all of the forces that compose the field and that this happens over and through time and space. (Yomtef 1993),

Finally that all observation is from a particular, place, time and perspective.. This is a phenomenological viewpoint in other words that all reality is interpreted and that there is no objective reality. Nor indeed is any awareness subjective since all awareness does point intentionally something. The therapist neither has an objective nor an uninterpreted viewpoint. All events happen in a particular time and space and all observations are interpretations from a particular time ans space. I observe a particular client on a particular day in my room and this a particular day in the life of a client. 

On another day in another context the client may appear very different to me. One can observe this in a client who appears to be passive while working in relationship counselling session but very lively in an individual or group therapy. A holistic view or awareness of epoche takes into account interactions not only at the moment but as a view of the person over different contexts of time and of situation. Meaning is not objective, it is the experience in a figure in relation to the ground. For example the use of the word “love “ may mean different things to someone experiencing a mature healthy relationship to someone who has experienced manipulation or sexual abuse.

Awareness consequently characterised by contact, sensing, excitement and by Gestalt formation ( Perls et al 1951/1994) Contact refers to what we are in contact with. If I am sitting with someone and thinking of the things I must do , then I am in contact with my*to do” list and not the other person. One can be in touch with some thing without being aware of it. So in this example I might not realize that I am sitting with a person while being in contact with my list. Sometimes in therapy a person believes they are “aware” only when experiencing some aspects of awareness. Frequently clients will know about something but do not fully feel it, sense it or be in contact with it and know what they do not allow to be emerge as figure in the foreground of the field.. This is what Merleau-Ponty (1960) called “aware agency” and which lies at the heart of Gestalt therapy.

A secondary association that could be called sensing refers to how one is in touch by receptors such as hearing or by proprioception, or close sensing such as touching, smelling and tasting or by intuition. Sensory data could be used to orient and organise our iprocesses ( urges, provocations, desires, impulses appetites, needs etc) and our experience of the field or the environmental influences.

Finally In Gestalt therapy Excitement refers to emotional and physiological excitation. I may be physically touched by someone9 feeling the touch in or on my body) and I may be stimulated. 

This emotional quality of the excitement arousal might be joy, pleasure, disgust, fear and so forth. This may also allow an awareness of transference or counter transference to be imported from Psychoanalytic theory directly into the field and foreground either showing the need for epoche or indeed noticing the event in the here and now of the unit of the client and the therapist.

In conclusion I would like to examine the link between process in the field with change in therapeutic practice. A change in treatment is determined by the therapist client field as a whole.. 

When therapy flows well, the client, therapist and their systems together are all responsible. Importantly when there is a disruption, failure and so forth this is also caused by the client, therapist and their system together. Secondly perception is relative and not absolute. A field is always seen from some vantage point and is neither objective or universally true. In therapy there are at least two view points that need to be taken into account and respected. The “truth” of the therapist is only one of many possible perspectives.-it is not privileged. Thirdly A field viewpoint always involves space and time Any valid observations must specify the time and the location and the developments over time and space.. 

A client may come in my room with intense emotions spilling over and creating chaos. Any generalisations must take into account that this is happening in this particular space in my office and at this particular time. The client may not show such powerful emotions in any other location. The quality of the emotions might not be an ongoing quality but may occur because of contemporaneous events. Or perhaps this moment may be atypical one for this particular client.

Finally field thinking is holistic Gestalt therapists take into accounts and work with the body, the environment, contemporary systems, residues of childhood systems and so forth. Consequently Gestalt therapists can use a wide range of interventions and various ways to bring the field forces into awareness and allows allow holistic and health to stem from the pradoxical theory of change.

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