Gestalt therapy is a direction of psychoanalysis, successfully applied in practice to help people with mental problems. The author of this method is Frederick Perls, a German psychiatrist. The main slogan of Gestalt therapy is “to live here and now”, and all the features of theory and technology are aimed at ensuring that a person gets rid of the influence of the past, fantasies about the future, people and society around him and solves his problems, being aware of his feelings.
What is gestalt therapy
Gestalt therapy is one of the areas of psychiatric therapy, the principles of which were developed by the psychiatrist, psychoanalyst Frederick Perls. The main rule of this trend is “live here and now”. Gestalt therapy works only with presently existing experiences and problems; during a psychotherapy session, psychologists encourage clients not to leave the stream of conscious emotions.
Perls and other followers of this theory of psychoanalysis believed that a person loses the ability to be aware of his feelings, to analyze them, he turns to the past or aims at the future, which does not solve his problems. He is looking for a way out in relationships with other people, but does not achieve inner harmony.
The main feature of Gestalt therapy is that this area of psychology is purely practical, therapists use certain techniques and techniques to help people, develop new methods of treatment and counseling, study the problems of working with one person or several patients.
The followers of this method are not fond of theorizing, but test their conjectures in practice, and as practice shows, Gestalt therapy is often successful.
Gestalt therapy in practice
One of the fundamental concepts of Gestalt therapy is “contact boundary”. It is the relationship between the patient and the environment, such as another person. Therapists distinguish several types of boundaries: bodily, boundaries of values, emotions, trust and the familiar. When a person does not distinguish these boundaries poorly and begins to adapt to the requirements of society, thus merging with the environment, a mental problem arises. The same happens when a patient, on the contrary, imposes his own rules on others, invades someone else's territory and again violates boundaries - one of the manifestations of such behavior is a crime.
Therefore, during sessions of gestalt therapy, psychologists work to ensure that a person draws the line between himself and the world around him, becomes isolated and realizes his feelings and needs.
Another important term is "unfinished gestalt", any business in the past that has not been completed and prevents a person from living "here and now."
Gestalt therapists show developed imagination when creating new techniques in this direction. There are two types of therapy methods: dialogue techniques and projective. The first are realized when the client interacts with a psychologist, the second is the work of a person with his experiences, imagination, dreams. The most famous are the techniques for working with chairs; there are already several varieties of such exercises.
The hot chair technique is used in a group: one person sits on a chair in the center of the circle and talks about their problems to the therapist, and the rest observe, and then talk about their experiences in connection with what they heard. An empty chair is a method that allows the client to talk to someone with whom it is impossible to establish contact, such as a deceased relative, in order to free themselves from the past and start living “here and now”.
