Influences on Gestalt

These are by no means all of the influences on Gestalt. Gestalt has to be viewed as the product of the "Zeitgeist" of a large chunk of the Twentieth Century; and many other movements and schools of thought had an impact on Gestalt.

PSYCHOANALYSIS – Gestalt was created as a violent reaction to the shortcomings of psychoanalysis. Shortcomings both as therapeutic method and due to the rigidity of the psychoanalytic establishment in response to any new ideas not issuing from Freud. Although the two approach’s working methods diverge greatly, many of Freud’s psychological theories underlie Gestalt. Especially his Personality Theory, the notion of neurotic resistances hindering change, and the Tension Reduction Model. In simple terms, this model asserts that human behavior is an effort to reduce tension by getting needs met. From this model and the figure/ground concepts of Gestalt Psychology was derived the Gestalt Cycle – arguably the central theoretical concept of Gestalt Therapy.

HOLISM – from the holistic writings of Jan Smuts, Gestalt incorporated the concepts of homeostasis and organismic self-regulation. Needs disturb the homeostasis (natural balance) of a person. A healthy person when aware of a need has the emotional and intellectual capabilities to act to satisfy the need and return to balance. An unhealthy person is often unable to act to regain homeostasis. However, the body (organism) has an automatic self-regulating mechanism to ensure a return to homeostasis.

For example, where displays of grieving are frowned upon, the body might channel repressed emotion into a psychosomatic illness. In this way, attention is directed away from the grief (it has been regulated back to homeostasis since it is no longer the most important concern) and transferred onto concern about the illness a concern the society will allow the person to take action to deal with.

GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY – homeostasis is disrupted when a need arises. Gestalt draws from Gestalt Psychology to provide the language to describe this process of needs arising or “figure/ground” (gestalt) formation. The “figure” is whatever is the focus of attention for an individual within the entire “field.” The field encompasses other people, the environment and the individual as a whole (mind, body and feelings). The “ground” is everything else in the field except the figure. Whatever is figural for a person shapes his or her needs. With the satisfaction of the need, the figure merges back into the ground to make way for the next figure to emerge and so on and so forth cycling on through life.

PSYCHODRAMA – Gestalt makes use of Jacob Moreno’s ideas about the transformative power of playacting. In Gestalt, acting enables a person to bring an issue into the present and experience it under the supervision of the therapist so that gaining new awareness becomes possible. Gestalt places great store in the value of Moreno’s approach and encourages clients to “act out rather than talk about” issues and even to overact to heighten awareness. Psychodrama was particularly influential on the Gestalt approach to dreams and on the development of Hot Seat in which the client "acts out" to gain experiential insights or “aha’s” as Moreno termed them.

MARTIN BUBER – Buber gave Gestalt the notion of “I and Thou, here and now,” which is basically the quick recipe for contact. I and Thou, here and now means two human beings bringing their whole personality to the point of contact between them, with neither thinking they are able to speak for the other. It is any interaction that is fully human and fully alive.

EXISTENTIALISM – The existentialist notion that human beings are totally free and responsible for their own actions underlies the entire Gestalt approach. The purpose of all Gestalt is to allow the client to be fully aware of his or her choices of how to live moment by moment. People in Western societies lost touch with the ability to be fully aware by becoming “stuck in their heads”: exalting intellectual reason and rejecting sensory experience and feelings. Hence the existentialist imperative employed by Fritz Perls to, “lose your mind and come to your senses.”

Awareness is the means by which this is achieved in Gestalt and allows the individual to make choices of how he or she wishes to live instead of accepting the norms of society. Gestalt distinguishes itself from other therapies, by working to help clients get out of their heads and the destructive cycle of rumination and come alive by being more in touch with feelings.

WILHELM REICH – Reich’s early work greatly influenced the development of bodywork in Gestalt, partly as a result of Fritz Perls having been psychoanalyzed by Reich. Unlike orthodox psychoanalysts who sat behind their clients laid out on the couch, the Gestalt Therapist sits facing the client allowing them to incorporate body language with the talk therapy. From this position it is possible to observe the whole person – posture, gesture, musculature and movement as well as listening to what he or she says. This allows the Gestalt Therapist to work with obvious contradictions between what is said verbally and the body language. Also, it allows the therapist to read the client in terms of Reich’s concept of body armoring. That is, to see where emotion has been inhibited or locked in the body because it was deemed socially unacceptable to express it.

PHENOMENOLOGY – provides the theoretical basis for Gestalt turning away from Freud’s approach of the endless, and therapeutically limited, search for the reason why a person behaves the way her or she does. It was the psychoanalyst’s “expert” analysis that provided the client with the answer to the question of why. Freud believed this would have a cathartic effect on the person that could release them from neurosis.

Gestalt Therapy does not ask why but how a person is. It concerns itself only with what is – the obvious. The therapist applies acute and incisive observation of the client to see how the person presents him or herself and uses these observations in the work so that the client can make a choice whether or not to continue being the way they are. To Gestalt Therapists why the client is the way they are is of no consequence to helping him or her choose healthy behavior rather than neurotic.

The Gestalt Therapist will not analyze or speak for the client as in psychoanalysis because it uses the phenomenological method. For a Gestalt therapist, all that is available to work with are “phenomena” (what is); what is going on inside the client and what caused the client to become like this cannot be known.