Presented by

Legesse Sana Dana

• The word “gestalt” is a German word
that roughly means “the whole is more
than the sum of the parts”., a
configuration or patterns of elements
so unified as a whole that it cannot be
described merely as a sum of its parts.
• The term Gestalt was coined by the
philosopher Christian von Ehrenfels in
1890, to denote experiences that
require more than the basic sensory
capacities to comprehend.
 According to the school,
understanding of psychological
phenomena such as perceptual
illusions could not be derived by
merely isolating the elementary parts
for analysis, because human
perception may organize sensory
stimuli in any number of ways, making
the whole different from the sum of
the parts.
 Gestalt psychologists suggest that the
events in the brain bear a structural
correspondence to psychological
events; indeed, it has been shown that
steady electric currents in the brain
correspond to structured perceptual
events. The Gestalt school has made
substantial contributions to the study
of learning, recall, and the nature of
associations, as well as important
contributions to personality and social
psychology.
• Gestalists believe that human beings work
for wholeness and completeness in their
lives. Each person has a self-actualizing
tendency that emerges through the
beginning of self-awareness and personal
interaction with the environment.
• Self-actualization is centered in the present;
it “is the process of being what one is and
not a process of striving to become.”
(Kempler, 1973,P.262).
• The Gestalt view of human nature places
trust in the inner wisdom of people, much
as person-centered counseling does.
• Each person seeks to live interactively and
productively, striving to coordinate the various
parts of the person into a healthy, unified whole.
From a Gestalt perspective, persons are more
than a sum of their parts (Perls, 1969).
• The Gestalt view that each person is able to
change and become responsible (Hatcher &
Himelsteint, 1997). Thus, individuals are actors
in the events around them, not just reactors to
events.
• Overall, the Gestalt point of view is existential,
experiential, and phenomenological: the now is
what matters. People discover different aspects
of themselves through experience rather than
talk, and individuals’ own assessment and
interpretation of their lives at any given moment
are what matter most.
• Fritz Perls
• Born in 1893 into a Jewish Berlin family
• Medic in WWI for Germany, MD in 1920
• Trained as a psychoanalyst
• 1933, fled Germany to Holland & S. Africa
• 1946, went to America
Other contributors:
 Laura Perls, Fritz’s wife, and
Paul Goodman helped refine
and enlarge the original ideas.
 Jeon Fagan and Irma Lee
Shepherd (1970), developed the
model still further.
 Gestalt psychologists find it is important to
think of problems as a whole. Max Wertheimer
considered thinking to happen in two ways:
productive and reproductive.
 Productive thinking- is solving a problem with
insight.
 This is a quick insightful unplanned response to
situations and environmental interaction.
 Reproductive thinking-is solving a problem with
previous experiences and what is already
known. (1945/1959).
 This is a very common thinking. For example,
when a person is given several segments of
information, he/she deliberately examines the
relationships among its parts, analyzes their
purpose, concept, and totality, he/she reaches
the "aha!" moment, using what is already
known.
Gestalt therapy is associated with Gestalt
Psychology, a school of thought that stresses
the perception of completeness and
wholeness. In fact, the term gestalt literally
translated means “whole figure.” Gestalt
therapy arose as a reaction to the reductionist
emphasis in other schools of counseling and
psychotherapy, such as psychoanalysis and
behaviorism, which tried to break down the
personality or client behaviors into
explainable parts. In contrast, Gestalt theory
emphasizes how people function in their
totality.
• Wholeness & completeness
• Trust the inner wisdom of people
• Live integratively & productively
• People are able to change and become
responsible
• Persons are more than the sum of their parts
• Individuals are actors, not reactors
• The now is what matters
• Discovery of self occurs thru experience rather
than talk due to an overdependence on
intellectual experience
• Unfinished business – earlier thoughts, feelings
& reactions that still affect personal functioning
& interfere w/present
• No unconscious just a lack of awareness
• The more aware = more healthy
• Body signs = awareness of a need to change
behaviors
• Needs are brought to the fore and then
placed in the background when a new need
will come to the fore
• Using “I” in place of “it”, especially when
talking about one’s body
• Focus on how and what rather than why
• Convert questions into statements
• Do not diagnose
 Unexpressed feelings
 These incomplete directions do seek
completion: preoccupation,
compulsive behavior, wariness,
oppressive energy, and self-defeating
behavior, and shows in some blockage
in the body
 Impasse- stuck point
 Introjection- uncritically accepting
others’ beliefs and standards without
assimilating them to make them
congruent with who we are. Passive
incorporation.
 Projection- disowning certain aspects
of ourselves by assigning them to the
environment. Seeing in others the
qualities we refuse to acknowledge
ourselves.
 Retroflection- turning back to
ourselves what we would like to do
someone else or doing to ourselves
what we would like someone else to
do to us.
 Deflection- process of distraction so
that it is difficult to maintain a
sustained sense of contact. Overuse
of humor, abstract generalization, and
questions rather than statements.
 Confluence- blurring of the
differentiation between self and the
environment. High need to be
accepted and liked. Playing safe.

 In using introjection,projection,
retroflection, deflection, and
confluence, one lose contact with the
environment, and lose boundary.
 Phony layer – pretending to be something
that one is not, often involving game playing
and fantasy.
 Phobic layer – an attempt to avoid
recognizing aspects of one self that an
individual would prefer to deny.
 Impasse layer – no sense of direction and
wonder how they are going to make it in the
environment and drift into the sea of
hopelessness.
 Implosive layer – Feel vulnerable to feelings
that they have defensively built.
 Explosive layer – have intense feelings of joy,
sorrow or pain. Become authentic with
themselves and others.
• Counselors create an atmosphere that
encourages clients to explore growth
• Therefore, counselors are personally
involved w/clients & are honest
• Counselors are exciting, energetic and
fully human
• Always use the present tense
• Address all conversations directly
• Help clients resolve unfinished business
• Here & now, immediacy of experience
• Action, experience feelings & behaviors
• Now = experience = awareness = reality
• Past is no more, future does not exist. Only
the now exists
• Attend to both nonverbal and verbal
expression.
• Recognize that life presents choices
• Help clients become more integrated &
mature
• Bring together emotion, cognition, and
behavior
• Exercises are ready made techniques
• Experiments are made on the spot
• Dream work – become parts of the
dream, discover what is missing in the
dream
• Empty chair
• Confrontation – point out incongruities
• Asking what & how

-End-
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology
www.answers.com/topic/gestalt-psychology