Office in Walnut Creek, California CA
Jay Slupesky, M.A., MFT
Gestalt thinking stresses the importance of our relationship to the environmental field. How we experience our environment in the here and now is of primary importance; our past, our influences, and our motivations are secondary. We can devote our attention to only one figure from the field at a time, but it is vital that we experience that figure with full awareness, for if we fail to completely express our feelings in the present, the unexpressed emotions recede into the background as unfinished business, exerting a harmful influence and causing self-defeating behavior. Successful Gestalt therapy involves a dialogue between therapist and client and may include unconventional experiments and offbeat group techniques. The goal of therapy is to bring the unfinished business back to present awareness and then to properly deal with it. Once the client resolves unfinished business and discards phoniness and pretenses, he or she reaches an explosive level of happiness and fulfillment.
In the Gestalt view an individual cannot be understood in isolation. Rather, since people are continually engaged with their environment, they are fully comprehendible only when viewed in context (Corey, 2001). An individual is seen as part of an ever-changing field which includes not only one's immediate surroundings but also his or her culture, beliefs, and past experiences. All parts of the field overlay and affect one other, and since we influence our field, we have the power to create our own reality. At any particular moment an individual's attention is devoted to exactly one primary figure from the field; the ignored and undifferentiated remainder of the field is called the background. The primary figure holds the focus for some variable period of time, after which is recedes into the background and is replaced by a new figure (Melnick, 1997).
The present moment, the now, is vitally important in Gestalt Therapy, for what a person feels and perceives in the now is far more significant than explanations and interpretations of the past (Yontef, 1993). Similarly, how someone behaves in the present is of eminently more import than is understanding why he or she behaves that way. As a phenomenological theory, Gestaltian thinking teaches that we only know what we experience. To learn or to solve a problem we must discover something in our field, something waiting to be recognized and which can help us. The whole of the human experience is greater than the sum of its parts, and we are meant to experience this wholeness rather than encountering its components in a piecemeal fashion. We even have a tendency to arbitrarily force structure upon randomness by creating order where none is meant to exist.
According to the Gestalt model, dysfunction occurs when the natural flow of the figure/background process is disrupted. Unfinished business is the result of figures receding into the background before they are completely experienced and dealt with in the now. Painful feelings, never fully and properly expressed, lurk in the background and grow stronger as time passes. Eventually they grow powerful enough to hinder an individual's present moments, and self-defeating behavior results. This condition persists until the person finally faces and deals with the unfinished business (Corey, 2001).
There are five major defenses, or resistances, to fully experiencing figures in the now. Introjection is the process by which outside material is accepted uncritically and without discrimination. Projection is the denial of something that is truly of the self; it is then reattributed to something outside. Retroflection is the act of doing to oneself what one wishes to do to someone else. Deflection is the avoidance of contact through means such as vagueness and verbosity, and confluence is the blending of oneself into the background, for example, by "playing it safe" or by pleasing people. These five resistances are studied, addressed, and challenged in Gestalt therapy.
A well person has the capacity to organize his or her field into well-defined obligations which can be dealt with appropriately. He or she revels in the now, living it fully, making choices, freely experiencing and expressing emotion, and leaving behind no unfinished business. Facades and charades are discarded, freeing a large amount of pent-up energy, and the explosive layer of personality is reached. Once this ultimate level of self-awareness is fully cultivated, happiness, fulfillment, and wholeness are realized.
The primary goal of Gestalt therapy is awareness. The therapist helps the client to be cognizant of every aspect of the present moment, every sensation and emotion, every facet of the environment, and to fully experience and respond to every situation in the now, not leaving behind any new unfinished business. Conflicts and dysfunctions caused by preexisting unfinished business are dealt with by bringing these incomplete Gestalts into the present and confronting them in the here and now. Once the unexpressed feelings are surfaced, the unfinished business is resolved (Yontef, 1993)
The Gestaltian therapist engages in a dialogue with his or her client, proposing both experiments for the client to perform and therapeutic techniques to be used as interventions. Experiments are creative and spontaneous, with a particular outcome neither expected nor encouraged. For example, a client may be asked to engage in a seemingly odd activity such as "becoming" an object from a dream. Experiments force the client to face emotions in the present. Techniques are more suitable to group work and involve activities such as role-playing and face-to-face encounters between group members. Again, the goal is to elicit emotions and thereby raze the barriers preventing resolution of unfinished business.
Clearly, Gestalt therapy makes no attempt to directly modify behavior or to analyze the past. Rather, it is an exploratory process. The emphasis is on the integration of all aspects of the personality, whether positive or negative, into a unified whole, and an amplification of the individual's ability to make choices and to assume responsibility for those choices. These are essential to restoring one's natural tendency toward happiness and fulfillment (Corey, 2001).
2004 Oct 21