Gestalt therapy: theory and practice. Basic principles, methods and techniques of Gestalt therapy Gestalt therapy f Perlza briefly

The unfamiliar word “Gestalt” still hurts the ears of many, although, if you look at it, Gestalt therapy is not such a stranger. Many concepts and techniques developed by it over the 50 years of its existence have literally become “folk”, since in one way or another they are included in various areas of modern psychotherapy. This is the here and now principle, borrowed from Eastern philosophy; a holistic approach that considers man and the world as a holistic phenomenon. This is the principle of self-regulation and interchange with the environment and a paradoxical theory of change: they occur when a person becomes who he is, and does not try to be who he is not. This is, finally, the “empty chair” technique, when you express your complaints not to a real, but to an imaginary interlocutor - a boss, a friend, your own laziness.

Gestalt therapy is the most universal direction of psychotherapy, providing the basis for any work with the inner world - from combating childhood fears to coaching top officials. Gestalt therapy perceives a person as a holistic phenomenon, in which simultaneously and constantly there is conscious and unconscious, body and mind, love and hate, past and plans for the future. And all this is only here and now, since the past no longer exists and the future has not yet arrived. Man is designed in such a way that he cannot exist in isolation, as a “thing in itself.” The outside world is by no means hostile to us (as psychoanalysis claimed); on the contrary, it is the environment that nourishes us and in which our life is the only possible one. Only in contact with the outside world can we take what we lack and give what fills us. When this mutual exchange is disrupted, we freeze and life becomes like an abandoned circus arena, where the lights have long gone out, the spectators have left, and we habitually walk and walk in circles.

The goal of Gestalt therapy is not even to understand why we walk in this circle, but to restore freedom in our relationships with the world: we are free to leave and return, run in circles or sleep in the open air.

Granddaughter for grandmother

Gestalt therapy is called the granddaughter of psychoanalysis. Its founder, the Austrian psychiatrist Frederick Perls, was a Freudian at the beginning of his professional career, but, like any good student, he went further than his teacher, combining Western psychotherapeutic schools with the ideas of Eastern philosophy. For the creation of a new direction (as well as for Perls’s personal life), his acquaintance with Laura, a doctor of Gestalt psychology, who later became his wife, played an important role. The word gestalt (German) itself does not have an exact translation. Approximately, it denotes a complete image, a complete structure. At the beginning of the 20th century, a school of experimental psychology emerged, called “Gestalt psychology.” Its essence is that we perceive the world as a collection of integral images and phenomena (gestalts). Narmiper, bkuvy in solva can follow in any place - we still understand the meaning. If we see something unfamiliar, the brain first quickly tries to find what it looks like and adapt new information to it. And only if this fails, the orienting reflex is activated: “What is it?”

The postulates of the new direction were strongly influenced by the “field” theory developed by Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin. Essentially, this discovery showed: the world has everything we need, but we see only what we want to see, what is important to us at this moment in our lives, and the rest becomes an unnoticeable background, rushing by, like the landscape outside a car window. When we are cold, we dream of warmth and comfort; when we are looking for boots, we look at everyone’s feet. When we are in love, all other men cease to exist for us.

Another theory - “unfinished actions” - has experimentally found that unfinished tasks are best remembered. Until the work is done, we are not free. She holds us like an invisible leash, not allowing us to leave. We all know very well how this happens, because at least once everyone has wandered around the table with an unfinished coursework, no longer able to write it, but also unable to do anything else.

In Perls's life there was a series of meetings that influenced the emergence of the theory of Gestalt therapy. For some time he worked as an assistant to the doctor Kurt Goldstein, who practiced a holistic approach to a person, not considering it possible to divide him into organs, parts or functions. Thanks to Wilhelm Reich, who introduced the bodily dimension into psychotherapeutic work, Gestalt therapy became the first direction to consider bodily manifestations not as separately existing symptoms requiring treatment, but as one of the ways of experiencing internal, emotional conflicts. Perls's views were also strongly influenced by the ideas of existentialism of the 20s and 30s.

And, finally, the essence and philosophy of Gestalt therapy, its view of the world as a process, and of man as a traveler, its love of paradoxes, the desire for truth hidden in the depths of everyone - all this surprisingly resonates with the ideas of Buddhism and Taoism.

mission Possible

Perls based his theory on the idea of balance and self-regulation, that is, in essence, the wisdom of nature. If nothing interferes with a person, he will inevitably be happy and contented - like a tree growing in favorable conditions, capable of taking everything it needs for its own growth. We are children of this world, and it contains everything we need to be happy.

Perls created a beautiful theory about the contact cycle environment. What this is can be easily understood using a simple example of your lunch. How does it all begin? At first you feel hungry. From this feeling a desire is born - to satisfy hunger. Then you correlate your desire with the surrounding reality and begin to look for ways to realize it. And finally, the moment comes to meet the object of your need. If everything went as it should, you are satisfied with the process and the result, you are full and almost happy. The cycle is complete.

Included in this big contact cycle are many small ones: perhaps you had to finish or reschedule something to go to lunch, or you went to lunch with one of your colleagues. You had to get dressed to go out, and then choose from a variety of dishes what you wanted (and could afford) right now. Likewise, the lunch itself could be included in a larger gestalt called "Business Meeting" (or "Romantic Date" or "See You at Last"). And this gestalt is even greater (“Job Search”, “Career Advancement”, “Crazy Romance”, “Creating a Family”). So our whole life (and the life of all humanity) is like a nesting doll, made up of different gestalts: from crossing the street to the construction of the Great Wall of China, from a minute conversation with an acquaintance on the street to fifty years of family life.

The reasons for our dissatisfaction in life lie in the fact that some cycles of contact are interrupted somewhere, gestalts remain incomplete. And at the same time, on the one hand, we are busy (until the work is done, we are not free), and on the other hand, we are hungry, since satisfaction is possible only when the job is done (lunch is eaten, the wedding took place, life is good).

And here is one of the key points of Gestalt therapy. Perls did not focus his attention on how external world interferes with us, but on how we ourselves do not allow ourselves to be happy. Because (remember field theory) there is everything in this world, but for us there is only what we ourselves select from the background. And we can highlight either our powerlessness in the face of evil circumstances that did not allow us to dine, or the opportunity to somehow change them. Those who want, look for ways, and those who don’t want, look for reasons. And in fact, people differ from each other not so much in what circumstances they were given, but in how they react to them. Obviously, an employee who is inclined to feel powerless in front of a tyrant boss is much more likely to remain hungry, because he stops himself much more effectively than his boss.

The goal of therapy is to find a place and a way to interrupt contact, find out how and why a person stops himself, and restore the normal cycle of events in nature.

Stereo effect

Gestalt therapy is sometimes called contact therapy. This is its uniqueness. Until now, this is the only practice in which the therapist works “by himself,” in contrast to classical psychoanalysis, where the most neutral position (“blank slate”) is maintained. During a session, the Gestalt therapist has the right to his own feelings and desires and, aware of them, presents them to the client if the process requires it. People turn to a therapist when they want to change something - in themselves or in their lives. But he refuses the role of a person who “knows how to do it”, does not give directive instructions or interpretations, as in psychoanalysis, and becomes one who facilitates the client’s meeting with his essence. The therapist himself embodies that piece of the world with which the client is trying to build a familiar (and ineffective) relationship. The client, communicating with the therapist, seeks to transfer onto him his stereotypes about people, about how they “should” behave and how they “usually” react to him, and encounters a spontaneous reaction from the therapist who does not consider it necessary to adapt to a changing world the one with whom you are in contact. Very often this reaction does not fit into the client’s “script” and forces the latter to take a decisive step beyond the usual barrier of his expectations, ideas, fears or resentments. He begins to explore his reactions to an unusual situation - right here and now - and his new possibilities or limitations. And in the end it comes to the conclusion that, by building relationships, everyone can remain themselves and at the same time maintain intimate contact with the other. He gains or restores the lost freedom to get out of the script, out of the usual circle. He himself gains the experience of a new, different interaction. Then he can integrate this experience into his life.

The goal of such therapy is to return a person to himself, to restore freedom to deal with his life. The client is not a passive object of analysis, but an equal creator and participant in the therapeutic process. After all, only he himself knows where his magic door and the golden key to it are. Even if he forgot or doesn’t want to look in the right direction, he knows.

Responsible for everything

There are several “whales” on which the earth called “Gestalt therapy” rests.

Awareness– sensory experience, experiencing oneself in contact. This is one of those moments when I know “in my gut” who I am, what I am like and what is happening to me. This is experienced as insight, and at some point in life the awareness becomes continuous.

Awareness inevitably entails responsibility, but not as guilt, but as authorship: this is not happening to me, this is how I live. It’s not my head that hurts, but I feel pain and compression in my head, I’m not being manipulated, but I agree to be the object of manipulation. At first, accepting responsibility causes resistance because it deprives you of the enormous benefits of psychological games and shows the “wrong side” of human exploits and suffering. But if we find the courage to face our “shadow”, we will be rewarded - we begin to understand that we have power over our own lives and over our relationships with other people. After all, if I do it, then I can redo it! We develop our possessions and sooner or later reach their borders.

So, after experiencing the euphoria of power, we encounter the uncontrollable - with time and losses, with love and sadness, with our own strength and weakness, with the decisions and actions of other people. We humble ourselves and accept not only this world, but also ourselves in it, after which the therapy ends and life continues.

The principle of reality. It is easy to explain, but difficult to accept. There is a certain reality (given to us in sensations), but there is also our opinion about it, our interpretation of what is happening. These reactions are much more varied than the facts, and they often turn out to be so much stronger than sensations that we take a long time and seriously solve the problem: is the king naked or am I stupid?

Gestalt therapy is sometimes called “therapy of the obvious.” The therapist does not rely on the client’s thoughts or his own generalizations, but on what he sees and hears. He avoids judgment and interpretation, but asks the questions “what?” And How?". Practice has shown that it is enough to focus on the process (what is happening and how it is happening), and not on the content (what is being discussed), for a person to exclaim that same “aha!” A common reaction to meeting reality is resistance, because a person is deprived of illusions and rose-colored glasses. “Yes, it was true. But it’s some kind of treacherous truth,” admitted one of the group members. In addition, reality sometimes forces a person to admit that the king is really naked, and then it will no longer be possible to live as before. And the newness is scary.

Here and now. The future does not exist yet, the past has already happened, we live in the present. Only here and now am I writing this text, and you read it, or remember what happened, or make plans for the future. Only here and now is change possible.

This principle does not deny our past at all. The client’s experience, the field of his life, does not disappear anywhere and determines his behavior at every moment, including during the session. And yet, here and now he is talking to a therapist - and why about this? What is here and now that could be useful (at the moment)?

Dialogue in Gestalt therapy it is a meeting of two worlds: client and therapist, person and person. When the worlds come into contact, in this contact it is possible to explore the border that exists between “me” and “not-me”. The client (sometimes for the first time!) experiences the experiences that arise in the process of interacting with someone who is “not me” while simultaneously maintaining his own identity. These are those I–You relationships in which there is I with my feelings, You with my feelings and that living, unique thing that happens between them (happens for the first time, this very minute and will never happen again).

This is a unique experience because the therapist is a person outside the client's life who does not need anything from him, and can truly allow the client to be himself and experience what he is experiencing without trying to influence his feelings.

Gestalt therapy is beyond morality and politics. Its only task is to make the client’s inner world accessible to him, to return the person to himself. She has no educational goals. She doesn’t care at all whether a person grows cabbage or rules a kingdom - it is important that everyone lives their own life, minds their own business and loves with their own love.

Walking together

In classical psychoanalysis and in everyday consciousness, individuality and society are opposed to each other. In everyday life, we often have the idea (and feeling) that another person limits our freedom, since it ends where our neighbor’s nose begins. Then the most logical conclusion seems to be that the fewer people there are around and the further we are from them, the more free we are, the easier it is to be ourselves. That is, psychologically speaking, loneliness is necessary for deep individualization. In most philosophical practices, the process of individualization involves immersion in oneself and withdrawal from the world.

Perhaps at some stage this is really necessary. But Gestalt therapy says: in order to come to yourself, you need to come to others. Go to another person - and there you will find your essence. Go into the world - and there you will find yourself.

But why does contact with the world and another person allow individualization to occur? Alone with ourselves, we can think whatever we want about ourselves. But we will never know if this is true until we interact with the world. A person may think that he can easily lift a car until he tries - in fact, this ability does not exist, but only fantasies about it. This is the false self, the false uniqueness. True uniqueness involves real action in the real world.

What happens to our uniqueness when it meets the uniqueness of another? Only when we come into contact with the world (another person) does our uniqueness take on a practical character. Two realities collide, giving birth to a third. In this way, the socialization of individuality occurs: a person’s originality is the uniqueness of his functions, and this determines his value to others. Individuality brought to the boundary of contact turns into a function for others. For example: “I’m authoritarian” - Well, then lead.” “I am a poet” - “And make your soul sing.”

Thus, we go beyond the definition of society as restraining frameworks and regulations; they simply cease to play a determining role. What becomes significant is what in a person is of value to others. And what in others is of value to this person. These are our experiences, experiences and ideas, our unique characteristics or simply abilities that others do not have. This determines our need for each other and determines our relationships.

Very sharp eye

Remember the prayer attributed to the Optina elders: “Lord, give me the strength to change what I cannot bear! Lord, give me patience to endure what I cannot change! And, Lord, give me wisdom to distinguish the first from the second!” I have the impression that Gestalt therapy is gradually teaching me this wisdom. She has made my life interesting because it helps me to be very selective, to quickly abandon what does not suit me, to search and find what I need. And everything that happens in my life: people, business, hobbies, books - this is what I like, is interesting and needs.

Gestalt therapy also gave me peace. I can trust the river that is my life. She lets me know when and where I need to be alert, and when and where I can drop the oars and just surrender to the flow and the sun.

The method, created by the American psychologist F. Perls under the influence of the ideas of Gestalt psychology, existentialism, and psychoanalysis, has gained great practical popularity. F. Perls transferred the patterns of figure formation, established in Gestalt psychology in the field of perception, to the field of motivation of human behavior. He viewed the emergence and satisfaction of needs as the rhythm of the formation and completion of gestalts. The functioning of the motivational sphere is carried out (according to Perls) according to the principle of self-regulation of the body.

A person is in balance with himself and the world around him. Being yourself, realizing your “I”, realizing your needs and inclinations is the path to a harmonious healthy personality. A person who chronically prevents the satisfaction of his own needs, refuses to realize his “I”, and over time begins to follow values imposed from the outside. And this leads to disruption of the body’s self-regulation process.

According to Gestalt therapy, the body is viewed as a whole, and any aspect of behavior can be a manifestation of a person’s holistic existence. Man is part of a wider field: the organism is the environment. In a healthy person, the boundary with the environment is mobile: the emergence of a certain need requires “contact” with the environment and forms a gestalt, satisfaction of the need completes the gestalt and requires a “departure” from the environment. In a neurotic personality, the processes of “contact” and “care” are highly distorted and do not provide adequate satisfaction of needs.

F. Perls considered personal growth as a process of expanding zones of self-awareness, which promotes self-regulation and coordinates the balance between the inner world and the environment. He highlighted three zones of awareness:

Internal - phenomena and processes occurring in our body.
External - external events that are reflected by consciousness.
Middle - fantasies, beliefs, relationships.

With neurosis, the predominant tendency is to concentrate on the middle zone due to the exclusion of the first two from consciousness. Such an excessive tendency to fantasize and interpret disrupts the natural rhythm of the process of consciousness, forces the client to focus on the past and future to the detriment of the present, since the gestalt (need satisfaction) can only be completed at the moment “here and now.”

According to F. Perls, mental disorders in people are caused by the fact that their personality does not form a single whole, i.e. Gestalt. For most clients, stress results from unconscious conflicts that prevent them from getting in touch with some of their own feelings and thoughts.

Gestalt therapy seeks to encourage a person to experience his own fantasies, become aware of his own emotions, control the intonation of his voice, the movements of his hands and eyes, and understand previously ignored physical sensations so that he can again restore the connection between all aspects of his personality and, as a result, achieve a full awareness of himself. "I". All disorders are based on limitations in the individual’s ability to maintain optimal balance with the environment and a violation of the process of self-regulation.

In Gestalt theory there are five mechanisms for disrupting the self-regulation process:

introjection;
projection;
retroflexion;
deflexion;
conflict.

At introjections a person assimilates feelings, views, beliefs, assessments, norms, patterns of behavior of other people, which, conflicting with his own experience, are not assimilated by his personality. This unassimilated experience - introject - is a part of his personality that is alien to a person. The earliest introjects are parental teachings, which are absorbed by the child without critical reflection. Over time, it becomes difficult to distinguish between introjects and one's own beliefs. "He thinks what others want him to think."

Projection- the direct opposite of introjection. In projection, a person alienates his inherent qualities because they do not correspond to his “I-concept”. The holes formed as a result of projection are filled with introjects. "He does to others what he accuses them of doing."

Retroflexion- turning towards oneself - is observed in cases where any needs cannot be satisfied due to their blocking by the social environment, and then the energy intended for manipulation in the external environment is directed towards oneself. These unmet needs or unfinished gestalts are often aggressive feelings. "He does to himself what he would like to do to others." Retroflexion manifests itself in muscle tension. The initial conflict between self and others turns into intrapersonal conflict. Indicators of retroflexion are the use of reflexive pronouns and particles in speech. For example: “I have to force myself to do this.”

Deflexion- avoidance of real contact. A person characterized by deflection avoids direct contact with other people, problems and situations. Deflection is expressed in the form of talkativeness, ritualism, conventional behavior, and a tendency to “smooth out” conflict situations.

Confluence(or fusion) - is expressed in the blurring of boundaries between the “I” and the environment. Such clients have difficulty distinguishing their thoughts, feelings and desires from those of others. It is common for people with confluence to use the pronoun “we” instead of “I” when describing their own behavior. Confluence is a defense mechanism by resorting to which an individual abandons his true self.

As a result of the action of the listed mechanisms, the integrity of the personality is violated, which turns out to be fragmented, divided into separate parts. Such fragments are often dichotomies: male - female, active - passive, dependence - alienation, rationality - emotionality, etc.

Concept " unfinished business"is one of the central ones in Gestalt correction. "Unfinished business" means that unreacted emotions interfere with the process of actual awareness of what is happening. According to Perls, the most common and worst type of unfinished business is resentment, which violates the authenticity of communication.

To complete what is unfinished, to free oneself from emotional delays is one of the essential points in Gestalt correction.

Another important term is " avoidance". A concept that reflects behavioral characteristics associated with ways of avoiding recognition and accepting everything that is associated with the unpleasant experience of unfinished business. Gestalt therapy encourages the expression of delayed feelings, confrontation with them and working through them, thereby achieving personal integration In the process of Gestalt correction, on the way to revealing his true individuality, the client passes through five levels, which F. Perls calls levels of neurosis.

5 levels of neurosis according to F. Perls

First level - level of false relationships, games and roles. This is a layer of false role behavior, familiar stereotypes, roles. A neurotic person refuses to realize his “I” and lives according to the expectations of other people. As a result, a person’s own goals and needs are unsatisfied. A person experiences frustration, disappointment and the meaninglessness of his existence.

Second level - phobic- is associated with awareness of one’s false behavior and manipulation. But when the client imagines what consequences might arise if he begins to behave sincerely, he is overcome by a feeling of fear. A person is afraid to be who he is. He is afraid that society will ostracize him. And the client seeks to avoid confrontation with his painful experiences.

Third level - level of impasse and despair. It is characterized by the fact that a person does not know what to do, where to move. He experiences the loss of support from the outside, but is not ready and does not want to use his own resources and gain an internal foothold. As a result, the person sticks to the status quo, afraid to go through a dead end. These are moments associated with the experience of one’s own helplessness.

Fourth level - implosion, a state of internal confusion, despair, self-loathing, caused by full awareness of how a person has limited and suppressed himself. At this level the client may experience fear of death. These moments are associated with the involvement of a huge amount of energy and the clash of opposing forces within a person. The resulting pressure, it seems to him, threatens to destroy him. A person in tears of despair experiences his determination to accept the situation himself and cope with it. This is a layer of access to your true self.

Fifth level - explosion, explosion. The client throws off the false, superficial, begins to live and act from his true self. Achieving this level means the formation of an authentic personality, which acquires the ability to experience and express one’s emotions. Thus, Gestalt correction is an approach aimed at liberation and independence of the individual.

Correction goals. The goal of Gestalt correction is to remove blockages, awakening the natural resources potentially existing in a person that contribute to his personal growth, achieving value and maturity, full integration of the client's personality.

primary goal- helping people realize their full potential. This goal is divided into auxiliary ones:

ensuring the full functioning of actual self-awareness
shift of locus of control inward;
promoting independence and self-sufficiency;
identifying psychological blocks that impede growth and eliminating them.

Psychologist's position. In Gestalt correction, the psychologist is seen as a catalyst, assistant, co-creator, integrated into the whole of the client’s Gestalt personality. The psychologist tries to avoid direct interference with the client's personal feelings and tries to facilitate the expression of these feelings.

The main goal of interaction with the client- activation of the client’s internal personal reserves, the release of which leads to personal growth.

Requirements and expectations from the client. In Gestalt correction, clients are given an active role, which includes the right to their own interpretations of positions, awareness of patterns of their behavior and life. The client is expected to switch from rationalizing to experiencing. Moreover, the verbalization of feelings is not as important as the client’s desire, his willingness to accept the process of actual experiencing, in which he will actually experience feelings and speak on their behalf, and not just report them.

Technicians

Psychotechnicians are given very great importance in Gestalt correction. They are called games and experiments. Gestalt correction became widely known largely thanks to these games.

1. Experimental (dissociated) dialogue. This is a dialogue between fragments of one's own personality. When a client experiences fragmentation of his own personality, the psychologist suggests an experiment: conducting a dialogue between significant fragments of the personality. For example, between an aggressive and a passive beginning, between an attacker and a defender. This can be a dialogue with one’s own feeling (for example, with a feeling of fear), as well as with individual parts of the body or with an imaginary person (meaningful to the client).

The technique of the game is as follows: opposite the chair occupied by the client (the “hot chair”) there is an empty chair on which an imaginary interlocutor is “seated.” The client alternates chairs, playing the dialogue, identifying himself with various fragments of his personality and speaking either from the position of the victim or from the position of the aggressor, and takes turns reproducing remarks on behalf of one, then another psychological position.

2. "Big Dog" and "Puppy". A common technique is to use two playing positions: "Big Dog" and "Puppy". “Big Dog” personifies responsibilities, requirements, evaluations. “Puppy” personifies passive-defensive attitudes, looking for tricks, excuses, justifications to justify evasion of responsibilities. Between these positions there is a struggle for power and complete control over the individual.

The Big Dog tries to exert pressure by threatening punishment or predicting negative consequences for non-compliant behavior. The “puppy” does not engage in direct combat, but uses tricks - it is not typical for it to be aggressive. Fragments of dialogue between these parts of the personality sometimes arise in the client’s mind in various situations Everyday life when, for example, he tries to force himself to do something and at the same time manipulates various excuses and self-justifications. With the help of systematic and sincere dialogue during the exercise, the client can more fully understand the fruitless manipulations performed on his own personality, become more sincere and able to manage himself more effectively.

The technique has a pronounced energy potential and enhances the client’s motivation for more appropriate behavior.

3. Making circles, or walking in circles. A well-known psychotechnic, according to which the client, at the request of the leader (the technique is used in group work), goes around all the participants in turn, and either says something to them or performs some actions with them. Group members can then respond. The technique is used to activate group members, encourage them to take risks in new behaviors and to express themselves freely. Often a statement will begin with a request for completion, for example: “Please go to everyone in the group and complete the following statement: “I feel uncomfortable because...” The client can go around the circle and address each participant with a concern. question, for example, to find out how others evaluate him, what they think of him, or to express his own feelings towards group members. The technique allows you to more differentiatedly define your own experiences and connections with others.

Repeated repetition of a phrase expressing a deep belief can help change its meaning and content for the client.

4. Reverse technique (reversal). The technique is to have the client perform the opposite behavior of the one he does not like. Let's say a shy person began to behave defiantly; cloyingly polite - rudely, the one who always agreed would take an attitude of incessant refusal. The technique is aimed at the client accepting himself in behavior that is new to him and at integrating new structures of experience into the “I”.

5. Experimental exaggeration. The technique is aimed at developing the process of self-awareness through exaggeration of bodily, vocal and other movements. This usually intensifies the feelings attached to a particular behavior: repeat a phrase louder and louder, make a gesture more expressively. And the situation is of particular value when the client seeks to suppress any experiences - this leads to the development of internal communications.

6.Unfinished Business. Any unfinished gestalt is unfinished business that requires completion. Most people have many unresolved issues related to their relatives, parents, co-workers, etc. Most often these are unspoken complaints and complaints. The client is invited, using the “empty chair” technique, to express his feelings to an imaginary interlocutor or to contact directly one of the group members who is related to the unfinished business. In the experience of Gestalt groups, it is noted that the most common and significant unexpressed feeling is a feeling of guilt or a feeling of resentment; it is this feeling that is worked with in the game, which begins with the words “I am offended...”.

7.Projective games on the imagination illustrate the process of projection and help group members identify with rejected aspects of the personality.

The most popular game is " Old abandoned store"The client is asked to close his eyes, relax, and then imagine that late at night he is walking along a small street past an old abandoned store. The windows are dirty, but if you look, you can see some object. The client is asked to carefully examine it, then move away from the abandoned store and describe the items found outside the window.
Next, he is asked to imagine himself as this object, and, speaking in the first person, describe his feelings by answering the questions: “Why was it left in the store? What is its existence like as this object?” By identifying with objects, clients project some of their personal aspects onto them.

8. "I have a secret". This game explores feelings of guilt and shame. Each group member is asked to think about some important and carefully kept personal secret. The psychologist asks that the participants do not share these secrets, but imagine how they might react surrounding people, if these secrets became known to them. The next step could be to give each participant the opportunity to brag to others “what terrible secret he keeps it within himself." Quite often it turns out that many people are unconsciously very attached to their secrets as if they were something precious.

9. "Exaggeration". Much attention in Gestalt therapy is paid to the so-called “body language”. It is believed that physical symptoms more accurately convey a person’s feelings than verbal language. Unintentional movements, gestures, and postures of the client are sometimes signals of important content. However, these signals remain interrupted, undeveloped, By inviting the client to exaggerate an unexpected movement or gesture, an important discovery can be made.

For example, an uptight, overly reserved man taps his finger on the table, while a woman in a group talks at length about something. When asked if he would like to comment on what the woman is talking about, he refuses, insisting that the conversation interests him little, but continues to tap. Then the psychologist asks to increase the tapping, to knock louder and more expressively until the client realizes what he is doing.

The client's anger grows very quickly, and within a minute he hits the table with force, passionately expressing his disagreement with the woman. At the same time, he exclaims: “She’s just like my wife!” In addition to this awareness, he receives a fleeting impression of being overly controlled by his strong affirmative feelings and of being able to express them more directly.

10. "Rehearsal"According to F. Perls, people spend a lot of time rehearsing on the “stage of imagination” various roles and strategies of behavior in relation to specific situations and persons. Often the lack of success in actions in specific life situations is determined by how a given person prepares in the imagination to these situations. Such preparation in thoughts and imagination often takes place in accordance with rigid and ineffective stereotypes, which are a source of constant anxiety about inappropriate behavior. Rehearsing behavior out loud in a group with the involvement of other participants allows you to become more aware of your own stereotypes, as well as to use new ideas and solutions in this area.

11. Checking a ready-made opinion. It happens that a psychologist, listening to a client, catches some specific message in his words. Then he can take advantage the following formula: “Listening to you, I had one opinion. I want to invite you to repeat this opinion out loud and check how it sounds in your mouth, how well it suits you. If you agree to try, repeat this opinion to several members of the group.”

This exercise contains the factor of interpreting the hidden meaning of the client's behavior, but the psychologist does not try to communicate his interpretation to the client, he only provides the client with the opportunity to explore the experiences associated with testing the working hypothesis. If the hypothesis proves fruitful, the client can develop it in the context of his own activities and experiences.

F. Perls initially applied his method in the form of individual correction, but subsequently completely switched to the group form, finding it more effective and economical. Group work is carried out as client-centred. The group is used instrumentally, like a choir.

While one of the group members is working, who occupies the “hot chair” next to the psychologist’s chair, the other group members identify with him and do a lot of silent autotherapy, becoming aware of the fragmented parts of their “I” and completing unfinished situations.

The entire diverse technique of Gestalt therapy is aimed at providing psychological support to the individual, freeing a person from the burden of past and future problems and returning his “I” to the rich, changeable world of personal “now” existence.

According to F. Perls, the goal of Gestalt therapy is to increase a person’s potential, or increase his strength and capabilities through the process of integration and development, and the formation of a holistic, harmonious personality capable of withstanding any situation. Integration helps the individual move from dependence to independence, from reliance on external authorities to authentic internal authorities. Having internal authority means that a person is confident in himself. She discovers that the required capabilities are within her and that they depend only on her.

The socio-cultural environment creates different concepts and models of desired behavior. In order to be accepted, an individual perceives various elements of these models and requirements. By doing this, a person often abandons his feelings, desires and needs, thereby losing contact with nature and being guided mainly by calculation. He plays roles in front of himself and others that are not dictated by true desires and experiences. He is torn apart by internal conflicting demands and expectations.

He does not know how to establish contact with himself and the environment and devotes a significant part of his activity to searching for some kind of support outside himself, because he does not believe in the ability to cope with his life on his own. The task of Gestalt is to expand consciousness, to greater integration, to greater integrity, to greater intrapersonal communication. Everything that is done with such goals is a gestalt. Anything done for other purposes is not.

The potential client was perfectly described by F. Perls: " Modern man lives at a low level of vitality. Although, in general, he does not suffer too deeply, he knows just as little about truly creative life. He became an anxious automaton. He seemed to have lost all his spontaneity and lost the ability to feel and express himself directly and creatively. ".

According to F. Perls, in order to find the joy of creativity and enjoy life, a person needs to be able to listen to himself. By trusting your inner voice, you can learn to make decisions and take responsibility for your life. In other words, a person is able to build his own life and effectively solve his problems if he is fully aware of what is happening in him and around him.

Developed by F. Perls, Gestalt therapy is a form of existential therapy based on the premise that people must find their own path in life and accept personal responsibility if they hope to achieve maturity. This is an approach aimed at developing individual independence, gaining true vitality, and the ability to enjoy life in the present. In the process of therapy, the most important issue is the mobilization of one’s own resources - learning to “stand on one’s own two feet”, to find correct forms connections with the environment.

Purpose therapeutic work is to remove blocking and stimulate the development process, realize opportunities and goals and, above all, create an internal source of support and optimize the process of self-regulation. The basis of the therapeutic process is the “awareness” and “experience of contact” with oneself and the environment.

“Most of the time we choose to calculate rather than be self-aware, without even realizing that we are making a choice. The technique of turning off our “computer” can promote contact with current experiences, which may or may not involve desires to calculate the future involve. And in fact, much of our thinking is like a rehearsal, necessitating the need to manage the future. In search of such security, “we can avoid losses and pain, but, having turned into a “computer,” we generally cease to live fully.”

Gestalt therapy seeks to encourage a person to become aware of his own emotions, voice intonations, hand and eye movements, and to understand previously ignored physical sensations. Only then will he be able to reconnect with all these aspects of his personality and, as a result, achieve a full awareness of his own Self.

Awareness in itself can be healing.F. Perls had great faith in the “wisdom of the organism,” the independent self-regulation of a healthy mature person. He believed that cultivating self-awareness leads to the discovery of this self-regulating nature of the human body. An individual's ability to self-regulate cannot be adequately replaced by anything - this is the main principle of Gestalt therapy.

In Gestalt therapy, consciousness is awareness. It is similar in Zen awareness, when the meaning of this word is not so much mental, associated with the work of the left hemisphere, but rather an activity more related to the right hemisphere. This is the knowledge of one’s Self, this is the alertness, this is the attention, this is the stream of consciousness that we study experimentally every second.

This awareness is simultaneously physical, emotional and mental and manifests itself on three levels corresponding to different body/environment field tensions:

Self-awareness

Awareness of the world, environment

Awareness of what lies between them, i.e., in other words, the zones of imagination, fantasy

The process of development according to F. Perls is a process of expanding zones of self-awareness; The main factor hindering psychological growth is avoidance of awareness.

F. Perls believed that when a person gives up trying to bring his behavior into line with conventions borrowed from “authorities,” conscious needs and spontaneous interest come to the surface, and he can discover who he is and what suits him. This is his nature, the core of his life force. The energy and attention that went into forcing himself out of a false sense of "should" was often directed against his own healthy interests. To the extent that he can regain this energy and direct it in a new way, the spheres of influence of life interest will expand. Nature itself heals - “natura sanat”.

The values of good health according to Gestalt therapy include the following conditions:

Live "now"

Living “here” in this situation

Accept myself as I am

Perceive and interact with your environment as it is, not as you would like it to be

Be honest with yourself

Express what you want, what you think, what you feel, without manipulating yourself and others through rationalization, expectations, judgment and distortion.

Fully experience all the emotions that arise, both pleasant and unpleasant

Do not accept those external demands that conflict with your own best knowledge of yourself

Be ready to experiment and discover new situations

Be open to change, growth

In the theory of Gestalt therapy, the “I” is defined as a complex system of contacts necessary for adaptation in a complex field. Gestalt therapy views the personality or self not as a static structure, but as an ongoing process. "I" is not a choice of frozen characteristics ("I" is only this, and nothing else). Normally, the “I” is flexible and diverse in its abilities and qualities, depending on the particular requirements of the body and the environment. The “I” has no nature of its own except in contact with or in relation to the environment. It can be described as a system of contacts or interactions with the environment. In this sense, the “I” can be seen as an integrator of experience.

The self is described as a system of "arousal, orientation, manipulation, various identifications and alienations." These general categories of contact functions describe the main ways in which we interact with our environment to satisfy our needs and adapt to environmental changes. Through arousal we feel our needs.

Through orientation we organize ourselves to meet our needs in relation to the environment. Through manipulation we act to satisfy our needs. Through identification we accept into our body (we make it our “I”) that which we can assimilate, and through alienation we discard (we make it “not I”) that which is alien to our nature and which, thus, cannot be assimilated.

The full functioning of the device depends on contact functions that are fully available to the body to satisfy changing demands in interaction with the environment. When contact functions become inaccessible to awareness, the body will no longer be able to adapt to the world. The more limited our abilities to connect, the more our sense of ourselves and the world becomes fragmented, disorganized and thus subject to resistance.

From the point of view of F. Perls, the study of the way an individual functions in his environment is the study of what happens at the boundary of contact between the individual and his environment. It is on this border that psychological events are located: our thoughts, our actions, our behavior, our emotions are the form of our experience and the meeting of these events on the border with the outside world.

Character, according to F. Perls, is a rigid structure of behavior that prevents the creative adaptation of the self from occurring with the necessary flexibility. He believed that if a person has character, it means he has developed a rigid system. His behavior becomes petrified, predictable, and he loses the ability to interact freely with all his resources. He is predetermined to react to certain events in one way or another, because... his character prescribes this method for you. This seems paradoxical when F. Perls wrote that a truly rich person, the most productive and creative person, is a person who has no character.”

Mechanisms of violation and resistance. According to the Gestalt approach, a person is in balance with himself and the world around him. To maintain harmony, you just need to trust the “wisdom of the body”, listen to the needs of the body and not interfere with their implementation. To be yourself, to realize your “I”, to realize your needs, inclinations, abilities - this is the path of a harmonious, healthy personality.

A patient with neurosis, according to existential-humanistic psychology, is a person who chronically prevents the satisfaction of his own needs, refuses to realize his “I”, directs all his efforts to the realization of the “I” concept created for him by other people - especially loved ones - and which Over time, he begins to accept him as his true self.

Refusal of one's own needs and adherence to values imposed from the outside leads to disruption of the body's self-regulation process. In Gestalt therapy, there are five mechanisms for disrupting the self-regulation process: introjection, projection, retroflection, deflection, and confluence.

With introjection, a person assimilates the feelings, views, beliefs, assessments, norms, and patterns of behavior of other people, which, however, conflict with his own experience, are not assimilated by his personality. This unassimilated experience - introject - is a part of his personality that is alien to a person. The earliest introjects are parental teachings, which are absorbed by the child without critical reflection. Over time, it becomes difficult to distinguish between introjects and one's own beliefs.

Projection is the direct opposite of introjection, and, as a rule, these two mechanisms complement each other. In projection, a person alienates his inherent qualities because they do not correspond to his “I” concept. The “holes” formed as a result of projection are filled with introjects.

Retroflection - “turning towards oneself” - is observed in cases where any needs cannot be satisfied due to their blocking by the social environment, and then the energy intended for manipulation in the external environment is directed towards oneself. These unmet needs, or unfinished gestalts, are often aggressive feelings. Retroflexion manifests itself in muscle tension. The initial conflict between self and others turns into intrapersonal conflict. An indicator of retroflexion is the use of reflexive pronouns and particles in speech, for example: “I have to force myself to do this.”

Deflection is the avoidance of real contact. A person characterized by deflection avoids direct contact with other people, problems and situations. Deflection is expressed in the form of salon conversations, talkativeness, buffoonery, ritualistic and conventional behavior, a tendency to “smooth out” conflict situations, etc.

Confluence, or fusion, is expressed in the blurring of boundaries between the “I” and the environment. Such people have difficulty distinguishing their thoughts, feelings or desires from those of others. Merger is well identified in group psychotherapy sessions in patients who fully identify with the group; It is typical for them to use the pronoun “we” instead of “I” when describing their own behavior.

The described variants of violations of the self-regulation process represent neurotic defense mechanisms, resorting to which the individual abandons his true “I”. As a result of the action of the listed mechanisms, the integrity of the personality is violated, which turns out to be fragmented, divided into separate parts. Such fragments or parts are often dichotomies: male-female, active-passive, dependence-alienation, rationality-emotionality, selfishness-unselfishness.

In Gestalt therapy, great importance is attached to the conflict described by Perls between the “attacker” (top-dog) and the “defender” (under-dog). The “attacker” is an introject of parental teachings and expectations that dictate to a person what and how he should do (“Parent” in the terminology of transactional analysis). The “defender” is a dependent, insecure part of the personality, fighting off with various tricks and delays such as “I’ll do it tomorrow,” “I promise,” “yes, but...”, “I’ll try” (“Child” in transactional analysis).

The main goal of Gestalt therapy is to integrate fragmented parts of the personality. In the process of Gestalt therapy, on the path to discovering his true personality, the patient passes through five levels, which Perls described as “passing through the layers of neurosis.”

The first, superficial layer that the therapist encounters is the deceptive layer; it manifests itself in behavioral stereotypes and unreal responses to life. At this level, there are games and roles in which a person loses himself, living in fantasies and illusions. As soon as a person tries to realize the deceitfulness of games and become more honest, he experiences discomfort and pain.

The next layer is phobic. At this level, a person tries to avoid the emotional pain that is associated with the fact that he begins to see various aspects of himself that he would rather not know. At this point, resistance to accepting oneself as a person really is seems to “explode.” Catastrophic fears arise that other people will certainly reject the neurotic.

Behind the phobic layer, Perls shows a dead-end layer, or a stuck point in the process of personality maturation. At this point, a person feels that he is not able to survive on his own, that he does not have the internal resources to get out of the impasse without support from the environment. Typical behavior in this case is manipulating the environment so that it sees, hears, feels, thinks, and makes decisions for him.

A person at a dead end often experiences something similar to death, feels that he is an empty place, nothing. To be alive, you need to get out of the dead end. If a person experiences these feelings instead of denying the "deadness" or running away from it, the implosive level is manifested. Perls writes that one must go through this level in order to find one's own self. At this level of neurosis, a person discovers his defense mechanisms and begins to become aware of his own self.

At the last explosive level, an explosive state is created, a person gets rid of deceptive roles and pretensions, and releases a huge flow of energy that was held back inside. To be authentic one must achieve this explosion, which can be an explosion into pain or into joy. Achieving this level means the formation of an authentic personality, which acquires the ability to experience and express one’s emotions. Explosion is a deep and intense emotional experience.

Perls describes four types of explosion: grief, anger, joy, orgasm. The explosion of true grief is the result of dealing with the loss or death of a loved one. Orgasm is the result of working with sexually blocked individuals. Anger and joy are associated with the discovery of authentic personality and true individuality.

Main theoretical principle Gestalt therapy is the belief that the individual's ability to self-regulate cannot be adequately replaced by anything. Therefore, special attention is paid to developing the patient’s readiness to make decisions and choices. Since self-regulation is carried out in the present, gestalt arises in the “given moment,” then psychotherapeutic work is carried out purely in the “now” situation.

The psychotherapist carefully monitors changes in the functioning of the patient’s body, encourages him to expand his awareness of what is happening to him at the moment, in order to notice how he interferes with the process of self-regulation of the body, what blocks he uses to avoid confrontation with his present, to "escaping from the present."

The psychotherapist pays great attention to “body language,” which is more informative than verbal language, which is often used to rationalize, self-justify, and avoid solving problems. The psychotherapist is interested in what the patient is doing at the moment and how he is doing it, for example, whether he clenches his fists, makes small stereotypical movements, looks away, holds his breath. Thus, in Gestalt therapy the emphasis shifts from the question “why?” to the question “what and how?”

The result of his reflections was the book “Gestalt Therapy,” published in 1951. The first part of this book, which is a practical guide to self-exploration, was repeatedly published in Russian under the title “Workshop on Gestalt Therapy.”

gestalt therapy perls therapeutic

1 Internal - phenomena and processes occurring in our body.

2. External - external events that are reflected by consciousness.

3. Average - fantasies, beliefs, relationships.

In Gestalt theory, there are five mechanisms for disrupting the self-regulation process: 1) introjection; 2) projection; 3) retroflexion; 4) deflection; 5) conflict.

At introjections a person assimilates feelings, views, beliefs, assessments, norms, patterns of behavior of other people, which, conflicting with his own experience, are not assimilated by his personality. Projection- the direct opposite of introjection. In projection, a person alienates his inherent qualities because they do not correspond to his “I-concept”. The holes formed as a result of projection are filled with introjects. "He does to others what he accuses them of doing."

Retroflexion - turning towards oneself - is observed in cases where any needs cannot be satisfied due to their blocking by the social environment, and then the energy intended for manipulation in the external environment is directed towards oneself. Deflexion- avoidance of real contact. A person characterized by deflection avoids direct contact with other people, problems and situations. Deflection is expressed in the form of talkativeness, ritualism, conventional behavior, and a tendency to “smooth out” conflict situations.

Confluence(or fusion) - is expressed in the blurring of boundaries between the “I” and the environment. Such clients have difficulty distinguishing their thoughts, feelings and desires from those of others. It is common for people with confluence to use the pronoun “we” instead of “I” when describing their own behavior. Confluence is a defense mechanism by resorting to which an individual abandons his true self.

Concept "unfinished business" is one of the central ones in Gestalt correction. "Unfinished Business" means that unreacted emotions interfere with the process of actual awareness of what is happening. According to Perls, the most common and worst type of unfinished business is resentment, which violates the authenticity of communication.

To complete what is unfinished, to free oneself from emotional delays is one of the essential points in Gestalt correction.

Another important term is "avoidance". A concept that reflects behavioral characteristics associated with ways of avoiding recognition and accepting everything that is associated with the unpleasant experience of unfinished business. Gestalt therapy encourages the expression, confrontation and processing of pent-up feelings, thereby achieving personal integration. In the process of Gestalt correction, on the way to revealing his true personality, the client goes through five levels, which F. Perls calls levels of neurosis.

First level- level of false relationships, games and roles. This is a layer of false role behavior, familiar stereotypes, roles. A neurotic person refuses to realize his “I” and lives according to the expectations of other people. As a result, a person’s own goals and needs are unsatisfied. A person experiences frustration, disappointment and the meaninglessness of his existence.

Second level- phobic- is associated with awareness of one’s false behavior and manipulation. But when the client imagines what consequences might arise if he begins to behave sincerely, he is overcome by a feeling of fear. Human

afraid to be who he is. He is afraid that society will ostracize him. And the client seeks to avoid confrontation with his painful experiences.

Third level- level of impasse and despair. It is characterized by the fact that a person does not know what to do, where to move. He experiences the loss of support from the outside, but is not ready and does not want to use his own resources and gain an internal foothold. As a result, the person sticks to the status quo, afraid to go through a dead end. These are moments associated with the experience of one’s own helplessness.

Fourth level- implosion, a state of internal confusion, despair, self-loathing, caused by full awareness of how a person has limited and suppressed himself. At this level the client may experience fear of death. These moments are associated with the involvement of a huge amount of energy and the clash of opposing forces within a person. The resulting pressure, it seems to him, threatens to destroy him. A person in tears of despair experiences his determination to accept the situation himself and cope with it. This is a layer of access to your true self.

Fifth level- explosion, explosion. The client throws off the false, superficial, begins to live and act from his true self. Achieving this level means the formation of an authentic personality, which acquires the ability to experience and express one’s emotions. Thus, Gestalt correction is an approach aimed at liberation and independence of the individual.

Goals of correction. The goal of Gestalt correction is to remove blockages, awaken the natural resources potentially existing in a person, contributing to his personal growth, the achievement of value and maturity, and the full integration of the client’s personality.

Primary goal - helping people realize their full potential. This goal is broken down into auxiliary:

Ensuring the full functioning of current self-awareness

Shifting the locus of control inward;

Encouraging independence and self-sufficiency;

Detecting psychological blocks that impede growth and eliminating them.

The position of the psychologist. In Gestalt correction, the psychologist is seen as a catalyst, assistant, co-creator, integrated into the whole of the client’s Gestalt personality. The psychologist tries to avoid direct interference with the client's personal feelings and tries to facilitate the expression of these feelings.

the main objective interaction with the client - activation of the client’s internal personal reserves, the release of which leads to personal growth.

Technicians. Psychotechnicians are given great importance in Gestalt correction. They are called games and experiments. Gestalt correction became widely known largely thanks to these games.

1. Experimental (dissociated) dialogue. This is a dialogue between fragments of one's own personality. When a client experiences fragmentation of his own personality, the psychologist suggests an experiment: conducting a dialogue between significant fragments of the personality.

2. "Big Dog" and "Puppy" A widely used technique is to use two playing positions: "Big Dog" and "Puppy". “Big Dog” personifies responsibilities, requirements, evaluations. “Puppy” personifies passive-defensive attitudes, looking for tricks, excuses, justifications to justify evasion of responsibilities. Between these positions there is a struggle for power and complete control over the individual.

3. Making circles, or walking in a circle. A well-known psychotechnic, according to which the client, at the request of the leader (the technique is used in group work), goes around all the participants in turn, and either says something to them, or performs some actions with them.

4. Reverse technique (reversal). The technique is to have the client perform the opposite behavior of the one he does not like.

5. Experimental exaggeration. The technique is aimed at developing the process of self-awareness through exaggeration of bodily, vocal and other movements.

6. Unfinished Business . Any unfinished gestalt is unfinished business that requires completion.

7. Projective imagination games illustrate the process of projection and help group members identify with rejected aspects of personality.

8. "I have a secret" This game explores feelings of guilt and shame. Each group member is asked to think about some important and carefully kept personal secret.

9. "Exaggeration." Much attention in Gestalt therapy is paid to the so-called “body language”.

10. “Rehearsal”. According to F. Perls, people spend a lot of time rehearsing on the “stage of imagination” various roles and strategies of behavior in relation to specific situations and individuals.

11. Checking a ready-made opinion. It happens that a psychologist, listening to a client, catches some specific message in his words.

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Friedrich S. Perls

Gestalt approach. Witness therapy

Preface

The two books - "The Gestalt Approach" and "Witness Therapy" - can be considered as one. Fritz Perls had their plan in mind and was working on both of them until shortly before his death. I think he would have liked this connection.

The Gestalt Approach will undoubtedly become one of the seminal books in the Gestalt literature. It seems to me that Fritz was quite successful in fulfilling the task he had set for himself. “Any reasonable approach to psychology, not hidden behind jargon, must be understandable to an intelligent reader and must be based on the facts of human behavior.” – Fritz wrote the “Gestalt Approach” because he was no longer satisfied with the two previous theoretical works. Both This, Hunger and Aggression (1947) and Gestalt Therapy (1950) are difficult to read, and both are outdated.

Over the past two decades, Fritz has learned much from a variety of sources, especially Eastern religious teachings, meditation, psychedelic experiences and bodywork. More importantly, he lived, loved, struggled, and practiced psychotherapy for two decades. In his uniqueness, Fritz did not limit himself to the roles of doctor, enemy, charismatic gadfly, lover, dirty old man, artist or writer. He did not age in the way we imagine aging in the West; the years refined his ability to live in the present and his virtuosity in the arts he practiced.

Fritz wrote most of the Gestalt Approach at Esalen. He continued to work on the book in Cowichan, where he moved in May 1969. Cowichan is a small forest town on a lake, fifty miles north of Victoria, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Fritz wanted to create a Gestalt community here. I believe he did not predetermine the form it would take. He hoped for the emergence of a lifestyle conducive to increasing awareness, in which everyone would integrate previously alienated parts of their personality and take responsibility for their own state of consciousness. He wanted to create a center where therapists could live and train for a few months.

I was in Cowichan for the last two months of Fritz's stay there. He said he had never been happier. Slowly, in step with what was happening, he taught, did therapy, played, loved and wrote.

Fritz became increasingly concerned that many therapists were imitating him technical methods, without really understanding his ideas as a whole. He wanted to combine his life philosophy, theory and practice of psychotherapy in a single form suitable for teaching. He asked me to publish a book, Witness to Therapy, which would use fragments of theory from the Gestalt Approach and the texts of his therapy sessions and lectures in Cowichan, transcribed from film footage. He gave me these materials when he left Cowichan in early December 1969. Fritz intended to return in the spring and finish this work. He died that winter. I asked Richard Bandler to edit these materials.

The Gestalt Approach can be read as a standalone book, but it also serves as an introduction to the Witness to Therapy texts. Richard Bandler chose mainly those fragments of filming that are understandable in themselves and are an introduction to Gestalt work. Also included are several fragments representing more complex and extensive Gestalt sessions; other fragments of this kind will be included in subsequent volumes.

It is planned to publish two more volumes similar in form to this one. Each one will begin didactic materials, chiefly from Fritz's lectures at Cowichan. These lectures are informal and sometimes have a great emotional impact, demonstrating the influence of Eastern philosophy on Fritz. They will be followed by fragments of more extensive Gestalt work, recorded on tape or filmed with a camera. Fritz loved these recordings and recommended intensive study of the films with the transcript in hand. The transcripts will be commented on by experienced Gestalt therapists who knew Fritz well.

Robert S. Spitzer, D.M., Ch. editor of Science and Behavior Books

Introduction

Modern man lives at a low level of vital energy. Although in general he does not suffer too deeply, he knows just as little about a truly creative life. He became an anxious automaton. The world offers him many opportunities for a richer and happier life, but he wanders aimlessly, poorly understanding what he wants, and even worse - how to achieve it. He does not feel the excitement and fervor of going on the adventure of life.

He seems to believe that the time of fun, pleasure and growth is childhood and adolescence, and is ready to reject life itself when he reaches “maturity.” He makes a lot of movements, but the expression on his face betrays a lack of any real interest in what he is doing. He is either bored, keeping a straight face, or irritated. He seems to have lost all his spontaneity, the ability to feel and express himself directly and creatively.

He talks well about his difficulties, but deals with them poorly. He reduces his life to verbal and intellectual exercises; he drowns himself in a sea of words. He replaces life itself with psychiatric and pseudo-psychiatric explanations. He spends a lot of time trying to reconstruct the past or determine the future. His activity is performing boring and tedious duties. At times he is not even aware of what he is doing at the moment.

These statements may seem sweeping, but the time has come when it needs to be said. Over the past fifty years, man has become much more self-aware. We have learned an incredible amount about the physiological and psychological mechanisms by which we maintain our balance under the pressure of constantly changing life conditions. But at the same time, we have not learned to enjoy ourselves equally, to use our knowledge to our advantage, to expand and deepen our sense of life (aliveness) and growth.

Understanding human behavior for its own sake is enjoyable intellectual game, a pleasant (or painful) way to kill time, but it may not be useful for the daily tasks of life. Apparently, much of the neurotic dissatisfaction with ourselves and our world occurs due to the fact that, having swallowed whole many of the terms and ideas of modern psychiatry and psychology, we did not chew them, did not taste them, did not try to use our verbal and intellectual knowledge as the power it could be.

On the contrary, many use psychiatric ideas as a rationalization, as a way to prolong unsatisfactory behavior. We justify our present difficulties with past experiences, we wallow in our misfortunes. We use our knowledge of a person as an excuse for socially destructive or self-destructive behavior. Growing out of the childhood “I can’t handle this,” we begin to say “I can’t handle this because...” - because my mother rejected me as a child, because I don’t know how to deal with my Oedipus complex, because I too introverted, etc.

However, psychiatry and psychology were not intended to justify neurotic behavior that deprives a person of the opportunity to live to the maximum of his abilities. The purpose of these sciences is not simply to offer explanations for behavior; they should help us gain self-knowledge, satisfaction and self-support.

It is possible that one of the reasons for this distortion of psychiatry is that too many classical theories are turned into fossilized dogma by their supporters. In an attempt to fit the various forms and subtleties of human behavior into the Procrustean bed of a favored theory, many schools of psychiatry ignore those aspects of human life that stubbornly defy explanation in terms of old ideas. Instead of abandoning or changing a theory that does not fit the facts, they try to change the facts to fit the theory. This contributes neither to deeper understanding nor to the resolution of human difficulties.

This book offers new approach to human behavior - in its actuality and its potentiality. It is written in the belief that man can live a fuller and richer life than most of us live, that man has not yet even begun to reveal the potential of energy and enthusiasm that lies within him. The book seeks to bring together theory and its practical use to problems of everyday life and to methods of psychotherapy. The theory itself is based on experience and observation; it has grown and changed over years of practice and application, and it continues to evolve.

Part One: Gestalt Approach

1. Grounds

Gestalt psychology

Any reasonable approach to psychology that does not hide behind professional jargon must be understandable to an intelligent, interested reader and must be based on the facts of human behavior. If this is not the case, there is something fundamentally wrong with this approach. After all, psychology deals with the most interesting subject for humans - ourselves and our neighbors.

Understanding psychology and ourselves must be consistent. Without being able to understand ourselves, we cannot understand what we are doing, cannot expect solutions to our problems, and must give up hope of living a satisfying life. However, understanding oneself involves more than the ordinary workings of the mind. It also requires feelings and sensitivity.

The approach presented here is based on premises that are neither vague nor unfounded. On the contrary, these are mainly common sense assumptions, easily confirmed by experience. In fact, they underlie much of modern psychology, although they are often formulated in complex terms that, while promoting the author's sense of self-importance, tend to confuse the reader rather than serve to clarify the point. Unfortunately, psychologists, as a rule, take them for granted and leave them in the background, while their theories move further and further from the real and observable. But if we express these premises clearly and simply, we will be able to use them as a measure of the soundness and usefulness of our ideas, which will enable us to undertake research with pleasure and profit.

We introduce the first premise by means of illustration. We have said that the approach proposed in this book is new in many respects. This does not mean that it has no connection with other theories of human behavior or with other applications of these theories to problems of everyday life or psychotherapeutic practice. Nor does this mean that our approach consists entirely of new and revolutionary elements. Most of its elements can be found in many other approaches to our subject. What is new here is not mainly the individual fragments of which the theory should consist; The uniqueness that gives us the right to claim the reader's attention is given to the approach by the way they are used and organized.

This last sentence reveals the first basic premise of our approach, which is that facts, perceptions, behavior or phenomena acquire their specificity and certain meaning due to their specific organization.

These ideas were originally developed by a group of German psychologists working in the field of perception. They showed that a person does not perceive separate, unrelated elements, but organizes them in the process of perception into a meaningful whole. For example, a person who enters a room where there are other people does not perceive moving spots of color, and not even faces and bodies separately; he perceives the room and the people in it as a unity in which one element, chosen from many others, stands out, while the rest form the background. The choice of a particular element among others is determined by many factors, the totality of which can be combined under the general term interest. As long as a certain interest lasts, the whole appears to be meaningfully organized. Only if interest is completely absent does perception cease to be holistic and the room falls apart into many unrelated objects.

Let's look at how this principle can work in a simple situation. Let's assume that the room in question is the living room during a party. Most of the guests have already arrived, the rest are gradually gathering. A chronic alcoholic enters, thirsting for a drink. For him, other guests, as well as chairs, a sofa, paintings on the walls - all this is unimportant, this is the background. He heads towards the bar; Of all the objects in the room, it is the bar that is the figure for him.

Another guest enters; she is an artist, and the landlady recently bought her painting. She is primarily interested in where and how this painting hangs; she chooses it among all the other objects in the room. She, like an alcoholic, may not be at all interested in the people in the room; she heads towards her painting like a pigeon striving for home.

Here is a young man who came to the party to meet his current girlfriend. He looks around the crowd, looking for her, and when he finds her, she becomes a figure for him, and everything else is the background.

For a guest who moves from one group to another, from sofa to sofa, from the hostess to a box of cigarettes, the living room turns out to be completely different at different moments. When he participates in a conversation in a certain circle of guests, this circle and this conversation are a figure for him. When he, after standing, feels tired and wants to sit down, the figure becomes an empty seat on the sofa. As his interest changes, his perception of the room, the people and objects in it, and even himself changes. Figure and ground change places; they do not remain as constant as those of that young man who is chained to his beloved all evening.

But then a new guest arrives. He, like many of us at parties, didn't want to come here at all, and he has no real interests here. For him, the whole scene remains disorganized and meaningless until something happens to attract his attention and interest.

The psychological school based on such observations is called “Gestalt psychology.” "Gestalt" - german word, for which it is difficult to find an exact English equivalent. Gestalt is a pattern, configuration, a certain form of organization of individual parts that creates integrity. The basic premise of Gestalt psychology is that human nature is organized into patterns or wholes, and only in this way can it be perceived and understood.

Homeostasis

Our next premise is that life and behavior are governed by a process that in science is called homeostasis, or more simply, adjustment or adaptation. Homeostasis is the process by which the body maintains its balance and, therefore, a healthy state in changing conditions. In other words, homeostasis is the process of the body satisfying its needs. Since these needs are numerous and each of them threatens the balance of the body, the homeostatic process continues continuously. All life is characterized by this constant play of balance and disequilibrium in the body.

If the homeostatic process is disrupted to some extent, so that the body remains in a state of disequilibrium for too long, it means that it is sick - If the homeostasis process fails completely, the body dies.

Here are some examples to explain this. The functioning of the human body requires maintaining blood sugar levels within certain limits. If sugar levels drop below normal levels, the corresponding glands secrete adrenaline, which causes the liver to convert glycogen stores into sugar; sugar enters the blood and its blood levels rise. All this happens purely physiologically, the body is not aware of it. But a drop in blood sugar also has another effect: it is accompanied by a feeling of hunger. The body restores its balance by satisfying this need through food. Food is digested, a certain amount of it is converted into sugar, which is stored in the blood. Thus, when it comes to eating, the homeostatic process requires awareness and certain voluntary actions on the part of the body.

When sugar levels rise above normal, the pancreas secretes more insulin, which causes the liver to reduce the amount of sugar. The kidneys also help with this: sugar is excreted in the urine. This process, as previously described, is purely physiological. But blood sugar can also be reduced voluntarily, as a result of awareness and appropriate action. Chronic difficulties in the homeostatic process, manifested by constantly exaggerated amounts of sugar in the blood, are medically called diabetes. The diabetic body cannot control its own process. However, the patient can exercise control by artificially increasing the amount of insulin, that is, taking it in pill form, which lowers the sugar level to normal.

Let's take another example. The health of the body requires that the amount of water in the blood is also maintained within certain limits. If it falls below this level, sweating, salivation and urination are reduced, and body tissues transfer some of the fluid they contain to the circulatory system. The body retains water during such periods. This is the physiological side of the process. But when the amount of water in the blood becomes too small, the individual feels thirsty and takes actions possible to maintain the necessary balance: he drinks some liquid. If the amount of water in the blood is too high, the opposite processes occur, just as in the case of an increase in the amount of sugar.

A simpler way to put it is this: in physiological terms, the loss of water in the blood is called dehydration; chemically this can be expressed as the loss of a certain number of H20 units; Sensibly it is felt as thirst, the symptoms of which are dry mouth and restlessness; psychologically this is experienced as a desire to drink.

Thus, we can call the homeostatic process a process of self-regulation through which an organism interacts with its environment. Although the examples given contain complex activities of the body, these are the simplest and basic functions, serving the survival of the individual and, thanks to this, the species as a whole. The need to maintain the amount of sugar and water in the blood within certain limits is vital for every animal organism.

But there are other needs, not so critically related to issues of life and death, in which the process of homeostasis also operates. A person sees better with two eyes than with one. But if one eye is diseased or destroyed, the person can continue to live. And although now it is not a two-eyed, but a one-eyed organism, it will soon learn to function effectively in this situation, satisfying its needs through appropriate adaptation.

The body has needs for psychological contacts, as well as physiological ones; they are felt whenever psychological equilibrium is disturbed, just as physiological needs are felt whenever physiological equilibrium is disturbed. Psychological needs are satisfied through the psychological side of the homeostatic process.

However, it must be clearly understood that psychological processes cannot be separated from physiological ones; each contains elements of the other. Needs that are primarily psychological in nature and the homeostatic adaptive mechanisms by which they are satisfied form part of the subject of psychology.

People have thousands of needs on a purely physiological level and thousands of needs on a social level. The more they seem to us essential for survival, the more we identify with them, the more intensely we direct our activities to satisfy them.

This is where the static views of old psychological theories can hinder correct understanding. Noticing certain common drives common to all living creatures, theorists postulated "instincts" as forces directing the processes of life, and described neurosis as the repression of these instincts. McDougall presented a list of fourteen instincts. Freud believed that the most fundamental and important are Eros (sex or life) and Thanatos (death). But if we consider all possible disturbances of organic equilibrium, we will discover thousands of instincts of varying intensity.

The instinct theory has another weak side. We can agree that need acts as a coercive force in all living creatures, manifesting itself in two essential tendencies: the tendency to survive as an individual and species, and the tendency to development. These are fixed goals. But the ways in which they are satisfied differ in different situations, for various types and for different individuals.

When the survival of a nation is threatened by war, citizens take up arms. If an individual's survival is threatened by low blood sugar, it seeks food. Scheherazade was threatened with death by the Sultan, and in order to avoid this prospect, she told him fairy tales for a thousand and one nights. Should we assume that she had a “fairytale-storytelling” instinct?

It seems that the theory of instincts confuses needs with their symptoms and with the means used to satisfy them, and from this confusion arises the idea of repression of instinct.

Instincts (if they exist) cannot be suppressed; they are beyond the reach of our awareness and thus beyond the reach of voluntary action. We, for example, cannot “suppress” the need for survival; but we can, and do, intervene in its symptoms and signs. This is done by interrupting the current process, by preventing oneself from performing the action that corresponds to the need.

But what happens if several needs (or, if you prefer, instincts) arise simultaneously? A healthy body seems to operate on the principle of a hierarchy of values. Since he is unable to properly do more than one thing at a time, he turns to the dominant need for survival before any other. He operates on the principle of “first things first”.

Once in Africa I observed a group of deer grazing within a hundred yards of sleeping lions. When one of the lions woke up and roared from hunger, the deer immediately rushed off. Imagine for a moment yourself in the skin of a deer, imagine that you are rushing to save your life. After a while you will begin to feel out of breath, and then you will have to slow down your running or even stop until you can rest; at this moment the need to breathe is more important, is a more essential need than running, just as previously the need to escape was more important than the need to eat.

Formulating this principle in terms of Gestalt psychology, we can say that at each moment the dominant need of the organism comes to the fore as a figure, and the others, at least temporarily, recede into the background. The figure is the need that most urgently requires satisfaction; it may be, as in our example, the need to preserve one’s life itself; in less acute situations it may be a physiological or psychological need.

A mother, for example, needs her child to be satisfied and happy; The baby's discomfort creates discomfort for the mother. The mother of a small child may sleep peacefully to the sound of street noise or a thunderstorm, but will immediately wake up if her child cries in the next room.

In order for a person to satisfy his needs, thereby completing the gestalt, and move on to other matters, he needs to be aware of his needs and be able to deal with himself and his environment, because even purely physiological needs can only be satisfied in the interaction of the organism and the environment.