Are Gestalt Psychology and Gestalt Therapy related?
No, there is no reason to speak of any serious connection. Fritz Perls used the respected word “gestalt” to give the name of his direction seriousness and solidity.
By the way, he hesitated, considered calling his approach not “Gestalt therapy”, but “existential psychotherapy”
Does Gestalt therapy really implement what Gestalt psychologists have been talking about and researching? Is the Gestalt approach a practical application of Gestalt psychology to the field of therapy?
It is difficult to argue that Perls’ invention is based on Gestalt principles. Some ideas of Gestalt psychology are really present there, but in general, Gestalt therapy is rather a synthesis of psychoanalysis, bioenergetics and psychodrama. Perls made no secret of the fact that he got acquainted with the concept of Gestalt psychology rather superficially — by his own admission, he did not fully master any of the key monographs of this direction. Yes, he used some of the provisions of Gestalt psychology, but in his rather free interpretation.
The founders of Gestalt psychology and supporters of this approach to Perls’s innovations were disapproving, and his interpretations of Gestalt were not shared. Wolfgang Köhler, shortly before his death — and he died in 1967, when the principles of Gestalt therapy were already sufficiently known — gave an interview in which he called Perls a «thinker» (quotes belong to Köhler) stupid. In his opinion, Perls either misunderstood the basic principles of Gestalt psychology, or allowed himself to interpret them too freely.
The indication that Gestalt therapy allegedly arose in the depths of Gestalt psychology, as some sources say, is only an advertising ploy.