Tasks and technologies of gestalt therapy

The main task of Gestalt therapy is to restore the normal contact of a person with himself, others and life, gaining vital energy.

This work occurs mainly through work with actual feelings and bodily manifestations, although work with memories and dreams is often involved. The work of the imagination, conversations with imaginary characters are actively used. In Gestalt there is no task to think, there is a task to realize and feel. Some of the problems are solved through awareness (to realize what you are now feeling, what you are expressing now), some through real reaction.

• Works with the present, finding the past in the present.

Unlike psychoanalysis, Gestalt therapy does not reduce today’s difficulties to problems in the past. For Gestalt, there is no past, there is only the present, in which the client has an idea of ​​the traces of the past. This is what the Gestalt therapist works with. Planning for the future life (setting goals, setting priorities, plans for a year, five years and beyond) does not build a Gestalt therapist with a client. See →

• The position is more analytical than actual.

Working with the present, modern Russian Gestalt therapy always tends to the past, its position is more analytical than actual. As a rule, the Gestalt therapist interprets problem behavior as “emotional pus”, as a manifestation, playing out a previously received trauma (childhood trauma, abuse), and offers to return feelings to those who once caused them and to whom it was impossible to open them. express — it is clear that in a metaphorical, playful form. See →

• The priority is to work with feelings.

The idea of ​​real feelings. Illness is a blockage of true feelings (mainly aggression), health is a free expression of true feelings. Mind, head — less interesting (less important) than feelings. The head is what prevents the manifestation of true feelings. See →

• Attention to the body

The body is the most reliable source of information about real feelings. In Gestalt therapy, «body language» is considered to be more informative than verbal language, which is often used to rationalize, self-justify, and avoid solving problems. The Gestalt approach does not believe the client when he speaks (tells tales, gives interpretations) about his feelings and emotions. He believes only in reality, asking the client about his bodily sensations, about sensory experiences. See →

Procedures, techniques and methods of work in Gestalt therapy

The main methods of work and techniques of Gestalt therapy are awareness, energy focusing, taking responsibility, working with polarities, monodrama. Some methods of work intersect with other areas of psychotherapy, for example, the well-known technique of working with a client «hot chair» or «empty chair». See →