Therapeutic techniques in Gestalt therapy

Therapeutic techniques

❖ Repetition & Exaggeration

Repetition and exaggeration: If there is repetition such as the example of the client tapping their feet on the ground, the therapist would get them to exaggerate the movement and talk about feelings that come up. This in turn focuses on the emotion and should help to release the blocked awareness.

❖ Role playing

This is a role-playing exercise that allows a client to imagine and participate in a conversation with another person or another part of themselves. Sitting across from the empty chair, the client enters into a dialogue as if they were speaking with that other person or that other part of themselves. This enables client to gain self-awareness and express repressed thoughts.

❖ Open chair technique

It is sometimes called as empty chair technique. In this technique, therapist places a person in therapy across from an empty chair. He or she is asked to imagine that someone (such as a boss, spouse, or relative), they, or a part of themselves is sitting in the chair.By this he/she may be able to experience repressed emotions in front of imagined person which in actual he/ she may not be able to do.

❖ Dialogue

Dialogue is based on experiencing the other person as he or she really is and showing the true self, sharing phenomenological awareness. The Gestalt therapist says what he or she means and encourages the patient to do the same. Gestalt dialogue embodies authenticity and responsibility.

❖ Discussing dreams

Gestalt therapists believe that dreams are existential messages we send to ourselves. These messages are actively explored to bring dream content into a person's actual life. A major technique used in Gestalt dream analysis is the “Take the Part of” technique.

❖ Attention to body language

Throughout therapy, a gestalt therapist will concentrate on body language, which is considered a subtle indicator of intense emotions. When specific body language is noticed, the therapist may ask the client to exaggerate these movements or behaviors.

❖ Top dog – Under dog technique

Top dogs are those factors which the individual has desire to meet because of social norms and standards. For example, a person might say “I should be on time” or “I should study hard and get good grades”. Underdogs are the opposite of top dogs. The idea of top dog and underdog underlie the basis of gestalt therapy: to reflect back and challenge clients’ incongruent parts in order to help them become whole (hence the term ‘gestalt’, meaning ‘whole’ or ‘circle’ in German).

❖ Fantasy

Fantasy is used in Gestalt Therapy to increase clients' self-awareness of their thoughts and emotions and to bring about closure to unfinished business. Therapists use guided imagery techniques to encourage client to imagine.

❖ Confusion

The technique of dealing with confusion of the client is about drawing attention to the client's hesitation in talking about something being questioned by therapist. This hesitation is the way to unconscious awareness of client of expression of inner self.

❖ Here and Now technique

This is the widely used therapeutic technique in which client is asked to focus on present moment that here is his/her opportunities and he/she must use it now. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction to Aaron Beck

  Aaron Temkin Beck is an American psychiatrist who is professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He is regarded as the father of both cognitive therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. Early Life Aaron Temkin Beck was born on July 18, 1921, in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the youngest of five children. Both of his parents were Russian Jewish immigrants to the United States. Two of Beck's siblings had died before his birth, an older brother in childhood and an older sister in the influenza pandemic of 1919. As a result of these tragedies, Beck's mother was chronically depressed for several years and became overprotective of her youngest son. Beck came to think that he was a replacement for his sister, and that his mother was disappointed that he was not a girl. Beck developed several phobias in the course of his childhood. One was a blood/injury phobia, which he related to his experience with surgery for his broken arm at age seven. D...
Read more

Emergence and history of Psychology of Men in West and Pakistan

Psychology of Men:       The new psychology of men has emerged over the past 15 years within the larger fields of men's studies and gender studies. Informed by the academic breakthroughs of feminist scholarship, the new psychology of men examines masculinity not as a normative referent, but rather as a problematic construct. In so doing, it provides a framework for a psychological approach to men and masculinity that questions traditional norms of the male role and views some male problems as unfortunate byproducts of the male gender role socialization process. This article introduces this new field, covering the gender role strain paradigm, masculinity ideology, and the 3 varieties of male gender role strain-- discrepancy-strain, dysfunctionstrain, and trauma-strain. Implications for practice are presented.  Masculine Psychology:       Masculine Psychology is a relative term sometimes used to describe and categorize issues concerning the gen...
Read more

Introduction to Fritz Perls

• Introduction: Fritz Perls was a 20th century psychiatrist who founded Gestalt therapy in collaboration with his wife, Laura Perls.Frederick or Friedrich Salomon Perls (July 8, 1893, Berlin - March 14, 1970, Chicago) entered the history as Fritz Perls, a famous psychiatrist and psychotherapist. He was a Jew born in Germany, who developed absolutely new approach in psychotherapy. He reacted against the structuralist, behaviorists and psychoanalysts. According to this theory, one of the primary objectives of Gestalt therapy is the ability to restore the self-awareness which is lost when a psychological disorder becomes evident. This is accomplished by restoring the individual's ability to differentiate, which helps the individual to identify what is and what is not a true part of the self, what provides the individual with a sense of self-realization and achievement and what leads to frustration. Due to him term of Gestalt therapy came into view. It is based on Gestalt psycholog...
Read more