Psychology for Dummies (85 page)
Read Psychology for Dummies Online
Authors: Adam Cash
Tags: #Psychology, #General, #Body; Mind & Spirit, #Spirituality
I realize that I’m out of touch with my needs and that I’ve adopted all kinds of defensive maneuvers and layered adaptations. Now what? Gestalt therapy here I come. Does Fritz Perls show me the error of my ways, pointing out where I cut off, shut down, and missed the mark? Well, not exactly. If I go to a Gestalt therapist looking for him or her to be the “doctor” while I sit passively by and play the role of the “patient,” I’ve got another thing coming.
Gestalt therapists begin therapy with some very basic expectations. Patients are responsible for
Guiding the process
Deciding when they’re feeling better
Finding their own solutions
At this point, you may be wondering, “So what’s the patient paying for then?” Gestalt therapists provide a collaborative relationship, which is accompanied by expertise in Gestalt personality theory and psychopathology as a means to guide the patient toward a more thorough awareness of himself and his needs. The therapist and patient are expected to be on a more equal ground than other forms of therapy (psychoanalysis emphasizes the doctor-patient roles, for instance). The patient doesn’t lie on a couch — the therapist provides more human contact than that. The therapist is expected to be as genuine and real with the patient as appropriate. The two main goals of Gestalt therapy are to
Improve the patient’s awareness of the entire field
Restore a healthy cycle of experience
The Gestalt therapist points out the patient’s unfinished business as it emerges through both the content and the process of the therapeutic relationship. The therapist directs the patient to focus on his or her immediate experience, in an attempt to help the individual reconnect with his or her discarded needs and break out of old behavior.
One of most unique contributions to therapy by the Gestaltists is their use of “experiments” and special awareness-enhancing techniques. These experiments and techniques help patients to see how their currently compromised means for meeting their needs have gone from a technique of trying to get needs met to an obstacle in getting needs met.
The
empty chair technique
is an excellent example. If a patient has a conflict with a particular individual that qualifies as unfinished business, the therapist asks the patient to imagine that the person is sitting in an empty chair in the room. The patient then talks to the individual, saying whatever it is he or she has always wanted to say. Here are a few more experiments and techniques used by Gestalt therapists:
I take responsibility:
Asking patients to end everything they say with “. . . and I take responsibility for it”
Playing the projection:
Asking patients to play the role of the person they project upon, such as a spouse playing the other spouse
Reversals:
Asking patients to act in the exact opposite manner of the way that they usually act in order to explore hidden and unknown aspects of themselves
Gestalt therapists expect the patient to stay in the
here and now,
not spending too much time reminiscing on the past or worrying about the future. Perls was famous for aggressively challenging his patients to stay in the moment and own their experience. Gestalt therapists may repeat something over and over again until the patient faces the issue, or they may exaggerate a point to increase the energy of a session.
Ultimately, Gestalt-therapy patients leave therapy with a renewed sense of energy and purpose. They’re able to more effectively meet their needs and take a more experimental approach to life. Most of all, they’re more aware — the Gestalt key to the good life!
In the 1960s, the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
became really popular among members of the counterculture (you know, hippies). The book is a Buddhist instruction manual for what to do when you die — go toward the light, don’t go toward the light, that sort of thing. The book and its subject matter captured a lot of people’s imaginations, as death always seems to do. Death seems to have a profound effect on the quality of our lives. Whether we’re facing death ourselves or dealing with the loss of someone important to us, the looming presence of death almost invariably stirs up strong emotions.
A group of psychologists from the school of
existential psychology
place death center stage among the most important issues to discuss in psychotherapy. In addition to death, they view some issues (anxiety, freedom, and choice) as very basic to our existence and at the core of much of what we call
psychopathol-ogy
(psychological problems). In a way, the existentialists cut straight to the chase concerning therapy by placing ultimate importance on deep philosophical issues such as:
Anxiety
Death
Guilt
Time
Transcendence
Why all this morose fascination? Existential therapists, such as Rollo May and Irvin Yalom, shared a philosophical perspective that was deeply dissatisfied with the focus of much of psychoanalysis and other forms of therapy. They believed that our most important issues were ignored, or at the very least indirectly addressed, by forms of therapy such as psychoanalysis and cognitive-behavioral therapy. Specifically, they saw behavioral therapy (see Chapter 20 for more on behavior therapy) as an overly narrow and technical exercise that didn’t respect the struggles that all of us face in our lives. They wanted to do therapy with a real person sitting across from the individual, examining his or her real concerns and deepest issues. It seems like they didn’t want to be distracted by theories and models that dehumanized therapy, which at its heart is a basic human process.
Existential therapy is more of a philosophical position than a specific technique. It does, however, make some unique contributions to technique, as I discuss later in this chapter. At the center of the philosophy is the assumption that all human beings have a core experience of “I Am.” This experience is our basic sense of being alive and striving toward being.
Getting into nothingIf you ever want to take a road trip into hardcore philosophical obscurity concerning the issue of being or not-being, read Jean Paul Sartre’s
On Being and Nothingness.
It’s like a computer instruction manual for existential philosophy.
