PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELLOR
HPCSA Reg No.: PRC 0036072
Gestalt Therapy
“We live in a house of mirrors and think we are looking out the windows.”
-Frederick Perls
Gestalt therapy was developed by Fredrick Perls in the late forties. It is widely used in psychological counselling, in individual and family therapy, in business consulting.
The German word gestalt has no perfect English translation, but a close approximation is “whole.” The basis of the method is a holistic approach to a person, meaning that a human being can not be understood by generalizing one part of the self to understand the whole person. For example, the client cannot be understood solely by a diagnosis, or by one interaction, but must be considered the total of all they are. The aim of gestalt approach is to increase awareness through embracing the totality of everything the person before us is, was and can be.
The essence of this approach is to figure out how we handle our desires and needs, whether we understand them, at what point we forbid ourselves to act, and, stepping on the throat of our own song, we miss our dream and form an incomplete gestalt at the same time. The method also allows us to explore at what point we “do not control ourselves”, what effect our actions have on the people around us and the actions of others on us. Letting what is spontaneous in the experience of the here-and-now evolve is a distinctive trait of Gestalt therapy.
Gestalt therapy offers a present-focused, relational approach, central to which is the fundamental belief that the client knows the best way of adjusting to their situation.
Gestalt therapy helps to restore contact between family members, avoid destructive conflicts in relationships and adapt to changes.
