Gestalt Therapy Practice

Theory and Experiential Learning

Gro Skottun, Åshild Krüger

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000427769
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Psychology
• Sous-sujet: Mental Health in Psychology

This essential new book gives the reader an introduction to the fundamental concepts of gestalt therapy in a stimulating and accessible style. It supports the study and practice of gestalt therapy for clinicians of all backgrounds, reflecting a practice-based pedagogy that emphasises experiential learning.

The content in this book builds on the curriculum taught at the Norwegian Gestalt Institute University College (NGI). The material is divided into four main sections. In the first section, the theoretical basis for gestalt therapy is presented with references to gestalt psychology, field theory, phenomenology, and existential philosophy. In the later parts, central theoretical terms and practical models are discussed, such as the paradoxical theory of change, creative adjustment, self, contact, contact forms, awareness, polarities, and process models. Clinical examples illustrate the therapy form's emphasis on the relational meeting between therapist and client.

Detailed description of gestalt therapy theory from the time of the gestalt psychologists to today, with abundant examples from clinical practice, distinguishes this book from other texts. It will be of great value to therapists, coaches, and students of gestalt therapy.

Part 1
The basis of gestalt therapy

Chapter 1
Gestalt psychology and field theory

DOI: 10.4324/9781003153856-2

What exactly does the word ‘gestalt’ mean? This is the classic question gestalt therapists are often asked by friends, acquaintances, and clients. The word ‘gestalt’ is German, and can be translated as ‘form, shape’ or ‘an organised whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts’. In the theatre world it is not uncommon to hear the phrase ‘to gestalt a role’ as a way to describe the process by which an actor brings form and substance to a character. In a therapeutic context, we can say that the client comes to therapy to explore difficult experiences. With the therapist’s support, the client creates the possibility to give form and content to—to gestalt—those experiences.

In this chapter, we describe the psychological basis for gestalt therapy, namely gestalt psychology, with emphasis on perception, key gestalt principles, and field theory. We provide a historical overview of the development of gestalt psychology, describe its basic theories, and discuss the influences these have had on gestalt therapy.¹

The roots of the term ‘gestalt’

The history of the term ‘gestalt’ stretches back in time to the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). Goethe was also a naturalist; he believed that totality was more important than individual parts. A forest, a plant, or for that matter a human being, is first and foremost a gestalt that cannot be picked apart.

The term ‘gestalt’ reappears in the German psychology of consciousness in the 1890s. For the proponents of this school of thought, however, consciousness was focused more on individual trees than on the forest, although it was also thought that the forest as a whole was more than a collection of trees. It is, however, the so-called gestalt psychologists from Berlin in the beginning of the twentieth century who have become known as the founders of what we today call gestalt psychology. The gestalt psychologists, or the Berlin School as they also were called, consisted of a group of scientists who set out to demonstrate scientifically how we structure what we sense, or, to use our terminology, how we perceive what we sense.

A historical retrospect

From the late 1800s, psychology was a new science in full swing with research on human thought and behaviour. In laboratories, questions were raised about how we understand human consciousness, and psychologists made great progress in research. They developed hypotheses and concluded that images on the retina are a direct result of neurological processes between external stimuli and brain activity.

The psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), whose professional life took place during the era of the psychology of consciousness in the 1890s, was considered by his contemporaries to be a founder of the ‘new experimental psychology’. He established the first formal laboratory for psychological research in Leipzig in 1879. In his opinion, experimental psychology should study simple psychological phenomena such as sensation, perception, attention, associations, and simple emotions; that is, the basic, elementary aspects of consciousness.

The psychological analyses of this school of thought were based in a reduction-ist, one-to-one correspondence between external objects and internal images. The tree I see is the same as the real, living tree. Consciousness is composed of individual parts—a so-called atomistic way of thinking, advocated by Wilhelm Wundt.

In line with this reductionist way of understanding human behaviour emerged another type of psychological understanding. Psychologist Christian Freiherr von Ehrenfels (1859–1932) was one of the first to question whether there were other scientific ways to understand consciousness. In contrast to the reductionists, he claimed that our senses perceive more than individual parts. He believed that what we see is not the parts that make up a tree, but rather the tree in its entirety. Thus, atomism was replaced by holistic thinking.

Ehrenfels was thus the first to use the term ‘gestalt’ to describe the sensory process by which we see objects as whole entities. It was in his footsteps the first gestalt psychologists followed when they formed their hypotheses about how we gestalt experience. The first was one of Ehrenfels’ students, the philosopher and psychologist Max Wertheimer (1880–1943). Wertheimer was followed by his like-minded colleagues Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) and Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967).

It is not surprising that Wertheimer and his colleagues became involved in the holistic and phenomenological school of thought. They read and studied the natural philosophers Spinoza and Goethe, two thinkers who, in addition to phenomenology, are considered central to the idea of the importance of the senses and the holistic idea that everything is connected. Wertheimer, Koffka, and Köhler were interested in music and other art forms; these interests were also fertile ground for scientific challenge to atomistic thinking.

The discovery of the phi phenomenon (motion illusion)

The gestalt psychologists went one step further and argued that we first and foremost perceive the totality of an object or experience, and that the whole is thus more than the sum of its parts. Wertheimer claimed that when we hear, or rather sense, a piece of music, we perceive the overall quality or expression, a qualita tive whole beyond its individual notes. Wertheimer called this phenomenon phi.

This claim was not, however, well received, and it took time before phi could be explained scientifically. The famous discovery came one autumn day in 1910 as Wertheimer sat on the train watching telephone poles go by along the railroad tracks. He was aware that the distance between the poles seemed to be less than it actually was as the train passed. The overall picture as it was perceived by the senses there and then, as the train was in motion, was an illusion. The whole that emerges is illusory: we perceive movement without the poles actually moving. The conclusion is, in Wertheimer’s view, was that we sense not only the sum of the parts, in this case the telephone poles, but the qualitative totality: movement.

Perception of gestalts

Wertheimer eventually moved to Berlin, where he met Koffka and Köhler. Together, the three established an active and enthusiastic research group that became known in relation to gestalt psychology. After the discovery of the phi phenomenon, Wertheimer and Köhler continued work on the hypothesis of perception and creating wholes. Having ascertained that we perceive, they directed their attention to how our impressions of the whole of a situation are formed; in other words, how we gestalt and structure phenomena.

The gestalt psychologists gave many compelling arguments that illustrated how totalities occur spontaneously; in other words, how perceptual impressions organise themselves. On this basis, they came to the following conclusions, taken from Teigen (2004/2015):

• All perception is the perception of organised forms: even two dots are not just dots, but a pair. The phi phenomenon is not two sensations, but a movement.
• It is not coincidental which parts of a field of stimulus come together to form a whole.
• A gestalt’s appearance is not coincidental.

The law of prägnanz

Using a series of experiments, gestalt psychologists found that organisation takes form in certain ways and by specific laws, and that the fundamental principle behind these laws is the law of prägnanz. Wertheimer and Köhler found that our perception tends to find the clearest and simplest form. For example, we have a tendency to perceive a figure as complete, even when parts of the whole are lacking. This is shown in Figures 1.1 and 1.2.

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.2

When you see these figures, your mind automatically fills in the missing information; Figure 1.1 becomes a complete circle, Figure 1.2 an entire rectangle.

The law of prägnanz says that when we perceive something, we tend to seek and identify the totality that we feel to be the simplest and most obvious. If we look at human behaviour in light of this law, we see that the simplest, most obvious and natural thing for people to do is often what they are accustomed to doing, or—as in Figures 1.1 and 1.2—to see what they are accustomed to seeing. This is an example of structures or gestalts that repeat. In the context of the therapy room, this means that the therapist sees the client’s behaviour as the best, most obvious, and simplest way of being, even though it is not always the most appropriate for the client or the client’s environment.

The principles of perceptual grouping were also called ‘gestalt laws’, ‘gestalt factors’, or ‘gestalt qualities’. These principles describe which parts of the stimulus field are grouped together, and that these groups will also appear as the most regular and completed. We have certain ideals that we attempt to align with the world around us. This often succeeds, because on the whole, the world and perception follow the same laws.

The principle of figure-ground

The principle of figure-ground is also an example of an automatic organisation of sensory impressions that matches well with the way the world is actually organised. The organisation of figure-ground is perhaps the principle most often referred to by gestalt therapists. It was developed by the Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin (1886–1951), who began studying the phenomenon several months before Wertheimer began his investigations of phi.

Figure 1.3 is the well-known, characteristic example of how we tend to perceive something against the background of something else. This well-known image illustrates that when we focus on an idea or sensation, everything else disappears into the background. When we see the vase, the white area comes into the foreground and the black becomes a formless background. The opposite happens when the figure is perceived as two faces; the white area loses its contour and blends into the background while the profiles take shape and come to the foreground.

Figure 1.3

The ‘aha’ experience and problem-solving learning

Köhler was interested in how the process of gestalting occurred, and performed a series of experiments on chimpanzees to see how they solved specific tasks. Some of the most famous are the experiments done with the chimpanzee Sultan. Köhler placed Sultan in a cage and placed bananas out of reach. The chimpanzee was equipped with two bamboo poles, and the only way to reach the bananas was to put the poles together. Sultan was hungry and wanted the bananas. Initially, Köhler tried to help him by suggesting solutions. Interestingly, Sultan was not interested in the suggestions; instead, he concentrated on solving the problem himself. After much trial and error, he was angry and frustrated and gave up. He retreated to the back of the cage, showed no interest in his environment, and scratched his neck. Suddenly he stood up, walked over, and put the two poles together, bringing the bananas within reach. He was able to complete the task when he restructured the problem.

Köhler interpreted Sultan’s behavior as an ‘aha’ experience (Madsen, 2016). With this and similar examples, Köhler demonstrated that solutions often happen in moments of insight, where the individual factors, all aspects of the problem, spontaneously organise themselves into a meaningful, comprehensive action in the situation. It was not possible to explain how Sultan had solved the problem by breaking down his action into individual factors (Neumann & Neumann, 2014). The result of Köhler’s research and the theories he developed have had a great deal of influence on later theories of insight-based problem-solving and learning and are also fundamental to how gestalt theory views change and learning in the therapy room (see Chapter 4 on paradoxical change).

Summary of gestalt psychology and perception

The gestalt psychologists’ conclusions about perceptions live on. After systematic testing of perception in the laboratory, they arrived at several basic principles. Although their methods were later criticised for not being thorough enough, there is no doubt that their work paved the way for later, more precise experimenting. Many of the gestalt psychologists’ findings became part of the foundation of the theory of gestalt therapy, in particular the phi phenomenon, the law of prägnanz and related gestalt laws, and the principle of figure-ground. The gestalt view that the whole is greater than and not simply the sum of its parts; that phenomena such as experience, needs, and emotions are gestalted in a field; and the therapist’s attitude that by following the law of prägnanz the client does the best she can in any given situation, all have their roots in gestalt psychology.

The attitude in gestalt therapy toward change and learning are influenced by Köhler’s experi...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface to the English edition
• Introduction
• Part 1 The basis of gestalt therapy
• Part 2 Fundamental terminology and concepts
• Part 3 Contact forms
• Part 4 Process models
• Index