I’m so happy for them. For example, a client might be tapping their feet on the ground. Unfinished business: Unfinished business refers to people who do not finish things in their lives and is often related to people with a “growth disorder” (Seligman, 2006). A psychologically healthy person is someone who is self-regulating through the changes in life and has developed a sense of “wholeness” between mind and body (Corsini & Wedding, (2000). Corey, C. (2005). The therapist may ask where this is coming from in the body and the response from the client may be that the feeling is butterflies in the stomach. 105. According to Perls, people are not made up of separate components, this is, mind, body and soul, rather human beings function as a whole. 1800 657 667, Gestalt Therapy: Overview and Key Concepts. They went off and now they have to take care of themselves. And I don’t need to be home in case of any little emergency, you know, forgotten homework or rides home for practice. 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 (Seligman, 2006). Also, an understanding of the whole of the client’s experience is required by the therapist. Versatile and flexible in its approach to therapy. It tells us about Benefits of Gestalt Therapy. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. The client is challenged with sensitivity and empathy on the part of the therapist to face the issues important to them. Techniques of gestalt therapy include confrontation, dream analysis, and role playing. (2000). Now the professional counselor can help Sandra begin to deal with these emotions of loss, grief, and sadness to adjust to the changes in her life. The CAS (M. E. Young, 2013) is a three-level assessment: (1) client denied the discrepancy, (2) client accepted only part of the discrepancy/confrontation, and (3) client fully accepted the confrontation and acts on the discrepancy. What about your husband’s expectation that you will get a part-time job now that you don’t have children to care for? I’ve always been a fireball! Contemporary gestalt therapy is not about confrontation in the way that Fritz Perls practiced. Many will be familiar with this technique. Client–counselor trust and respect must be strong for confrontation to be received at all, let alone successfully. This therapy sees a healthy individual as being someone who has awareness in his or her life and lives in the here and now rather than focusing on the past or future. CCS uses a five-level scale to determine effectiveness of the confrontation and where the client is in the change process: (1) client denied the discrepancy, (2) client examined only a portion of the discrepancy, (3) client accepted the confrontation but no change resulted, (4) client is ready to try new solutions to the discrepancy, and (5) client accepted the discrepancy and is generating and applying new behaviors to address the discrepancy. It’s a good thing my sons aren’t here; I wouldn’t be any good to them! “The confrontation technique was originally used most prominently in Gestalt therapy, but it has emerged in numerous other approaches and is comfortably ensconced in humanistic-existential and microskills approaches (Ivey, Ivey, & Zalaquett, 2014). A focus of developing awareness is that of clients’ awareness of their own realities. Corsini, R.J., & Wedding, D. ( Log Out /  It is important to confront clients with the ways they are avoiding being fully alive, confrontation does not have to be aimed at negative traits, and confrontation should be a genuine expression of caring. While some clients follow a linear progression through this process, others do not, depending on the type or depth of conflict experienced. Required fields are marked *. The client may attempt to use avoidance responses or project individual traits onto other people or external causes, for example “She makes me so angry”; “It’s his fault”. You said that you enjoy having less laundry to take care of, but that you often feel lonely while your husband is at work. Sandra has been a stay-at-home mom since her sons were born, but now that the boys are in college, her husband would like Sandra to get a part-time job to keep her busy and help with the added expenses of college. In the process, emotions and conflicts are evoked, impasses may be brought about and resolved, and awareness and integration of polarities may develop – polarities or splits within the patient, between the patient and other persons, or between the patient’s wants and the social norms (Patterson, 1986). Gestalt Therapy was developed in the 1940’s by Fritz and Laura Perls and further influenced by the likes of Kurt Lewin and Kurt Goldstein (Corsini & Wedding, 2000). The individual is seen as being self-regulating and is able to motivate oneself to solve problems. I have way less to do at home. Confrontation: In Gestalt Therapy, confrontation means ‘to challenge or frustrate the client’. It is noted that Gestalt Therapy has a history of being an approach which creates or borrows specific techniques that are focused on assisting the client to take the next step in their personal growth and development. Gestalt Therapy involves a lot of therapeutic confrontation by the therapist in order to challenge avoidance and to promote the client taking responsibility. What about the changes that this transition has caused in your day-to-day life? Empathic confrontation (Ivey et al., 2014), also known as the challenge technique, can be implemented to help clients analyze their narratives for discrepancies and contradictions between words and deeds. Furthermore, confrontation should not be antagonistic or harsh; instead, counselor training in the use of confrontation must reflect caring and support of the client, focusing on positive, not negative, client characteristics in order to help clients recognize their discrepancies in thought and action and become motivated to address these discrepancies (Shechtman & Yanov, 2001). I’ve never felt this way before. Gestalt therapy rejects the dualities of mind and body, body and soul, thinking and feeling, and feeling and action. Yes. Locating emotions in the body: Gestalt Therapists may ask clients where they are experiencing the emotion in their body. Ivey et al. Factors around timing ordinarily include the stage of the counseling process in which the confrontation is implemented, client readiness, client behavioral risk factors, and client emotional stability. Originally Gestalt Therapy was predominantly used to treat individuals who were anxious and/or depressed and who were not showing serious pathological symptoms. Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning. This in turn focuses on the emotion and should help to release the blocked awareness. Therapists use guided imagery techniques (fantasy) to encourage clients to imagine situations such as what they would do in a certain situation or by projecting themselves into different roles. 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. The therapist may simply observe as the dialogue progresses or may instruct the patient when to change chairs, suggest sentences to say, call the patient’s attention to what has been said, or ask the patient to repeat or exaggerate words or actions. With this as prerequisite context, we are now ready to analyze the steps of the confrontation technique. Many novice counselors are hesitant to use confrontation, viewing it as harsh and potentially damaging to the therapeutic alliance. Other techniques used in gestalt therapy include the empowering use of language by the therapist, dream analysis, fantasy or guided imagery, confrontation or inducing frustration, and so forth. You have dedicated yourself to being a mother to your sons for their whole lives, and now they’re off at college and you can’t do as much for them. Most of criticisms of Gestalt therapy pertain to the older version, or the style of Fritz Perls, which emphasized confrontation and de-emphasized the cognitive factors of personality. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Ltd. Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors, Toll Free Not feeling as needed as you used to, even for a good reason like your boys going away to college, can still make you feel lonely and sad. The confrontation technique has been implemented successfully with clients in danger of harming themselves (i.e., suicidal; Polcin, Galloway, Bond, Korcha, & Greenfield, 2010; Popadiuk et al., 2008) and clients with addictions, including nicotine (Kotz, Huibers, West, Wesseling, & van Schayck, 2009). He has a work function to go to in two weeks time so the therapist gives him the experiment of starting a conversation at the function with someone he does not normally speak to. Gestalt Therapy is about finding and releasing the blockages that may be inhibiting awareness. Running around to football practice, swimming, and tutoring. As the patient alternates the role, he or she sits in one or the other chair. But, remember that this isn’t a friendship, and sometimes when counseling clients you need to take the risk that you may upset them. And you don’t seem happy right now talking about your boys growing up. However, what does differentiate Gestalt Therapy from these therapies are some of the ideas added by Perls and associates as well as distinctive therapeutic techniques that will be covered further down (Seligman, 2006). Of course! You are you and I am I, The focus on client strengths and positives, coupled with active counselor support, increases the likelihood of successful outcomes and therapeutic movement (Corey, 2015; Gold & Hartnett, 2004; MacCluskie, 2010; Shechtman & Yanov, 2001). Again, understanding a client’s worldview and building a strong client–counselor bond are critical to effective implementation of the confrontation technique. Of course I’m happy. I don’t understand. My boys are out on their own. Counselors’ different theoretical approaches can also lead to differing implementation strategies of confrontation (Strong & Zeman, 2010). However, confrontation is not a technique that can be used with all clients. By drawing attention to the hesitation, it creates self-awareness for the client and allows the client to work through the issue. Emphasis on statements rather than questions to highlight a collaborative client-therapist relationship. It is often helpful to bring these internal and external conflicts to the surface and discuss them openly, including how the conflicts are helping to keep the client stuck, what needs are being met by perpetuating the discrepancy, and what needs are not being met because of the discrepancy. This form of therapy may also not be ideal for persons who struggle with impulse control issues or delinquency. Also, Popadiuk et al. It is the strength of this foundational relationship that creates the client motivation to work with the professional counselor, especially when confrontations occur about discrepancies between what the client says and how the client behaves (Corey, 2015; Gold & Hartnett, 2004; MacCluskie, 2010). Going off to college is the first step. Sandra, how often do you think about your boys? On the other hand, appropriate use of confrontation resulted in enhanced client ability to experience emotions in the here and now in at least one study (Town, Hardy, McCullough, & Stride, 2012). I think I may be coming down with something; I haven’t had any energy at all. So feeling this way, tired, and sometimes lonely and sad, is new to you? It is a positive, humanistic therapy. I’m proud of my boys, but I do miss seeing them and doing things for them. These days, Gestalt draws on intersubective and relational approaches which are focused on exploring the here and now - what is being created together between therapist and client/patient. A variation on this technique is self-confrontation, wherein clients confront themselves after direct observations of their behaviors and statements (usually through video recordings) and which leads to self-identification of feelings, defenses, and behaviors (Popadiuk, Young, & Valach, 2008; M. E. Young, 2013).

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