The Therapeutic Process

The Therapeutic Process

A. Therapeutic Goals

- Increased awareness

- Gradually assume ownership of their experience

- Develop skills and acquire values that will allow them to satisfy their needs without violating the rights of others

- Become more aware of all of their senses

- Lean to accept responsibility for what they do, including accepting the consequences of their actions

- Move from outside support à increasing internal support

- Be able to ask for and get help from others and be able to give to others

B. Therapist’s Function and Role

- Invite clients into an active partnership

- Encourage clients to attend their sensory awareness in the present moment

- Work in a here and now framework

- Pay attention to client’s body language

- Places emphasis on the relationship between language patterns and personality

Aspects of language that Gestalt therapists focus on:

1. “It” talk – ask clients to say “I” instead of “it”

2. “You” talk – change impersonal “you” into and “I” statement

3. Questions – change questions into statements

4. Language that denies power

5. Listening to clients’ metaphors – translating the meaning of metaphors into manifest content

6. Listening for language that uncovers a story

C. Client’s Experience in Therapy

Miriam Polster (1987) describes a three-stage integration sequence that characterizes client growth in therapy

Stage 1-- Discovery

→ Reach a new realization about themselves

→ Acquire a novel view of an old situation

Stage 2 – Accommodation

→ Recognize that they have a choice

→ Trying out new behavior

→ Expand their awareness of the world

Stage 3 -- Assimilation

→ Learn how to influence their environment

→ Develop confidence in their ability to improve

D. Relationship Between Therapist and Client

Therapist’s experiences, awareness and perceptions provide the background of the therapy process, client’s awareness and reactions constitute the foreground

Gestalt therapists:

- Willing to express their reaction and observations

- Share their personal experiences and stories in relevant and appropriate ways

- Do not manipulate clients

- Encounter clients with honest and immediate reactions

- Explore the client’s fears, catastrophic expectations, blockages and resistances

- Person of the therapist is more important than the techniques he or she uses

- Present-centered

- Nonjudgmental dialogue

- Aimed at awareness, not at simple solutions to a client’s problem

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