child and adolescent counseling chapter 7

The Nature of People • The most important areas of concern are the thoughts and feelings that people are experiencing at the moment • Normal healthy behavior occurs when people act and r

Chapter Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

• Outline the development of Gestalt therapy and Fritz Perls

• Explain the theory of Gestalt therapy including its core

Overview Gestalt Therapy

Fritz Perls

• The Nature of People

• Theory of Counseling

• Counseling Method

• Cross Cultural Application

• Managed Health Care

Fritz Perls

• A native of Germany

• Childhood of questioning and rebellion

• Degree from Friedrich Wilhelm University in 1921

• Worked in South Africa for 12 years and there

formulated all the ideas he would later call Gestalt therapy

• Lived in New York, Miami, California and British Columbia

• A German term that cannot be translated exactly

into English, but explained as:

• A form, a configuration or a totality that has, as a

unified whole, properties which cannot be derived by summation from the parts and their relationships It may refer to physical structures, to physiological and psychological functions, or to symbolic units

(English & English, 1958, p 225)

The Nature of People

• The most important areas of concern are the

thoughts and feelings that people are

experiencing at the moment

• Normal healthy behavior occurs when people act and react as total organisms

• Many people fragment their lives, distributing

concentration and attention among several things

at one time

The Nature of People

• View of human nature is positive

• People are capable of becoming self-regulating beings who can achieve a sense of unity and

integration in their lives

• “Lose your mind and come to your senses”

• Awareness alone can be curative

• With full awareness self-regulation develops and the total person takes control

General principles for healthy functioning

1 Valuing the here-and-now in order to experience each

minute fully

2 Embracing self-awareness and experience,

understanding and accepting all parts of self

3 Prizing wholeness or responsibility and understanding

life is a process; as people mature they move past old

ways and become more self-sufficient, self-observing,

and self-understanding

(Fall et al., 2004)

People cause themselves problems by not handling their lives in these ways:

• Lacking contact with their environment.

• Confluence: incorporate themselves into

others or the environment into themselves

• Unfinished business: unfulfilled needs,

unfinished situations

Cause of problems

• Fragmentation: inability to find what one

needs caused fragmentation

• Top/under dog: split between what they

should do and what they want to do

• Polarities: need to resolve conflicts between

existing polarities

Five Types of Polarities

1 Physical: masculine-feminine, and

4 Spiritual: intellectual doubt – dogmatism

5 Inter-Individual: man-woman, black-white,

Christian-Jew

Theory of Counseling

The five layers of neurosis (counseling stages)

1 Phony Layer: Trying to be what they are not

2 Phobic Layer: Aware of the fears that force the

Phony game

3 Impasse Layer: Shed environmental supports of

their game without a better way to cope with fears and dislikes

4 Implosive Layer: Aware of how they limit

themselves and begin to experiment with new behaviors

Theory of Counseling

1 Body language – project thoughts onto empty

chair as significant person

2 Direct experience of the here and now –

Integration and maturation – Gestalts as new needs

3 Help people help themselves grow up

4 Integration is creating whole person whose

behavior matches their inner state

5 People should: grow in awareness – take

responsibility for their actions – move from

environmental support to self support

A sampling of counseling

methods

• “I” language: Disallow “you”

as in “you know how it is”

• Substitute “won’t” for “can’t”

Insist on client taking responsibility

• Substitute “what” and “how” for “why”

“what do you feel” not “why do you feel”

• No gossiping: talk to people not about people

A sampling of counseling

methods

• Change questions to statements

“I should” not “do you think I should”

• Take responsibility: Right now I feel

_and I take _ % of the

responsibility

• Sentence completion

“I help/hurt myself when I _

Sampling of counseling

methods

• Bipolarities – Top/under dog or I should vs I want

o Use an empty chair for a discussion

o Client sits in one chair to defend “I should”

o Moves to another chair to discuss “I want

• My greatest weakness

o Write a paragraph on my greatest weakness and why it is a strength

Counseling methods

Fantasy Games for creating awareness

• Client fantasizes being an animal and tries to understand what it feels like

• Wise person: client asks and answers one question to/from a wise person

Counseling Methods

Dream Work

• Dreaming is an awareness of the world

• Pieces of a dream are fragments of a

personality that must be integrated

• Describe a dream – list the objects – client gives a voice to each part and has them

converse

Gestalt Play Therapy

• Concern of therapy is the integrated

functioning of all aspects of the child so that senses, body, emotions, and intellect are

well coordinated in a creative adjustment

• A dance that sometimes the counselor

leads and other times the child leads

• Contact is having the ability to be

completely present in a situation

Gestalt Play Therapy

• Goal is to restore the child’s natural functioning and self-regulatory

processes

• Experiencing the contacting process leads to integration, choice and

change

Gestalt Play Therapy

Focus on development of inner strength and confidence in the child through

opportunities to make choices, achieve mastery, own their projections,

participate in imaginative play, and

expel aggressive energy appropriately

problems will take care of themselves.

• Present oriented but past can be dealt with using empty chair

• People are responsible for their lives – no victims – discounts the past

Managed Health Care

1 Managed health care companies would

have difficulties with this approach because

of the lack of specificity

2 How do you know when therapy is finished?

When the client has achieved the open

honest manner of interaction

3 Can be viewed as instant cure because that

sometimes happens quickly