Gestalt Therapy

According to our text book, “Gestalt therapy is an existential, phenomenological, and process-based approach created on the premise that individuals must be understood in the context of their ongoing relationship of the environment. The initial goal is for the clients to gain awareness of what they are experiencing and how they are doing it. Through this awareness, change automatically occurs. This approach is phenomenological because it focuses on the client’s perceptions of reality and existential because it is grounded in the notion that people are always in the process of becoming, remaking, and rediscovering themselves.”

One technique used in Gestalt therapy is empty-chair technique. With this, a therapist may ask you to imagine holding a conversation with someone or something imagined to be in the empty chair. According to the West Hartford Counseling Center website, the empty-chair technique “stimulates your thinking, highlighting your emotions and attitudes.” (http://www.westhartfordcounselingcenter.com/gestalt.html)

I found this video that college students at the University of Texas Austin made, and I felt that it showed a good example of what the empty-chair technique is (as well as give other Gestalt therapy examples)

Another aspect that Gestalt therapy focuses on is unfinished business. Every time I’ve heard those 2 words, I am reminded of the popular 1995 movie, Casper. Unfinished business is mentioned a lot in this movie, as the dad in it believes that the reasons why ghosts don’t pass over and remain on Earth is because they have unfinished business. I tried finding this scene online, but was unable to, so here is the scripted version of it. To set the scene up, the character of Carrigan is a new ghost who is trying to steal Casper’s treasure:

Casper- Aren’t you forgetting something?
Carrigan- What?
Casper- Your unfinished business.
Carrigan- My what?
Casper- You know, unfinished business. All ghosts have unfinished business. That's why they don't cross over.
Carrigan- Unfinished business? I have no unfinished business. I have my treasure, my mansion. I have EVERYTHING. I'm... just... perfect!
[she laughs evilly until a flash of light comes out of her as a sign that she is crossing over]
Carrigan- [gasps] Wait! Wait! I lied! I have unfinished business - lots of unfinished business! I-I'm not ready to cross over yet! Wait! You tricked me, you rotten little rat!

Although a rather silly movie, this scene is displaying that Carrigan has no unfinished business so has no reason to stay on Earth. The same sort of thing goes for living humans in real life! If people have unfinished business, it is very hard for them to move on and live in the present. Gestalt therapy is trying to get people to live in the present and not focus too much on the past or future.

Here’s a scene I did find from Casper also displaying someone who didn’t have any unfinished business. You need to fast forward it to about the 3 minute mark.

Notice how the woman told her husband to not let her be his unfinished business. It’s almost as if she is using a Gestalt therapy technique to help her husband live in the present and get rid of his unfinished business from the past.

I have learned a lot from Gestalt therapy. I need to let go of some of the unfinished business I have in my own past and learn to enjoy the here and now. It would be wise for everyone else to do the same!

To end this blog I thought I would put a song from one of my favorite bands Mumford and Sons titled "Unfinished Business" :)

Psychoanalytical, Adlerian, and Existential Therapies

Psychoanalytical Therapy

Whenever I think of psychoanalytical therapy, I always think of an individual lying on the couch, with the therapist not in view of them, because psychoanalytical therapists do not tend to form relationships with their clients on a personal level. It is this therapist’s job to analyze what the client is saying. Often times, the psychoanalytical therapist will let the client continue to talk without saying a word to get to know more of how the client acts. It often seems as though the therapist dehumanizes the client and sees him or her as more of an experiment than a person.

The goal of this type of therapy is to make the unconscious conscious, to assist clients in reliving earlier experiences, and to help them work through repressed conflicts.

Adlerian Therapy

Adlerian therapists tend to be a lot more relational than psychoanalytical therapists, and will actually talk with their clients rather than make their clients do all of the talking. They are very interested in the individual’s lifestyle. Adlerian therapy focuses on early memories, birth order, and inferiority/superiority.

Adlerian therapists often act like guides for the clients. It is their job to help the client determine their goals, and give them “homework” to begin working on that goal.

Existential Therapy

Existential therapy is very focused on self-awareness, freedom of choice to decide one's fate, responsibility, anxiety, the search for meaning, being alone and being in relation with others, and facing the reality of death.

The existential therapist’s job is to help the client identify their values and where they came from, and focus on the present. They help the client figure out their self worth. The main goal is to help people see that they are free and become aware of their possibilities.

Out of all 3 of these, I find that Adlerian therapy still interests me the most. However, I feel as though I would most benefit from existential therapy as I sometimes forget my own self worth!

Adlerian Therapy

I find Adlerian therapy to be very interesting. The Christie Hunter website explains, “Adlerian theory primarily emphasizes birth order, individual life styles, social interests, and concepts pertaining to inferiority and superiority as principle components of personality.” (http://www.christiehunter.com/personality/alderian-therapy.htm)

It also focuses on early memories, which is what I am going to focus on for this first blog entry.

When we watched that video in class last week, from the patient’s first memories, we learned a lot about him, such as him being a competitive person by always getting to school first before his other classmates got there. He continued his competitiveness when becoming a teacher, and once again, always getting to school first before his other coworkers got there. This could also be said about his perfectionism and wanting others to be impressed by the fact that he’s always there on time.

When I thought about what my first memory was, it was when my younger brother Daniel was born when I was 2 ½ years old. I initially thought what that could say about me is that I’m a very family oriented person. But then literally this morning, when I was once again thinking about what my first memory could mean, I thought about other aspects that were involved with this memory. I remember visiting my mom in the hospital and it was her dinner time. The dessert that was included with this delicious hospital food was green jello. Being almost 3 years old, as you could all imagine, I really wanted that green jello. I considered asking my mom if I could have some of it, but then the wise 3 year old girl in me decided against it. I thought to myself, my mom just had a baby, and she deserves that jello more than I do. Thinking of that totally hit me; I have been a people pleaser my whole life, including when I was 3. I am one of those who have the hardest time saying no to people, and often do things I don’t want to do in order to make others happy. So that’s what I personally believe my first memory says about me.

I’ve become so interested in what early memories say about people, that I went around and asked some family and friends what their first memories were.

My mom said that one of her first memories was almost drowning in her friend’s pool at a birthday party. None of the adults were paying attention, and my mom, thinking she was a better swimmer than she was, decided to go into the deep end. Luckily one of the kids there screamed, “Debbie is drowning!” and one of the dads jumped into the water and saved her, but my mother has been petrified of the water ever since then. It effected her in later life too when she had kids of her own, and would constantly yell at my brothers and I to stay in the shallow end. It bothered me as a child, but I completely understand it now.

When I asked a friend of mine what his first memories were, he said that he remembered being yelled at by two different people. One person was his teacher. He said they were doing some sort of drawing in an activity book, and he drew a line in the wrong spot, and got yelled at for it. Another person who yelled at him was his old babysitter. He was at her house and accidentally spilled his cup of milk, and not only did she yell at him for it, but she made him clean it up (He was 4 years old at the time). When he was all done cleaning, he went to tell her, but she didn’t believe him and told him to clean some more. Although my friend is now 24, and you’d think he’d be over something like that, he didn’t seem to be. My friend has a real problem with authority and doesn’t like being told what to do, and I wonder if part of that has anything to do with him being bothered as a kid by being yelled at by authority figures for what he calls benign things.

My younger brother didn’t give me too much to work with in the memory department (or so I thought). He said that his first memory was playing with blocks by himself at preschool. I pressed him to think of something else, but he wouldn’t. So I thought to myself, my brother is kind of a quiet, keep to himself sort of a guy, and I guess that’s nothing different from when he was a young kid. I wonder if it has anything to do with him feeling inferior, which is what Adler might have thought, or if he had avoidance of any kind. My little brother has always been a little bit of a mystery to me, but it is because, like I said, he’s a keep it to myself sort of a guy. One thing I can say about him, he is very focused and interested in the work that he does, so I could see him being the same way when building his towers of blocks.

The last person I asked was my younger brother’s girlfriend. Asking her this question brought up a lot of bad memories from her childhood, and I promised her I wouldn’t write about them. I feel like I’m already practicing client/patient confidentiality! What I can say is that a specific event in her life made her afraid of the dark, and made her feel like little importance to her family, and makes her feel inferior a lot in life, and she often wonders if she is good enough for my brother. Not to mention, she is 1 of 6 children, 4 of which were girls, who were all raised by their dad, so it’s easy for her to feel forgotten.

I may be wrong about some of my analyses, but I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed brainstorming these ideas. It’s amazing that you can get that much information about someone through one memory. I really think I like this Adlerian therapy!

(All Pictures taken from google image)

Erik Erikson Youtube Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i9ckfFRcd4&feature=BFa&list=FLwb4EmmqW7UWG9jbMAWWfOg&lf=autoplay