It allows everyone to work through their blockages, to develop their full potential and to live their life in accordance with their deepest aspirations. Gestalt allows us to choose our life rather than surrender to it.
How can we affirm who we are while adjusting to the world around us? How do nourish contact with others without sacrificing our autonomy? How do we preserve our freedom despite the constraints of everyday life? These are just some of the basic questions that Gestalt therapy helps us answer.
Listed below are some of the key underlying principles of Gestalt therapy.
“A humanist and optimistic approach”
Developed in the 1950s, Gestalt belongs to the “humanist” School of psychotherapy: it is based on the idea that the human being has an inherent potential to get better and that this is a state we strive towards naturally. It is therefore resolutely optimistic.
“The human being is an indivisible whole…”
Gestalt therapy rejects the traditional body/mind emotion/reason separation. It assumes a holistic approach and always strives to dig deeper into the interaction. Anything that appears in the course of this process is taken into account, be it an idea, an emotion, a bodily sensation, a thought, etc.
“… who constantly interacts with his or her environment.”
Gestalt considers that we are indissociable from our environment. We are in constant interaction with our environment, whether we want to be or not. The emphasis of the therapy is placed on these very interactions and we often say that the therapy is primarily interested and the individual’s “way of being” in the world.
“Here and now as the point of departure.”
This explains the specific place that the therapist occupies in the presence of the patient. By respecting the possibilities offered by the situation, the therapist attempts to open doors to the patient’s modes of interaction, which might not be new, but are at least connected to the situation that is taking place in the here and now.