Gestalt Therapy

Gestalt therapy is a holistic and experiential approach to psychotherapy that embraces the expression of feelings and creativity. It is especially associated with one of its founders, the charismatic Fritz Perls. Like person-centred therapy, it is in a humanistic approach and similarly it focuses on growth. Regarding therapeutic change, it is said in gestalt that one can only become what one already is.

The gestalt approach has various roots: psychoanalysis, Reichian body-work, existential therapy, field theory (we all operate in a field of relationships in the world) psychodrama, gestalt psychology (concerned with patterns of wholes) and Zen Buddhism, all of which contribute both to the theory and the practice.

In gestalt therapy there is a focus on the present, the "here and now", and what you are experiencing emotionally and in your body, rather than making interpretations about why  Polarity is also emphasised, for example the polarity between different emotions. Another important idea is the idea of the gestalt cycle, which describes the process of, for example, a desire emerging, stimulating action to satisfy it, the action, satisfaction of the desire and a return to quiescence. The term "unfinished business" comes from the gestalt cycle being incomplete, so something is left unresolved. In gestalt therapy . Gestalt dreamwork is a creative venture in which you can explore different elements of the dream as aspects of yourself. One of the powerful methods sometimes used in gestalt therapy is two-chair work, where you may sit in different chairs to voice different views or sides of a situation or different choices.