Clinical techniques
Robert McAlpine, Anthony Hillin in Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Adolescents, 2020
Not all young people, nor all therapists, will be comfortable with using role play. The empty chair technique is a slight variation on role play and provides an alternative for some young people. This method was pioneered by Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, (1973), and has also been used more widely by therapists from other theoretical orientations (Elliott et al., 2004). The empty chair approach when used in IPT-A is a form of self-dialogue in which the young person speaks to an empty chair as if a significant other were sitting in it. Similarly to role play, the young person can also play the role of the significant other by swapping chairs. The therapist has the role of observer and director, calling the young person’s attention to what has been said and how it was said and directing the young person’s attention to affect or emotions in either himself or herself or perceived in the other. The goals of the empty chair in IPT-A are to help clients (1) be more aware of their own thoughts and feelings towards others; (2) understand how their words and actions affect others; (3) develop an awareness of the feelings of others; and (4) modify their communication with others, based on information gathered from (1) to (3) above.
An introduction to Fritz Perls’ dream interpretation techniques
Frederick L. Coolidge, Ernest Hartmann in Dream Interpretation as a Psychotherapeutic Technique, 2018
Fritz Perls (1893–1970) was one of the founders of Gestalt Therapy, and he was a lively and controversial figure of this popular psychotherapy of the 1960s. His early influences included German neurologist Kurt Goldstein and highly controversial neo-Freudian Wilhelm Reich. In Perls’ book, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim (1969a), he outlined in only 71 pages its philosophical bases in a series of public lectures. Whereas Freud believed that dreams were the royal road to the unconscious, Perls thought that dreams served as ‘the royal road to integration.’ Dreaming, for Perls, was the most spontaneous thing that people do. He thought that language, specifically the things that we typically said, were mostly types of shit: chickenshit consisted of trite phrases like hello, how are you, etc.; bullshit occurred mostly in response to asking a person: why? Because Perls, like Freud, believed that psychic events were overdetermined, that is, they have many causes, there was no possible way that someone could come up with the answer to why they had done something. Finally, in his spontaneous and provocative humor, he added elephantshit, for which he gave Gestalt Therapy as an example, and he reserved the term for grand theories.
Creative Arts and Somatic Therapies
Tricia L. Chandler, Fredrick Dombrowski, Tara G. Matthews in Co-occurring Mental Illness and Substance Use Disorders, 2022
The development of psychodrama by the Morenos was followed by creative adaptions as a healing methodology that uses somatic movement, along with assuming and acting out the roles of others to explore the dynamics of familial, relational, and interpersonal issues. In the 1970s, Dr. Fritz Perls created gestalt therapy using sensitivity groups, sometimes staged with an ‘empty chair’ placed in the center of a group for a person of focus at any given session (Perls, 1973). Psychodrama was also later developed to increase communication skills in family therapy by Dr. Virginia Satir, who developed a form of ‘family sculpting’ and re-sculpting sessions (Satir, 1988). More recently, psychodrama approaches, especially forms of ‘constellation therapy’, were also specifically designed for an individual’s family dynamics in a closely guided and supportive group run by non-licensed psychiatric practitioners trained in the constellations systems approach (Wolynn, 2021).
Group-based acceptance and commitment therapy to enhance graduate student psychological flexibility: Treatment development and preliminary implementation evaluation
Published in Journal of American College Health, 2023
Rivian K. Lewin, Samuel F. Acuff, Kristoffer S. Berlin, Jeffrey S. Berman, Amy R. Murrell
Awareness, acceptance, and willingness are integrated throughout treatment by calling attention to the clients’ present experiences. For example, as clients engage in group discussion, therapists routinely ask clients to pause and make space for the emotion behind their words. Therapists may ask clients to describe where in their bodies they notice sensations (e.g., their heart beating) or what shape/color their experience might take if they were to assign these properties (a Gestalt therapy technique often used throughout ACT sessions). Further, therapists regularly ask questions like, “Are you willing to feel that if it means getting closer to what matters to you?”. By consistently bringing awareness to the characteristics of their internal experience and questioning their willingness to hold on to certain experiences in the service of values, clients become accustomed to this type of interaction with their private selves.
Phenomenological consulting: A viable alternative for sport psychology practitioners
Published in Journal of Sport Psychology in Action, 2018
Mark A. Hector, Johannes Raabe, Craig A. Wrisberg
While PC may appear similar in several respects to other humanistic approaches, such as person-centered therapy (Rogers, 1951), rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT; Ellis, 1995), or gestalt therapy (Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1951), there are several aspects of this method that distinguish it from the others. Similar to other person-centered approaches, PC can serve as a vehicle for enhancing the athlete's/client's subjective self-awareness. However, this is not its primary aim. Moreover, the presuppositionless starting point required in PC, goes beyond the need on the part of counselors/therapists to avoid a priori assumptions about athletes/clients (which is a characteristic of other humanistic, person-centered approaches); rather, it is its essential foundation. PC may be more specifically delineated in several other ways.
A Philosophical Approach to the Rehabilitation of the Patient with Persistent Pain
Published in American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 2020
Philip R. Appel
I also teach a guided Choiceless awareness mindfulness meditation with hypnotic language (Appel, 2017). Described in Elkins’s Handbook of Medical and Psychological Hypnosis (Elkins, 2017), the meditation promotes the expansion of awareness to all senses simultaneously so that, paradoxically, the patient is aware of no one thing. While in trance it is also easy to employ Gestalt therapy projective techniques (Araoz, 1983; Perls, Hefferline & Goodman, 1965) where an imagined conversation with the muscle or body region helps discern the needs of the body and from a mind-body perspective learn what is being protected or what is repressed. At times it can be helpful to ask the patient while in trance what the affected body part would say if it could speak (e.g., “What would your neck tell you that it needs from you”).
Related Knowledge Centers
- Cognition
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- Gestalt Psychology
- Humanistic Psychology
- Psychoanalysis
- Psychotherapy
- Responsibility Assumption
- Field Theory
- Meaning-Making
- Gestalt Practice