The Story of Change, triggered by the Gestalt Cycle of Change…

Laura Quelch
Jul 24
10 min read

Psychological Essay by Laura Elizabeth Quelch

Introduction:

As I watched Fritz Perls speak to Gloria, in The Gloria Films*, I felt an emotion wash over me, it filled my body head to toe, my heart was racing, I was hot and bothered, I even felt like I wanted to cry. I understood that I needed to let out this built up energy, and so afterwards, I made sure to briskly walk round the outside seating area! I was much better after that, but I could still feel the effects, and wondered what on Earth had just happened to me. Witnessing this interaction clearly had an impact on me, evident in the stressful dreams I then had later!

I came to the conclusion that I hated the Gestalt technique and even hated Fritz Perls. Yes, I hated it. This was how powerful my reaction was. At that moment, I embraced the urge to dismiss this technique “Afterall, there are so many other techniques I can practice instead” I confidently thought to myself. However, I want to be the type of therapist who actively does the inner healing “practice what you preach”, and that I consistently develop myself to be the best help to others. To me, that means having an abundant knowledge and awareness of various areas of therapy from hypnosis, to NLP to Transactional Analysis.

We discussed this right at the very start of the diploma: integration philosophy. Which is a combination of all different types of therapy that compliment each other. It’s having the knowledge of which technique is best for that particular client, as well as being mindful of ourselves as a complex person. It’s bringing the best version of ourselves to this client. It’s also knowing your limitations and ensuring you also protect yourself.

This essay gives me the chance to achieve both of those 1. To uncover what about the Gloria and Fritz Perls interview that I strongly reacted to and 2. To confidently understand what Gestalt therapy is. How effective is Gestalt? Why is it controversial? Why is it effective? Can it be applied in different ways and still be considered Gestalt?

I want to understand the effectiveness of Gestalt - I don’t want to shy away from my current understanding of it, which I find is brief and basic. At the point of writing this, I recognise that there is some Transference at play, and I want to give this area of therapy the true attention it deserves. I feel with more research, I will feel differently about this, and may even consider practicing it with Clients. And, if not, then at least I will be able to confidently say why, which will be in my conclusion of this essay.

As of the start of this essay, I think Carl Rogers’ Person Centered Therapy is far more effective. It is my personal mantra that “you have everything you need within you, you have all of the answers inside of you” and so his belief “that the individual has within him/herself vast resources…” (Rogers, 1974: p.116) clearly very much resonates with me!

Another word that I resonate with is “dare”. As mentioned in Individual Therapy: A Handbook “The person-centred therapist seeks to establish a relationship with a client in which the latter can gradually dare to face the anxiety and confusion which inevitably arise once the self-concept is challenged by the movement into awareness of experiences which do not fit into its current configuration.” (Thorne, 1990).

Daring to do something acknowledges the courage it takes to do this inner work, to face your demons, as they say ....”Your demons which represent your fears, insecurities, doubts or negative beliefs are the source of suffering. To achieve your desires, it is imperative to break through them to experience the greatness you deserve.” (Tony Fahkry, 2017) These are not easy feelings, they are not meant to be, and I feel making that clear in the space you make with the Client is of great benefit to them.

1.Transference and Projection

So, what is it about this particular scene that brought out such a strong reaction in me? What is the awareness I need to understand this reaction and be an effective therapist?

The Transference/ Countertransference Relationship is an element in Petruska Clarkson’s Five Elements of the Therapeutic Relationship. It refers to the act of viewing the client (or anyone) based on past experiences of similar people. This part is normally done unconsciously. So you may be both responding because of this.

This is my hard truth - I saw in Fritz Perls, a tutor of mine from university. This experience is something I never truly healed from. It was at a time where my best coping mechanism was to place the experience in “Pandora’s Box”, to squash it down into the depths of my mind, out of sight, out of mind, and to never touch on it again, for fear of those painful feelings.

This forced me to heal from that experience. Why? I acknowledge that I cannot move forward if I have such a strong Transference happening in everyday life. And, thanks to what I’ve learnt so far in this Diploma, I can easily do that.

2. The Gestalt Theory

So, what is Gestalt Therapy? Created and developed in the 1940s and 1950s by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Fritz Perls, and his then-wife, psychotherapist Laura (a good name), it was seen as a different approach to what can be considered traditional therapy, which I share my thoughts on below (psychologytoday.com).

With Gestalt, there is a lot of focus on the non-verbal elements of a person’s behaviour, and exploring what information can be perceived once these elements are “put together” as a “whole” to “form” the full true self. Just some of the descriptions of where the word originates.

Instead of being what I commonly see therapy as - solution based/action orientated, the client comes to you with a certain problem/issue in their life, Gestalt therapy seems more convoluted (at this early point of my research).

In my experience of therapy, the client has already enough awareness to know there is a particular issue, and they may even have uncovered the ‘why’ and now they are coming to you, the therapist, for the ‘how’ to move forward.

I feel Peter Philippson in this 2014 British Gestalt Journal article did a great summary of Gestalt therapy:

“a joint enterprise of exploration of dynamics underlying the difficulties with which people come to therapy, dynamics that essentially originated from difficult circumstances in childhood and infancy.”

There is a huge focus on the client not actually knowing what they want from therapy. This could be due to the client being heavily influenced by a Controlling Parent State. These people are greatly, unconsciously affected by the difficult circumstances mentioned above.

Image: The Gestalt Cycle of Change and the human capacity to grow (pawprintsofthesoul, 2012).

The above image shows the stages of the Gestalt Cycle of Change, along with possible interruptions. In training, the example used was thirst - awareness of this thirst, moving to take action in the form of getting a drink, then moving through to satisfaction of having this drink and removing the thirst, meaning the cycle comes to an end.

A cause for concern would be when the cycle does not complete. An issue is when something is stopping us from satisfying that need and being stuck in a loop of negative thinking. Perhaps you are so numb to your feelings you don’t even realise you are badly in need of water. Perhaps you lack so little self worth that you don’t feel you deserve to feel happy and comfortable, so you intentionally deflect your thoughts on this matter. Perhaps you deny encouragement of change on this topic and push people away who may be trying to help you. The root of the matter is that these beliefs may not even be your own. They may be the opinions of others that you may not even agree with, however, lacking self awareness leads to taking on beliefs without fully considering why. The next level of denial is to be quite able to recognise this negative behaviour in others, but not recognise it in yourself!

Then we have Retroflection - when we don’t want to do a particular thing to someone else, but we have a strong need to do that action, so we do it to ourselves. For example, we may be angry with someone, so angry we want to do them harm, the retroflection would be self-harm. Egotism, ironically, is another lack of self awareness, as being so engrossed with the self means you lack grounding within the present feeling of the Contact and lose the full experience of the satisfaction.

Lastly, quite like the adoption of opinions from others, Confluence is confusing yourself with others. This reminds me of growing up, having the same opinions as my parents, but not knowing why. For example, my mother hated Princess Diana. Before I even knew who she was, I knew I hated her. Mentions of her brought out a twist in my face, a shake of my head and a snide comment. It wasn’t until I did my own healing to notice and change these thought patterns.

So, this theory has a clear structure to it (another word used to describe it!) which I find ironic as one of the controversies of the Gestalt theory has been its lack of structure. There are two elements to the Gestalt theory to consider 1. The Gestalt Cycle of Change and 2. How the therapist chooses to engage with this cycle at play. As someone who thrives on structure and routine - a concise and clear agenda, this could be another reason for my strong response.

The Controversies of The Gestalt Theory

Speaking of controversies, Gestalt was also considered “vague and perhaps even obscure” - being dramatic with these grand displays of role playing. From what I’m learning, Perls seems to have had a persona as a therapist, arrogant, aggressive, assertive, which completely goes against what many therapists practice - to bring your true self to the session (The Decision Lab).

Perls emphasised qualitative descriptions - direct and literal ways of explaining his theory, and lacked the quantitative descriptions, the data, to back it up. This naturally struck a chord with many practitioners, like phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who “argued that the translation of psychological gestalten to physiological gestalten, and therefore to physical gestalten, is overly reductionist.” (The Decision Lab).

And, to put that in simple terms?! It comes back to Perls’ concept of the “whole”. Combining every single element of the human psyche without any concession of a difference then creates a dilemma of what consciousness even actually is!

Perls was also said to be sexist. This insight possibly hints at some countertransference at play during the Gloria Films. Was every action carefully thought out and designed to help Gloria see her true thought patterns and behaviours, or was some of it influenced by his personal opinion of the person he saw in front of him?

I also think it’s important to acknowledge how the views of men have had a disproportionate impact on many fields in history, psychology being one of them. And, I was also disheartened to discover Gloria Szymanski was led to believe these tapes would be solely used for internal educational purposes. So, you can just imagine her shock when her very real and raw experiences are laid bare for the world to see!

Dr Judith Johnson wrote a great article on this, and I completely agree with her point that the same effect can be made using actors. I watched some of her videos myself, and can attest to this! I then got my colleagues to watch some, just to be sure!

Person-Centered/Humanistic Therapy

What I like about the Carl Rogers’ approach is that it hugely resonates with my own philosophy: we all have the power from within to achieve our goals. As a therapist, I want my clients to find their own way to the solution. I do not like clients to become reliant on me, instead personalising my approach so that the techniques resonate with them, and that they feel comfortable to try these things out in their own time.

This requires getting on the client’s level of what they would understand. I think if Fritz had simply given a bit of warning in the form of something like “My technique can be quite powerful and effective, but also quite triggering. I don’t know how deeply you will be affected by what is about to transpire, but if you are willing to do the work, I will give you my best.” I wanted to see the “green light” from Gloria that she was prepared to go there. I think that would have done a lot for my own beliefs as a therapist.

Conclusion:

The aim of this essay was to examine my thoughts and feelings towards the scene of Fritz Perls displaying the Gestalt theory with Gloria, in The Gloria Films, as well as the Gestalt theory in general.

What seems to be clear is that psychotherapy is quite complex (what an understatement!) and that it requires far more time than that of a 2,500 word essay. However, writing this essay has done wonders for my understanding of the above things mentioned.

I don’t hate Gestalt. It turns out I was projecting! I wasn’t solely angry at Fritz for his behaviour, but at Gloria for “taking the bait”. I viewed her from my point of view. I now see what Gestalt theory really is and I see the pros of it.

I can also see how this would be of great help to people who really need it. For those who could not do the self awareness/problem spotting at home on their own, and need some form of “trigger” like a playful back and forth of role-playing or re-enactment to elicit a response that will help them see what patterns they truly have in their thoughts processes and behaviours. It can be beneficial for people who do not think to look inwards for solutions, and need showing that with these intense techniques.

This is the very first step to growth - knowing your thought patterns. Knowing who you are. When a technique puts the focus on the use of “I”, how to get the client to use “I” statements, it forces the client to only go one way, inward.

This comes back to my reaction - I would attend my own therapy with a specific goal in mind, and plenty of thought pattern recognition to hand, so this approach of trying to help me find it would throw me off. Which may have been what happened. I was also deeply confused - “Why is he doing this?” “What does this achieve?” “He didn’t even ask her what her problem was” Now it all makes sense. She didn’t truly know what her problem was.

Moving forward, I will ensure I have a process in place so that self awareness - awareness of Transference/ Countertransference, and realignment is automatic. I will trust that the information is out there to change my assumptions and further develop myself.