Learn about Gestalt

What is Gestalt Therapy?

Gestalt therapy is an interactive and holistic form of psychotherapy that focuses on the total person, recognizing the unity of the mind, body and emotions. An integrated body of theory and practice having its roots in psychoanalysis, it originated in the 1940's when Drs. Frederick (Fritz) and Laura Perls, both classically trained psychoanalysts, became aware of the limitations of Freud's verbal, intellectual methods based on free association. They began to develop methods based on Gestalt Psychology, in which they expanded psychoanalysis to include a more holistic form of free association that covers all sense modalities, including emotions and body-awareness that cannot easily be put into words. They also modified Freud's method of encouraging projections by sitting behind the patient, realizing that the subtle avoidances of contact that patients engage in spontaneously and habitually are more significant than those produced in an artificial situation -- a view now accepted by many schools of psychoanalysis.

As it exists today, Gestalt therapy draws on humanistic psychology, existentialism and Eastern thought in addition to its psychoanalytic roots. A creative and patient approach that is non-authoritarian and non-interpretive, Gestalt therapy focuses on the client's here and now experience. Through skillful use of a variety of experiential methods, our therapy helps us to free energy locked in old, dysfuntional behavior patterns and re-organize ourselves in a way that allows us to live more fully and effectively, centered in ourselves, yet able to reach out and take in what the world has to offer.