Table Of ContentDEVELOPING GESTALT
COUNSELLING
A field theoretical and relational
model of contemporary Gestalt
counselling and psychotherapy
Developing Counselling, edited by Windy Dryden, is an innovative
series of books which provides counsellors and counselling
trainees with practical hints and guidelines on the problems they
face in the counselling process. The books assume that readers
have a working knowledge of the approach in question, and, in a
clear and accessible fashion show how the counsellor can more
effectively translate that knowledge into everyday practice.
Books in the series include:
Developing the Practice of Counselling
Windy Dryden and Colin Feltham
Developing Counsellor Supervision
Colin Feltham and Windy Dryden
Developing Counsellor Training
Windy Dryden and Colin Feltham
Developing Person-Centred Counselling
Dave Mearns
Developing Psychodynamic Counselling
Brendan McLoughlin
Developing Rational Emotive Behavioural Counselling
Windy Dryden and Joseph Yankura
Developing Cognitive-Behavioural Counselling
Michael J. Scott, Stephen G. Stradling and Windy Dryden
Developing Transactional Analysis Counselling
Ian Stewart
DEVELOPING GESTALT
COUNSELLING
A field theoretical and relational
model of contemporary Gestalt
counselling and psychotherapy
Jennifer Mackewn
USAGE
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Singapore | Washington DC
© Jennifer Mackewn 1997
First published 1997
Reprinted 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
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ISBN 978-0-8039-7860-7
ISBN 978-0-8039-7861-4 (pbk)
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Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction: A field theoretical and relational model
of contemporary integrative Gestalt 1
/ Attending to Beginnings: Initial Conditions and
Existential Meeting 29
1 Using initial session(s) for meeting, clarification and
two-way assessment 31
// Exploring the Client's Context and Culture 41
2 Attending to the whole person 43
3 Understanding field theory and meeting clients from
a field perspective 48
4 Understanding how people organise their
psychological field 54
5 Using phenomenological methods to describe and
investigate the field 58
6 Understanding the paradoxical theory of
change 63
/// Developing a Dialogic Relationship as a Crucible for
Self Development 71
7 Understanding Gestalt theories of self and their
implications 73
8 Understanding the dialogic relationship
and developing a person to person
dialogue 79
9 Making a working alliance with clients 87
10 Understanding transferential processes within the
dialogic relationship 92
11 Integrating the different components of dialogic
relating in practice 97
vi Developing Gestalt counselling
IV Observing Process, Developing Diagnostic
Perspectives and Therapeutic Strategies 101
12 Observing clients' processes of contact and styles of
moderating contact, while developing diagnostic
perspectives 103
V Exploring Awareness and Contact 111
13 Exploring and developing awareness and contact 113
14 Reintegrating disowned aspects or polarities of the
self 119
15 Exploring personal responsibility 124
VI Integrating Experimental, Creative and
Transpersonal Dimensions 129
16 Integrating creative imagination and experiments 131
17 Introducing and developing imagery and metaphor 139
18 Introducing fantasy and visualisation 142
19 Working with dreams 144
20 Opening to the transpersonal and caring for soul 150
VII Working with Embodiment, Energy and 'Resistance9 157
21 Using embodiment, movement and play 159
22 Attending to body process and energy flow 162
23 Appreciating the wisdom of 'resistance', while
exploring the impasse 169
VIII Attending to the Background Features and Processes
in Clients9 Lives 177
24 Attending to the ground from which figures of
contact arise 179
25 Exploring and developing awareness of support
systems 183
26 Identifying and unravelling life themes 188
27 Attending to continuity, assimilation and
completion 192
28 Calibrating your approach for people who have a
fragile sense of self or are easily shamed 196
(X Shaping Counselling over Time 203
29 Shaping therapeutic work over time 205
30 Attending to the final stages and endings 209
Contents vii
Conclusion: Simplicity, Complexity and Paradox in Gestalt
Counselling and Therapy 215
Appendices 221
1 Examples of Gestalt intake sheet and initial contract
form 223
2 Integrating Gestalt and Psychiatric Diagnosis 226
3 Form to support Gestalt diagnosis of process and
psychiatric diagnosis 230
4 Diagnostic criteria for those with borderline and
narcissistic self process 234
5 Co-designing Gestalt experiments with clients 236
6 Complex cycles in individual, group and systemic
process 238
7 Shame in the intersubjective field 245
References 252
Index 260
Preface
This book has been written with three aims in mind. Firstly, I hope to
provide a view of contemporary integrative Gestalt which will go some way
to offset and counterbalance the oft repeated and sometimes reductionist
descriptions of Fritz Perl's demonstration work in the 1960s. The Gestalt
approach to counselling and therapy has been consistently misrepresented
and misunderstood by people who have not differentiated between Gestalt
and 'Perlsism' (Clarkson and Mackewn, 1993; Dublin, 1977). Contemporary
integrative Gestalt is a complex intersubjective approach based in phenom-
enological field theory. I especially want to convey how flexible and adapt
able Gestalt can be, allowing the practitioner to incorporate all manner of
ideas and insights from other forms of therapy and from different fields of
expertise, within the integrative frame of field theory. Gestalt is not, at heart,
a matter of developing new tricks and techniques but of creatively adapting
the approach and the practitioner to meet the other person or people where
they are available for meeting.
Secondly, I have attempted to meet a need for an overview of contem
porary integrative Gestalt. In recent years many counsellors, psychotherapists
and trainees have approached me saying that they know Gestalt has evolved
and developed enormously since the 1960s but they have found it hard to get
a comprehensive sense of its evolution. To gather relevant and necessary
information about contemporary Gestalt (as opposed to Perlsian 1960s Gestalt
which still predominates in the minds of many) they have had to find and
read material from a wide range of sources, not all of which are easy to get
hold of or absorb. This book integrates many of the important developments
of the last decade.
Thirdly, I have wished to provoke some new thinking within the field of
counselling and therapy. In this context I am proposing a model of coun
selling and therapy as complex processes which are not linear in nature but
iterative, recursive and spiralling - see the Introduction. I am also suggesting
that counselling and therapy need to go beyond individualism, beyond even
human intersubjectivity and address issues of the field in which we live - our
interdependence with the natural world, our responsibilities for the economic
and cultural conditions of our times as well as our responsibilities towards
the other species which co-habit our earth.
In tune with most other Western developments of the century, counselling
and psychotherapy have persistently recommended a 'person-centred'
approach. The result is that we human beings now participate predominantly
with other humans and with human made technologies and experiences.
Most of us have lost a sense of our interdependent place in the universe. This
is a precarious situation both for our survival as a species and for our
psychological health. We have become estranged from the animate earth
(Abram, 1996). We need connection and contact with the elements of earth,
sky, water, fire and a lived sense of relationship to rocks, trees, flowers and
wüd creatures in order to live meaningful, sustainable lives.
Preface ix
Counselling and psychotherapy do not seem to have fulfilled their early
promise. Far from improving the world, we have had a hundred years of
psychotherapy and the world is getting worse. Indeed psychotherapy and
counselling may have contributed to the fostering of a narcissistic culture
(Lasch, 1979) which emphasises the rights of individuals without fully taking
account of their responsibilities and the entitlements of other peoples,
cultures, species and life forms or indeed of the earth herself. Counselling and
psychotherapy have undoubtedly helped many individuals but they have
also upset many individuals and bypassed many more.
Above all, therapeutic counselling has contributed relatively little to the
care of the world or the interaction between individuals and the ecological,
social and economic conditions of our times. Counselling and psychotherapy
have emphasised the hurts which older generations and society have inflicted
and they have shown some useful ways that individuals can alleviate these
wounds. But they have offered little guidance about how we can tend the
wounds of society, of our ancestors or of the world.
Gestalt is perhaps uniquely placed to redress this imbalance because of its
emphasis upon field theory and existential phenomenology. I propose that
contemporary integrative Gestalt offers a different basis for counselling and
psychotherapy. It does not emphasise the person but the person in context. It
places as much emphasis upon the environment or field as upon the person
coming for counselling. Field theory shows how we are shaped by our
environment but it also indicates how we individually contribute towards
shaping our environment and are responsible in many respects for choosing
our reality. It invites us to experience our interdependence with the world and
challenges us to feel our responsibility for the field conditions in which we
live. It therefore seems a useful approach to counselling at a time when the
ecological balance of the world is immediately threatened and a continued
emphasis upon 'humanistic' and 'person-centred' approaches is proving fatal
to many species and habitats and is likely to be fatal to the human species as
well.
Existential phenomenology suggests that there is not one but many
realities, not one but many perspectives, not one but many truths. It reminds
us of the inherent subjectivity of any one person's view and the humbling
limits of our human perceptions. It opens us to multiple levels of reality,
reconnects us to the direct sensuous nature of our bodily experience and puts
us back in touch with the interdependent world. Only through such lived
experience of interconnection can we start living as one of earth's animals,
equally conscious of our responsibilities as of our rights.
Developing Gestalt Counselling and Psychotherapy makes no claims for being
either authoritative or comprehensive. Rather, what I have set out to do is
outline the various areas which I feel have been under- or misrepresented in
the general books published on Gestalt so far. It is inevitably a subjective
view of the Gestalt approach even though tempered by the subjective com
ments of the many colleagues and trainees who have been kind enough to
read and help me with the typescripts.
The book can be read as a whole, but it is equally intended to be treated as
a reference and a support, to be dipped into at different places. Each section
is fairly complete in itself and is amply cross-referenced so I hope you will
feel free to pick and choose to meet your needs and follow your interests. I
hope you enjoy the book and find it of use.
