MA Gestalt Psychotherapy

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. Each of us has different feelings, desires and ideas, some of which do not best support us to live life in the here-and-now with full energy available. Some of our energy is tied up in “unfinished business” blocking the flow of energy. With awareness we can unblock that energy and have it available to live a rich and full life.

One of the central concepts of Gestalt psychotherapy is that we are innately motivated to actualise our fullest self, while maintaining a contactful relationship with our environment (which includes other people, our work, society… everything ‘outside’ of ourselves). Much of our behaviour can be understood as an expression of our attempts to do this, and the Gestalt therapist works in partnership with the client to empower them in this natural process, and to help release areas where they may have got ‘stuck’: difficulties can arise, if the creative adjustments we make become fixed patterns of behaviour which we try to apply in all situations.

Since much of this happens out of our awareness, one of the tasks of the Gestalt therapist is to help us get more in touch with what we are doing and how we are doing it. Gestalt psychotherapy has a variety of dynamic approaches that allow us to do this, and aims to integrate all aspects of the person: cognitive, emotional, physical and spiritual. What is directly perceived and felt is considered more reliable than explanations or interpretation.

Through this we can come to exercise real choice, heal wounds and gain access to our fuller potential for meeting a variety of life experiences.

Gestalt, founded by Fritz Perls and others, is a profoundly Humanistic psychotherapy (Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow are others from this school) which draws on a rich foundation of philosophical and psychological influences: existentialism, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, Zen Buddhism and psychodrama; the wider systems approach of field theory; concepts of child development; and holism. (Gestalt means ‘a whole configuration’, or ‘the whole that is more than the sum of its parts’).

It has also benefited from many contemporary developments, particularly concerning the importance of the therapeutic relationship; and the idea that this psychotherapy should itself be open to change and the integration of new ideas, is inherent in its philosophy. In this, Gestalt psychotherapy retains the iconoclasm and creativity of its founders and indicates its particular relevance to the rapidly changing circumstances of the 21st century.

If you would like further information about this course please contact our office.

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