Gestalt therapy originated with Fritz Perls, who was interested in the here and now. Perls believed that a person’s difficulties today arise because of the way he or she is acting today, here and now. In Perls’s words:
[T]he goal … must be to give him the means with which he can solve his present problems and any that may arise tomorrow or next year. The tool is self-support, and this he achieves by dealing with himself and his problems with all the means presently at his command, right now. If he can be truly aware at every instant of himself and his actions on whatever level – fantasy, verbal or physical – he can see how he is producing his difficulties, he can see what his present difficulties are, and he can help himself to solve them in the present, in the here and now.
A consultant using a Gestalt approach has the primary aim of showing clients that they interrupt themselves in achieving what they want. Gestalt is experiential, not just based on talking, and there is an emphasis on doing, acting and feeling. Gestaltists use a cycle of experience to map how individuals and groups enact their desires, but more often than not how they block themselves from completing the cycle.
A favourite saying of Fritz Perls was to ‘get out of your mind and come to your senses’. Gestalt always begins with what one is experiencing in the here and now. Experiencing has as its basis what one is sensing. ‘Sensing determines the nature of awareness’ (Perls, Hefferline and Goodman, 1951).
What we sense outside of ourselves or within leads to awareness. Awareness comes when we alight or focus upon what we are experiencing. Nevis (1998) describes it as ‘the spontaneous sensing of what arises or becomes figural, and it involves direct, immediate experience’. He gives a comprehensive list of the many things that we can be aware of at any one moment, including the following:
- What we sense: sights, sounds, textures, tastes, smells, kinaesthetic stimulations and so on.
- What we verbalize and visualize: thinking, planning, remembering, imagining and so on.
- What we feel: happiness, sadness, fearfulness, wonder, anger, pride, empathy, indifference, compassion, anxiety and so on.
- What we value: inclinations, judgements, conclusions, prejudices and so on.
How we interact: participation patterns, communication styles, energy levels, norms and so on.
Although your awareness can only ever be in the present, this awareness can include memory of the past, anticipation of the future, inner experience and awareness of others and the environment.
Mobilization of energy occurs as awareness is focused on a specific facet. Imagine you have to give a piece of negative feedback to a colleague. As you focus on this challenge by bringing it into the foreground, you might start to feel butterflies in your stomach, or sweaty palms. This is like using a searchlight to illuminate a specific thing and bring it into full awareness. In Nevis’s terminology this brings about an ‘energized concern’.
This energy then needs to be released typically by doing something, by taking action, by making contact in and with the outside world. You give the feedback.
Closure might come when the colleague thanks you for the feedback and compliments you on the clarity and level of insight. Or perhaps you have an argument and agree to disagree. You will then experience a reduction in your energy, and will complete the cycle by having come to a resolution, with the object of attention fading into the background once more. The issue of the colleague’s performance becomes less important.
For real change to have occurred (either internally or out in the world) the full Gestalt cycle will need to have been experienced.
Nevis shows how the Gestalt cycle maps on to stages in managerial decision making:
Awareness
Data generation, Seeking information, Sharing information, Reviewing past performance, Environmental scanning
Energy/action
Attempts to mobilize energy and interest in ideas or proposals, Supporting ideas presented by others, Identifying and experiencing differences and conflicts of competing interests or views, Supporting own position, Seeking maximum participation
Contact
Joining in a common objective, Common recognition of problem definition, Indications of understanding, not necessarily agreement, Choosing a course of possible future action
Resolution/closure
Testing, checking for common understanding, Reviewing what’s occurred, Acknowledgement of what’s been accomplished and what remains to be done, Identifying the meaning of the discussion, Generalizing from what’s been learned, Beginning to develop implementation and action plans
Withdrawal
Pausing to let things ‘sink in’
Reducing energy and interest in the issue
Turning to other tasks or problems
Ending the meeting.
STOP AND THINK!
Use the Gestalt curve to describe how a manager moves from a concern about the team’s performance to launching and executing a change initiative.