Marriage Counseling: Gestalt Methods

Gestalt therapy takes a humanistic approach to marriage counseling, focusing on personal responsibility and looking at the couple's experience in the present moment. It seeks to heighten emotions, perceptions and sensations while emphasizing the idea of the relationship and how it is tied up its surroundings. A phenomenological-existential/experimental form of psychotherapy, Gestalt therapy was founded by husband-and-wife team Frederick (Fritz) and Laura Perls, alongside sociologist Paul Goodman, in the 1940s.

Phenomenological Perspective

1. Key to Gestalt therapy is phenomenology, which in psychological and sociological terms helps people to take a step back from their usual method of thinking to understand what is actually in the present and what's a hangover from past experiences. It takes what a couple might be feeling in the present moment as being the most important aspect, where other forms of counseling stress past experiences, which avoid tackling deeper-rooted feelings.

Empty Chair

2. One method used in Gestalt marriage counseling is the empty chair, or open chair, technique. Each partner might undergo this technique separately in order to highlight the way in which each individual thinks. The Gestalt therapist sets out an empty chair, in which the therapist will ask the individual to imagine another person is sitting. This might be the person's husband or wife, or even an object like the individual's wedding ring. The therapist will ask the individual to hold a conversation with that person or object. This method can help to highlight an individual's attitude to another person or to a symbolic object, and seeks to create a heightened emotional experience in order to clarify thoughts.

Imagery

3. Gestalt marriage therapists may also ask couples to close their eyes and think back to various big events or trigger points. The therapist may ask the couple to picture a specific moment, like the first time they met, or more generally ask about the first image each individual arrives at when thinking of the other person. Discussions about these images can help the couple understand how they perceive each other at this moment in time, highlighting whether or not this opinion derives from the past or present.

Physical Behavior

4. Gestalt therapists will observe how each individual of the couple behaves physically during the sessions. They may have habits in their ways of sitting, touching each other, or fiddling with hair or clothing. By highlighting such behaviors to the clients, therapists can help a couple gain greater understanding of how their bodies are intrinsically linked with their present state of mind and relationship together.

Focus on the Present Day

5. Gestalt therapy can help a couple put issues they might be having into perspective. Translating Gestalt theory into everyday terms, it means that each person must take responsibility for himself and his actions. Ultimately, it teaches that couples should not be weighed down by things that have happened in the past, but work toward accepting that things have happened. The most important element a couple must think about is how life is in reality in the present day; Gestalt methods promote an understanding that the couple's relationship is about the here and now.

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