Marc Williams- Brighton Therapy

Gestalt Therapy is a Humanistic Therapy believing that it is the client who has the answers and not the therapist. The therapist will not interpret the client but will help the client to find their own solutions.

Gestalt Therapy draws on a wide range of philosophical and theoretical approaches to form an integrated framework reflecting our experience.

Its many influences include: -

The aim of Gestalt Therapy is to accurately reflect our experience of ourselves and how we relate to others and to the world. It believes that humans attempt to make meanings out of their experience helping to shape their understanding of themselves and their environment. We follow natural rhythms and cycles as with the rest of nature attending to our emerging needs as we become aware of them. When we do not bring something satisfactorily to a conclusion it can remain as unfinished business affecting or influencing our behaviour or attitude to subsequent events.

Gestalt therapy subscribes to the view that the more we try to be what we are not the more we will stay the same. The more that we are able to accept who we are the more we will be able to change. This view was first articulated by Arnold Beissner in the early 1970’s and is known as the Paradoxical Theory of Change; it has become integral to Gestalt therapy theory since this time. 

A Gestalt Therapist works in a present-centred way believing that our past experiences and how they have shaped us will be available to us in the present moment. The therapist will help the client raise his or her awareness about what is happening for them not only on a cognitive level but also on an emotional and physical level.  

This raising of awareness gives us an increased understanding and acceptance of ourselves and how we relate to others in turn giving us more freedom and flexibility in how we make choices and our ability to respond to events in our lives.