The sympathy and frustration technique

It is not enough merely to empathise with clients because this means that counsellors
are withholding themselves. Sympathy is also needed, but sympathy on its own spoils the
client. The best combination is a mixture of sympathy and frustration, that is, clients must be
frustrated in their endeavour to control their counsellors by means of neurotic manipulation.
Instead clients’ manipulative power is redirected to enable them to meet their true needs.
Clients are taught to avoid becoming phobic when they become uncomfortable, and instead to
be more aware.

Perls set up situations that resulted in clients being stuck in frustration. He then
frustrated their avoidances even further so they were forced to mobilise their own resources.
In other words he frustrated clients in order to bring them face to face with their blocks. The
important point here is that frustration eventually reveals that phobic impasse exists in
fantasy and not in reality, and that clients are stopping themselves from using their resources
because of their catastrophic expectations. Frustration helps clients to express their needs
directly rather than masking them with neurotic manipulations. The primary form of
communication is the imperative because clients who are able to state precisely what they
need and mean what they say have made the most important advance in counselling.

The fantasising technique

This is used to speed up counselling. Fantasising can be verbal, written or acted, and
there is often a strong transference element, representing projected attributes.

Drama techniques

Firstly, monodrama or monotherapy is a type of psychodrama in which individual

clients play all the roles in a drama of their own creation and under their own direction.
Secondly, the shuttle technique involves clients shuttling their attention from one area
to another. For example a client may shuttle from the visualisation of a memory to the
reliving of it in the here and now. Another useful application of this technique is to get clients
to shuttle between talking and listening to themselves. After each sentence they are asked if
they are aware of what they have said. The object is to stop them talking compulsively
because this prevents them from hearing what others have to say and from experiencing
themselves.
Thirdly, with the hot seat technique the hot seat is occupied by one of the clients
taking part in a group session and the counsellor works with that client in front of the group.
Fourthly, the empty chair technique involves clients changing chairs as they shuttle
between parts of themselves or between the different people in a monodrama, or to complete
unfinished business. For example clients might be asked to imagine that a deceased person
from their past is sitting in the chair, and then to say all the things they would like to say if
that person were really there. The imagined person might be an abuser or some other person
who has hurt the client.
Finally, top dog–underdog dialogues involve chair shutling and fantasy work. Many
people have self-torture fantasies in which they are fragmented into a top dog or inner
controller and an underdog or the controlled. The top dog is the superego and is characterised
by the issuing of authoritarian and righteous ‘shoulds’ and ‘should nots’. This top dog is a
perfectionistic manipulator that threatens dire consequences if its demands are not met.
 The underdog is the intra-ego and is cunning. It manipulates by being apologetic or
defensive, by wheedling, by being a crybaby and so on. Typical underdog statements are ‘My
intentions are really good’, ‘Mañana’ and ‘I really do try my best’.
Counsellors get their clients to shuttle between these two polarities so that they can
understand how their behaviour is structured. The aim is to reconcile the two adversaries by
enabling clients to be more in touch with their organismic self.

Dreams

According to Perls, dreams are the royal road to integration. They are not just
unfinished situations, symptoms or current problems, they are existential messages. If a
dream is repetitive, then an important existential issue is likely to be involved.
There are four stages to dreamwork. In the first stage the dream is related by the
client. The second stage involves the client retelling the dream, or part of it, in the present
tense so as to make it into a drama. For example ‘I was walking along this country lane’
becomes ‘I am walking along this country lane’. In the third stage the client becomes the
stage director, setting the scene and talking to the various actors. Finally, the client becomes
the actors, the props and everything else involved. The empty chair technique is valuable in
the final stage as it facilitates a dialogue between the different characters, parts of the self and
so on that are encountering each another.
Dreamwork promotes the integration of conflicts and reidentification with alienated
parts of the self, especially the assimilation of projections, and it reveals holes in the client’s
personality. The latter show up as blank spaces and voids, accompanied by confusion and
nervousness.

Group counselling

There are six basic rules for Gestalt groups

 The ‘now’ principle: communications in the present are encouraged, for example the
question ‘What is your now?’ might be asked.
 I and thou: this involves sending direct messages to the other. The personal pronoun ‘I’ is
used rather than ‘it’.
 Responsibilty language: this involves changing statements such as ‘I am unable to do
that’ to ‘I refuse to do that’.
 The awareness continuum: rather than the usual ‘why’ of behaviour, emphasis is
switched to the ‘now what’ and ‘how’ of behaviour.
 No gossiping: communication should be directed at the people concerned, as opposed to
talking about others when they are present.
 Changing questions into statements: instead of asking questions that serve to manipulate
the environment to gain support, group members are encouraged to exchange passive
questions for active, self-supporting statements.

A number of games are used by counsellors in group sessions. In the ‘I take responsibilty’
game every statement made by a client is accompanied by the phrase ‘. . . and I take
responsibilty for it’. For example ‘I am aware that I am walking forward, and I take
responsibility for it’. In ‘I have a secret’ every person in the group thinks of a personal secret
that fills them with shame and guilt and (without sharing it) imagines (or projects) what
others might say about it. Games of dialogue are used for splits in the personality, such as the
top dog–underdog scenario. Others include masculine–feminine and nice guy–rogue. In
‘Making the rounds’ a theme or feeling is elaborated by a client. For example ‘I don’t trust
anyone in this room’ is turned into a specific statement to each person. ‘Unfinished business’
requires clients to complete unfinished business with parents, friends, colleagues or siblings.
Unfinished business includes feelings such as hurt, resentment and anger.

In ‘Playing the projection’ a client who has difficulty with, for example, trusting
others is asked to play an untrustworthy person in order to identify and assimilate his or her
own untrustworthiness. A lot of human thought constitutes a rehearsal of social roles, so in
‘Rehearsal’ group members are asked to share their personal rehearsals. The main principle
behind ‘Reversal’ is that overt behaviour is frequently the reverse of latent/underlying
impulses, so in this game the considerate young man is asked to play someone selfish and
uncaring, and so on. ‘Exaggeration’ focuses either on verbal statements or on movement and
gesture. Clients are asked to exaggerate the statement or behaviour in each case. Finally, in
the ‘Marriage counselling’ game partners sit opposite each other and say ‘I resent you for . .
.’, followed by ‘What I appreciate in you is . . .’. The next step is to get partners to relate to
the reality of each other, rather than their fantasy of them. So partners describe each other in
sentences that start with ‘I see . . .’.

Changes to gestalt counselling since the death of Perls

Nowadays there is less emphasis on confrontation and frustration in Gestalt counselling. A

softer approach is taken and clients’ perceptions are emphasised. Counsellors are more likely
to make disclosures about their own defensiveness, personal problems, life experiences,
confusion and fears, but only if it helps the client to take the next step. Physical contact takes
place, and to enhance contact with clients and improve client focusing counsellors make ‘I’
statements. Psychoanalytic formulations are openly voiced to describe character structure.
Counselling is carried out on an individual, group or joint basis, and increased attention is
given to theoretical instruction, theoretical exposition and general work with cognition.
Finally, Gestalt techniques have been integrated with other approaches, such as transactional
analysis, which is discussed in the next chapter.

Conclusion

The most worrying aspect of the Gestalt approach is that it went through a period of being
fashionable, during which time it was simplified and distorted by therapists from other
approaches who used Gestalt after just a few days’ training. The scarcity of research and
literature contributed to the trivialisation of the approach and the lack of understanding of its
theoretical content. This was also the result of a regrettable propensity to minimise the use of
the intellect. Fear that a rigid structure might emerge caused a disinclination to move on from
the early phase of innovation and improvisation to develop a solid theoretical and
organisational base. Another problem was that practitioners failed to take the founders’
insights into new areas in a way that was consistent with the approach’s principles. The
result, especially in Britain, was that many Gestalt therapists felt isolated and lacked a
professional network. The consequence of all this was variable standards among Gestalt
therapists. However the problems have been addressed and Gestalt has survived because, at
its best, it enables clients to make sense of the world. It is therefore a theory that fits the
functioning of human beings.