PubMed · 6490257
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R L Harman. 1984. Recent developments in gestalt group therapy.. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207284.1984.11491397
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Gestalt views of psychopathology are almost completely ignored in mainstream psychology and psychiatry. However, a review of available evidence indicates a remarkable consistency between these views and current data from experimental psychopathology and cognitive neuroscience. This consistency is especially pronounced in the area of schizophrenia. In addition, there is a convergence of cognitive and neurobiological evidence regarding the validity of early Gestalt views of both normal brain-behavior relationships and disordered ones, as in schizophrenia. This article reviews some contributions of Gestalt psychology regarding schizophrenia and examines these views in light of more recent findings from cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and experimental psychopathology. We conclude that Gestalt theory is a viable theoretical framework from which to understand schizophrenia. Specifically, it appears that a breakdown of Gestalt organizational processes may characterize both the cognitive and the brain processes in schizophrenia.
This metaanalytical assessment of evaluation research in the field of Gestalt therapy has been conducted on the basis of 38 studies which took place between 1970 and 1986. Its scope is substantially broader than the metaanalysis of Smith, Glass and Miller (1980) or the secondary analysis of Grawe's Berner Workgroup documented in Forschungsgutachten zu Fragen eines Psychotherapeutengesetzes (1991). The results indicate Gestalt therapy to be an effective psychotherapeutic treatment which is not inferior to other comparable methods of treatment. No definitive statement can be made concerning differential indication, individual therapy setting or long-term measures.
In Gestalt therapy, transference is viewed as a contact boundary disturbance which impairs the patient's ability to accurately perceive the present therapy situation. The boundary disturbances in Gestalt therapy most closely related to the analytic notion of transference are projection, introjection, and confluence. In Gestalt group psychotherapy, group members interfere with the process of need identification and satisfaction by distorting their contact with each other through projecting, introjecting, and being confluent. The Gestalt group therapist uses interventions directed to individuals and to the group to increase participants' awareness of these boundary disturbances and of the present contact opportunities available to them when these disturbances are resolved. In formulating interventions, the leader is mindful of the function of boundary disturbances to the group-as-a-whole as well as to individuals.