So, from the very beginning of the session, I focused on raising his awareness, helping him to begin to notice how he was saying what he was saying as well as the quality of our engagement. Throughout the first session, I did not concentrate on gathering details of his life, trying to teach him how to combat the thoughts in his head, or trying to establish a relationship by getting to know him. I was primarily interested in helping him to experience the process of how we are together.
The Gestalt approach originated in the late ’40s with a group of New York intellectuals objected to psychoanalysis, which they saw as severely limited because it focused on pathology, as opposed to potential. These intellectuals—Laura and Fritz Perls, Paul Goodman, and Ralph Hefferline, among others—responded to this lack by creating a more open, engaged, enlivened psychotherapeutic experience, one focused on liberation and growth, which allowed the human personality to transcend the limitations of the defenses.