Articles

History:

Influences that shaped Gestalt psychology:

Freud’s psychoanalytic theory

Psychodrama and the work of Jacob Moreno

Frederick Perls (1893–1970) was the founder and chief designer of Gestalt therapy. He joined the German army in 1916 and served as a doctor in the First World War. His experience with soldiers who had been gassed on the front line turned his interest towards psychological functioning, which led to Gestalt psychology.

After the war Perls worked with Kurt Goldstein at the Goldstein Institute in Frankfurt, which cared for brain-injured soldiers, and through this collaboration came to see the importance of viewing people as wholes rather than as collections of separately functioning parts. He later moved to Vienna and began his training in psychoanalysis.

In 1952 Perls and several colleagues founded the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. He eventually left New York and settled in Big Sur, California, where he ran workshops and seminars at the Esalen Institute and made his name as an innovator in psychotherapy. There he had a great influence on people, partly through his professional writing but mainly through personal contact in his workshops.

Perls himself was a lively and astonishing man. People usually responded to him with a mixture of fear and respect, or saw him as a harsh confronter who met his own needs through a talent for acting. He had loved the theatre since childhood. For a first-hand account of Fritz Perls’s life, we recommend his autobiography In and Out the Garbage Pail (1969); for the history of Gestalt therapy, Bowman (2005) is recommended.

Source: Gerald Corey, Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy, Persian translation by Yahya Seyed Mohammadi, Arasbaran Publishing, 2013

For those interested in this approach, Moeen Counselling Centre plans to run workshops and specialist Gestalt therapist training courses taught by Dr Amir Askari. To hear when workshops are held, join our network.

“Lifetrap” is an everyday term; the word specialists use for a lifetrap is schema. The concept of the schema comes from cognitive psychology. Schemas can be defined as deep, unshakeable beliefs about ourselves, others and the world around us that formed in our minds in childhood.
These schemas play a decisive part in how we feel about ourselves. Letting go of them means giving up the security we have found in their shelter. So, despite the harm these beliefs do us, we feel safe in their shelter, because they give us predictability and reassurance. That is why cognitive therapists believe that changing these beliefs is hard, exhausting work.

Three features of schemas

Schemas have three features by which we can recognise them:
1. Schemas are long-standing patterns or themes in our lives.
2. Schemas are self-damaging.
3. Schemas fight for their own survival.
A schema is a pattern or theme formed in childhood that imposes itself on a person throughout life. If you have fallen into a lifetrap or schema, what it brings you in adulthood is a re-creation of the conditions of your childhood — the very conditions that harmed you and caused you problems.
Schemas are self-damaging. People circle like a moth around a flame: they are constantly drawn to situations that closely resemble their past. Schemas can harm identity, health and social relationships, work and mood. A schema brings every dimension of life under its sway.

A schema fights hard for its own survival. There is a strong pull in a person to keep their schema — part of the human wish for consistency and stability. We can recognise a schema. Painful and troublesome as it is, it has become normal and familiar to the person, which is why changing it is hard, exhausting work. Above all, in childhood these schemas were ways of adapting to a dysfunctional family. In childhood these traps were realistic. The problem is that, although they are of little use now and we have many paths open to us, we cling tightly to keeping them going.

Sources:

– Jeffrey Young, Reinventing Your Life, Persian translation by Dr Hassan Hamidpour, Arjmand Publishing

– Martin R. Bamber, Schema Therapy for Occupational Stress (Persian title), translated by Dr Hassan Hamidpour, Arjmand Publishing

Moeen Counselling Centre plans to run specialist schema-focused therapist training courses for professionals and students in counselling and psychology, taught by Dr Amir Askari. Because schemas form in childhood, the centre also runs parenting courses for the public. To hear about course dates and requirements, join our network.

Early adverse experiences and the formation of schemas

Early maladaptive schemas form through exposure to early adverse experiences in the environment. Young and his colleagues extended Beck’s concept of underlying assumptions and named them early maladaptive schemas (EMS). They see these schemas as deep, pervasive themes or patterns about oneself and one’s relationships with others, and as highly dysfunctional. The schemas form in childhood or adolescence and go on ruling absolutely over the course of a life.

Young and his colleagues believe that early maladaptive schemas are activated when a person meets environments that recall the adverse environment of their childhood. When this happens, the person is overtaken by intense and often overwhelming negative emotions. A growing body of evidence supports the existence of early maladaptive schemas.

What is a maladaptive coping style?

Early maladaptive schemas show themselves through maladaptive coping styles. Young and his colleagues describe three coping styles, linked to the three basic responses of fight, flight and freeze: surrender (freeze), avoidance (flight) and overcompensation (fight). In any given situation a person probably uses only one coping style, but with early maladaptive schemas they may show different coping styles in different situations.

The surrender coping style

Schema surrender: people with this style become obedient followers of the schema and let it win. They do not try to fight or avoid it. They put their seal of approval on the schema and act in ways that confirm it. As adults they ruminate over the childhood experiences that feed their early maladaptive schemas.

The avoidance coping style

Schema avoidance: people with this coping style try to arrange their lives so that their schemas are never activated, and act as if no schema existed at all. They avoid situations that might trigger their schemas, and if a schema is activated they may take refuge in behaviours that let them avoid and escape the emotional turmoil linked to it — such as heavy drinking, drug use, workaholism or compulsive behaviours. All of these behaviours serve to avoid the feelings the schema brings.

The overcompensation coping style

Schema overcompensation: people with this style fight the schema in their thinking, feeling and behaviour, as if its opposite were true. For example, a person adopts perfectionistic attitudes to make up for underlying feelings of worthlessness.

A child who was submissive may become defiant as an adult. A person who was controlled as a child will try to control others as an adult, and someone who was abused as a child may mistreat others as an adult.

Sources:

– Jeffrey Young, Reinventing Your Life, Persian translation by Dr Hassan Hamidpour, Arjmand Publishing

– Martin R. Bamber, Schema Therapy for Occupational Stress (Persian title), translated by Dr Hassan Hamidpour, Arjmand Publishing

Moeen Counselling Centre plans to run specialist schema-focused therapist training courses for professionals and students in counselling and psychology, taught by Dr Amir Askari. Because schemas form in childhood, the centre also runs parenting courses for the public. To hear about course dates and requirements, join our network.

Family therapy is a term for the many ways of working with families who suffer from problems of biological, psychological and social[1] origin.

What is a family?

A family is a unit of at least two people with fairly complex emotional relationships between its members. This smallest and oldest social institution, which exists to meet its members’ mutual needs, has its own rules, relationships, boundaries and limits. The family is where people’s relationships begin. That is why the relationship between parents and children matters so much: these contacts are a person’s first relationships with another person, and these interactions lay the foundation for our future relationships with others and with society.

The family therapist

Some family therapists believe that all human problems have a relational[2] basis, and so family therapy applies in every case. Others believe that couples therapy[3] and family therapy suit particular relationship problems, or can be used alongside medication in particular conditions such as schizophrenia.

Approaches also differ in the kind of intervention therapists believe in. Some like to invite every family member to every session. Others meet members individually to help them handle their interactions with the rest of the family better, while others try to widen family therapy to take in the broad social and professional network surrounding the family. There are very complex situations that involve or affect every member of the family, and some of them can also affect or involve other members of the community the family belongs to.

[1] relational

[2] marital therapy

[1] Biopsychosocial

Moeen Counselling Centre plans to run specialist family therapist training courses for students and professionals in counselling and psychology, taught by Dr Bahman Bahmani. To hear about course dates and requirements, join our network.