Use of Gestalt by Counselors

• Gestalt counselling in schools? by Mary Burner, 3/23/98
  
  

Dear Ms. Burner: The problem with Gestalt is... it's effective in the hands of anyone. By "problem" I mean, if you use chairs, for instance, simply changing chairs with the sitter moving into the chair of who he has just addressed, does dissociate some repressed memory as cognitive awareness. However, if the counselor is not therpeutically free of fear relative to the energy being dissociated within the MIND of the sitter, the sitter's MIND will quickly shift the sitter's attention from the dissociated energy, re-repressing it, and will also reinforce the misperception of the sitter that such energy is "fearful", thus exacerbating the sitter's access to it the next time. Gestalt must be used by those who have thoroughly explored a personal process of psychotherapy.

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