Update on experiment

• Gestalt Therapy and Mental Health Care: Part 1 by Brian O'Neill, 11/3/96
  • Substance Abuse Therapy in Community Mental Health Centers by J. Richard White, 11/24/96
    • Gestalt and Residential Tx of DualDx Clients by Philip Brownell, 12/3/96
      
      

I would like to bring an update to the experiment of using the Gestalt training group as a model for working in a Gestalt fashion with clients in residential treatment on an ICU in a dual diagnosis hospital. I cannot speak with any detail regarding the clients, but this approach seems to be going well. I am very surprised, and delighted, to see people one would believe to be low functioning rise to the occasion. They emerge from their pacing, shuffling existence to participate in meaningful ways. Those more troubled respond in a very concrete fashion to watching someone else work, they are merely reminded of similarities in the content of the work, while others are reminded of similar processes in their lives, and these folks usually end up telling stories about themselves, connecting something through having observed one of their peers working. It is truly amazing to see character disordered people in the same group with thought disturbed folks, and each relating from the base of their relative dynamics. My experience so far is that this is very useful, stimulating these clients in ways they hadn't imagined. This evening I had the added delight of seeing the person who had volunteered to work come back several times to the nurse's station, where I was charting, to announce some new aspect of the work upon which he'd been chewing. I could see the paradoxical nature of experiential therapy, that is, the work was still being worked - it was definitely not over when we all left the group room. Frankly, all the other approaches have been left in the dust by a bunch of people who just wanted to get to the next smoke break, but this one is keeping them thinking, and I like that.

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