The authors present background on the gestalt-experiential understanding of resistance, conceptualized to be either resistance to awareness or resistance to contact. The authors discuss why they do not use the term resistance and describe the phenomena as a client's self-protective attempt to avoid the anxiety necessitated by change. Such resistant behaviors occur outside a client's awareness and often result in an ambivalence or conflict about change. The authors also describe using in-session experiments as a way to engage with the client in exploring such a state of ambivalence or conflict. Finally, they respond to the case studies presented elsewhere in this issue and propose intervention strategies consistent with the gestalt-experiential perspective.

Focused Expressive Psychotherapy is a Gestalt-based method of psychotherapy which is designed to facilitate the resolution of constricted emotion in patients. This form of therapy is described as a five-step process. The present article addresses the steps of that process which relate specifically to the intensification and resolution of emotions. The importance and rationale for intensification are discussed and related to the concept of restructured schematic memories. Markers of resolution are identified as changes in 'benchmarks', changes in patient behaviour or attitude, and/or a reevaluated stance towards past events. We conclude by citing one of our recent research efforts that demonstrates a relationship between the intensification of emotion and positive therapy outcome.

This article reviews the literature on cognitive, emotional, and social effects of battering, describes a group therapy process through case examples, and outlines the problems the authors experienced in executing their plan. Directions for further research and modifications in the group therapy process are suggested.

Counselors and psychotherapists commonly use two rhetorics, a rhetoric of caring and a rhetoric of warfare. The latter should be abandoned in favor of less antagonistic language.

Filters or sources of distortion inherent in the counselor culture can diminish the counselor's ability to understand a person asking for help. A counselor's role, theoretical orientation, work context, and personal experience influence the interaction between counselor and client so that the client may not be the center of the counseling process. Remedies to reduce such distortions include heightened awareness of the filters' existence, participation in supervision in which counselor and supervisor have access to the same client, and research to establish empirically the presence and effects of various filters on counselors' views of clients.