Individual and Family Growth: A Gestalt Approach

Kaplan, Marvin L.; Kaplan, Netta R.

doi:10.1111/j.1545-5300.1978.00195.x

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The gestalt therapy concepts contact and confluence relate to the flexibility and permeability of interpersonal boundaries. Confluence refers to a boundary disturbance in which interactions are fixed and rigid, the couple caught in a “ritual playing-out of roles” (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1978, p. 198). Confluent reactions are based primarily on preconception and prior experience, responses to what is assumed to be.…”

Section: Reversal and Boundariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The goal of increasing contact gets to the heart of the rationale for using reversal with couples. In a relationship characterized by contact, each person has the “experience of reaching out [in reversal … reaching in] to recognize and discover, or rediscover, the human in one’s presence” (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1978, p. 198). Regarding the variation of reversal being discussed, the intention is to dismantle fixed defenses and distortions that interfere with contact.…”

Section: Reversal and Boundariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Partner-focused reversal in couple therapy.

Fow¹

1998

Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training

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Reversal techniques represent a variety of interventions whose roots can be found in psychodrama and gestalt therapy. The focus of the variation discussed here is couple therapy. Each person is asked to speak as though he or she were his or her partner. Particular attention is paid to using the technique to enhance rapport between the partners and encourage willing behavior change through increasing empathy and identification. The technique is discussed within the framework of the concepts of enmeshmentl disengagement and confluence/contact.To know where the other person makes a mistake is of little value. It only becomes interesting when you know where you make the mistake, for then you can do something about it.Carl Jung (1973, p. 226) The use of reversal techniques can likely be traced to the Viennese psychiatrist Jacob Moreno and the therapy approach psychodrama (Moreno, 1946(Moreno, , 1953). An essential element of psychodrama is the "free expression of feelings through unrehearsed, spontaneous acting" (Korchin, 1976, p. 391). Moreno's legacy is probably less in the practice of psychodrama as a pure technique and more so in its adoption and adaptation to the common techniques of role play and reversal. These techniques appear to draw their therapeutic potency, at least in part, by allowing, through the playing of another, the viewing of both the other's

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Section: Reversal and Boundariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Reversal and Boundariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Partner-focused reversal in couple therapy.

Fow¹

1998

Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training

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“…The Gestalt terms are similar but focus on how experience is organized. Confluence refers to experiential organization in which self and others are perceived in terms of familiar, a priori, restricted formulations (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1978). A person is confluent when he or she "sees" and "hears" others in terms of expectations that are embedded in his or her current restricted organization so the person cannot recognize what -does not fit".…”

Section: Field and Boundary Variationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A person is confluent when he or she "sees" and "hears" others in terms of expectations that are embedded in his or her current restricted organization so the person cannot recognize what -does not fit". Contact is the experience of discovery, a process in which the person's experiential organization undergoes modification as he or she acts to explore current boundaries (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1978). In field change, shift describes change from one "confluent" organization to another; field modification calls for "contact" or discovery processes that produce changed boundaries in an existing field.…”

Section: Field and Boundary Variationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organization of Experience Among Family Members in the Immediate Present: A Gestalt/Systems Integration

Kaplan

Kaplan²

1982

J Marital Family Therapy

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How processes of family functioning are conceptualized influences a therapist's understanding and use of immediate experiential phenomena in the therapy setting. This article outlines two basic formulations that generate different conceptual perspectives of immediate phenomena. One recognizes that the family system has a time‐enduring stability, while the second postulates that the family system has an immediate and temporary organization. The latter position is developed as an appropriate and useful application of systems thinking. Integrating systems thinking and Gestalt Therapy provides a framework for this application, one that recognizes individual experience as organized and as embedded in a mutual causal, self‐maintaining system of the whole. The nature of such wholes, how they maintain their stability, their potential for change, and implications for therapy are described.

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“…The couple, mother and infant, parent and child, parent and parent, exist and move as if in a 'dance' in a relationship to each other. They make a characteristic shape, have a unique smell and feel, and make a changing 'gestalt' of figure and ground between them (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1978).…”

Section: Theories Based On the Numbers Of Elements Necessary For Theimentioning

confidence: 99%

Theories of family interaction and techniques of intervention

Bentovim

1979

Journal of Family Therapy

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Individual and Family Growth: A Gestalt Approach

Cited by 5 publications

References 2 publications

Partner-focused reversal in couple therapy.

Partner-focused reversal in couple therapy.

Organization of Experience Among Family Members in the Immediate Present: A Gestalt/Systems Integration

Theories of family interaction and techniques of intervention

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