Institut de Développement du Thérapeute

What research for Gestalt therapy?

2020-06-18T14:18:35Z

Two risks and a third way

Vincent BEJA

Tél: +336 83 45 75 84

Two risks and a third way: what research for GT?
This article has been first published in the British Gestalt Journal Vol 29, n°1 - The author wrote this article while he was chairing the EAGT Research Committee in a controversial context about research and on request of the editor.
His recognition goes to Florence Belasco for her support, and with whom he has maintained a long and mutual companionship on this theme of clinical research for almost ten years.

In this article the author explains the possible future for Gestalt therapy in view of the evolution of the regulatory context and the appearance of the contextual model resulting from the evolution of research in psychotherapy. This future oscillates between marginalisation or even outright disappearance and dissolution into a vast, integrative, outcome-based current.

The author argues that both the values inspiring the Gestalt therapeutic posture and the mode of intervention based on the therapist's affective resonance are worth defending and even disseminating more widely than today. He then draws the outlines of a Gestalt research that allows Gestalt therapy to be legitimised by being recognised as offering evidence-based treatments and to continue to develop as an original and innovative modality.

Table of contents
I - Regulatory Pressure and the Risk of Marginality
II - The Contextual Model and the Risk of Identity Loss
..........II-1 Wampold's Contextual Model
..........II-2 EAP Policy
III - The need and interest in inventing our future: the third way
IV - Elements for a Gestalt Therapy Research Policy
..........IV-1 The medical model: a controversial model
..........IV-2 Efficiency research - Methodologies compatible with our anthropology
..........IV-3 Research Questions Relevant to Gestalt Therapy
V - What policy, then, for the EAGT?
..........V-1 A bit of history
..........V-2 The Future

Vincent Béja,
Chair of the EAGT Research Committee, convening international conferences on Gestalt therapy research in Paris (2017) and Hamburg (2021), co-founder of the French Research Committee, former member of the AAGT Research Task Force, and member of the Research Committee of the EAGT since 2013. Co-editor with Florence Belasco of the book La recherche en Gestalt-thérapie (2018), member of the editorial board of the Gestalt Therapy Book Series, and member of the reading committee of the Revue Gestalt for ten years. He has written more than thirty articles on Gestalt therapy in various French and English- speaking journals and translated many others. Co-founder of the IDeT (Institute for the Development of the Therapist) in Paris, France. He is currently a member of the SPR (Society for Psychotherapy Research) and the NYIGT (New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy).
From 1985 to 1992 he was a statistician and researcher at the ORS PACA (Observatoire Régional de la Santé de Provence Alpes Côtes d'Azur), France.

This article was published in British Gestalt Journal 29.1. To read the full issue, please visit the British Gestalt Journal website.

=> This document is available in English, Spanish and French on request...

Excerpt...

The second element we need to take into account is the state of research and what the future holds for the profession of psychotherapists. Although the debate between cognitive-behavioural scientists and those who belong to humanistic and psychoanalytic approaches is not over, it has become clear that differences in effectiveness between modalities are marginal (Luborsky & Luborsky, 1975; Luborsky & al., 2002). Currently, there is a growing consensus that effectiveness depends mainly on factors that are common to all modalities, i.e., mainly on the therapeutic relationship and its components. Thus, the quality of the therapeutic alliance is today the best predictor of the outcomes of a therapy (Orlinsky & al., 2004, Norcross & Wampold, 2011).
Moreover, there are therapists who systematically and significantly have better results than their colleagues, regardless of the modalities and perhaps even the types of patients they receive (Castonguay & Hill, 2017). This means that the therapist is ultimately more important than the treatment (Belasco & Castonguay, 2017).

These two statements, taken together, can profoundly transform the landscape of psychotherapy. Bruce Wampold, a renowned American researcher, has drawn conclusions from these achievements, which are no longer hardly contested today, and he has proposed the contextual model (Wampold, 2015) as an alternative to the medical model. In particular, he argues that since modalities have less impact on outcomes than the individual therapist, it is the therapist - not the modality or treatment - who must prove its effectiveness. It is moreover on this clinical basis of regular evaluation that the therapist will be able to improve his efficiency and measure his evolution; it will no longer be enough to apply a treatment based on evidence (Briffault, 2018).
It is therefore a model that departs from the medical model currently advocated by CBT and is beginning to compete with it. However, it leads to a weakening of therapeutic modalities, including Gestalt therapy (Briffault, 2018). Indeed, if they are still necessary to give the practitioner a form of conceptual framework and assurance, they are no longer justified by anything other than the therapist's personal preference alone. Thus, in the long run, modalities may disappear in favour of a therapy guided essentially by the result. What lies in wait is to lose our gestalt specificity and to have to melt into a globalizing and eclectic supra-modality.

First French book on research in Gestalt therapy

2020-02-07T22:13:53Z

Béja V., Belasco F. (Editors), 2018, La Recherche en Gestalt-thérapie, Special joint issue of la Revue Gestalt and les Cahiers de Gestalt-thérapie, Ed. SFG (Société française de Gestalt-thérapie) & CEG-t (Collège européen de Gestalt-thérapie)
– online Cairn

This book is the result of the Paris 2017 conference on research in Gestalt therapy. It presents a panorama of international contemporary research conducted in this modality. Through the topics addressed and its extensive bibliography, it will be of general interest to all readers concerned with the development and validation of humanistic therapies.

Summary

Presentation - Béja, Belasco
Towards Renewal... the International Conference on Gestalt Therapy Research in Paris - Béja, Francesetti, Roubal, Reck

Two major research programs under discussion in the international gestalt community

The Gestalt Therapy Fidelity Scale - Fogarty, Bhar, Theiler
What does a therapist do in Gestalt therapy - Philippson
Proposal for a methodology for research in Gestalt therapy: the use of case studies in the analysis of change processes and its effectiveness - Herrera, Mstibovzskyi, Roubal, Brownell

About the epistemic difficulties araising from research

Interview with Willy Butollo - Béja, Butollo
Epistemological and Practical Consequences for Gestalt Therapy Research of Adopting a Contextual Model “à la Wampold” - Briffault

Research consistent with the principles of Gestalt therapy

Descriptive research: Describe the practice from the point of view of the gestalt therapist who conducts it. Brissaud
The importance of research: how to improve one's practice of Gestalt Therapy - Stevens
A phenomenological way to measure change in gestalt therapy - Sandell
A gestalt theory of depression and the construction and validation of a test - Babakhanyan, Burley

Effectiveness Issues

Presentation of the results of a comparative naturalist study from the perspective of Gestalt Therapy - Schulthess, Tschuschke, Koemeda-Lutz, von Wyl, Crameri
Practice-based research as evidence of the effectiveness of Gestalt Therapy - Grossman, Cohen
The results of psychotherapy: reexamining an old question - Castonguay
Evaluation of Gestalt Personality Therapy with the Cloninger TCI 125 Questionnaire - Vallejo, Plu, Calvet

A step into exploring practice-based research in Gestalt therapy

2020-01-01T11:48:00Z

Out of the Paris'Conference

Out of the Paris Conference: a step into exploring practice- based research in Gestalt therapy

In this paper, Vincent Béja, Gianni Francesetti, Jan Roubal, Mark Reck, the four conveners of the Paris Conference (May 2017) tell us why and how a research tradition in Gestalt therapy is starting to grow: the uniqueness and relevance of Gestalt therapy merits joining the psychotherapy research field to receive legitimation and the Gestalt community has already undertaken good research projects and achieved valuable results. The Gestalt community is now mobilized and the success of the Paris Conference seems to be a turning point. The authors continue by discussing how research can fit with Gestalt anthropology and show how this emerging tradition is connected with and part of the wider field of contemporary psychotherapy research. Finally, they focus on the training and development of the reflexive awareness of the therapist, advocating a more research-oriented attitude.

Table of contents

Heading towards research: a brief history
A reflective process
A major political axis
False dichotomy and true benefit
An effort towards method
A terrain of conflict and evolution
Training: the real challenge

This paper has been first published in the British Gestalt Journal 2018, Vol. 27, No.1, 7–13

=> Available from the first author on request.

Excerpt:

The role of research is like a spur which pushes us on and invites us not simply to satisfy ourselves with what exists. For example, we tend to believe that group training develops reflexive awareness and improves a future therapist's interpersonal skills; however, as with many aspects of our approach, we have no evidence- based data proving this. This is where the challenge lies, in getting evidence that supports our methods. We are convinced that by focusing on the processes of clarification and observation, our community will find new ways to further improve our training in terms of a better integration of theoretical–clinical knowledge with relational skills.
It is therefore desirable that research, with its dual aspects of results – that are always incomplete – and the ever-stimulating questions being asked, become an integral part of the therapists' and trainers' ‘baggage'. This has recently led the EAGT to advocate for the introduction of research into the programs of the training institutes it accredits.