Healthcare Training Institute - Quality Education since 1979
CE for Psychologist, Social Worker, Counselor, & MFT!!

Introduction

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Welcome to the Home Study Course sponsored by the Healthcare Training Institute. This course is dealing with Gestalt therapy techniques.Our primary intent for this home study course is to provide quality education to foster your professional growth.  The Institute has provided quality education since 1979. Hi.  My name is James Brennen.   I will be the narrator of this CD set.  We appreciate that you have chosen us as a vehicle for you to earn your Continuing Education Credit.

The purpose of the course is to assist you in increasing your knowledge regarding how to treat patients, clients, etc. by using Gestalt therapy techniques that bring the client into the "now".  As each case study is given, if the concepts seem to be applicable to your situation, I encourage you to turn your CD player off and make a few notes regarding the application of the principle to your setting.  However, these notes are for your purposes only and are not to be sent to the Institute.  Also each section is very content dense.  So feel free to replay the section to review the content either for your own purposes, or if you feel appropriate play the section in an individual or group session for client education.  Also permission is granted to reproduce this CD.  We encourage you to duplicate and give copies of this CD to colleagues, clients, etc. as you deem appropriate. We feel the information on our CD's is valuable.  Thus, we have an interest in distributing CD's in as many ways as possible, to benefit the greatest number of people, who have a need and are receptive to this practical information.

The questions in your Test are sequential and deal with the section of content that preceded it.  For this reason, to facilitate the answering of each question, you might read the question from the Test prior to listening to that CD section.  By knowing what the question is ahead of time, you will then know the content to listen for that contains the answer.  So just a hint, after you write down the answer to a question in your Test, read on to the next question in order to give you a "heads up" to listen for the content that contains the answer to the next question.

Merely write the correct letter on the corresponding blank line in your Test. Each answer is only used once. Keep in mind there is nothing tricky or hard about these questions.  They are merely intended to verify the playing of this CD.

For the purpose of brevity, most generally, I will use the term "therapists" or "mental health professional."  However, don’t let these terms deter you from applying the concepts to your situations.  When you hear the word "therapists," if your job title is social worker, psychologist, marriage and family therapist, mental health counselor, professional counselor, resident director, program assistant, etc. merely substitute the appropriate term that is the most meaningful to you. In short, don’t let my use of the term "therapists" cognitively set you off track from hearing the content because your job title is school counselor, for example.  I will also use the term "client" for the purposes of brevity.  However, if you deal with patients, residents, students, consumers, etc., transpose "client" for the term that is the most meaningful to you in your work setting. 

On this CD set we will discuss such topics as: guidelines for Gestalt therapy, awareness and the now, techniques for enhancing client awareness, changing words, changing sentences, addressing nonverbal behaviors, identification and projection, fantasy, dialogues, helping the client presentize, responsibility, bipolarities, avoidance, and acceptance.

So, let’s get started...

Just to make sure that we are all on the same page, I'd like to begin this CD set with a brief review of the approaches in Gestalt therapy.  As you know, Gestalt therapy focuses on enhancing a client's awareness of his or her "now."  This awareness is defined as "knowing what one is sensing, feeling, and thinking." Thus, the therapist focuses not on interpreting the client's behavior, but on the "what" and "how" of the client's present.  The basic assumption of Gestalt therapy is that through this focus on the client's "now", the client's most pressing need will emerge to be dealt with.  Throughout the rest of this course, we will discuss specific approaches and techniques the Gestalt therapist can use to help the client focus his or her attention on the "now."