The methods are powerful catalysts for opening up feelings and getting clients into contact with their present-centered experience. A wide range of techniques is designed to intensify experiencing and to integrate conflicting feelings. Techniques include confrontation, dialogue with polarities, role playing, staying with feelings, reaching an impasse, and reliving and reexperiencing unfinished business in the forms of resentment and guilt. Gestalt dream work is very useful. Formal diagnosis and testing are not done.
Interpretation is done by the client instead of by the therapist.
By encouraging direct contact and the expression of feelings, the approach de-emphasizes abstract intellectualization of one's problems. Intense experiencing can occur quickly, so therapy can be relatively brief. The approach recognizes the value of working with the past as it is important to the here and now. Its focus is on the recognition of one's own projections and the refusal to accept helplessness. Gestalt therapy gives attention to nonverbal and body messages.