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Gestalt Therapy is a form of psychotherapy. Based on several descriptions it seems to be vague and fringe.

A practicing psychotherapist told me:

It is anything but scientific. It was popular in the '60s and '70s but has never had any empirical research or validation.

The lay person simply cannot negotiate the jungle of craziness in the therapy world. It really hurts psychology in general and therapy specifically when clients get poor treatment or worse. They don't see it as worthwhile and, of course, they tell everyone else about their bad experience. The root of much of this is religious protections and religious people who sit on licensing boards, to say nothing of religious legislators who write licensing laws that allow people to practice some pretty kooky stuff.

Trying to nail down a specific claim, consider depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. The American Addiction Centers make a claim on their page describing the therapy:

Research indicates that Gestalt therapy is successful in the treatment of trauma- and stressor-related disorders, depression, issues with anxiety, and substance use disorders. Individuals who participate in Gestalt therapy often become more self-confident and happier as they learn to accept themselves, accept others, and take responsibility for their actions.

Does research indicate that Gestalt Therapy is successful in the treatment of any of: trauma- and stressor-related disorders, depression, anxiety, or substance use disorders?

Reinstate Monica -- notmaynard
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CJ Dennis
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    It isn't clear what the claim here is. Is Gestalt therapy effective at treating what? Does anyone make a specific claim that can be tested? – Oddthinking Jan 31 '21 at 07:13
  • @Oddthinking Yes, the practitioners of Gestalt therapy claim it works for treating emotional problems. – CJ Dennis Jan 31 '21 at 10:47
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    Would you like to include that claim in the question, with a citation if possible? – Jiminy Cricket. Jan 31 '21 at 10:56
  • This is still way too broad and vague. Let's take something specific and real-world - like, say, drug addiction - and then quote something that says Gestalt Therapy can cure it. [For example](https://treatmentsolutions.com/treatment/therapies/gestalt/): " Research indicates that **Gestalt therapy is successful in the treatment** of trauma- and stressor-related disorders, depression, issues with anxiety, and **substance use disorders**." Then we can delete all the vaguery except perhaps a Wikipedia link for context. – Oddthinking Feb 01 '21 at 00:47
  • @Oddthinking I obviously don't know how to ask a good question for this site, even though you understand exactly what I'm asking. I give you permission to change the question however you want, and if I don't like it, I'll roll it back (incredibly unlikely). – CJ Dennis Feb 01 '21 at 00:50
  • Done. (To be clear, I know what you are asking, but it isn't answerable here. I am trying to make your question suitable for this site.) – Oddthinking Feb 01 '21 at 04:25
  • I've upvoted. Because the "standard" way to treat substance abuse is 12 step programs - magical thinking. I'd find it concerning if psychological methods were also not evidence based. – Jerome Viveiros Feb 01 '21 at 05:47
  • -1: You made it too darned broad again. I started to research an answer, and I found a mention of evidence about *substance abuse in adolescents*... so not even wide enough to cover the narrowest version of the question. Now, it isn't worth bothering, because it will take a few thousand words to cover the area. – Oddthinking Feb 01 '21 at 14:16
  • I'm actually not so opposed to a broader question (psychological therapies often are used for multiple purposes), but the title needs to be brought in line with that. "Does it work for any of these" is a reasonable question in this area. I'd take more issue with the fact that simply any form of "talk therapy" is somewhat effective for a number of conditions... so this may to be very insightful question. – Fizz Feb 02 '21 at 02:26
  • E.g. APA notes that "comparisons of different forms of psychotherapy most often result in relatively nonsignificant difference [...] patient and therapist characteristics, which are not usually captured by a patient's diagnosis or by the therapist's use of a specific psychotherapy, affect the results" https://www.apa.org/about/policy/resolution-psychotherapy – Fizz Feb 02 '21 at 02:33
  • Well, a practicing physicist once told me all of the psychology is 'anything but scientific'. – Neil Meyer Feb 11 '21 at 17:39
  • @NeilMeyer https://xkcd.com/435/ – CJ Dennis Feb 12 '21 at 23:28

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Short answer: Yeah, I guess...

Some Disclaimers:

  • There is a section on Wikipedia discussing a host of issues with measuring the effectiveness of psychotherapy. I won't review that here.
  • Gestalt therapy is not a particularly popular form of psychotherapy. For example, an APA survey by Norcross & Rogan (2012) reported 4% of respondents ascribing to Gestalt, and in a global survey by Goodyear et al (2016) only about 2% of respondents reported Gestalt as their preferred theoretical orientation. Even fewer therapists practice Gestalt exclusively.
  • Consequently, there is a paucity of research data available on the effectiveness of Gestalt therapy. For example, Raffagnino (2019) found only 11 studies in 12 years for their review of the effectiveness of Gestalt therapy, most of which are small, and do not report comparable effect sizes.

For the Love of Dodo Birds:

But it turns out that thanks to a character in Alice in Wonderland, we may reasonably answer the question without much additional evidence. This is because most "empirically validated" treatment modalities have been found to be equally effective - a finding known as the "Dodo bird conjecture" - with a "moderate" level of effectiveness all around. The so-called "third wave" therapies - those built on CBT, with outcome measures in mind - may be an exception to this rule, but Gestalt therapy is an older orientation, so would reasonably fall under the umbrella of moderately effective treatments. Studies measuring effect sizes for Gestalt therapy support this conclusion (eg, Stevens et al, 2014; Elliot et al, 2013; Shinohara et al, 2013; see Brownwell, 2016 for more examples).

A summary of a notable meta-analysis by Uwe Strümpfel (2006) of approximately 4500 patients concludes (original in German):

The studies confirm the effects of Gestalt therapy in a wide range of clinical disorders such as schizophrenia, other psychiatric and personality disorders, affective disorders and anxiety, substance dependencies and psychosomatic disorders and for work with special groups and in psychosocial preventive health settings.

The results published in this book are evidence that Gestalt therapy does not lag behind other forms of therapy in regard to efficacy and breadth of applications and even demonstrates particularly good treatment outcomes in certain areas of change.

Scientific Basis:

If you are interested in the scientific basis of psychotherapies in general, then check out:

As is often the case in medicine, tests of effectiveness are agnostic about the scientific basis of treatment. It does not matter if therapy involves extremely well-researched conditioning paradigms, or more questionable practices of flashing lights into people's eyes. There are for example, many art-oriented therapies, and no one would argue that art is science-based - what matters is the effect, even if the successful treatment is literal snake oil. Gestalt therapy being largely client-centered (rather than scientific) is not much of a concern in this sense.

Arnon Weinberg
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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/119940/discussion-on-answer-by-arnon-weinberg-does-gelstalt-therapy-effectively-treat-s). – Oddthinking Feb 19 '21 at 15:39