ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Personality Disorders
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1280954
Use of Temperament and Character Inventory to Describe Effectiveness of Gestalt Therapy
Provisionally accepted
Benjamin Calvet1,2,3*
Jean-Luc Vallejo4Yves Plu5Isabelle Soulat4Alexandra Foucher3
Jean-Pierre Clément1,2,3- 1Pole Universitaire de Psychiatrie de l'Adulte et de la Personne Âgée, d'Addictologie (PUP3A), Centre Hospitalier Esquirol, Limoges, France
- 2INSERM U1094 Neuroépidémiologie Tropicale, Limoges, Limousin, France
- 3CMRR du Limousin, Limoges, Limousin, France
- 4Institut Limousin de Formation et de Gestalt-Thérapie, Limoges, France
- 5Institut Gestalt+, Rennes, France
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: Gestalt therapy (GT) is a dynamic, integrative, embodied approach that addresses human existence as a fundamentally relational modality, in which the experience of the self is situated in a dynamic organism–environment field. Assessments of GT are scarce, often avoided, and generally qualitative. The THEGETCI study aimed to show that the modifiable character dimensions of the 125-item Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI-125), as well as other personality temperament dimensions and emotional measures, change after a GT program. Methods: A psychotherapeutic program consisting of 33 one-hour sessions (minimum of 12 sessions), spaced over several months, was offered to 319 subjects with mood and/or anxiety disorders. The TCI-125, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and Visual Analog Scale (VAS) were used to assess subjective psychological states before and after the program. All TCI-125 scores were adjusted for potential confounding factors. Results: Statistically significant differences between initial and final mean scores were observed for anxiety (t = 16.46; p < 0.0001), depression (t = 11.24; p < 0.0001), harm avoidance (t = 8.82; p < 0.0001), and global psychological distress assessed by VAS (t = 18.7; p < 0.0001) (all showing decreased scores). Significant increases were observed for the three maturity dimensions: Self-Directedness (t = -11.49; p < 0.0001), Cooperativeness (t = -2.77; p < 0.006), and Self-Transcendence (t = -4.52; p < 0.0001). Conclusion: The THEGETCI study is one of the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of specific, current GT strategies on personality dimensions using rigorous evaluation methods. Further research is needed to confirm these results and to better identify both the expected benefits for practitioners and the problem profiles most likely to benefit from GT.
Keywords: Gestalt Therapy, Temperament and Character Inventory, Personality, effectiveness, Temperament, Character, Anxiety, Depression
Received: 21 Aug 2023; Accepted: 04 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Calvet, Vallejo, Plu, Soulat, Foucher and Clément. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Benjamin Calvet, Pole Universitaire de Psychiatrie de l'Adulte et de la Personne Âgée, d'Addictologie (PUP3A), Centre Hospitalier Esquirol, Limoges, France
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.