ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Psychopathology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1593918
Clients' Subjective Experiences of Navigating Challenges in Gestalt Therapy: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Psychology, Bertha von Suttner Private University, St. Poelten, Austria
- 2Fachsektion Integrative Gestalttherapie, Österreichischer Arbeitskreis für Gruppentherapie und Gruppendynamik, Vienna, Austria
- 3University for Continuing Education Krems, Krems an der Donau, Lower Austria, Austria
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
This study explored the lived experiences of four female clients with common mental disorders and suboptimal structural integration after 30 sessions of Gestalt therapy, navigating emotional and relational challenges, bodily awareness, and agency. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), we analyzed four semi-structured interviews, followed by a cross-case comparison. Two experiential patterns emerged. Clients with low-integrated personality structures faced significant difficulties with emotional regulation, self-concept stability, and relational dynamics. They relied heavily on external validation and struggled to develop cohesive internal processes. While they described increased awareness of emotions and bodily sensations, these experiences remained fragmented and did not translate into broader self-integration. In contrast, clients with moderateintegrated personality structures demonstrated greater emotional regulation and a more stable selfconcept. However, despite engaging in reflective processing and linking past experiences to present challenges, they continued to struggle with self-agency. Findings highlight the distinct ways in which clients with varying levels of personality integration experience Gestalt therapy and suggest that while emotional and relational growth occurred, deeper structural transformation remained limited. This study underscores the need for tailoring therapeutic interventions to clients' structural integration levels, particularly by addressing the challenges of fostering agency in structurally vulnerable clients.
Keywords: Gestalt Therapy, Personality Structure, OPD, interpretative phenomenological analysis, qualitative research
Received: 14 Mar 2025; Accepted: 07 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kaisler and Schaffler. 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: Raphaela Elisabeth Kaisler, raphaela.kaisler@suttneruni.at
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.