The Gestalt approach is based in an educational model and not in a medical model.
The medical model is focused on the cure, discovering what doesn’t work properly, to later intervene and try to look for a remedy to what is considered an illness. On the other hand, the educational model emphasizes in developing the potential, to see human beings from their healthy functioning.
In the medical model, when a person is seen as sick, s/he needs to have specialists in that disease that they can, in first place, diagnose adequately so, then, define in an more appropriate way to cure her/him; more than sick people, we have illnesses. Instead, in the educational model, the only expert of one self is the person her/himself, that is not sick, but has a problem that has to attend, facilitating the process of auto-regulation to recuperate his/her well being. Based on this point of view, the expert in one self is the one that has the problem, and the therapist is a specialist in points of view and methods that facilitate the recuperation of the well being of the person and improve its quality. There are not abstract problems, but concrete persons that have problems.
This is the vision of Gestalt therapy: human beings are constructive by nature and require the support of her/his environment for his/her development. (Terapia Gestalt en la práctica clínica, Myriam Muñoz Polit).