THE

GESTALT
JOURNAL
Volume II, Number 1, Spring, 1979

A MESSAGE FROM THE PUBLISHER

AN ORAL HISTORY OF GESTALT THERAPY, PART 3:

A CONVERSATION WTH
ERVING AND MARIAM POLSTER
Joe %song

GESTALT THERAPY: CLINICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

Gary Yontef

COMPARING CERTAIN THEORIES AND THERAPIES

OF FREUD AND PERLS
Genie Z Laborde

ELEMENTS IN THE WAY OF THE SWORD

Jeffrey Schaler

TOWARDS A THEORY OF TRANSPERSONAL GESTALT

Ed Elkin

A GESTALT EXPERIMENT: FEAR OF REJECTION

Martha J. Welch, Ph.D.

GESTALT THERAPY WITH PROFOUNDLY DISTURBED

PERSONS
Claire D. Stratford and Lynn W. Brallier

BOOK REVIEWS

BOOKS RECEIVED

NOTES ON THE AUTHORS

FROM THE PUBLISHER:
It is with regret that we announce that this will be the kzst issue of
The Gestalt Journal produced under the direct editorial supervision of Ed-
ward Rosenfeld. I am, however, pleased to announce that Ed will continue
with us in the new position of Enecutive Editor, offering us the benefits of
his tulents while giving less of his time.
When Ed and Ifirst conceived the Journal Ed's primary personal
responsibilities were his work as an author ofnonfiction books and hisprac-
tice as a Gestalt therapist. Since our beginning, Ed accepted the position of
Articles Editor of Omni, the new popukzr science magazine. While Ed and I
both hoped that the additional burden on his time and energy would not in-
terfere with his responsibilitiesas Editor of the Journal the passage oftime
has proven our hopes wrong The miriad of details involved in the role of
editor are many, and Omni, as a monthly mass-market publication must,
takesprecedence over workfor the Journal
As we went through the finalprocess ofputting this issue to bed, Ed
and I both realized, and discussed, the obvious conflicts between both of his
roles. I'm pleased that our discussions have led to Ed agreeing to continue
with the Journal as our Executive Editor. For now, I will assume the role of
Editor of the Journal and hope to be able to make the various processes
from article submission to Journal publication smoother for all of us.
Our other activities continue to grow and expand. A s of this wiling,
ourfirst Gestalt conference is yet to occur, but as you read this, it ispast.
Next year's conference will be held in the Greater Boston Area May 16th,
17th, and lath, 1980. Make a note andphn to attend.
The latest edition of The Gestalt Directory will be avaikzble shortly
(perhaps by the time you read this). A n advertisement for it appears
elsewhere in these pages.
Other future projects include the re$ublication of Claudio
Naranjo's Techniques of Gestalt Therapy, which has been out ofprint for
severalyears. We anticipate publication shortly after Lnbor Day and will be
notjfying all of you via mail upon its release.
Until next time, please keep your comments cominf in. Most impor-
tant, keep in mind that the Journal depends on you and awaits you>articles.
Send them in du$licate 20 us at our new address - The Gestalt Journal
Highland, N.Y. 12S28.

Joe Wysong
AN ORAL HISTORY OF
GESTALT THERAPY
PART THREE: A CONVERSATION WITH
ERVING AND MIRIAM POLSTER
Joe Wysong

We continue with our oral history of the development of Gestalt

therapy with an interview with Erving and Miriam Polster Probably best
k n o w for their book, Gestalt Therapy Integrated, publishedin 1973, both
have been active in Gestalt therapy almost since its inception and were a
part of the first Gestalt "study " group started outsiae New York City.
From this group evolved The Gestalt Institute of Cleueland, which just
celebrated its 2% Anniuersary.
Active in the Cleveland Institute for almost 20 years, the Polsters
left Cleveland and moved to California where they established The Gestalt
Training Center-Sun Dkgo. In addition to their programs in Son Diego,
Erv and Miriam travel, both separately and together, throughout the coun-
try conducting training workshops and seminars for other institutions.
Last fall, Erv and Miriam Polsler where conducting a five d?y train-
ing workshop on Cape Cod. What follows is condensedfrom a conuersation
that began after lunch, was interrupted by an afternoon training session,
and then continued until early evening and dinner.
Erv and I began the interview alone, and were joined at a later point
(indicated in the text) by Miriam. Our conversation took place on October
19, 1978 in Provincetown, Massachnsetts.
1 CONVERSATION WITH ERVING AND MIRIAM POLSTER

Erving Politer - Photo courfesy E w i n ~Poiiler

JW: What were you doing professionally when you first heard of Fritz Peds
and Gestalt Therapy?
EP: I had gotten my Ph.D. from Western Reserve three years earlier in
1950. I already had two years on the faculty of the University of Iowa, half
teaching and half clinical work. I came back to Cleveland in '51 and started
a private practice and was also doing some supervisory work at the Universi-
ty. I was Director of Psychotherapy in the Psychology Department at
Cleveland State Hospital, where 1 did some early group therapy work. In
1953 Marjorie Creelman called me about a workshop that Fritz was doing
in Cleveland. They'd already had one, and this was the second one. I went. I
just was very aroused and re-oriented. Not re-oriented, but more fully
oriented about what I was doing and thinking. Everthing seemed to come
together more clearly, seeing what Fritz was doing and saying. I also needed
further training. I'd been out of gaduate school for four years. I'd gone
about as far as I felt I could go on what I had learned in graduate school and
to get some new inspiration and new training was very important to me.
There was not much that was available because in those days we didn't have
the same kind of diverse training that exists today outside graduate schools.
JW: Is there anything from that first workshop with Fritz that's particularly
vivid to you?
EP: I don't remember any specific content, but I do remember the power of
seeing someone have a profound personal experience in a group of people
who had not previously been intimate. That was a revelation to me. It
wasn't done much then. Nowadays it's taken for granted, but then to see
somebody say something that was so powerful they would cry, right there
among fifteen people from the community who were not related to them,
who were not necessarily even their friends; was a revelatory experience.
JW: Did the group only meet when Perls came to Cleveland?
EP: No. We met leaderless weekly. We did a lot of exploration that was
novel for us in those days. Explorations of how we walked, how we talked,
how we saw, how we used our language and much more. That lasted a year
and a half. We also had workshops with Fritz about four times a year. We
also had many workshops with Paul Weisz, and some with Laura. The first
workshop was with Fritz andPaul Weisz-they came jointly. After a while,
Paul got tired of being seen as a couple with Fritz, and wanted to be invited
on his own, so we invited him separately. Soon, Paul Goodman came in. We
had a lot of trouble getting Paul in through Fritz. He felt like Paul would be
too much for us, or he thought Paul would be an enfant terrible-but we
wanted to meet with Paul, because we knew of him as co-authoring the
A COWERSATTON WITH ERVING AND MIRIAM POLSTER

book, Gestalt Therapy. We did, finally, meet with Paul. We met with him
quite a lot.
JW: A t what point did Isadore start his visits to Cleveland?
EP: Isadore came to one of the early workshops that Fritz and Paul did
together, around 1955. Soon Isadore began working with us individually.
We knew we needed more than we could get from workshops. We wanted
somebody from New York to come in to work with us individually. Isadore
was available. First he came in twice a month and he'd stay for a few days
each time, so that each one of us could get a couple of sessions with him
twice a month. We didn't know him very well before we started to work
with him, but we came to know him very intimately. He came in for about
four years on a once a month basis, then he went off to live in Europe for a
couple of years. When he came back to this country he came back to
Cleveland again for a couple of years.
JW: I'd enjoy some brief impressions of Perls, Paul Goodman, Paul Weisz
and Laura Perls as they were at the time.
EP: It's very difficult. I can't do it without a disclaimer about my facility
about my doing it right. From Fritz I got the realization that a person could
have incredible range in characteristics. I could experience Fritz as the most
cutting and the most tender of all people. I loved that contrast.
JW: You saw this both in his work and in him as an individual?
EP: I'm talking about his work. Outside of his work there was a very did
ferent quality between us. In his work I felt his power of creating tension to
be greater than any I've ever seen. A tension that was lively-at any mo-
ment the world would change. He got across that kind of vibrancy of lie.
And he would get across a sense of courage to be able to go into any under-
current trip. It was as though one were to go on an LSD trip (LSD was not
known in those days) and he would always be there. There was no way that
he wouldn't know what to do on that trip. I was incredibly supported and
inspired to be able to take some of the trips that I took with him. He was a
man of vast power to assimilate what somebody was saying to him, no mat-
ter how large it was. You would say something large to him, and he'd be
just as large. You could say something small and he could stoop to hear it.
He had this great range-and he had an X-ray quality. I suddenly
discovered that a person could actually know another person for the mo-
ment without knowing them wholly. He seemed a genius to me. I'd never
known a genius first hand. I'd read about them. Now I felt like I'd met a
genius before the critics got to him. I was able to feel that without anybody
having said it to me about him. I really loved having the opportunity to

Th.&,,#I< J o " ~ !Vol I,, NO 1

h
know my own mind about that without having heard a lot of stories about
him. . . I could get it fresh. I was so entranced with the way he functioned
that I used to immitate his way of smoking. I would even find myself saying
yes as though I had some remote contact with being German. It was very
strange, I could hardly believe myself when1 did it. I got over that, but1 was
entranced. He was a man who could cast spells.
JW: I think it's important that you're talking about 1952 or 1953 because
now we hear a lot about immediacy and presence, but in that context, at
that time. . . .
EP: Yes. I used to watch him work with people. One time he worked with a
person who came in for a demonstration, who was not in our group. Every
step of the way he went I could think of things I would say that would carry
the process further. . .from interpretation. . . to general knowing of the
person. . .but he didn't. He got into that person each moment. That was
enough for him. And of course that accumulated into a very large or-
perience.
JW: And Paul Weisz?
EP: Paul Weisz came at the same time as Fritz. Sometimes he came with
Fritz, sometimes he came separately. Paul Weisz was a very different man.
He was, first of all, a man of finer steps. He would take small steps in
therapy. He could move with a person from one sensation to the next where
Fritz wouldn't do that. And you had a feeling with Paul of almost Zen
knowing when he would have difficulty verbalizing. He was not as simple in
his verbalizations as Fritz. Fritz could describe what he wanted to describe
as long as he didn't have to talk longer than a paragraph. He could talk with
exquisite clarity, using figures of speech and very simple language. He could
talk to you as though he was telling a story to a child. With great resonance
in his voice and with profound content. Paul was much more abstract in his
talking. It was a little harder for us to get the words from him, but he was in-
credibly sensitive about whatever was happening and he had the deepest
respect for a person's creative process. I had a feeling that I could go
anywhere with Paul. He wasn't the inspirational force that Fritz was. When
you were done with Fritz, you might have been Svengalied into what you
got in to. But Paul Weisz was not a Svengali man. He was a very human,
brave, responsible man. He was the kind of person who could love
something you'd done even though it wasn't obvious that everybody would
love it, or even if it was trite--he saw the beauty in it. He could respond in a
way that would get to the beauty instead of the triteness. He was physically
more vigorous than Fritz, though not as graceful. He was younger. He in-
A CONVERSATION WITH ERVING AND MlRlAM POLSTER

troduced a Zen experience into our situation. I remember being silent with
him for hours. It was the first time I'd ever experienced the power of a silent
experience. Paul wasn't invoking silence. H e was not a man to invoke
things. I remember doing an experiment which was very eye-opening. He
brought a pail of water. The idea was to immerse our heads in it. And
breathe. I don't remember the experience exactly. . i t ' s been solong. But I
remember feeling the power of how I could, through self-experimentation,
change that which was simply a pail of water into a microcosm of life. He
had a way of doing that. I remember putting my head into that water and
remembering the moment of the expansion of all my sensations and anxiety
into excitement at the prospect of drowning. As though I could have drown-
ed right there in that little pail of water. I was taking that chance in life. I
came out of it alive, having a sense for the microcosmic quality. It was that
sort of thing that Paul Weisz introduced me to.
JW: And he wasn't getting it from books.
EP: No. In fact, Isadore had introduced me to a book called Zen and the Art
of Archery. There wasn't much Zen around. Obviously there were
philosophers who knew a lot about Zen, but when I say not much Zen
around, I mean it was through Paul and somewhat through Fritz that we
could get a sense of how the Eastern systems and the Western systems were
merging. Meeting, if not merging.
JW: What about Isadore?
EP: Isadore was a very different person. A t first we were all in individual
therapy with him. Then, we had theory meeting with him in small groups.
The way we did theory with Isadore was to read Gestalt Therapy together.
Each of us would take a turn reading it. We wouldstop the reader at a time
when we wanted to ask a question. I can remember some of the questions
that I was concerned with, that 1needed further explanation for, and would
disagree about, and that Isadore would explain. It was a new idea that hap-
piness might not be the major goal in lie. I would argue that point with
Isadore. I probably still might argue that point. But whether I would agree
or disagree is not as important to me as what he further accentuated for me.
I said, all we care about is to feel good. His position was that to feel as you
feel is more what life is about, irrespective of whether one was happy or not
happy-irrespective of your feeling. Function came across as transcending
questions of feeling good or feeling happy. There were many discussions of
that sort. They were pretty intellectual discussions, which has not always
been harmonious with the Gestalt view. Still isn't. I think that's changing.
One of the important things for me in my later development was deciding to
go back to the concepts. That's when I started the first course I did in
Cleveland on the concepts of Gestalt therapy where I wanted to deal with
the concepts of the method rather than the experience of the method. That
was a blast for me. What I have come to develop as my perspectives on
Gestalt therapy are a result of that first course. I newly organized the con-
cepts to present them to the people in Cleveland. A n interesting thing hap-
pened during the time I was doing the lecturing. It was just totally lecture
and discussion. One day Fritz came to town and said, "What are you doing
these days?" And I said, "Well, I'm teaching a course in Gestalt therapy
from the standpoint of concepts. I'm also doing experiential things, but I
want this to be just concepts." And he said, "That's fantastic, I'm in-
terested in that too, and I'm starting to write and 1would like to come and
present something to your class." So I said to him, "Well, I would love you
to do that Fritz, i/ you'll do that-not to be experiential." He said, "Yes,
yes, yes, yes, yes. That's just what I want to do. I want to do it, and I want a
place to do it, and this is the place." So he came and gave a lecture for about
five minutes. You could see his mind beginning to falter in the lecture form.
Not falter, that isn't the right way to put it, but-as though he would not be
able to elaborate fully and felt compelled to show how to do what he was
talking about. So be started working with somebody and the rest of the ses-
sion was a magnificent experience. No more concepts. Because Fritz was a
man of aphorism, wry sayings; not a man of extended conceptualizations, of
dealing with the obvious contradictions and the obvious implications, the
obvious additions to what he might be saying.
JW: That leaves us with Paul Goodman and Laura. . . ,
EP: I want to say more about Isadore. First of all, he was more intimate with
us. He knew us better. Second of all, he had acectain learnedness about him
that Fritz and Paul didn't bring into the picture. Paul was a learned
man-Paul Weisz I'm talking about now. But Paul Weisz didn't bring it in
much. What he knew was usually brought in through his integration of it,
rather than as the original. Isadore was at the borderline of the writer-artist
and the therapist. I had more of the feeling of the relationship of the artist to
the therapist when I was with Isadore than I did with either of the others. In
fact, one of my more anxious moments in therapy with Isadore was at a
point when I was doing some magnificent things in my own therapy. They
felt ardul, and I began to feel something of what the relationship was be-
tween the artist and the therapist. Then I suddenly realized that my art form
might be to be the patient. That alarmed me to no end (laughs). But in any
case, there was that with Isadore. And then, with Isadore, we had continui-
A CONVERSATION WITH ERVING AND MIHAM POLSTER

ty. Isadore did not m n a medicine man act, in the sense of the magic potion.
I'm not saying that the magic potions were not valuable, because I think
some of the magic potions were very revealing. I loved them, and find them
very educational. They just need the substance of the continuing. Isadore
gave us that substance and continuity. And in the years that we were with
him we just flowered. I really should speak about myself now. I flowered. 1
discovered ways of existing that would not even have been fantasies for me
as a graduate student. And I say that without being modest, because I was
an excellent graduate student and I was seen as doing excellent work when I
got out of graduate school. I came to Gestalt therapy from the position of
the excellence of the profession of that day, into a new day, where there
were new illuminations that the profession just didn't know about. I was
also young, and ripe, and itwas very timely for me to grow in that direction.
I felt that Isadore's sensitivity was a very un-stereotypic sensitivity. For ex-
ample, I hardly remember Isadore ever asking me to do anything that I
would not be able to do. It's as though he followed my position so perfectly;
so finely, that when he would ask me to do something, it was right there to
do it. And I wondered for a number of years how it was that my patients
wouldn't be as ready as I was with him, and I discovered from him
something of how experience enters into the ju-jitsu moment when the
right timing happens, when something can be said very easily that leads into
eruption, it doesn't force eruption. Actually with Isadore it's more like
releasing a bird. I got that from his patience with m t h i s sensitivity for
every step of my development-for his letting me go my own route.
JW: And Paul Goodman?
EP: Paul came after I was already in individual therapy with Isadore. Paul
was simply and beatifically outrageous. He was a combination of the beatific
and the outrageous-it was simple for him. He was an inspiration for me.
He was an incredibly curious man. He was more curious about the person
he was working with than interested in whether there would be a cure. I
picked up a lot of that curiosity. And he enjoyed a good joke. all these peo-
ple were funny people, but there was something special with Paul about a
good joke. I mean, Fritz would tell a joke, but Paul would savor a joke. He
would love the deliciousness of the relationship of one experience to
another. And he would be bemused as well as amused. He would laugh, but
he would always feel the human condition in the joke. It was not only a joke
but also a poem.
Paul Goodman really could not understand how anybody could do less than
he could do.

7%. GeSZ Journal V o i 11, Nu. I

10
JW: Was Goodman working with the book as Isadore was?
EP: No. H e was more like a street philosopher than a Gestalt theoretician.
The people in Cleveland, as I observed, were never as taken with Paul as a
workshop leader as 1was. If Paul came in for a workshop, he didn't get the
same turnout. Even after he had written Growing UP Absurd. Some of us
were just panting to be with him, but it didn't turn out to be as festive a
thing as some of the other workshops. I never understood that. Goodman
did not create the tension system that either Fritz or Paul Weisz did. He was
not a man to create a tension system. He was a man of conversation. He was
a man of story-telling. He was occasionally provocative. He liked hearing
stories. You might have someone in the room telling a story, and the other
people might be bored, but he was fascinated. And he liked to tell stories.
But, I think these days, one needs to think in terms of tight sequentiality
and loose sequentiality . . .
JW: What do you mean by "sequentiality?"
EP: Well, one of my simple rules of therapy is that one thing follows
another. Now that's a very simple rule, hut it means that you stay with
something through sequences. You can do something to make that sequen-
tiality very tight. For example, if you're doing something and I quickly said,
"What are you doing now? What do you feel in your chest? How did you
say that? Where's your tongue?" If I stay with you like that, I'd get a tight
sequentiality, and I'd get a buildup of tension. You can also have a loose se-
quentiality. If we're talking to each other, and I suddenly start telling you a
story about my years in graduate school, we're going to have a loosening up
of our sequentiality. Sequentiality exists whether you like it or not. What
you pay attention to may have a looser or tighter quality. I deliberately-not
deliberately in the sense that I strategize it-but I knowingly will go back
and forth between a tight and a loose sequentiality. People don't know quite
what I'm doing. I sometimes do it with surrealism, which loosens up the
tightness of the sequentiality: I do it with humor. It isn't that I do it with
that purpose, it's just that I noticed that it happens when I did those things.
Then you come back prepared for the new experience in a new way. Then
you can go to the tight sequentiality again. It's a matter of loosening and
tightening. I got the tightest sequentiality from Paul Weisz. He could also
go loose, from a Zen position. Fritz had a looser sequentiality, but there was
always a high tension level anyway because there was magic in the air. Paul
Goodman was very willing to have a very loose sequentiality and low ten-
sion. Not that what he was doing was not exciting, because for me it was.
But when I would be in a workshop with him, the personal threat was not
A CONVERSATION WITH ERVING AND MIRIAM POLSTER

continuingly as high as it was in workshops with Fritz. So that was an im-

portant difference. But you see what Paul did was to bring through his own
personal function, he brought in humanity. He was a human person, even
though there was a sense of awe of his range of being. There's no less awe in
my mind for Paul Goodman than for Fritz Perls, but it was a very different
kind of awe. It was an awe, like, if he were an uncle, or someone in my fami-
ly, how could someone in my family have that broad a range of experience?
Whereas, with Fritz it was a feeling like, "I've never known a magician,
and now I know what a magician can do." I never experienced Paul Good-
man as a magician; I experienced him as a member of the community who
just was s o broad in his knowledge, so learned, and so experienced, that I
was awed at how h e happened to get past the family strictures. The story
telling, the humanity, the curiosity, the humor, the playing around with
people, the relaxedness-all of that was a part of Paul.
JW. And Laura?
EP: I had my first individual session with Laura. There was one workshop
when Laura came when we were doing individual therapy as well as
workshops, and I had a session with Laura. In just a very short period of
time she did some things with me that were very eye-opening. As I now
recognize, they were very simple things that she did, but they were very
knowing. She had me be my father. I had said something about my father,
and then I found for a moment what it was like to be my father. I could feel
her union with me on it. I could feel her universality about it. I felt in her, as
well as in the others, a grandness of experience. I thought I would be able to
learn a lot from her about specific language things, specific movements
Later on when I was in a workshop with her, I saw her very finely tuned in
to specific things that people were doing. She knew how to develop those
things. What I noticed in her that I didn't notice in Fritz or in Paul Weisz,
perhaps not in Isadore either, was a-what shall I call it?-a way of w a m -
ing in to the person she was working with. She would physically move in
closer to the person. She would smile. She would say encouraging things on
the side. She was not afraid to be openly supportive through her gestures
and movements.
JW: When I first went into training with Laura and wanted to work on
something in group, there was a physical problem in terms of her location
and my location and what astounded me was that she immediately got up
and moved closer to me. I was astounded that I did not have to move into a
"hot seat."
EP: Yes, Laura would do things like that. I was broadened by feeling that
Miriam Polster P h o t o courtesy Ervin8 Polrler
A CONVERSATION WITH ERVlNG AND MIRIAM POLSTER

kind of personhood in her. I experienced her brightness and I also experienc-

ed her sexuality. In fact, that first session I had with her, the only private
session I ever had with her, was in her hotel room. She and Fritz had come
to town and they were staying in a hotel and that's where my session was. I
had a feeling of her sexuality. She had never been seductive, she was just
natural, she was just a naturally sensual woman, and I had never been with
a woman on that kind of a professional-personal mixture basis. I felt the
warmth of the sexuality and the inspiration of the professionality joined
together. It just warmed my heart to be with her. That made it easier for me
to do what I had to do in the session. So it helped to broaden my own ex-
perience.
Earlier in the conversation, Miriam Polster entered the room. She
made herself comfortable, listened to the dialogue, and was asked to join us
with. . .
JW: Miriam, at what point in time did you become involved in Gestalt?
MP: Somewhere around 1956 or so.
JW: How did you move into it?
MP: By going to groups, groups that Fritz would lead. And Laura, and Paul
Goodman. I did not work with Paul Weisz. I worked with Isadore in in-
dividual therapy. And when Isadore came to town he would stay at our
house. I went to graduate school in 1962. So I had a good five-six years' ex-
perience in Gestalt. And when I went into graduate school, all the other
theories were new theories to me. It was almost a reversal of what happened
to most people. For me the basic theory was Gestalt, and how did the other
theories illuminate it?
JW: How did that make graduate school for you?
MP: A little crazy. It was a crazy experience. Because at that time there was
the overt statement that psychologists didn't do therapy, just testing. I
knew that it was radically different from that outside in the real world.
JW: And when did you start doing therapy?
MP: About '65.
JW: When did the Cleveland Institute begin to evolve into a formalized
training program?
EP: I can't remember the year-I did practicums and lecture courses for
about three years, so I would imagine that the training program must have
started around '63 or so. Or '62 perhaps. But what happened after that was
that we began to feel ready to teach others who were not among our group.
So we announced a program.
JW: In addition to you, who were the other people from Cleveland who
were teaching?
EP: We did workshops for people outside of our own community before we
did our training programs. So the training program had two different direc-
tions in its evolution. The workshops were not limited to professionals. We
would do workshops which would be three nights and a weekend. Dick
Wallen would do the conceptual part first, and then1 would do the therapy
for the rest of the evening. For the first three nights. Then Fritz would come
in and do a weekend. The people who taught in our first training programs
were, in addition to me, Elaine Kepner, Bill Warner, Rennie Fantz, Sonia
Nevis, Miriam, Ed Nevis, Joseph Zinker, and Cynthia Harris. We started
out with a program of a year and a half. The training group felt it wasn't
enough. They wanted to make it a three-year program. So the faculty went
ahead with them and also made the next group a three-year program.
JW: And then from then on, generally speaking, the training followed that
system, the three-year program?
EP: Yes. And then we introduced the intensive program. We called it in-
tensive because it was condensed in time. You could get a full-time program
over a shorter period of time. The three-year program was a weekly meeting
plus a couple of workshops, plus individual therapy. The intensive program
was a full-time program for a month in the summer, a week inNovember, a
week in March, and two weeks the following summer. And that was design-
ed for people who didn't live in Cleveland.
JW: A t what point in time did the Cleveland Institute go on into areas other
than Cleveland?
EP: I went to Chicago to do a group with people in Chicago. They wanted
more training after that workshop. From that evolved an alternation among
us on the Cleveland faculty of going to Chicago, to provide training.
JW: Is this the group that then started the Chicago Institute?
EP: Right. The next group was in Boston. I did a workshop there. And then
they wanted more training. Joseph Zinker and I came in to interview the
people who applied and several others of the Cleveland faculty joined us in
working with them.
JW: M y last historical question. Your leaving Cleveland. What was it that
took you to California? What's different for you out there?
EP: It's difficult to identlfy exactly, hut let me give you some factors that
entered into our leaving. First of all, we had been talking about the city we
would like to live in that we would move to--not in our retirement, but in a
statement of some new way that we wanted to live. And our original talk
was always about moving to New York. We almost did. I was doing a lot of

ZX. d~irnlt/ourmi Vol 11, No t

15
A CONVERSATION WITH ERVING AND MIRIAM POLSTER

things around the country already, and I was interested in writing. In fact,
our book was already done by the time we moved, and we wanted a benign
climate that would have visual beauty. Cleveland's winters were just too
hard to bear. I had come to do a workshop at AGPA in New Orleans,
around 1967 or '68 in February. When I was walking off that airplane, I
said to myself, "I am not spending the rest of my life in Cleveland." It took
about five or six years after that, before we finally moved. Another thing
was that it's exciting to both of us ta start aU over again. And we chose a
place, in fact, where that was most indispensable, because we knew nobody
in San Diego from before our experience with San Diego. We had heard of
people there. We took a trip west, we liked the people we met, and we decid-
ed on San Diego as the place we wanted to be, considering all the other
warm-weather spots that might have visual beauty.
JW: And you have an institute now in San Diego?
EP: Well, we call it a training center. Basically Miriam and I do the work,
and we find that it's very exciting from the standpoint of-I'm saying we
again,
MP: I'll correct you if I disagree.
EP: OK. We've talked about it, so I know what Miriam feels about it. But
the idea of working with people all the way is a blow-out of involvement in-
stead of taking a section here and a section there, as we did in Cleveland.
And though, as I say, I was very excited with the work in Cleveland, in
either the three-year program or the intensive program, it didn't have the
same feeling of following through all the way as I now have. I just love that
feeling. What I miss is the kind of comradeship right in the middle of our
work which I did have in Cleveland, the sense of support-
MP: And colleagual interaction.
JW: A question for both of you: People often talk of three styles of Gestalt;
the West Coast style, the East Coast style, and the Cleveland style. I wonder
if you're in harmony with that kind of division.
MP: The distinctions for me are hard t o make, because they often boil down
to the individual who's doing it. There might be some difference in the
muscularity of one person or the cerehrality of another. But I'm reluctant to
consider those East Coast, West Coast, Mid-West differences.
EP: Suppose you were to look at the people whoseeffect is most broad in the
areas. . .and you look at New York, you see Isadore and Laura, obviously.
But then you also see other segments of people. So you get a range right
there. You would hardly say that Isadore and Laura would do the same
therapy. Magda Denes I've never seen work. I've never seen the others
work, either. I know something about them, but I think you'd find great dif
ferences among them. What would be the dominant difference? I don't even
know. I would have more to say about the dominant quality of Cleveland
and California than I would about New York. In Cleveland, I think the se-
quentiality is looser, in terms that I mentioned before. I think California is
likely to have a tighter sequentiality. But California is mixed up for me.
Because there is California, and there is also the fact that we are in Califor-
nia, and the people who come to us can't function in the same way as they
would if they worked, let's say, with Joseph Zinker.
JW: In your book, Gestalt Therapy Integrated, you develop a new contact-
boundary interference-deflection. I'm interested in how that came
about-how that evolved in your thinking and in your work.
EP: When I was writing the outline for the first course I taught, I included
deflection and expanded it later on when I did it in the book. I think that's
the sequence. I just felt like it took care of some events that weren't taken
into account by the other resistances that were described in Gestalt
Therapy. There were four there. I thought of resistance in terms of direc-
tion of energy. Introjection is from out to in. Projection is the arrow going
from in to out. Retroflection is like this, sort of a hairpin experience. Con-
fluence is two individual energies going like this and meeting. And it seem-
ed to me a lot of experiences didn't really come back like rewoflection, nor
did they go out, like in projection, they just missed the connection. Abstrac-
tions just don't make the mark, for example, they just vaporize in air. Or, if
I don't look at you, that's deflection. The visual deflection is an important
event.
MP: It may also be that it's a product of the times. I think we are in a period
of increasing depersonalization. And deflection is a depersonalized way of
avoiding contact. Sometimes, given all the good intentions in the world, we
don't even know who the target might be for a particular feeling, for a par-
ticular point of contact. And all we have left is the deflection possibility. I
buy a bicycle for my child; I see it in a store, there it stands. When I get it
delivered, lo and behold, I get it, unassembled, in a box that comes like this.
Now who do I get mad at for that? I go to put it together. The directions say
point A and point B, and fasten it with nut Z, and so on. And point A and
point B don't even meet. There I am, this experience is palpable, and who
do I get mad at?
JW: And so the result is to deflect.
MP: Yes, I have no choice. And I have also gotten bitter. And I think as we
become an increasingly urbanized population, deflection is an increasing

Thr G ~ i r uJourml
l Vnl II Ni

17
A CONVERSATION WITH ERV!NG AND MIRIAM POLSTER

mode.
EP: A young cousin of mine, who had been in the Army, came over to talk
to me. Apparently he wanted to talk to me about some problems. I didn't
know him very well, but I knew his father quite well. He's one of my closest
cousins. He sat, like you're sitting there, and there's a T V set over there.
And our reflection was in the T V set. And he spoke to me looking straight
at the reflection in the T V set. The T V set wasn't on, just the reflection.
That's deflection!
JW:Must have been interesting to experience.
EP: Yes. It may have been right then that I thought of deflection, I don't
remember.
JW: In terms of the example you just gave, you had an opportunity for con-
tact, to perhaps alter the deflection. What about in the situation Miriam
mentioned, with the bike, is it just that one is left with. . .
EP: Well, of course there they've really removed the ohject. You have no
power but to be patient, until you create the image of the hike because there
is no visible bike. It's a very drastic illustration because it's as though the
bike has vaporized, there are only pieces. Deflection would mostly deal with
when there actually is somebody or something there that you turn away
from either visually, or you turn off your hearing, or you say, "Yes, hut,"
so that the person can't really get quite what you said. Or, if I ask you a
question, I may discover after a while you've never answered my question.
You've been clever enough to address the topic, but you've never answered
my question. Those are all deflected things.
JW: I just thought of Ron Ziegler, Nixon's press agent. . . his frequent
statement, "Yesterday's statement is inoperative."
EP: Inoperative. Beautiful deflection.
MP: George Orwell. If you want a good example, read 1984. Double think
and double speech.
EP: You know, it's interesting that you bring this question up. do you
know that I've been teaching deflection for. . .well. . .the book came out
in ' 7 3 . . . it took us about three years to write i t . . .and I was teaching it for
some years before that. . .and I think you're the first person who's ever
asked me about it. I think everyone just takes it for granted that it's part of
the original Gestalt system.
JW:That could support my theory that an awful lot of people doing Gestalt
have not read Gestalt Therapy. What about dreams? A lot of people seem to
think that the primary purpose of Gestalt dreamwork is to work with the
disowned parts of the personality-that the dream always contains disowned
parts of the personality, which is, I think, Otto Rank's original concept, not
really Fritz's.
MP: Valid, yes. But exclusive, no. There are times when a dream is an at-
tempt to come into contact with some aspect of the individual's existence.
You say disowned; I think maybe it's also unavailable. It can be unavailable
in that the contact they want to make with a person or an aspect of their l i e
is, in some ways, not available to them. Or something they are perhaps just
beginning to make contact with. Or making contact with at that moment,
in a certain way that they haven't done before. So disowned means only that
I've given it away. Unavailable means that there's a reality about it, and
there are some aspects of it that have not been current in my life. It can
either be an individual or even a quality of my life. Some quality of myself
that I have not exactly given away, but haven't claimed. Now it's knocking
on the door saying, "Pay attention to me."
EP: I have some trouble with that word, disowned, also. I would much
prefer to say "not experienced." "Not appreciated." "Not recognized."
Something about disowned, that possessive aspect of it. . like when I'm ac-
tually working with a person, I would not be likely to say, "You have
disowned your sexuality." I might say, "You're afraid of your sexuality."
JW: There have been teams-maleimale, femaleifemale, and maleifemale,
who work together in Gestalt therapy, although not many. Mostly it's been
things like Fritz and Laura, Fritz Perls doing Fritz Perls as a therapist, Laura
Perls doing Laura Perls as a therapist. People like Ed Nevis and Sonia Nevis
in Cleveland. You're recognized as a team I think mostly because of the
book. Erv and Miriam Polster, working as a team, and we're here in a
workshop, led by Erv and Miriam PoIster, and I'm interested in hearing
your comments about working together, how you work together, how you
don't work together. Why you do what you do, why you don't do what you
don't do.
MP: Our work together as a team is only of about five years' duration.
Before that, we did only a small amount of work together.
EP: We would do an occasional workshop, couples workshops. . .that's all
we did together in the old days, though we did write the book together.
MP: But our working as a team is a kind of unique way of working as a
team also. Because, though we're here together, and our training in San
Diego also, we divide the group into two, and each of us goes off into a room
with them. So our work as a team. . .we merge for some activities, and
separate for others. It's an interesting experience separating and then com-
ing together.
A CONVERSATION WITH ERVING AND MIRIAM

EP: We're together part of the day with the whole group. . maybe a
quarter of the day. . .and then we're not together. . t h e rest of the time.
Also we design together. Make decisions together.
JW: We're talking now primarily about training?
EP: Yes.
JW: The part of the day that you're together. . .what happens then, and
what happens the part of the day that you're apart?
MP: The part of the day that we're together is usually the didactic part of
the day. When we're presenting some topic, some material.
EP: Even then we tend to alternate in our presentations.
MP: As to who is primarily responsible.
EP: Yes. There's one person primarily responsible, and the other may join
in, with some things that we want to say. But may not. There are other
times, of course, when we're involved in the middle of just a discussion,
where there's nobody primarily responsible, but we joke around together,
we tease each other some together, we don't have a lot of dialogue
together. . . . .
MP: Well, no, but our ideas frequently trade off. Something that Erv will
say triggers off something that I will say. Something I will say triggers off
something that he will say. . . Our ideas may play off of each other's. And
also, we alternate responsibility. For example, if we have a topic for presen-
tation, and a demonstratibn, one of us will do one, and the other will do the
other. And we alternate that way. One day Erv will do the topic and I'll do
the demonstration, and the next day I'll do the topic and he'll do the
demonstration.
EP: It would have been difficult for Miriam to co-lead with me in the early
days. In fact, she couldn't even be a student with me. The other students at
the same time were students in my practicums, in therapy with me, and
such as that, and you were not in a position that we could do that. But once
Miriam got on her own legs and knew her professional competence, then it
was okay.
JW: How did you know?
MP: How did I know I was professionally competent?
JW: Yes.
MP: Well, I suspected I was. (laughs) And had enough independent ex-
perience.
EP: In fact, one of the great things in California is that there's no way that
Miriam in California is "my wife." There are as many people who are
oriented toward her offerings as mine. And it comes as an independent

Tha Gni'ol J,,.rnaI ""I. ,I, No i

20
thing, because they know her. But in Cleveland it was different.
MP: The way 1 dealt with it then was to have a whole series of experiences
independent of Erv and the Institute. I did a lot of teaching outside of the In-
stitute. A t that time, I didn't travel a lot; I do travel a lot more now, in-
dependently, without Erv. We do also travel a good bit together, and some
without each other.
EP: We haven't done as much separately as together.
JW: One of the things I was struck with in re-reading your book in the last
couple of weeks was that there was no attempt to separate the "I" in terms
of the narrator.
EP: I think that's very interesting. . .because we had some quarrels about
how to handle that, and finally wound up with that way.
MP: It felt so labored doing it, that we took the easy way out to get the
fluidity. With the "I." There are very distinct differences, though, in the
way we work.
EP: Oh, Yeah!
JW: What are the differences?
MP: EN is crazier. When we work together, Erv is crazier than I am. I have
this thing where if EN is crazy, I feel like somebody has to not be crazy.
And it's me. When I work by myself, I'm more likely to be crazy. T o claim
that part of me that I don't use as much when we work together.
JW: What's being crazy?
MP: What looks like irrelevant. I could describe his style of working, and he
could describe mine, that might be interesting.
JW: Yes, let's do that.
MP: EN has a kind of-Erv has a way of being very concrete-just taking
experience for its own sake with the kind of simplicity that is obvious only
the minute after he's commented on its obviousness. Until then it has not
been obvious. En, is masterful at that quality of experience and at the free-
association kind of l e a p w h e n you're putting together, in a way that's
Sherlock Holmesian. Erv will frequently make a marvelous leap into putting
something together with consistency. . .simple perceptions-that are sim-
ple only after he says it. He has this quality of perceptive simplicity. That's
the way Erv works. And there's also a kind of contagious
excitement-you're really interested in the person you're looking at.
JW: How do you see Miriam?
EP: She offers a very attentive staying-with a person wherever they're go-
ing. Until the special moment comes for what turns out to be a beautiful ex-
perience. There's a preparatory period, a preparation for that moment, and
1 A CONVERSATION WITH ERVING AND MIRIAM POLSTER

her experiment comes, and then through that experiment the person will
take off and discover some new aspects. She's more compatible than I am,
that is, the person working with her is not as likely to be afraid as with me.
They trust her. And they experience what they want. She has a selectivity
of language that is clarifying. And a kind of warmth that is supportive. Peo-
ple are freer, I think, to go in directions altogether of their own choice than
they would be with me. And h4iriam has a respect for the person's direction
that is not clouded by her own needs, as much as mine are.
JW: About women's roles in our society. It seems to me that women have
been looking lately for role models . .and having talked and dined with
some people from your group last night, it was obvious that some of the
women were using you in a very positive way as a role model. I was wonder-
ing if you find that a burden, a joy, a confusion, or none of the above?
MP: All of the above. The burdensome part of it i s a n d this would hold
true for men or women, whoever is perceived as a role model-when I'm
perceived as a role model what I am as a person gets obliterated or destroyed
or twisted around to lit somebody's needs as a role model. It does get
burdensome.
JW: What do you do when they don't see you clearly?
MP: Talk louder. I make myself a hell of a lot clearer.
JW: Gestalt has been in existence now for roughly 25 years. What do you
see happening for you in terms of the directions you'd like to move in, and
what are some new things that you're excited about?
MP: One of the things that amuses me, as I think about the future, is that
Gestalt therapy and Gestalt therapists have to watch out. There are dangers
of respectability, which are beginning to accrue. How to remain vital
although respectable is important to me.
EP: It's very hard for me to get a sense for the future, but I would like to see
a few different things. One is a sense of returning to the conservative. Con-
servative in the sense of Gestalt therapy being captured out of the alligator
mouths of the opportunistic with their quick sell, easy understood ideas
about Gestalt therapy. I would like us to be less narrow in the general im-
agery about Gestalt therapy. The recognition of what is an abuse of the
quality of exchange rather than obliterating it. For example, I would like
there to be a recognition of the uses to which words like "should,"
"why," and so on can be put, rather than writing them out. I'd like to be
able to get a broadening within Gestalt. I think there's a recognition that
Gestalt therapy went too far into the manufactured language, or the
manufactured non-language. That's one side of it. Another side of it points
in the direction of how can Gestalt therapy carry us into the things that are
interesting to people in the future? Can we, for example, be oriented with
the principles of Gestalt therapy and still explore clairvoyance, extra-sensory
perception. . . ?
MP: Or what Joan Fagen was fascinated by when she wrote about the fact-
that some principles of Gestalt therapy may be compatible with what we're
now finding out about left-brain, right-brain. That's a really intriguing
possibility.
EP: Yes. That kind of thing. I think one of the problems of psychoanalysis
was that they were not willing to assimilate new discoveries in such a way as
to alter their system. I think our principles lead into some of the things
we're talking about, in such a way as to be relevant to those. I would not
have to give up what I see as very orienting to me in Gestalt therapy. I
would not have to give that up in order to explore extrasensory perception. I
feel like I could fit that in. Now if I couldn't then I'd have to find some other
system. But I feel that for Gestalt therapy to be fully realized it has to go
beyond the insights of the originators and the kind of things they had to deal
with. And it's exciting to me to see whether it can encompass another
generation of innovation.
JW: Some people have said that what has to happen to Gestalt is what hap-
pened to psychoanalysis. That there has to be someone like Fritz who sud-
denly decides to go against it.
EP: That's true a t the point when that system will no longer encompass the
new.
MP: Then you must go outside in order to make changes in direction.
EP: And it is uue that psychoanalysis could not encompass what Fritz was
doing. I'm not saying that it should have to. But I would be interested in
seeing how far our principles, our fundamentals, stretch into the future, in
encompassing the explorations of the contemporary in the future. For exam-
ple, how does the concept of contact boundary become relevant to clair-
voyance? Can you still use the concept of the contact boundary? I can well
imagine that the concept of the contact boundary would be very relevant. It
would be a new way to see it. O r a new way to sense it, perhaps. If we take
clairvoyance, if we take nutrition, if we take right-brain, left-brain, if we take
technology, if we take all the things that are likely to be coming in on the
future. . . . .
MP: Yes, like neural transmission, the electro-chemical neurology of
behavior. . .
EP: What ever those new forms are, you still have internal dialogues as rele-

The G i a b Jmwi Voi. It. No I

23
A CONVERSATION WITH ERVUUG AND MIRIAM POLSTER

vant, experienced at a much more immediate level. So I would like to see

how far into that future the Gestalt orientation would still be novel, still be
fresh.
MP: I would like to see us developed enough to return to the respect for ar-
ticulateness. We place great value on sensory awareness, and understanding
and appreciating sensation. But I would like to see that made compatible
with what we know about the Whorfian hypothesis of language. I can make
just as many discriminations as I have categories. Like the Eskimos have 26
words or so for snow. I would like to see a return to the respect for language
in Gestalt therapy as a tool whereby my awareness can be made more
discriminating. I would like to see that rhythm restored. But I have some
despair about it. I think our culture's language is getting poorer, rather than
better. We're inundated with slogans. I would like to see a return to having
my language being useful and workable enough so that I can make more
subtle sensory discriminations. That's a direction we need to go.
EP: Another direction for the future that I have in mind is how to include
within Gestalt therapy, or in any frame of therapy, the experiences of every-
day life-as religion does. For example, to have some way of dealing with it
not only in the therapeutic situation but in the community at large. I've had
these concerns for a long time and nothing has ever come of them because
I've never been willing to change my life to explore them. But, for example,
there's nothing within Gestalt therapy or within any therapy that deals
communally with the time when somebody dies. Or when somebody
reaches puberty. Or the daily kind of activity like prayer or mutual involve-
ment, that goes beyond the position of specificallysought therapy. And I see
some aspect, some permeation, of therapy generally into everyday life,
where you would have community and rituals, and procedures and
availabilities, that go beyond the old medical model that we're still dealing
with. We're still afraid of the word religion. And we're still afraid of control
by central authority. But the result is a kind of unavailability.
JW: As you speak of religion in daily life, I think of ritual gatherings around
meals, prayers at a few specific times during the day-a way of coming back
to center. Are these the kinds of things you're talking about?
EP: Yes, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. But it's hard to talk
about those things, because they feel very much like they support the wrong
personal behaviors and conformities. And distortions of what life is actually
about. I'm not talking about doing that, I'm talking about the kind of thing
that will repeat the orientation so that one can stay tuned in. Keep it
available so that one doesn't have to go to psychotherapy to relate on those
levels.
JW: T o the clergy instad?
EP: Oh, that's a possibility, too. The leadership makes a difference.But also
people without leadership in a particular setting.
MP: It's very interesring, the association I have with that is that
psychoanalysis has what they call lay analysts. . a n d "lay" is also a
religious term.
JW: Like lay preacher.
MP: Yes, and it may be thatwhat you're talking about is establishing a lai-
ty, like a therapeutic laity. Or a therapeutic knowledge.
JW: Earlier, when you were describing the initial way you were working
with Isadore in Cleveland-reading portions of the text and stopping when
someone had a question-it occurred to me that it's a classic description of a
traditional Christian bible study group.
MP: lt's also a classic description of a Talmudic study group.
EP: Yes, and that was a very interesting way to be together. In fact, what I
didn't say before is something along these lines. . . w h e n Isadore came to
town he was at the center of a communal development. There was a holiday
spirit.
MP: I had that with Isadore too. As frequently as he came, there was a
special quality about it.
EP: So, what I see as unlikely, hut valuable, is some of the Gestalt holidays.
That sounds like such a trite thing to say, and I can hardly get it out of my
mouth. It doesn't have to be called Gestalt holidays, but the sense of holi-
day, the sense of celebration, the sense of being together during times of
mourning, the sense of community, is still a matter that people have to
work out in their own lives, quite independently of anything to do with
therapy. So if something bad happens in my life, I have to relate to the peo-
ple who are part of my life, and that's okay with me. There's a certain in-
dependent spirit that comes out of that. Although I say this would be
beautiful, it would he hard for me to do it. But I could do it now, I could find
a way of doing it. I think it's missing in my life, even though I've replaced it
with other things. But I miss the part of my life that has that in it. And the
only way that I could close to that would be, for example, to go to a temple.
But, what they say there is not what interests me. And the people there
don't really get a chance to relate to each other, so there's no big deal about
that anyway. But nevertheless, both functions are realized in the other
religions, the religions other than psychotherapy. But psychotherapy has
still not taken that on itself. It's still a medical model.
A CONVERSATION WITH ERVING AND MIHAM POLSTER

JW: Any last comments?

EP: I want to say something more about the Cleveland situation. There taus
a sense of community among us. There was a lot of live and let live quality.
MP: The excitement was the communal and individual discovery of talent.
Learning to recognize the talent that was there. That was very exciting.
Supporting it and letting it move on.
GESTALT THERAPY:
CLINICAL PHENOMENOLOGY'
Gary M. Yontef, Ph.D.

Gestalt psychology was an experimental phenomenological approach

based on a conceptual framework of holism called field theory (and a close
parallel to field theory in physics). While Gestalt Therapy (GT) is an
outgrowth of psychoanalysis (Freud, Reich, Homey, Rank, etc.), and heavi-
ly influenced by existentialism (Buber, Tillich, Sartre), the underlying
holistic and phenomenological structure of GT is a clinical derivative of
Gestalt psychology. Neither Gestalt psychology nor the connection with
G T is adequately understood, even by most Gestalt Therapists, and has not
been adequately discussed in the GT literature. Unfortunately this very im-
portant subject must be reserved for a more technical paper (see Perls,
1973).
The word Gestalt (Plural: Gestalten) refers to the shape, configura-
tion or whole, the structural entity, that which makes the whole a mean-
ingful unity different from a mere sum of parts. Nature is orderly, it is
organized into meaningful wholes. Out of these wholes figures emerge in
relation to a ground and this relationship of figure and ground is meaning.

*Iwant to express my appreciation to Jeffrey Hutter, Ph.D., Robert Martin,

D.S.W., Robert Resnick, Ph.D., and Lolita Sapriel, M.S.W. for their aid in
the preparation of this paper.
GESTALT THERAPY: CLINICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

A good Gestalt is clear and the figurelground relation responsive to and

energized by the changing pattern of the person's immediate needs. The
good Gestalt is neither too rigid and unyielding nor too quickly changing
and tenuous. The awareness that cures is the awareness that forms a clear
Gestalt with a figure organized and energized by the person's dominant
need at each moment.
Behavior and experience are more than a summation of discrete
parts. A person's behavior and experience form unities or organized wholes
that optimally have the qualities of a good Gestalt. Each whole is organized
around an emerging foreground or figure that is spontaneously energized
and given a positive or negative valence by the person's dominant need.
When a need is met, the Gestalt it organized becomes complete and no
longer commands organismic energy. When the Gestalt formation and
desuunion is blocked or rigidfied, when needs are not recognized and ex-
pressed, unmet needs form incomplete Gestalten pressing for attention and
interfering with the formation of new Gestalten.
"I look up from my writings, noticing 1am thirsty, and I think about
getting a drink of water; going into the kitchen, I pour a full glass of water,
drain it, and return to my desk. I notice it is sunny and cool in the room
where I am writing; the cats are playing with each other and there is traffic
passing by outside. All of these were as true a few minutes ago as they are
now, hut I did not notice them then. I ignored them, reaching out first to
the deficit of moisture in my body and then to the water faucet, and my
manipulative system organized around the water. There are many
possibilities in my environment, hut I organized around my thirst, in
preference to the other possibilities. I was not stimulated randomly and
positively by the field; rather my senses organized around my thirst."
(Latner, pp17-18.)
Through this Gestalt process human beings regulate themselves in
orderly and meaningful ways. This self regulation depends on two inter-
related processes: sensory awareness and the use of aggression (NB: in G T
aggression is a force, life energy, without positive or negative moral over-
tones).
To survive the person must exchange energy with the environment
(e.g., breathe, eat, touch) and yet maintain himself as an entity somewhat
separated from it. The organismically self-regulating person picks and
chooses for himself what part of each thing he encounters to take in and
what to reject. He takes in what is nourishing to him and rejects what is tox-
ic to him, using his awareness to discriminate and his aggression: to destroy
or destruct the foreign, novel stimuli (lit. "de-structure"), integrate the
nourishing parts into the self (assimilation), and reject or excrete the
unusable. Taking in any particle whole without this assimilation process is
introjection. For example, an infant who swallows a piece of corn without
de-structuring it, i.e., without chewing it, has an introject, a foreign object,
within his gastrointestinal tract. It shows up, unchanged, in his feces and he
derives no nourishment. So too beliefs, rules, self-images, role definitions,
etc., are frequently swallowed whole (introjected), and later form the basis of
<'
character," i.e., rigid and repetitive behavior that is unresponsive to pre-
sent need. Inducing patients to accept any extrinsic goal without Awareness
and assimilation inhibits growth.

What is Awareness?

Awareness is a form of experiencing. It is the process of being in

vigilant contact with the most important event in the indiuidnul/environ-
ment field with full sensorimotor, emotional, cognitive, and energetic rup-
port. A continuing and uninterrupted continuum of Awareness leads to an
Aha!, an immediate grasp of the obvious unity of disparate elements in the
field. Awareness is always accompanied by Gestalt formation. New, mean-
ingful wholes are created by Aware contact. Thus Awareness is in itself an
integration of a problem.
Since understanding G T depends on understanding the G T concept
of Awareness, I suggest a careful and thoughtful second reading of the
previous paragraph and the corollaries below. Each corollary refers par-
ticularly to awareness in the context of the whole person in his human life
space. While all living creatures have some awareness, some means of ex-
periencing and orienting to the world, people have a special capacity for sur-
viving with partial awareness. For example, a neurotic may think about his
current situation without sensing or knowing his feelings, or he may ex-
press emotions physically without cognitive knowing. Both of these forms
of human awareness are incomplete and not the Awareness we seek in GT.
CeroNary One: Awareness is effective only when grounded in and
enerezed by the dominant present need of the organism. Without this the
organism (person or animal) is aware but not to where the nourishment or
toxicity is most acute for him. And without the energy, excitement, emo-
tionality of the organism being invested in the emerging figure, the figure
has no meaning, power or impact. Example: A man is on a date and worry-
ing about a forthconling interview. He is not Aware of what he needs from
GESTALT THERAPY: CUNICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

his date and thus reduces the excitement and meaningfulness of his contact
with her.
Corollary Two: Awareness is not complete without directly knowing
the reality of the sitnution and how one is in the sitnution. T o the extent
that the situation, external or internal, is denied, awareness is distorted. The
penon who acknowledges verbally his situation but does not really SEE it,
KNOW it, REACT to it, is not Aware and is not in full contact. The person
who sort-of-knows his behavior, but does not really KNOW in a feeling,
physical way what he does, how he does it, that he has alternatives and
CHOOSES to be as he is, is not Aware.
Awareness is accompanied by Owning, i.e., the process of knowing
one's control over, choice of, responsibility for one's own behavior and feel-
ings (lit. response-ability, ability to respond, to be the primary agent in
determining one's own behavior). Without this the person may be vigilant
to his own experience and l i e space, but not to what power he has and what
he does not have. So, functionally full Awareness is equal to responsibility,
i.e., when I am fully Aware I am at that instant responseable, and, I cannot
be responsible without being Aware.
T o say "I am" or "I know" with the belief that it was not chosen
or to believe that how I am disappears by verbal incantation is self-deception
or bad faith (Sartre). Awareness must include self-acceptance, real self-
acknowledgement. The act of acknowledgement of how "I am" does not
mean one transcends that which is being acknowledged. Yet people are
often aware of something about themselves with a subtle attitude of being
above that which is ostensibly being acknowledged. be "aware" of how
one is with an attitude of self-rejection is such a false acknowledgement. It is
saying both "I am" and at the same time denying the "I am" by saying it
as if it were an observation of another person, saying in effect: "I was that
way, but now that I confess, I who confess am not that way." Such is not a
direct knowing of oneself, but a way of not really knowing. It is both a
knowing about oneself and a denial of oneself. So too merely knowing that
one is dissatisfied with a problem without knowing directly, intimately and
clearly what is being done to create and perpetuate the situation and how is
not Awareness.
Corollary Three: Awareness is always Here and Now and always
changing, evolving and transcending itself:
Awareness is sensory, not magical: it exists. Everything that exists
does so Here and Now. The past exists NOW as memory, regret, body ten-
sion, etc. The future does not exist except NOW, as fantasy, hopes, etc. In
G T we stress Awareness in the sense of knowing what I am DOING,
NOW, in the situation that IS, and not confusing this IS with what was,
could be, should be. We take our bearing from Aw'zreness of what is, by
energizing the figure of attention according to our present interest and lively
concern.
The act of Awareness is always here-and-now, although the content
of Awareness may be distant. T o KNOW that "now I am remembering" is
very different from slipping into remembering without Awareness.
Awareness is experiencing and knowing what I am doing now (and how).
The now changes each moment. Awareness is a new coming
together and excludes an unchanging way of seeing the world (fixed
character). Awareness cannot be static, but is a process of orienting that is
renewed at each new moment. The "awareness" that is static is an abstract
representation of the flowing Awareness that is felt. We trust the evolving
Awareness more than any preset, abstract idea.

Gestult Phenomenology and The Paradoxical Theory of Change

G T is an existential therapy (see Humanism and Technology section

below). The term "phenomenology" has come to be associated with any
approach emphasizing subjective variables or consciousness rather than
behavior or objective variables. G T utilizes a more technical meaning of
phenomenology: G T has created a therapy based on an operational existen-
tial methodology.
Phenomenology is a search for understanding based on what is o b
vious or revealed by the situation rather than the interpretation of the
observer. Phenomenologists refer to this as "given." Phenomenology
works by entering into the situation experientially and allowing sensory
Awareness to discover what is obviouslgiven. This necessitates discipline,
especially sensing what is present, what IS, excluding no data in advance.
The phenomenological attitude is recognizing and bracketing off
(putting aside) preconceptions about what is relevant. A phenomenological
description integrates both observed behavior and experiential, personal
reports. Phenomenological exploration aims for an increasingly clear and
detailed description of the IS, and de-emphasizes what would be, could be,
was, might be.
People often fail to see that which is right in front of them, and do
not realize it. They imagine, argue, get lost in reverie. The difference bet-
ween this filtered perception and an immediate, full-bodied grasp of the cur-
GESTALT THERAPY:CLINICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

rent situation can best be appreciated by those who have struggled for an
esoteric answer and found instead the joy of a simple and obvious Aha!
Beginning therapy patients often cannot say what they mean and
mean what they say because they are not Aware. They have lost the sense
of who they are and who it is that must live their lie. They have lost the
sense of: this is what I am thinking, feeling, doing. They ask for a cure or
ask why, for an explanation, before they observe, describe, and try to know
whal it is they are doing and how. Thus they try to explain, justify
something whose exact existence is unclear to them. They miss the ob-
vious.
These patients maintain this lack of clarity by two related processes:
thinking without integrating the sensory and affective AND using their ag-
gression more against themselves than for contact and assimilation. Their
behavioral Gestalten are formed more by these two rigid charcterological
habits than by the needs of the present (see The Neurotic section, below).
What is needed is experimentation in trying new modes of ex-
perience and new uses of psychobiological energy. The patient needs to see,
to do, to cope and learn. The therapy hour provides situations which are
safe enough to warrant experimentation and challenging enough to be
realistic. In GT we call this the "safe emergency." If the therapist is too
helpful, the patient does not have to do anything and if the therapist em-
phasizes verbal content (e.g., why-because), the patient can think without
experimenting or feeling.f.! the patient only repeats in therapy the processes
he already uses, e.g., obsessing (anticipating, analyzing, asking why) and be-
ing passive and uncreative ("tell me what to do"), the probability is that the
patient will make little improvement.
G T is based on patients learning to use their own senses to explore
for themselves, learn and find their own solutions to their problems. We
teach the patient the process of being Aware of what he is doing and how he
is doing it rather than talk about the content of how he should be or why he
is as he is. We give the patient a tool, in a sense we teach him to cook rather
than feed him a meal.
Traditional psychotherapy is content oriented in that the actual em-
phasis during the therapy hours is on the content of what is talked-about.
G T is process oriented in that the emphasis is on Awareness of how the pa-
tient is going about the search for understanding. We do more than talk-
about, we "work." Work refers to phenomenological experimentation, in-
cluding guided Awareness exercises and experiments. The exercises are not
merely to make the patient aware of something, but to become Aware of
how to be Aware, and as a coroUary to that, to be Aware of how they avoid
being Aware.
In traditional verbal therapy and behavior therapy there is an extrin-
sic goal; the patient is not okay as he is. Often this is agreed to by both the
patient and the therapist. In these therapies the therapist is a change agent
and the patient gets to some ideal state (content goal) trying to be what he is
not. In G T change is thought to occur first by clearly knowing and accep-
ting the given: who you are and how you are. Our only goal is learning and
using this Awareness process.
The G T theory of change (The Paradoxical Theory of Change,
Beisser, 1970) states:
. . .that change occurs when one becomes what he is, not
when he tries to become what he is not. Change does not
take place through a coercive attempt by the individual or by
another person to change him, but it does take place if one
takes the time and effort to be what he is-to be fully in-
vested in his current positions. By rejecting the role of
change agent, we make meaningful and orderly change
possible.
The Gestalt therapist rejects the role of "changer,"
for his strategy is to encourage, even insist, that the patient
be where and what he is. He believes change does not take
place by "trying." coercion, or persuasion, or by insight, in-
terpretation, or any other such means. Rather, change can
occur when the patient abandons, at least for the moment,
what he would Like to become and attempts to be what he is.
The premise is that one must stand in one place in order to
have firm footing to move and that it is difficult or impossible
to move without that footing.
The person seeking change by coming to therapy is
in conilict with at least two warring inuapsychic factions. He
is constantly moving between what he "should be" and
what he thinks he "is," never fully identifying with either.
The Gestalt therapist asks the person to invest himself fully
in his roles, one at a time. Whichever role he begins with,
the patient soon s h i i to another. The Gestalt therapist asks
simply that he be what he is at the moment.
The patient c o m a to the therapist because he wishes
to be changed. Many therapies accept this as a legitimate ob-
GESTALT THERAPY: CLINICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

jective and set out through various means to uy to change

him, establishing what Perls calls the "top-dadunder-dog"
dichotomy. A therapist who seeks to help a patient has left
the egalitarian position and become the knowing exprt,
with the patient playing the helpless person, yet his goal is
that he and the patient should become equals. The Gestalt
therapist believes that the top-dadunder-dog dichotomy
already exists within the patient, with one part trying to
change the other, and that the therapist must avoid becom-
ing locked into one of these roles. He tries to avoid this trap
by encouraging the patient to accept both of them, one at a
time, as his own.
If the patient abandons uying to be what he is not, even for a mo-
ment, he can experience what he is. T o invest in and explore what one is, to
endure the reality of one's way of being in the world, gives one the center-
ing and support for growth through Awareness and choice. Awareness
develops through contact and experimentation based on: wanting to know
what one needs, a willingness to stay with the confusion, conflict and doubt
that accompanies the search for the given, and a willingness to take the
responsibility for finding or creating new solutions. "Man transcends
himself only via his m e nature, not through ambition and artificial goals."
(Perls, 1973, p. 49.)

Humanism and Technology

GT's phenomenological work is done through a relationship based

on the existential model of Martin Buber's I and Thou; Here and Now. By
that model a penon involves himself fully and intensely with the person or
task at hand, each treated as a Thou, an end in itself and not as an "It,"
thing or means to an end. A relationship develops when two people, each
with his separate existence and personal needs, contact each other recogniz-
ing and allowing the differences between them.
Each is responsible for himself, for his part of the dialogue. This
means each is responsible for whether he allows himself to affect the other
and to be affected, for whether energy is exchanged. If both allow, the com-
ing together can be like a dance, with a rhythm of contact and withdrawal.
Then it is possible to have connecting and separating rather than isolation
(loss of connecting) or confluence (fusion or loss of separateness).
T o have this dance both must be allowed to regulate themselves
without being dominated, saved, or suppressed. Each regulates himself in
response to the dance of the other, rather than trying to choreograph the
other's dance. This requires a m s t of what might happen if rigid control of
the interaction is relaxed in favor of risking what is emergent between. It
also requires a trust that the other can regulate and support himself in the
face of an honest dialogue.
In G T we are both humanistic and technological. There is a
technology, and it is embedded in a matrix in which both people work
together to experiment in order to increase the patient's ability to ex-
perience on his own. The work may focus on a task, e.g., sorting out a prob
lem of the patient's, or maybe on the relationship itself. The work, suuc-
tured or unfocused, unifies sensing, feeling, and thinking into a continuum
of Awareness in the Now.
We allow each person to regulate himself without substituting an ex-
trinsic goal of ours for their mode of self regulation. We observe when the
patient interrupts and rejects himself, lacks faith in himself and wants us to
take over. But we trust in the orderliness and meaningfulness of the
patient's behavior and his ability to cope with life. We do not use verbal or
reconditioning methods to manipulate the patient into living an ideal, not
even the I-Thou ideal.
However, we can do more than refuse the "changed me" contract.
We have a whole phenomenological technology to use. We can suggest a
way in which the patient can take the risk of doing something new that
might lead himself to new experience. Our goal is Awareness of the struc
turelfunction of any disfunctional behavior and we use our
phenomenological technology in the service of that goal.
Every therapeutic intervention in G T is based on seeing and feeling.
Sometimes we simply share what we see (feedback) or what we feel in reac-
tion (disclosure). Sometimes our seeing and feeling give rise to a vision of
something the patient can do to be Aware more clearly. We value that
technological creation as much as disclosing and giving feedback. Tech-
niques arise out of the dialogue between I-Thou, and the I-Thou sometimes
requires a technological intervention. Example: Patient talks without look-
ing at the therapist. The dialogue has been interrupted in that the patient
taks, but to no one in panicu1ar. A real dialogue now would require a
vigorous response by the therapist. Possibilities: 1. "You aren't looking at
me," 2. "I feel left out," 3. "I suggest an experiment: Stop talking and
just look at me and see what happens."
So GT combines verbal work with tasks given the patient. This is
GESTALT THERAPY: CLINICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

very powerful, as the new Masters and Johnson-derived therapies have

recently discovered. These tasks are as varied as the creativity and imagina-
tion of the therapist and the patient. This includes work on sensing the out-
side world, enjoying one's body, polarity dialogues (aloud or in writing), ex-
prssive modalities (dreams, an, movement, poetry), ad infinitum. These
are sometimes confused with gimmicks used for turn-on, catharsis or short-
cut to cure. In G T these tasks are all embedded in the I and Thou relation
and are aU used to continue the exploring by the therapist-patient dyad of
each other and of the patient's problem solving and growth through
Awareness.
The tasks give the patient something to do that is new, a new possi-
ble mode of experiencing. T o repeat: The focus is not just on any kind of ex-
periencing, or even any kind of awareness, but the Awareness necessary for
self regulation, especially Awareness of the Awareness process itself.
Often the patient has a preconceived notion that therapy is just talk-
ing and that change comes automatically. They react to a request to try an
experiment with confusion, reluctance, fright. As the work begins to pro-
duce new knowledge, charges of genuine exciunent, real change, patients
react in different ways: sometimes the patients really perceive the glorious
possibilities and hunger for more-and, sometimes they object to the "gim-
micks" when they are reaUy frightened by a method that produces a clarity
about what they are doing, their need for change, and most of all by the pro-
spect of really changing.
Note that while this approach looks for the obvious, the surface, it is
far from "superficial." In aaditional therapy the real structure of the pa-
tient's l i e could be understood only by going linearly to the distant place
(past time or very "deep") where the determinants were thought to be
located (linear causality). But according to field theory all forces that have
an effect are present and cannot have an effect when removed in space or
time. Awareness training gets to the actual structure/function of the here
and now forces regulating the patient's existence. This becomes more ob-
vious as the therapy moves into later stages, as the simpler processes are
grasped in Awareness by the patient, and other fundamental forces that are
present, powerful and previously avoided by the patient become obvious
too.
This is effective only by working absolutely in the here and now,
with no part of the field being excluded. To stan with the assumption that
some part of the field is unimportant (violating phenomenological prin-
ciples) may exclude access to that here and now residue of past experience
that is available, e.g., in body language or hidden assumptions. T o be purely
verbal and try to be here and now would miss too much to he effective. To
be purely nonverbal would suffer the same fault.

The Neurotic

The neurotic does not let himself be Aware of, accept and d o w his
true needs to organize his behavior. Instead of allowing his excitment to go
fully and creatively into each need, he interrupts himself: he uses part of his
energy against himself, and part to control the therapist's half of the
dialogue. This he must do for he depends on the "guru" to fix him up. The
neurotic cannot fully embrace the I-Thou, for his character is rigid, his self
support reduced, and he usually believes he cannot grow out of his
repetitive and unsatisfying pattern of behavior.
He tries to fuse with the therapist, to draw on his strength instead of
allowing his own to develop. His sense of his own boundaries is weak, for he
rejects Awareness of aspects of himself (e.g., projection) and accepts alien
things as if they were himself (e.g., introjection). Thus the neurotic loses
Awareness of the IS.
So the neurotic is split, has reduced Awareness, and is self rejecting.
This unitary process of rejecting aspects of himself and becoming split can
be maintained only by restricting Awareness. For with full and continued
Awareness the rejected parts would be contacted and eventually integrated.
This self rejection and unawareness reduces the self support readily
available to the neurotic. He comes to believe that he cannot be self
regulating and self supporting, and therefore must manipulate others to tell
him how to be or else forces himself to live by rigid rules ("character") he
swallowed without assimilating. H e either tries to be self sufficient or depen-
dent, but does not use his self support for nourishing contact and
withdrawal. Thus the neurotic controls himself and others as things and
allows himself to be so controlled.
So the neurotic makes the therapeutic situation into a repeat of an
old one: someone telling him how to be, and he resisting or acquiescing. If
the therapist believes he knows best what is good for the patient, the pro-
blem intensifies. Even if the patient changes according to prescription, he
does so without learning how to regulate himself. Neither this nor the battle
between an ideal of the therapist and resistance of the patient is satisfactory.
It is not adopting this or that behavioral change that is sought, but the
Awareness of the patient's behavior by the patient so he can use his
strength to support himself rather than interrupt himself.

Thr Gri'd, ,""mi "01 I,, N..

37
GESTALT THERAPY: CLINICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

While many patients come to be changed, and do not want to be as

they are, they do not want to make real changes themselves. They want the
therapist to do it for them or to make them better at playing the same game.
They resist growth and invest energy in the failure of the therapist. This last
motivation is almost always out of the immediate Awareness of beginning
patients.
The problem is not that the patient manipulates, i.e., manages his
environment, but that he manipulates others to help him stay a cripple
more comfortably rather than manipulating based on self support in a giv-
ingitaking, contacdwithdrawal relationship with hi environment. The
therapist must be sympathetic with the patient's true needs and give close,
exclusive, non-demanding attention to the patient and at the same time
frustrate the subtle neurotic manipulations and force him thereby to "direct
all his manipulatory skill towards the satisfaction of his real needs (Perls,
1973, p. 108)."
" . . .if the therapist withholds himself . he deprives the field of its
main instrument, his intuition and sensitivity to the patient's on-going pro-
cesses. H e must, then, learn to work with sympathy and at the same time
with frustration. These two elements may appear to be incompatible, but
the therapist's art is to fuse them into an effective tool. H e must be cruel in
order to be kind. He must have a relational awareness of the total situation,
he must have contact with the total field-both his own needs and his reac-
tions to the patient's manipulations and the patient's needs and reactions to
the therapist. And he must feel free to express them." (Perls, 1973, p.
105).
To work with the neurotic we make contact and share our observa-
tions, our affective reactions, and our creativelartistic abilities. We give the
patient needed feedback, even if the patient has decided it is not relevant
(e.g., body language) or too painful to acknowledge (e.g., how he behaves).
We share with the patient our experience of him, including our emotional
reactions. We refuse to direct the patient's life, but do direct exercises and
experiments to increase awareness.
The Gestalt Therapist indicates by his interest, behavior, and words
that he cares, understands and will listen. This "true" support is
nourishing for many patients. Observers of G T who have not had an in-
timate, dyadic encounter with a Gestalt Therapist sometimes miss the in-
tensity and warmth of the "true" support offered by most Gestalt
Therapists while they are simultaneously "coldly" refusing to direct or be
responsible for the patient.

The G ~ I ~ l l J o Vu d~ IL
l No I

38
 Sometimes our contact leaves the patient frustrated. For example,
the patient may seek our approval or disapproval. We often refuse. Thus the
patient looking for approval, or disapproval, may find the Gestalt Therapist
intensely involved via eye contact and general attitude, but find no clue to
approval or disapproval. A therapist's unaverted gaze can be quite
disconcerting to such a patient. This is an example of the clinical use of
frustration. Giving subtle approval cues would be a form of conditioning
that reinforces the patient's struggle to impress the therapist rather than ex-
press himself.
Consider an obsessive patient who only experiences the world in a
cognitive mode and will not risk something new. He tells himself how he
should be and answers "yes, but. . . " or "I can't," or "maybe next
time." He is fearful of a suggestion that he experiment with a new mode of
experience and treats the suggestion as a command. He also treats a descrip-
tive, non-evaluative statement as a judgment or evaluation. Rather than
working with the description or following the suggestion to experiment he
plays the same "yes, but. . . " game with the therapist he plays with
himself. This we must not reinforce.
We value organismic self regulation and experimentation and these
values guide our interventions. The patient needs to explore so he can learn
for himself how to choose which mode of experiencing fitsfor him in each
situation. This Awareness as a tool contrasts with the awareness as a con-
tent (insight) that goes along with the analytc cure and the behavior change
without Awareness training of behavior modification.
We have no "you should" statements for the patient. He may ask,
"No shoulds? You mean I shouldn't have shoulds?" No. The patient
decides whether to have shoulds, the therapist describes. "You mean I can
do whatever I want and it is okay?" Again a misconception. Anything the
patient does is not "okay." There are legal, social, economic, moral conse-
quences. I do not give my sanction for "doing your own thing, " nor ask
you for sanction when "I do my thing " I take responsibility for my
choices, and insist that you take responsibility for yours. I aid patients to see
for themselves, experiment, validate their own behaviors, evaluate for
themselves. That is what is meant in G T by "doing your own thing," ex-
periencing the world for yourself (experiment, sense, feel), making your
own choices, and finding out if you have enough support.
GESTALT THERAPY: CLINICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

Evaluation and Maturity

G T is successful when the patient is able to regulate himself with a

process of Gestalt formation and destruction that clearly and spontaneously
forms his behavior and Awareness into wholeslunities that are organized
and energized by his dominant need. Such a person will "be Aware," i.e.,
have the characteristics of Awareness discussed above, e.g., be in contact
with the most important event in his lie space, have excitement that flows
into his behavior, be responsible and selfregulating, be able to risk new ex-
ploration, etc.
Thus we define maturity as a continual process rather than arriving
at an ideal end state. The mature person engages in this process. Saying this
another way: he is engaged in the process of Creative Adjustment. Creative
Adjustment is a relationship between person and environment in which the
person 1. responsibly contacts, acknowledges and copes with his life space,
and, 2. takes responsibility for creating conditions conducive to his own
well being. "Adjustment" without "creative" could mean mere con&
mity to an extrinsic standard. "Creative" without "adjustment" could
refer to dysfunctional nihilism. Individual behavior is mature only in the
context of coping with the environment. And, coping or adjusting without
the individual's being responsible for creating conditions conducive to the
satisfaction of his most basic needs and values also fails to meet this defini-
tion. Working, loving, asserting, yielding, etc., are mature only insofar as
they are part of Creatzve Adjustment.
Maturity is not a static ideal but rather is the process of engaging
with Awareness in a creatively adjusting process of organismic self-
regulation in the real world. In G T we work for the Awareness that is a
necessary support for Creative Adjustment.
Success in G T is measured in terms of how clearly the patient can
experience and judge for himself rather than his relying on any extrinsic
measure of adjustment. We expect the patient to learn how to experience for
himself the extent to which any process, including GT, satisfies or frustrates
his important needs. This means he must know what he
needslwantslprefers and be responsible for his own values, judgments and
choices.
This maturity and Awareness validly and reliably confirms the suc-
cess of G T only when they are clearly and obviously manifest to the patient
and the therapist. Success is measured by both externally visible behavior
and internal experiencing. The patient must feel differently: he must feel in-
creased clarity, excitement, well being, exploring, etc. There should be an
obvious congruence between the patient's experience and the therapist's
observation of overt behavior. Every internal Awareness should be accom-
panied by an external manifestation, e.g., the patient's feeling of greater
aliveness should show in observable, physiological changes. Failure of this
clear evidence of success to manifest itself to therapist or patient indicates a
need for explication by further phenomenological exploration.

Comparison of Models of Psychotherapy

The foundation for traditional talk therapies is still largely

psychoanalytic. Neither behavior nor the experience of the patient is trusted
since both are believed to be determined by inferred, unobservable, hidden
"real" causes, i.e., unconscious motivation. What the patient is left with is
an unconscious that is unavailable and a consciousness that is powerless and
unreliable. (Acceptance of the distant causes of one's present behavior is
often referred to as "insight.") The concept of the unconscious is rqlaced
in G T by the shifting figurelground of Awareness concept, in which certain
phenomena are not contacted because of a disturbance in the figurelground
formation or because the person is in contact with other phenomena (see
Perls, 1973, p. 54). But the data is available and the patient can be directly
and immediately taught to attend to it. It is not unavailable. Awareness in
G T is seen as the powerful and creative integrator that can encompass what
was previously unaware.
In traditional psychotherapy the belief in the unconscious motivation
of behavior leaves the patient dependent on the therapist's interpretations
rather than his own explorations in Awareness. The therapist knows and
the patient either gets well by learning what the therapist already knows or
he is "supported" by the therapist until the therapist believes the patient
has enough ego strength to hear what the therapist knows.
What the therapist "knows" are interpretations, speculations of
past events that are postulated to cause (justify?) present behavior. This
linear causlity model reduces the importance of here and now forces struc-
turally supporting the behavior and available for exploration by the patient's
senses. Only through the transference is the here and now entered, and
then only to interpret the patient's distortions.
All of this elevates the position of the therapist at the expense of the
patient; it nullifies the patient's means of orientation: his own sense of what
he sees and how he feels about it. This is functionally the same as saying

7%. Gsiult J o n m l Vol 11, No i

41
GESTALT THERAPY: CLINICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

that the patient is not responsible for himself and cannot know himself, but
rather has a disease or disability that the therapist will cure or eliminate.
Even those who ostensibly reject the medical model often have this same at-
titude in practice. This is the very attitude that the I and Thou model of G T
reacts against: the assumption that the patient is less than a Thou.
There is a split between these talking therapies and the more active
models, such as behavior modification. The new "third force" claims to be
a new alternative. Unfortunately many of the "new" psychotherapies are
merely updates of the talking cure or the reconditioning cure. Many of the
new therapies claim to be existential, but lack an existential methodology;
the methods of most of the new "existential" therapies are not
phenomenological. Often these "new" therapies are merely a traditional
talk therapy with a different language (new content) and a slight
methodological shift (e.g., more active).
In these "new" talk therapies the therapists still act as change
agents believing they know better than the patient how he should be. They
see the patient's task as learning what they already know (content) rather
than learning a process. Thus many are weak both humanistically and
technologically, and certainly do not integrate the two. They also lack the
phenomenological view of Awareness, trusting their own analysis more.
They lack a theory of causality to replace the outdated linear causality
model. They lack a theory of assimilation adequate to explain an ego that
has an existence apart from a sum of id impulses and external reinforce-
ment.
The more active third force therapies are also not phenomenological.
Encounter gropus that use gimmicks to produce a desired emotional expres-
sion or turn-on, body therapies designed to produce the ideal body, therapies
designed to produce primal screams, all have in common with behaviorism
two facton that differentiate them from G T (and any phenomenology): 1.
They emphasize the external behavior and de-emphasize the world us seen
by the putient. 2 . They aim for control of that behavior at the expense of the
kind of Awareness training that results in organismic self regulation. If the
goal is emotional expressiveness, then the group pushes the patient to emote
rather than teaching him to be Aware of and accept his impulses to express
and not express his emotions. The behaviorists do this reconditioning from
a scientific standpoint, with an emphasis on clear terminology, specified
techniques, learning theory, objective data, etc. Encounter group leaden
often do their reconditioning without as adequate a support base.
In G T we reject any split between talk and behavior. T o be
phenomenological we must use all the data: that of the patient's con-
sciousness and that which we observe. We integrate behavioral and ex-
periential psychology into one system of psychotherapy by our full concern
with the phenomenon of awareness and by using a new and more cogent
definition of Awareness. The elements of this new definition are included in
many definitions of awareness, but most other therapists do not insist on in-
cluding them all in a unified concept.
By working with here and now Awareness and without shoulds by
the therapist the G T patient can begin learning immediately. This im-
mediate change is exciting and frightening. Some are misled into believing
that G T promises instant growth or an easy road. Nothing can be further
from the truth: G T believes that growth cannot be instantaneous.
Awareness and growth can start immediately, but growing is a process and
not an instantaneous end-result of doing just the right thing. In G T we
share that road, and do not try to cheat the patient out of it by being his
reconditioner or all-knowing parentiguru.
We see growth through Awaraness arising out of a loving I-Thou
relation in which the patient's independence, worthiness, and sensing abili-
ty is respected. This is very similar to Rogers' theory, but with some
pointed differences. Rogers started with a client-centered approach leaving
out the person of the therapist, and later advocated a completely mutual
relation between therapist and patient. In G T the relationship is not com-
pletely mutual hut rather focused on the patient's learning (this is Buber's
concept). And, in G T the therapist is totally included: negative feelings,
feedback of sensory and body language, creativity (creating ways of increas-
ing Awareness), technological responses that guide Awareness work, and a
willingness to frustrate the patient seeking help.
Most patients want the therapist to cure them. If the therapist does
for the patient what the patient can do for himself, if he is too sympathetic,
he reinforces the patient's own belief that he is unable to regulate and s u p
port himself. If the therapist needs to be helpful in this way, the patient goes
on being dependent, neurotic and not finding out what he can do for
himself. "Chicken Soup Is Poison (Resnick, 1975)." If the therapist blames
or pushes the patient or gives disapproval it has the same effect.
The therapist needs to connect in a caring way with the patient as he
is, and refrain from "helping." The therapist must work to restore the pa-
tient's Awareness of hi own needs, his own strengths, his potential for
creating new ways of coping with the world. In short, the therapist must
support the patient's expression of his own self support.
GESTALT THERAPY: CLINICAL PHENOMENOLOGY

Summary

G T is a whole different framework and not just another talk therapy,

another behavior therapy or another encounter therapy. It is a new
framework within which therapists have to create their own style of work-
ing G T is more an attitude than a set of techniques. Any technique
facilitating Awareness and learning the tools of becoming Aware can be us-
ed within the system-if the G T attitude is adapted by the therapist,
therapist-trainee, or patient to each circumstance using their sensorylex-
periential tools and an understanding of the G T framework. G T has been
inadequately represented by the sloganeering and naivete of advocates and
critics who work without adequate understanding. People have even started
"institutes" of GT, taught GT, and written books without understanding
field theory, I and Thou, phenomenology, or even reading the basic G T
literature.
Two aspects are always present in each G T event that other systems
frequently treat as contradictory or separate: 1. The immediate personal
needs of the participants in the I-Thou, Here-Now dialogue, AND, 2. The
technical requirements of the Awareness work. Each therapeutic interven-
tion has both aspects: Each is both a technical event with implications for
Awareness work (phenomenology) and a human one, expressing the
therapist's need. The humanistic dialogue and Awareness "techniques"
are integrated in GT. Those deriving their Gestalt theory from watching
G T and inferring what the theory must be often confuse this. One does not
have to choose between technical expertise and human concern.
G T is very powerful and can therefore be abused. This places a great
demand on the Gestalt Therapist. When he works he must be mature
enough to be spontaneously more interested in the patient's Awareness that
in other needs, e.g., being entertained. Blending technical work with con-
tact and humaneness takes perspective and training in how one's personal
responses effect the Awareness and growth needs of the patient. The "I do
my thing" slogan has been misused as a screen for encounters that turn-on
without teaching the patient to be centered, Aware and responsible for his
lie in the world.
We use our humanltechnical potential to clarify the obvious through
experiencing and experimenting. We value the immediate raw data of our
perception of the Other and ourselves in the situation as experienced and
stay in the continuum of Awareness, however confusing or painful, until
organismic self regulation is restored. Each element is seen as meeting a
need and is therefore allowed to become foreground, stayed with (coped
with and communicated) until the need is met and the element becomes
background. This organismic self regulation replaces rigid, artificial regula-
tion. Fresh Awareness, I-Thou contactiexploration, and organismic self
regulation are more exciting and powerful for increasing growth than
analyzing, conditioning and talking-about.
Allowing patients to discover and explore is particularly suited to
our modem society with its constant and rapidly changing social order.
Rather than trying to be healthy by adjusting to a situation, in G T one
learns how to use one's Awareness in whatwer situation emerges. This re-
quires going beyond placebo effect, spontaneous remission and such and
learning the structure of how one can direct his own learning and change.

Bibliography

Beisser, A. The Paradoxical Theory of Change. in Gestalt Therapy Now,

ed. Fagan, J. and Shepherd, I.L., Science and Behavior Books, Palo
Alto, 1970.
Latner, J. The Gesfult Therapy Book. Julian Press, N.Y., 1973
Perls, F. Ego, Hungerand Aggression. 1947. Vintabe Books, N.Y., 1969.
Perls, F., Hefferline, R., and Goodman, P. Gestalt Therapy. Dell Books,
N.Y., 1951.
Polster, E. & Polster, M. G T Integrated. BrunnerIMazel, N.Y., 1973.
Resnick, R. Chicken Soup Is Poison. Reprinted in Stephenson.

Stephenson, F.D. G T Primer. Thomas, Springfield, Ill., 1975

Yontef, G. A Review of the Practice of GT. Trident Shop, L.A., 1969.
Reprinted in Stephenson.
Perls, F. The Gestalt Approach, Science & Behavior Books, Ben Lamond,
Ca., 1973.

A shortened version appears in: Modern Therapies, ed. V. Binder,

A. Binder and B. Rimland. Prentice-Hall. 1976.

Tbe Gestalt I o u m l Vol Il N

45
COMPARING CERTAIN THEORIES AND
THERAPIES OF FREUD AND PERLS
Genie 2. Laborde

A resurgence or continuing of interest in Gestalt therapy is indicated

by the recent publication of two books about its recognized founder,
Frederick Perls, and the philosophy underlying his controversial work at
Esalen Institute in the 60's. This philosophy seems to have strongly in-
tluenced other current therapies such as Transactional Analysis, Existen-
tial, Rogerian, and Reality Therapy as weU as popular movements such as
EST, PET, and TET. While some of the present day leaders of these
therapies might argue this point and play down their debt to Perls, the prin-
ciples of Gestalt show up in the writings and work of leaders and therapists
working in widely different methods. Of course, few if any of these prin-
ciples were original with Perls, but he brought them all together in four
books and showed how they could work in his popular therapy groups.
Sometimes viewed as the father of the Human Potential Movement, Fritz,
as Perk was known by those who worked with him and the title of one of
the new books, does seem to have popularized the group format for therapy
which has spread from the U.S. to Europe. Gestalt centers in London,
Amsterdam, Scandanavia, and Germany regularly import recognized U.S.
Gestalt leaders to hold workshops for professionals in psychology and
psychiau)..
Becoming famous only a few short years before he died, Perls seemed
to have had a great time writing his autobiography, sometimes writing
poetry and sometimes prose, where he admitted his feelings for Freud were
largely unresolved, containing both admiration and vindictiveness. This can
be discerned from the following by Perls:
Transference is a lovely game
That can be played forever.
........,,.......
And so we both play undisturbed
With symbols, insights and taboo.
I am really beginning to enjoy myself.
Especially writing this vignette hitting back at
psychoanalysis
After all, Freud,
I gave you seven of the best years of my lie. (1972,
pp. 21-22)
In late life, Perk claimed to have repudiated the validity of his early training
in Germany as a Freudian analyst in statements such as, "It took us a long
time to debunk the whole Freudian crap. . . " (1971, p. 1) However, a
close look at Perls' work, as recounted in his writings and viewed in video,
shows connections to Freudian principles-connections of which, perhaps,
even Perls was unaware.
Where did Freud and Perls agree? Was the difference primarily in
terminology or were their perceptions of mental processes basically dif-
ferent? A n exploration of certain basic concepts as elucidated in the writings
of these two seminal figures could be fruitful for those concerned with
therapy and its roots today.
First, a general look at the broad viewpoints of these two men, then a
closer look at one specific mental process, introjection, for purposes of com-
parison will be made.
In 1923, Freud outlined his map of man's "mental apparatus.''
While his interests and emphases shifted during the subsequent 16 yean of
his writings, these basic outlines remained constant. The pervasive in-
fluence of Freud's work on present day thinking has made his terms com-
monplace. However, a brief review of Freud's early definitions might be
helpful in order to compare his way of viewing the psychial actions of his pa-
tienu with Perls'.
COMPARING CERTAIN THEORIES AND THERAPIES OF FREUD AND PERLS

Pcpt-Cs

FI): I

SIGMUND FREUD'S DRAWING OF MAN'S MENTAL APPARATUS

Pcpt-Cs ----Perception-Conscious
Pcs -------Preconscious
Rprssd-----Repressed
Aud ------Auditory lobe
Sigmund Freud? Model

Sigmund Freud divided man's mental apparatus into the Ego, the
Super-ego, and the Id. Figure 1 appeared in The Ego and the id, first
published in 1923. Of the Ego, Freud wrote, "This ego appears to us as
something autonomous and unitary, marked off distinctly from everything
else." (1973, pp. 2-3) The Ego functions as a "psychial organization"
which mediates between the Id and the Super-ego, receives sensory stimuli
and perception of bodily needs, controls voluntary motor activity, and has
the task of sell-preservation. T o carry out this task, the Ego must be aware
of external stimuli, store up these stimuli (in memory), avoid excessive
stimuli (through flight), deal with moderate stimuli (through adaptation),
and bring about changes in the external world to its advantage (through ac-
tivity).

The Id is the oldest of the mental provinces or agencies, and here

reside, according to Freud, "everything that is laid down in the constitu-
tion-above all, therefore, the instincts." (1949, p. 2)
The Super-ego does not appear in Figure 1. However, in the next
chapter of The Ego and the id, Freud elucidates this basic concept in great
detail. The Super-ego is an agency which holds a special position between
the Ego and the Id. According to Freud, "It belongs to the Ego, shares its
high psychological organization, but stands in an especially intimate con-
nection with the Id. It is actually the precipitate of the Ego's first at-
tachments to objects." (1947, p. 48) These objects and their attendant
characteristics are introjected into the psyche of the child and become part
of his mental apparatus. Later, in the present paper, an exploration of
theories as to how this inuojection comes about will be made. For the mo-
ment, Freud's short definition should be sufficient:
The Super-ego is the successor and representative of the
parents (and educators) who superintended the actions of the
individual in his first years of life: it perpetuates their func-
tions almost without a change. (1939, p. 149)
Freud divided the processes of the mental apparatus into two broad
categories: conscious and unconscious. He wrote:
There is no need to characterize what we call
'conscious'-it is the same as the consciousness of
philosophers and of everyday opinion. Everything else
psychical is in our view 'the unconscious.' (1949, p. 16)
COMPARING CERTAIN THEORIES AND THERAPIES OF FREUD AND PERLS

Freud cautioned against trying to equate the Ego with consciousness

and the Id with unconsciousness. The processes of the Id are unconscious
but can move up to preconsciousness and from there into consciousness.
Preconscious is that part of the unconscious which is capable of entering
consciousness or which can return to the unconscious. Part of the Ego is
conscious and part is unconscious. The Super-ego is closer to un-
consciousness than is the Ego, according to Freud. One possible interpreta-
tion of this is that it is more difficult to bring Super-ego processes to con-
sciousness than Ego processes. Psychoanalysis was one way to move
material from the unconscious to the preconscious and then perhaps into
consciousness.
Some analogies of David Stafford-Clark's from the textbook What
Freud Really Said may be helpful in explaining these two p r e
cesses-conscious and unconscious. First, Stafford-Clark recalls the old
iceberg analogy for the conscious1unconscious division of our mental ap-
paratus. Then he writes:
Another way of visualizing the relationship between con-
sciousness, pre-consciousness, and the unconscious mental
l i e is to regard the whole area as a vast darkened arena con-
taining innumberable potential memories, ideas, and ex-
periences.
Consciousness is the spotlight which, sweeping the arena,
lights up just that area upon which it falls. Everything out-
side its illumination, but within its range, is
preconsciousness. In this analogy the manipulation of the
spotlight can be imagined as the responsibility of the ego, but
the mechanism is powered by the id and governed by the
superego, and the ego can move it only with their aid.
(1971, pp. 138-139)
Consciousness, being governed by the Super-ego, is conditioned to
accept its mandates without questioning their validity. With awareness (em-
phasized by Perk and explained in detail later), consciousness wakes up, so
to speak, and begins to question what is happening to the organism. This
questioning grows naturally from true awareness, according to Perls, and
here perhaps lies the difference between Freud's consciousness and Perls'
awareness.
It is perhaps an obvious point that Freud and Perls spent years close-
ly observing patients and themselves, then posited certain terms as ways of
communicating the processes, assumed from the actions, emotions, words,
 CONSCIOUS

PRECONSCIOUS

UNCONSCIOUS

SYMBOLIC
CONSTRUCT
MAN'S MENTAL APPARATUS
SIGMUND FREUD'S TERMS
COMPARING CERTAIN THEORIES AND THERAPIES OF FREUD AND PERLS

and other manifestations of these processes. Figure 2 is based on Freud's

model, designed to communicate what he saw and deduced. As are all
models, this is limited by Freud's experiences, his patterns of thought, and
any ' ' t ~ ~ t h swhich
'' he took to be self-evident-his paradigm. Freud actual-
ly broke through the paradigm in which psychiatrists of his day worked and
created a new one. This new paradigm existed when Perls was trained as a
Freudian analyst; it would appear that Perls wanted to break through it and
create a new one. Whether or not he succeeded is still in question. It seems
that he contributed worthwhile adjustments to the ongoing psjchological
paradigm and new therapeutic techniques. Perls' broad viewpoint will now
be briefly explored.

Frederick Perls ' Model

According to Perls' writings in The Gestalt Approach and Eye-

Witness to Therapy, his model of the personality and how it functions is
based on a concept:
. . developed by a group of German psychologists working
in the field of perception, who showed that man does not
perceive things as unrelated isolates but organizes them in
the perceptual process into meaningful wholes. (1973, p. 2)
This organized pattern, with its foreground and backgroud, the
Gestalt, is determined by the interest of the organism. This interest, in turn,
is based on the needs of the organism. Perk organizes these needs into two:
to survive and to grow. As Perls writes:
Formulating this principle in terms of Gestalt psychology,
we can say that the dominant need of the organism, at any
time, becomes the foreground figure, and the other needs
recede, at least temporarily, into the background. . F o r the
individual to satisfy his needs, to close the gestalt, to move
on to other business, he must be able to sense what he needs
and he must know how to manipulate himself and hi en-
vironment, for even the purely physiological needs can only
be satisfied through the inter-action of the organism and the
environment. (1973, p. 8)
"To be able to sense what he needs"-these words lead clearly to Perls'
emphasis on awareness. Awareness is absolutely necessary to sense what
one needs. Perls uses "awareness" and "non-awareness" in much the
same way that Freud uses "conscious" and "unconscious," though Perk'
C,*,., *
AWARENESS

UNAWARENESS

SYMBOLIC CONSTRUCT
MAN'S MENTAL APPARATUS
FREDERICK PERLS' TERMS
COMPARING CERTAIN W O R I E S AND THERAPIES OF FREUD AND PERLS

"
awareness" may have more emphasis on concentration than Freud's
"
conscious." Perk insists that one concentrate or look at his own
awareness, so to speak. Perls believed that our dominant needs push for
awareness, determine our gestalts, select from our environment whatever
relates to these needs. So by staying with moment-to-moment awareness,
the organism, through perception patterns, can determine its dominant
needs. Even more often, awareness focuses on the organism's old habits
which are not fulfilling its needs. By seeing one's habits and their failures
and focusing on what one really needs, awareness can lead to fulfilling the
organism's dominant need, ensuring its development. Figure 3 indicates
Perls' terms in schematic form.
Perls took issue with Freud in several significant areas; however, it
seems clear that Perk' work grew out of Freud's paradigm, even though
some of it is in opposition rather than in affirmation. One possibly construc-
tive and time-saving approach to an exploration of Perk' model would be to
explore where it differs from Freud's. Perk often expressed what he,
himself, believed while pointing out where he thought Freud's theory was
wrong or incomplete. These differences will be stated in Perls' words
whenever possible, for the medium is the message, and Perls' "aliveness"
is often communicated by the very rhythm of his words.
Perls disagreed with Freud's divisions of the mental apparatus into
Ego, Id, and Super-ego. Perls thought it more constructive to consider one
Ego, self, or personality which functioned in particular ways. Perk argued
that mental constructs of divisions inside the personality encouraged splits
in the personality.
Perls considered the Ego to be a function and a symbol, and
disagreed with the widely accepted psycho-analytic theory that held the Ego
to be a substance. It should be noted that Perk does not accuse Freud,
himself, with holding this theory. First we will look at Perls' writings on the
Ego, then those concerning the Super-ego and the Id. Perls writes:
The Ego's meaning is that of a symbol and not of a
substance. As the Ego indicates the acceptance of and iden-
tification with certain parts of the personality, we can make
use of the Ego-language for the purpose of assimilating
disowned parts of ourselves. These disowned parts are either
re-pressed or projected. The "It" language is a mild form of
projection and results, like any other projection, in a change
from an active to a passive attitude, from responsibility into
fatalism. (1969, p. 218)

Th. G ~ , ~ l ' / o u n r r voi

i II. NO.I
54
Here, Perls notes the power of language in constructing our reality and in
constructing our personality-instances of the crucial effect of symbols on
our experience.
Perls believed that Freud's concept of the Ego made it a servant in-
stead of a master. He writes:
In other words, by taking the Ego as a substance we have to
admit its incompetence. We have to accept the Ego's
dependency upon the demands of instincts, conscience, and
environment, and we have to agree fully with Freud's poor
view of the Ego's power. (1969, p. 147)
Perls, instead, viewed the Ego as potentially powerful and potentially the
master of its situation as a result of its ability to identdy, to attract toward
itself and take in whatever the Ego considered "right."
A s for Freud's Super-ego, Perls took exception to the concept
several different times and from several different vantage points. Perls made
a distinction between self-actualization, which he saw as a good and natural
development of the organism, and self-concept or self-image actualization,
which he saw as desuuctive. Perls wrote in his autobiography, In and Out
the Garbage Pad:
It took me still some more years to understand the nature of
self-actualizatton in terms of Gertrude Stein's "A rose is a
rose is a rose 1s a rose."
The self-concept actualization as there, for instance, with
Freud under the name of ego-ideal. However, Freud used the
terms super-ego and ego-ideal interchangeably like sleight of
hand. They are absolutely different phenomena. The super-
ego is the moralistic, controlling function which could be
called an ideal only by a 100% submission desiring ego.
Freud just never made it the p a n t of undemanding the self.
(1973, p. 5)
Perls voices one of his dissatisfactions with Freud's concept of the
Super-ego as an agency, and the conscience as a function of that agency,
when he writes:
Then Freud came and he showed that the conscience is
nothing but a fantasy, an introjection, a continuation of what
he believed was the parents. I believe it's a projection onto
the parents, but never mind. Some think it is an introjection,
an institution called the superego, that wants to take over
control. Now if this were so, then how come the analysis of
COMPARING CERTAIN THEORIES AND THERAPIBS OF FREUD AND PERLS

the super-ego is not successful? How come that when we tell

ourselves to be g w d or to do this or that, we are not suc-
cessful? (1971, p. 18)
Of course, Freud could well have answered, "The Id." Since Perls also
refused to accept the Id, this answer would not satisfy. Instead, Perls argued
that the functions which Freud gave to the agency he called the Super-ego
were actually the alienationiidentification functions of the self.
In Perls' model, the self has two main functions: Alienationirepul-
sion and identificatiodattraction. The self or Ego boundary is determined
by these two functions. We naturally tend to take inside the self what is at-
tractive and keep out what is repulsive. However, on some occasions in un-
conscious processes, both repulsive and attractive mandates were taken into
the self in a package. Once inside the s e x the repulsive characteristics, man-
dates, or values could interrupt the natural growth of the organism unless
they were exorcised by conscious awareness. If they were not exorcised,
they continued inside the self, but were alineated, cut off because they were
too repulsive for the self to own. The self cut off its awareness of their
presence, deadened itself to them, and isolated them in a layer of un-
consciousness. Unfortunately, they continued their blocking of natural pro-
cesses even though alienated and functioning on the unawareness level.
Perls writes of his concept that the dictatorial Ego was the manifestation of
the identification function-which has gone awry by taking in a
bully-when he writes:
A dictatorial, bullying, self-controlling Ego (which, correctly
expressed, means the identification function with a bullying
conscience), far from taking the responsibility for the
organism, pushed it (mostly as blame) onto the Id or the
"body" as if it was something not belonging to the Self.
(1969, p. 147j
Perls indicated that Freud's divisions and the entire process of
psychoanalysis allowed the patient to push responsibility onto his Id, hi
parents, his situation, his therapist, or whatever, and that no change would
take place until the person took responsibility for himself.
Another of Perls' quarrels with the Super-ego concept is expressed
when he writes:
If there is a superego, there must be a infraego. Again, Freud
did half the job. H e saw the topdog, the superego, but he left
out the underdog, which is just as much a personality as the
topdog. (1971, p. 18)
Perls considered the topdogiunderdog as manifestations of his principles of
attractionlrepukion which were functions of the self.
Perls' dissatisfactions with Freud's Id were similar to those he ex-
pressed about the Super-ego. He writes:
The concept of the "Id" is possible only as a counterpoint to
the concept of the Super-ego. Thus it is an artificial, un-
biological construction created by the alienation function of
the Ego. A boundary appears between the accepted and
refused part of the personality, and a split personality
develops. (1969, p. 147)
The concept of divisions inside the personality, in Perls' opinion, encourag-
ed not only splits in the personality but also non-responsibility. Instead of
separate agencies to denote certain processes, Perls preferred to label these
separate but related functions of one self. Using three divisions as mental
constructs allowed the Freudians to blame the Id for instincts, organismic
needs, which they, themselves, did not wish to own, to be responsible for.
Perk wrote:
Many intellectuals look enthusiastically to Groddeck's
theory of the Id. After they had dethroned God and Fate, but
were not yet strong enough to take sufficient responsibility
themselves, they found the necessary support in the concep-
tion of the Id. They needed aprime cause and found a solu-
tion by transferring God from his heaven into their own
system. (1969, p. 218)
Perls thought of the instincts as biological "needs" which directed the
organism's perception so that the personality could find the fulfillment of
these needs in its environment. Fulfillment of these needs leads the per-
sonality toward maturity, developmental growth. Interruption of fulfillment
of the needs of the organism, of the maturation of the "biological self," oc-
cured when the ideal self superimposed its introjects into this natural pro-
cess. The conflict between the natural self and the ideal self was a primary
cause of neuroses. D. H. Lawrence had introduced the concept of an "in-
dividual nature" which is spontaneously created by one's unconscious and
posited its conflict with the "ideal nature" in Psychoanalysis and the Un-
conscious (1968, pp. 15-16). Neglecting to mention the sources of your
ideas may be one of the hallmarks of a great man. Perk presented these bor-
rowed ideas in enough details and with few enough changes so that it is
possible to relate them back to their originators. Perls' talent lay in brilliant-
ly utilizing these ideas in the therapeutic process.
the source of anxiety. The distinction between doing something bad and
wishing to do it disappears entirely, according to Freud, when the outside
admonitions become a part of the mental apparatus of the child in the form
of the Super-ego. Freud next points out that the Super-ego has no reason to
punish the Ego for "bad" wishes, yet conditioned to do so, it continues and
anxiety is the result. This may be one of the sources of anxiety. There may
be other sources as well.
It is conceivable that the emotion of anxiety could be confused with
excitement, since there is sometimes overlap in the two feelings, or both
terms might be confused with a term used by Freud-excitation. A close
look at the three terms as used by Freud and by Perls may make the dif-
ference clear.
Anxiety is a state of uneasiness, apprehension, worry. Excitement is
stimulation, activity, increased energy. Perls viewed anxiety as excitement
without an immediate discharge into action-the distance existing between
thought now and action later caused anxiety. According to Perls, anxiety,
in most cases, is to be avoided, excitement is to be courted. Excitement is
the life force, manifesting itself. When we block this with fear, then anxiety
results.
Perls' use of the word, excitement, differed from Freud's use of a
similar word, excitation, in the following manner. In Freud's terminology,
the quality of excitation determined pleasure or pain. Pain was an increase
in excitation and pleasure was a decrease. Freud's principle of constancy and
his pleasure principle grew from this concept of pain and pleasure as pro-
ceeding from excitation. The organism attempts to reduce pain and to gain
pleasure by decreasing excitation. Perls' writings contain a similar principle
to Freud's principle of constancy, which Perls called homeostasis. W. B.
Cannon originated the ideal of homeostasis in The Wisdom of the Body.
The homeostatic process is the process by which the organism maintains its
equilibrium and satisfies its needs. The principle of constancy is the tenden-
cy toward stability. Excitation is the response of the organism to the princi-
ple of constancy in Freud's terms, while excitement is the response of the
organism to the principle ofhomeostasis. Freud saw the healthy organism as
wishing to decrease excitation in order to feel pleasure, while Perk saw the
functioning organism as marshalling excitement into action in order to
satisfy its needs, which is pleasurable. Thus, anxiety, excitement, and ex-
citation while showing some relationship as feeling states are used to denote
different experiences in the writings of Perk and Freud.
In summary, Perls disliked Freud's division of the mental apparatus
PARING CERTAIN THEORIES AND THERAPIES OF FRELiD AND PERLS

into the Ego, Id, and Super-ego. Perk thought that one Ego was a healthier
way to view the psychial organization. Perls replaced Freud's posited in-
stincts of the Id with the principles of attraction and repulsion; we expand
our Ego to take in whatever we are attracted to, and we either keep out what
is repulsive or we deaden our awareness that it has become part of our Ego.
In Perls' lexicon conflicts were usually between top dog and under dog or
between two opposing rules which have been introjected. These conflicts
could be resolved by awareness of what was happening inside the body and
outside in the environment. The ability to respond in an appropriate man-
ner to the inside and outside awareness would eliminate conflicts, deadness,
and any need for looking backward as psychoanalysis demanded. "Here and
Now," repeated Perls again and again. Not There and Then. Life is to be
lived, not talked about. It doesn't matter why you hate your mother, what
matters is how you feel now about your mate. What is going on now? What
do you want? These questions were asked to restore communication with
your "natural" self, which Perk felt would lead you toward maturation,
satisfaction, and self-support.
In order to look closely at one specific area, how each man viewed it,
and how they dealt with it with their patients, we will consider the Super-
ego and, as called by Perls, "introjects." The Super-ego could be con-
sidered to be a collection of introjects, or the result of the process of introjec-
tion. In the chapter of The Gestalt Approach, entitled "Neurotic
Mechanisms," Perls lists introjection first, followed by projection, con-
fluence, and retroflection. We will look closely at this one neurotic
mechanism in an attempt to determine the likenesses and differences in this
one area between these two creative thinkers in the field of psychology.

Introjects and the Super-ego

The relationship of introjects to Sigmund Freud's concept of the

Super-ego can be discerned from the following definition in Moses and
Monotheism:
In the course of the individual development, a part of the in-
hibiting forces in the outer world becomes internalized; a
standard is created in the Ego which opposes the other
faculties by observation, criticism, and prohibition. We call
this new standard the Super-ego. (1939, p. 149)
In Freud's theory, then, the Super-ego is composed of the commandments
of the authorities primarily from early life, but reaching into middle lie, and
often continuing into old age. A t first, these authorities and their command-
ments are outside the child, but later they move inside, becoming the Super-
ego. It seems clear that both Perls and Freud posit an internalization of out-
side rules which cause conflict inside the personality.
Perls' writings on introjection seem tq be a logical amplification of
Freud's concept of the Super-ego. In exploring the related concepts of intro-
jects and the Super-ego, we will now look at this area of agreement. Perls
took issue with Freud and some of the other psychoanalysts on some of their
major concepts; however, in the area of introjection there seem to be some
agreement.

Definition by Freud

In 1922, Freud wrote that "the ego has enriched itself with the pro-
perties of the object, it has 'intorjected' the object into itself, as Ferenczi ex-
presses it." (1951, pp. 75-76) The difficulties in quoting Freud are ap-
parent here, but understandable when one considers the enormous number
of new concepts he presented. Stafford-Clark clarifies Freud's definition in
these words:
. . .so too it [the ego] is influenced by a super-ego, that
aspect of childhood acceptance and respect for adult authori-
ty, standards, and ideals which has eventually been intro
jected. "Introjected" was Freud's own word; it means taken
once again into the self, at an unconscious level. There
established, the super-ego exerts its own separate and often
opposing influence, to mediate between the ego, which is the
awareness of self, the ego's experiences of the external world
and its challenges, and the ego's experiences of the impulses
of the id and its instinctual drives. (1971, p. 138)

Identification and Introjects

"Identification" in some compilations is listed as related to "intro

jection," and there has been consistent psychological research that falls in
the category of identification. Internalization of identification is sometimes
used as synonymous with introjection. However, internalization of iden-
tification can mean simply modeling someone's gestures or body language
or words, and is not always true introjection. Freud differentiated between
the two terms. He made the difference quite explicit when he wrote that in

Tbc Gcrinll Jaumui Vol 11, No. I

61
COMPARING CERTAIN THEORIES AND THERAPIES OF FRmTD AND PERLS

identification one wants to be another; in inuojection one wants to have the

other. In his words, "identification endeavors to mold a person's own ego
after the fashionof the one that has been taken asa 'model'." (1951, p. 63)
In introjection, one attempts to absorb the model into the ego.
There is a great difference between the two psychological
mechanisms, though in normally adjusted people, it may not be readily ap-
parent. There is an imperative about having an object with libidoinside the
psyche that does not allow the option of disregarding its dictates. With iden-
tification, the option exists of not being like the model. Freud wrote of a pro-
cess he called secondary identification or secondary narcissism that is very
close in meaning if not the same as introjection. "Shoulds" and "should
nots" seem to be invoked in both processes, but much weaker in the case of
identification.
Thoughtful consideration indicates that the process of introjection-
identification is, however, a continuum with true introjection on the end
with the greatest amount of libido and m e identification on the other. In-
trojects shading into identifications and visa versa exist inside these ex-
tremes. For ease of explication, extremely complex mental operations have
been simplified, and a somewhat arbitrary line has been drawn by stating
that introjects are unconscious and identifications are conscious. One-third
introject plus two-thirds identification become cumbersome and difficult to
communicate. Freud did not view the Super-ego as totally unconscious;
however, Perls viewed introjects as operating from the unawareness level.
Freud's laborious explanations are excellent in understanding what
probably goes on inside the psyche during this complex object-cathexis, in-
uojection, which Freud saw as part of the normal developmental process.
The formation of the Super-ego is accomplished by the process of introjec-
tion. The transformation of the contents of the Super-ego or introjects is a
matter of conjecture. Theories about this wiU be explained along with some
principles of Gestalt which may add to an understanding of what probably
happens in the psyche during this transformation of introjects.

Freud's Theory on the Formation of the Super-ego

The logical question at this point would be: How does the inter-
nalization of these maxims, attitudes, and values (for brevity I will use one of
these words or the word standards to denote all three) take place? Why does
the organism organize itself in this manner? What is the origin of the Super-
ego which is so often at odds with other parts of the total personality? In

Tbe G r d t lourmi vol ir. No.1

62
discussing the formation of the Super-ego, Freud writes of
. . t h e original infantile state of conscience, which, as we
see, is not given up after the introjection into the Super-ego,
but persists along side of it and behind it. (1973, p. 63)
Freud explains the infantile state of conscience as originating from the in-
fant's fear of loss of love and the attendant dangers which leads him to want
to please his parents or parental surrogates so that they do not punish hi.
As Freud writes:
. . . a person feels guilty (devout people would say "sinful")
when he has done something which he knows to be
"bad". . . How is this judgment arrived at?. . . What is
bad is often not at all what is injurious or dangerous to the
ego; on the contrary, it may be something which is desirable
and enjoyable to the ego. Here, therefore, there is an ex-
traneous influence at work, and it is this that decides what is
to be called good or bad. (1973, p. 61)
Thus, Freud sees early "good" and "had" evaluations coming directly
from our parental figures. A t a later stage, this infantile conscience, com-
posed of parental admonitions and valuations, becomes the Super-ego, an in-
ternal authority from which no "bad" wishes can he hidden.
The advantage of the Super-ego is that it carries the cultural man-
dates from generation to generation. The disadvantage is the guilt
engendered. Freud writes, "The price we pay for our advance in civilization
is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt." (1973,
p. 71) Freud saw the recreation of the cultural Super-ego in each individual
as leading to guilt for the cultural policeman had become internalized. What
was good for civilization was not necessarily good for the individual, but
even conflict about this caused guilt.
Freud indicates how education plays its role in the formation of the
Super-ego when he writes that education would do a better job if it told
young men:
This is how men ought to be, in order to be happy and to
make others happy; hut you have to reckon on their not be-
ing like that. Instead of this the young are made to believe
that everyone else fills those ethical demands-this is,
everyone else is virtuous. It is on this that the demand is bas-
ed that the young, too, shall become virtuous. (1973, p. 71)
Freud laments that education does not teach men to be happy, but instead
men are taught that everyone else lives up to his ideal self and follows his
COMPARING CERTAIN THEORIES AND THERAPIES OF FREUD AND PERLS

Super-ego's demands. Perls defines guilt feelings as "based upon the pro-
jected aggression" (1969, p. 68). By this Perls may have meant that anger
felt toward one's own self is projected out into the environment. The
somewhat ambiguous phrase becomes more intelligible when considered
from the viewpoint of a person who believes that "everyone else is
virtuous," but he is not. Aggression in this case both toward oneself and
others would seem natural. Here these two men's writings seem to comple-
ment each other, but in the next area to be considered, they again disagree.
The disagreement concerning the formation of the Super-ego is
clearly spelled out when Perls writes, "The Freudian idea that we introject
the people we love is wrong. You always introject people who are in
control." (1971, p. 151) In this statement Perls has touched upon one of
the central themes of the Existentialists. The European Gestaltists and the
Existentialists agreed that feelings of love demand mutuality rather than
control. It would seem that Perls and Freud disagreed on the subject of love
and its natural characteristics. Separating the state of being in love and be-
ing controlled could be a central difference between Perls and Freud;
however, in the young child, when the greatest amount of introjection oc-
curs, these two positions of loving and being controlled are often
synonomous. Freud and Perls both might agree that we introject those who
have power and/or those we perceive as powerful. The wish to take in some
of the power exhibited by others seems to be one of the motivations of the
process of introjection.
Freud sees the internalization of the outside standards as part of the
normal developmental process. He notes that for some people the standards
remain outside, and these people will follow their instincts as long as they
believe they will not be found out. It seems clear that both Perls and Freud
had found evidence of inhibiting forces from the environment which in a
developmental process becomes internalized and cause conflict, guilt, and
anxiety inside the personality.

Freud's Transformation of Super-ego

Freud dealt with the Super-ego, along with the Ego and the Id, by the
long and arduous process of psychoanalysis involving transference,
resistances, and the search for repressions, along with resolution of the
Oedipus complex. Psychoanalysis grew out of the needs of the mentally ill.
Their mal-adaptive behaviors are much more obvious than are those of the
so-called "normal" people who are, perhaps, suffering mainly from unhap-
piness and contained anxiety. The mechanisms discoverd by Freud in the
mentally ill are often working, but to a lesser degree, in these "normals." If
even some of the normal anxiety is due to "forbidden wishes of childhood"
which "need be forbidden no longer," how does one give them up? In the
absence of the time and money for psychoanalysis, or even the inclination
for such an undertaking, the Id and the Super-ego often, even in normal
people, keep up a constant struggle for the territory of the Ego.

Perls ' Transformation of Introjects

Perls' theory of introjects contains a formula for reducing or even

eliminating this conflict and anxiety and, at the same time, turning the in-
troject into a useful tool. He writes:
What I am saying is that the psychological food with which
the outside world presents us-the food of facts and attitudes
on which our personalities are built-has to be assimilated in
exactly the same way as is our actual food. It has to be
destructured, analyzed, taken apart, and then put together
again in the form in which it will be of most value to us. If it
is merely swallowed whole, it contributes not at all to the
development of our personalities. On the contrary, it makes
us something like a house so jampacked with other people's
possessions that there is no room for the owner's property. It
turns us into waste baskets of extraneous and irrelevant in-
formation. And what makes it most tragic is the fact that if
this material were to be tempered, altered and transformed
through us, it could be of enormous value to us. (1973, p.
34)
The tempering, altering, and transforming of introjects can take place, once
the material introjected has been brought into the conscious awareness.
Awareness, according to Perls, is the first step in the transformation of in-
trojecu. This may sound like a simple process-become aware of the stan-
dards laid down by outsiders and determine if they are of value in your life
processes or not. However, on a practical level, this awareness seems to be
difficult if not impossible. Many of the rules or standards are on a
preconscious or unconscious level and not easily reached, according to both
Perls and Freud.
Awareness, according to Perls, is basic to self-knowledge. As long as
we are not aware of our introjects, they seem to continue to move us to

The Garb1 lounol Vol, TI, No. i

65
COMPARING CERTAIN THEORIES A N D THERAPIES OF FREUD A N D PERLS

prescribed actions or to block us. One of the ways we blind ourselves to our
introjects is by disowning them-projecting them out onto our world and
the people in it. If I learned to be angry from my father, but learned1 should
be pleasant from my mother, I may solve this dilemma by perceiving the
people in my world as angry at me no matter what their frame of mind really
is. Then I can react in an angry way to them, and soon they will be angry,
and my projection now has a reality base. In this way, we can create the
emotional climate around us and take no responsibility for it.

Awareness that a pan of our self is alienated, unaccepted, and is

causing conflict can bring about change. According to Perls, awareness is
the first step, then a close look can be taken at those alienated portions of
our personality.
Perls sees the ego as functioning with either attraction or repulsion.
When the ego has introjected standards which it finds repulsive, it alienates
these from its consciousness-it dis-owns these parts. Perls and Freud both
pointed out that dreams are often filled with these unknown, alienated parts
of our personality. Much of Perls' dream work was concerned with
spotlighting these rejected parts of the personality of the participants so that
they might accept them and use the energy engaged in their repression.
Owning of these alienated part-recognizing that they belong to the per-
sonality-is an integral part of awareness. Awareness is extended, so to
speak, to include these repulsive, rejected parts, and this
awareness-recognition process in and of itself produces change. Judith
Brown tells her Gestalt groups that awareness is wonderful for a lazy person
because one doesn't have to do anything to change, just be aware.
Awareness restores the natural developmental processes to their rightful
position, and as a result of the unfolding of these processes, changes do oc-
cur. One of these changes involves taking the responsibility for one's own
processes and the interaction of these with others'.
By turning our consciousness spotlight on these alienated portions,
their different components are recognized, and we can perhaps accept the
ones that are useful in our lives and, perhaps, consciously reject the re-
mainder.
As an example, one has introjected his father's personality. Under a
certain stimulus, he reacts as his father does-in posture, expression, words,
even inflections. When he becomes aware of this, he can choose to keep
 LABORDE

those parts of his father's personality that he likes and that serve him-his
upright posture, his dignity, his strength, his courage, and he can begin to
give up his self-righteousness, his inability to hear another viewpoint, his
bigotry, his arrogance, and his rigidity. Without awareness, this discrimina-
tion of what is useful and what is harmful or distasteful cannot take place. It
may take years for deconditioning to take place, but as Freud said, one year
of analysis for a decade of illness is better than no improvement in a life-
time.
Here, in the amount of time it takes to change, is another place
where Freud and Perls disagreed. While Perls did not believe in instant
cure, he did believe that change was inherent in the process of awareness.
Awareness then begins the process of the transformation of intro-
jects, which, according to Perls, continues by destructuring, analyzing the
pans in relation to our life, and then acceptance or rejection of the different
parts. The first change with the first awareness might be slight, scarcely
noticeable, but, if awareness continued, then change would continue-not
by any mighty striving or straining of associations on a black leather couch,
but by continuing to check out what was happening, inside and out.
"Psychoanalysis" said Freud; "Awareness" and "Acceptance,"
said Perk is the answer to introjection.

Conclusion

Fritz Perk was a genius at therapy, more a man of action and inter-
action than an original thinker as was Freud. Peds synthesized and brilliant-
ly utilized the ideas of others in a group format which seems to multiply the
effectiveness of the therapist. Certainly, conversion of certain theories and
ideas into useful therapeutic took was a significant contribution of Perls.
When Freud and Perls, both excellent observers, watched their patients,
they recognized the same psychic mechanisms at work. Where they differed
was in how to change these mechanisms toward more constructive use.
Here Perk seems to have originated a course of action that was more p r o
ductive in a shorter length of time. Perls used Freud's theoretical base to in-
stigate actions that worked much as a field general takes theories and shapes
them to a battle plan, discarding those with less chance of success in this ter-
rain, focusing the main thrust of his decisions in a move that will produce
the best chance of winning. Perls was a West Pointer.
Perls' construct of introjects and awareness is more useful to a
therapist and a patient than is Freud's Super-ego, which, seemingly, could
COMPARING CERTAIN THEORIES AND THERAPIES OF FREUD AND PERLS

only be exorcized after years of psychoanalysis. Concentrating on how and

now rather than why is not only a change in theory; it is a change toward
decisive action. This change seems to have produced good results for the
participants in Perls' groups; they are still writing books about him and get-
ting them published. While it is clear that Perls wished to be free of his
Freudian roots, this exploration indicates that instead, he cultivated the
roots to synthesize significant ideas and originate creative treatments for
neuroses. Perls summed up his own contribution, "I accomplished the next
step after Freud in the history of psychiatry and this step spells efficiency."
(1972, p. 35)

References

Baumgardner, Patricia. Giftsfrom Loke Cowichan: legacyfrom Fritz. Palo

Alto, Ca.: Science and Behavior, 1975.

Cannon, W. B. The wisdom ofthe body. New York: W. W. Norton, 1939.

Freud, S. Moses and monotheism. New York: Vintage, 1939.

Freud, S. The question oflay analysis. London: Imago, 1947

Freud, S. A n outline ofpsychoanalysis. New York: W. W. Norton, 1949.

Freud, S. Group psychology and the amlysis of the ego. New York: Live-
right, 1951.

Freud, S. The ego and the id. London: Hogarth, 1957.

Freud, S. Civilization and its discontents. London: Hogarth, 1973

Lawrence, D. H. Psychoanalysis and the unconscious. New York: Viking,

1968.

Perls, F. Ego, hunter, and aggression. New York: Vintage, 1969.

Perls, F. Gestalt therapy verbatim. Toronto: Bantam, 1971

Perls, F. In and out the garbage pail. Toronto: Bantam, 1972

Perls, F. The gestalt approach and eye-witness to therapy. U.S.A.: Science
and Behavior, 1973.

Shepard, M. Fritz: an intimate portrait of Fritz Perls and Gestalt therapy.

New York: Dutton, 1975.

Stafford-Clark, D. What Freud r e a h said. New York: Schocken, 1971.

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Thr GriLll$/oumd Vol 11, N o I

70
ELEMENTS IN THE WAY OF THE SWORD
Jeffrey Schaler

There is a little story in D.T. Suzuki's book, Zen and Japanese

Culture, the section on Zen and Swordsmanship, that 1would like to begin
with, from the Hagakure.
"Yagu Tajima no kami Munenori was a great swordsman and
teacher in the art to the Shogun of the time, Tokugawa lyemitsu. One of the
personal guards of the Shogun one day came to Tajima no kami wishing to
be trained in swordplay. The master said, "As I observe, you seem to be a
master of the art yourself; pray tell me to what school you belong, before we
enter into the relationship of teacher and pupil."
The guardsman said, "1 am ashamed to confess that I have never
learned the art."
"Are you going to fool me? I am teacher to the honorable Shogun
himself, and I know my judging eye never fails."
"I am sorry to defy your honor, but I really know nothing."
This resolute denial on the part of the visitor made the swordsmaster
think for awhile and he finally said, "If you say so, that must be so; but still
I am sure of your being master of something, though I know not just
what."
"Yes, if you insist, I will tell you this. There is one thing which I
can say I am a complete master. When I was still a boy, the thought came
ELEMENTS IN THE WAY OF THE SWORD

upon me that as a samurai I ought in no circumstances to be afraid of death,

and ever since I have grappled with the problem of death now for some
years, and finally the problem has entirely ceased to worry me. May this be
what you hint at?"
"Exactly!" exclaimed Tajima no kami. "That is what 1mean. I am
glad I made no mistake in my judgment. For the ultimate secrets of sword-
smanship also lie in being released from the thought of death. I have trained
ever so many hundreds of my pupils along this line, but so far none of them
really deserve the final certificate for swordsmanship. You need no technical
training, you are already a master." 1
My study and practice of Iaido, a Japanese martial art which concen-
trates on many forms of drawing and returning a samurai sword to its scah-
hard after responding to the attacks of an imaginary opponent, and Kendo, a
more offensive swordsmanship which involves actual sport combat, have
served to enrich my understanding of Gestalt therapy and psychology in
general. First I learn the techniques, which like so many beliefs are essen-
tially introjects, then I chew them, destroying them as such, and hopefully if
my digestion is in order, Iaido and Kendo no longer have anything to do
with techniques for me, they "become" me. I come to understand how
operating from techniques are an obstacle to my growth. The same holds
true in my practice of psychotherapy for it is only when I have destroyed
therapeutic techniques by assimilating them do I function sensitively and
creatively. The other night at the martial arts dojo (training hall), this
became so obvious to me. Really for the first time I was aware of acting in-
stinctively, I had, as Fritz Perls might have said, "lost my mind and come
to my senses." M y instructor, Mr. James Roberts, Sr., a highly ac-
complished teacher for many years, was demonstrating a series of attacks
and defenses with me in front of the class. As so often happens with me I
had "forgotten" what he had just said, even though we had been over it so
many times before. He was going to attack me with his shinai, a mock
sword fashioned ingeniously by the Japanese out of bamboo strips, and I
might add that when he attacks he does so vigorously, enough so that one
ought to be ready or there is plenty of pain in store for you. After describing
what he was going to do to the class, I don't know what I was doing instead
of listening, he turned and faced me, indicating by his posture that the show
was to begin. Immediately I realized that I was "not ready." Iremembered
that I had forgotten what it was that we were going to do and the next thing
that I realized was that I didn't even have enough time to try and remember
for he was "on me." I was amazed and uplifted at my response. I met the
 SCHALER

three blows with appropriate defense and as soon as it was over I knew that
my thinking had nothing to do with it. As I look back at that moment I en-
vision myself as a bat flying blindly in the dark using sonar to avoid collision
at the last second. I was actually more satisfied with myself for "knowing"
when "not knowing" than at having succeeded in warding off the attack
with proper technique. What a relief not to think about the moment but to
just be in it! All the times when I had tried so hard to be instinctive had
resulted in failures, they were merely mechanical technique functions, and
here was a moment when in some ways I felt that I really had no choice but
to respond from the mind of my body and not the body of my mind that I
was so habituated to. My self-interference had been neutralized, a particular
field had been created, one in which I was able to respond to my environ-
ment, in the now, in a very natural and organic way. And now I think this
is what I see to be a goal of psychotherapy, to teach this sort of uninter-
rupted response to awareness, what we call organismic self-regulation.
Now these arts, Iaido and Kendo, have really become symbolic
events for me. They are, to coin the term from Idries Shah's description of
Sufi stories, vehicles of "analagous action philosophy." They have become
a means for learning who I am by paying attention to how I am, through the
Nelike psychodramatic fantasy of Iaido, to the harmonious conflict of in-
terpersonal relationships in Kendo, every particle of my being, my sense of
I-ness, the security I feel in knowing who I am, and who I am not, is
reflected in my configuration of action and movement. Each gesture speaks
of my beingness. Iaido is called the art of blocking and cutting. T o me the
sword is a living symbol, representing aspects of my self in search of self. Its
course of action is depicted through the blocking of all that which seeks to
interfere with its progressive individuality and through the cutting of all
bonadage to maya, the web of seltdeception. By selfdeception I mean all of
that which encourages me to pretend to be anything other than whole. The
sword, so sharp, so dangerous, so singular and unyielding, can be
transformed, during Iaido, to something so fluid, attractive, and confluent,
blending into all that comes into its way, pulling its audience's attention
around like gravity does to all things within its field. Realizing its potential
for creating death so swiftly one cannot help hut feel slightly uneasy in its
presence. And what is this uneasiness that a person feels? Fear of death?
Fear that one is not really living? Japanese legends speak of swords so sharp
that they leapt out of the bearer's scabbard on their own. And how do you
think it must feel to conquer this fear?
Anyway, Iaido and Kendo, as I have come to learn them, and I
ELEMENTS IN THE WAY OF THE SWORD

haven't spent much time at it, a tittle over a year and a half at the time of
this writing, are to me mysterious martial arts. Mysterious in the sense that
there is more to them than meets the casual eye. The naive observer quickly
draws the conclusion, (oh that I could draw my blade half as fast!), that
there is nought but killing present, anger past, and misery to come in the
course of one who studies these arts. This person delights in criticizing it
and those who study it. Hermann Hesse wrote: "When we hate someone,
it is because we hate some part of ourselves in his image. We don't get ex-
cited about anything that is not in ourselves." So too have I felt the impact
of this judgment by people who "see" the violence in Kendo and Iaido.
This violence is in the mind of the observer and not in the sport. The
tongue is sharper than the sword, its cut is quick and deep like a razor, so
quick in fact that oft times one does not even realize that they have been
seriously wounded until some time later when they grow weak from loss of
"blood," "a very singular f l ~ i d , "the
~ psychosomatic residence of feeling.
The only blood I have seen so far was my own, inflicted by my own, in an
overzealous moment in which I impatiently tried to swallow a new techni-
que. The faster one eats the hungrier one gets. The slower one eats the
more one digests and the longer it takes to be hungry again. I had the
honor, about six years ago, of being treated by the great Dr. Cheng M'an-
Ch'ing, a master of the five arts, poetry, calligraphy, painting, Tai Chi
Chuan, and herbal medicine, and I remember him telling a patient who was
very much underweight, to eat less and chew more. Her approach had
always been to eat more which kept resulting in weight loss. She was very
hungry. I also remember very vividly him telling a good friend of mine, a
person who took great pride in announcing to me that there was no reason
for her to see him as there was nothing wrong with her, that she was in fact
quite ill and did not even know it. Consequently she became disturbed by
his diagnosis and allowed him to treat her for several months. Years later
she says that she is very grateful for that experience. I'd like to share with
you what I perceive to be another example of this same philosophy.
After Iaido practice one night, as the five of us were putting on our
shoes to leave the dojo I asked Mr. Roberts, our teacher, to please explain a
bit about Aikido and its relationship to Iaido. He said that Aikido was in a
sense very much of a refined form of Judo, Judo being a very old art and in
some ways considered a bit cmde in relation to &dido. Uyeshiba, founder
of Aikido, had refined the art of Judo, focusing especially on the
philosophical event of the art. Aikido, he said, is very closely related to the
defensive sword play of Iaido. Both are defensive arts, Kendo being an offen-
sive swordsmanship. Then he proceeded to give us three demonstrations of
Aikido in which he asked one of us to attack him with empty hand. To our
delight he demonstrated a remarkable agility and skill clearly indicating that
he knew what he was doing. Here was a hidden skill of our teacher, one
which we had not realized he possessed, and one he felt no need nor desire
to flaunt. He is very matter of fact. The lesson of the demonstration was one
of force, energy, and commitment. The attacker had committed himself to a
particular goal, our teacher in this case. A t the critical point in which our
teacher realized that his attacker had committed himself to his goal, our
teacher decided to cease being the goal of his commitment and moved aside.
A s soon as he stepped aside, (in itself a commitment and goal accomplish-
ment), the attacker probably realized two things: (1)That he was committed
to nothing in such a way as that he could not cease being committed; and
(2) that he was confused because his fantasy of the future did not fit the reali-
ty of the present. A t this point our teacher took advantage of his attacker's
regretable commitment and confusion, exaggerated it and helped him to do
himself in, or see himself, so to speak. A simple movement, that upon a lit-
tle contemplation may reveal interesting sequence and relationship of
events. This was interesting to me and yet soon afterwards another couple
of events occurred. These invisible to me at fvst and then soon they were all
I could "see."
We were talking about internal martial arts after the demonstration
of Aikido, which we believed were such. Our teacher said that Iaido,
Aikido, Kung-fu, etc. were internal arts. He said that in Japan much time
was devoted in Iaido and Kendo to meditation of the art. This was an essen-
tial component of practice. One of his students asked at this point if he
would please teach us this internal aspect of the arts. Our teacher said that
he would not. He said that being from the cccident it would be too diicult
for us to learn, that we had to really have grown up in Japan and have the
culture of the orient in our blood in order to understand and learn the inter-
nal art. I spoke up at this point and said that we had studied eastern culture
and its philosophies. Essentially he ignored my saying this and repeated that
one had to have grown up in the culture to be able to receive the teaching.
A fellow student spoke up and said that we planned to work with him for
many year and would like very much to learn the internal art. Our teacher
said that he knew this was so and maybe some time he would show us a
"little hit" of the internal art but essentially he said that we were part of an
impatiently aggressive culture, that there really was no hope for us to learn
the internal arts and that our work together was primarily to focus on pa-

The &stair jovrnai vo1 ll, No i

75
ELEMENTS IN THE WAY OF THE SWORD

tience in the physical body, through exact techniques and posture. Needless
to say we were terribly frustrated and there seemed to he no way of getting
what we wanted. A t thii point Mr. Roberts asked one of us to run next door
to the drug store and buy some cough drops for him. He instructed him to
please. not buy any candied cough drops, just the plain ones. There was no
discussion of money, he expected the student to purchase them with his
own money. The student left and returned in about five minutes with a
brand of cough drops. He handed them to our teacher who then said that he
had purchased the wrong kind and asked him to go hack again and get the
right kind, telling where he should look in the store. The student returned
and said that he had looked for the right kind of cough drops but the kind he
had in his hand were all he could find. The student offered them to our
teacher who at this point refused them and said that he would get them
some place else. The student was left with the wrong brand of cough drops.
A t this point a fellow Japanese student and I were having a difficult time
holding back laughter. There was an interesting mix of frustration and con-
tentment amongst the four of us. We said goodnight end thanked our
teacher very much for discussing these matters with us.
As I was driving home I began to experience a remarkable feeling of
exhiliration. Shades of MiyamotoMusashi I had been cut with a draw from
the left hand, by surprise, just like Toshiro Mifune had done at the end of
the movieSanjuro! I began to see the last two interactions that had just oc-
curred as instances definable in terms of force, energy, and commitment.
We as students had been more committed to the "idea" of learning this in-
ternal art than paying attention to what was actually existing in the mo-
ment. We were committed to the fantasy of knowing the internal art when
right in the middle of the commitment we were being given the very thing
we said that we wanted. Being so committed to fantasy we were blind to
receiving the teaching. Just like the attacker in the demonstration of Aikido
who essentially wants his goal to cease being the way it is, which occurs as
soon as our teacher moves aside and ceases being the goal of commitment.
We said we wanted to learn the internal art and the internal art is the art of
listening, paying attention to what is, being patient, correcting over com-
mitment to a particular goal, staying with frustration, being an independent
individual. The internal art is the practice of action with flexible adaptihility
to each situation as it presents itself, in this case being content with what
first appears to be not getting what you think you want. It is, as my friend
and associate Richard says, the art of existing and moving from a conscious
center and not always towards the accomplishment of an external goal. In

Thr Geilail Inumni Vul 11, AVO1

76
 SCHALER

other words being committed to not being committed. The way of no way, wu-
wei. A gestalt was forming like some k i d of atomic chain reaction. All the
miniinsights I had had during previous classff joined togaher like a giant jig-
saw puzzle. By being overly committed to an idea or position one does themself
in as the attacker had done. I member once during a round-robin sparring ses-
sion I had successfully won four matches consecutively. As soon as I felt proud
in this position my next opponent, someone whom all the othen had beaten.
scored two within the k t five seconds and I lost. There will always be
someone better I thought. As soon as I thii I am great at the expense of
others, I lose. By stepping aside our teacher had maintained his own integrity in
the face of danger. This is the difference between a person that strivm to ac
tualize an image of himself and a pason that actualim himselt
I'm thinking now of when, about four years ago, I was asked by a
psychologist here in town to lead one of his therapy groups. During the group I
gave a little talk entitled "No Pain, No Gain." A member of rhe group spoke
up vigorously and said that he agreed very much with the philosophy of growth
I had prrsented and said that he was ready to experience it, would I please
facilitate him though the process. I agreed, asked him how he felt, and then sat
silently. Enthusiastically as ever he re-asserted his desire to grow exclaiming
"let's have the pain so 1can get the gain!" I asked him how he felt, he said that
he was frustrated with me and then I asked him if he was now happy se&g that
he had gotten what he said he wanted. He said 1 was doing nothing, that I was
not giving him what he wanted and would I please stop wasting time and help
him work. I asked him how he felt again and returned to my silence. He said
that he was feeling very frustrated and inmasingly more irritable with me. I
said that I thought we had both done very good work together and that I would
now like to move on to someone eke.
REFERENCES:
'Suzuki, D.T., Zen and Japanese Culture, Princeton Univ. Press, New
Jersey, 1959.
2Steiner, R., The Occult Sipificance of Blood, Rudolf Steiner Press,
London, 1967.
Perls, F., Hefferline, R., Goodman, P., Gestalt Therapy. Delta, New York,
1951.
Lomi School, The Lomi Papers, Lomi School Press, Mill Valley, Calif.,
1975.
Musashi, Miyamoto, A Book ofFiue Rings, Overlook Press, New York,
1974.
 ANNOUNCING
A NEW, UPDATED EDITION OF THE

GESTALT DIRECTORY

A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO
GESTALT THERAPISTS
AND
GESTALT TRAINING CENTERS

The new, 1979 edition of The Gestalt Directory is an invaluable resource

for counselors, medical professionals, students, psychotherapists, libraries
and other social service professionals and agencies who need a guide to
Gestalt therapists and training centers throughout the United States and
Canada. The Directory includes listings of over 500 practicing Gestalt
therapists. Each listing includes data regarding the listee's educational and
professional background, training in Gestalt therapy, and other relevant in-
formation. Each listing in the training section includes staff and faculty in-
formation, length and type of program, program costs and admission re-
quirements, and other pertinent data.

The Gestalt Directory, a puplication of The Center for Gestalt Develop-

ment, Inc., is the only available resource for locating and evaluating Gestalt
therapists and training programs.

For your copy, send $8.00 to: Gestalt Directory

P.O. Box 275
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Thc Gaub I o ~ m a Voi.

i 11, No 1

78
TOWARDS A THEORY OF
TRANSPERSONAL GESTALT
Ed Elkin

In my lectures in Gestalt Therapy, I have one aim only: to

impart a fraction of the meaning of the word NOW. To me,
nothing exists except the now. Now = experience =
awareness = reality.
The past is no more and the future not yet.
Only the Now exists.
F. Perls, Four Lectures
(Gestnlt Therpy Now; Ed.,
Fagan & Shephard)
In identifymg the essence of Gestalt with the concept of NOW, Perls
provided a key to opening Gestalt to the transpenonal. In emphasizing that
' 4
the past is no more and the future not yet" we can enter the spaceless
timeless realm that Zen calls the "Eternal Now," an ever-changing con-
figuration of figure against ground, subjectively experienced as moment-to-
moment flow in which Figure is the focus of conscious awareness and
Ground is the surrounding of that focus.
Transpersonal Gestalt emphasizes the continual shifting of these
figure-ground relationships in the Taoist sense of flow from one moment to
the next with ever-deeper portions of the personality becoming figural as
therapy proceeds. In a transpersonal framework the ground is not limited to
TOWARDS A THEORY OF TRANSPERSONAL GESTALT

the conscious surround, but extends deep below conscious awareness to in-
clude both the Jungian "collective unconscious" and the awareness of the
total universe beyond space and time esoterically known as "ALL T H A T
IS."
The transpersonal counterpart to the static image of the personality
as an onion whose layers must be peeled is found in the dynamic image of a
fountain continually renewing itself and clearing away the surface for new
material to emerge. That which comes to the surface of awareness from mo-
ment to moment constitutes the next incomplete Gestalt that the personali-
ty is ready to uncover.
In the therapy situation, the task is to bring incomplete Gestalts such
as "unfinished business" or "holes in personality" to the surface of con-
sciousness, and encourage their expression either verbally or non-verbally.
In the context of the transpersonal Gestalt group, the process of encourage-
ment is provided more by creating an atmosphere of mutual trust and caring
than by the traditional Gestalt mode of creative frustration. The misplaced
emphasis on "I do my thing, and you do your thing has led to a situation in
which Gestalt has come to be identified as the "screw you" school of
psychotherapy. Transpersonal Gestalt intends to make explicit what is im-
plicit in Perls' "I and Thou, Here and Now"; namely the interrelatedness
of "I" and "you"; the interdependence of Figure and Ground, and the
Subject-object unity that underlies duality and polarity. In transpersonal
Gestalt,
I am I. and I am you
You are you and you are me
In transpersonal Gestalt, gentleness replaces attack as the primary
uncovering force, and in an allegorical way, penetrates to the heart of the
matter, unlocking its energy.
Gentle penetration produces gradual and inconspicuous ef-
fects. It should be effected not by an act of violation, but by
influence that never lapses. Results of this kind are less strik-
ing to the eye than those won by surprise attack, but they are
more enduring and more complete.
I ChingIHegagram 57, The Gentle
It is sometimes useful to think of Gestalt therapy as a stepping stone
to transpersonal Gestalt therapy insofar as the ego first needs to be
strengthened before it can be transcended. The ego-boundaries must be ful-
ly established before they and the ego itself can be seen as an illusion. . . yet
another version of the classical paradox of going more deeply into
something in order to get out of it.
In the Gestalt approach, the ego boundaries are first strengthened by
focusing on the differences between self and others. The individual learns
that the way toBe is the way he is already, rather than the way he "should
be." Eventually, a strong sense develops that it is all right to be me and to
do my thing.
As Gestalt work progresses, however, more and more different ways
of being come to be seen as part of that "me." The capacity of being father,
mother, child, teenager, lover, etc. all lie within. Furthermore, in the pro-
cess of working with polarities, dreamwork and other Gestalt techniques,
the potential capacity for the full range of the human experience comes
widin the ego-boundary, and I am the flower, and the sunset; I am the
murderer and the rapist, I am the fly and the cesspool and the mountain and
the ocean. Just as the actor and the mime develop the ability to play many
roles of persons, things and ideas, so Gestalt work enables us to explore the
full potential of the many ways we can be. By re-owning all the disowned
parts of our personality, we reclaim the full energy that is ours, and discover
the entire universe within the I.
Gestalt and transpersonal Gestalt are not clearly separable. One
blends into the other as ice melts into water. The difference is one of em-
phasis and focus as much as philosophy and technique. For example, tradi-
tional Gestalt dreamwork techniques of identifying with all parts of the
dream provide a microcosmic view on the macrocosm of the transpersonal
approach.
In working on a dream, all aspects are regarded as manifestations of
the personality. In the process of discovering the "existential message" in
the dream, different parts of the dream are identified with and acted out.
However, the dreamer usually only identifies at first with that part of the
dream that he "recognizes" as himself. He usually discounts the reality
that ALL parts of the dream are parts of him as a creator of the dream.
In a similar way, the transpersonal approach conceives of each of us
as a manifestation of the energy of the universe. It is as if God, the dreamer,
had created all of us as manifestations of himself and had "identified" with
each of us to such an extent that he forgot who he really was. When we
remember who we really are, we discover that we eachare God. Behind the
illusion of individual differences we are the same, in spirit. A s the single
force that we call electricity can illuminate many differing light bulbs, so a
single spirit or life energy animates and energizes our separate and unique
bodies.

The G.*I',o"nal Vol 1r. No I

81
TOWARDS A THEORY OF TRANSPERSONAL GESTALT

******,*****.**
In the transpersonal Gestalt approach, there is renewed emphasis
that the "patient" is his own therapist and the "therapist" becomes a
facilitator or guide who assists the client to do what he cannot readily do for
himself. . . . .
(1) go through the impasse;
(2) see himself objectively in the sense of ''witnessing'' himself;
(3) provide the secure environment that allows defenses to drop
away.
From the transpersonal viewpoint, each person can do his own
Gestalt work through meditation, through developing the "witness" part
of his consciousness and through letting Divine trust and faith in the
universe provide the secure environment.
These skills, however, are rarely developed in most people. They are
potential in all people, but have been inhibited by years of conditioning. The
transpersonal Gestalt task then is precisely to de-condition the "character"
which has strangled spontaneity, stifled security, and hidden that sense of
integrated wholeness that is inherent at the core of all human beings. Such
skills can then be seen as the "tools" with which future problems can be
dealt with, without the need of the external therapist.
The process of therapy then may be seen as the "transmission" of
these "tools" from the therapist to the client. The therapist does this by
embodying the tools himself and by reminding the client that they lie within
him. Perhaps, the most powerful of these tools is that of SELF-
ACCEPTANCE. Perls, towards the end of his long life, repeatedly advised:
"REMEMBER, YOU CANNOT BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN
W H A T YOU ARE RIGHT NOW." Aliveness, then, emerges from ac-
cepting what is from moment to moment; from surrendering to the power
that works through our personalities at levels beyond our ordinary
awareness. Paper people become real people when all the disowned parts are
re-owned, and humans realize their ongoing perfection in harmony with the
forces of the Universe.
We are not apart from the Universe, hut rather a part of it and
simultaneously all of it. In Essence, the Being is whole, always was whole
and always will be whole.
In transpersonal Gestalt therapy, the aim is to discover that
wholeness and to make it the ground of being in the eternal now.
"I A M IN EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING IS IN ME"
. . R a m Tirth

The Geirdi /oumnl Vol 11, No I

R?
A GESTALT EXPERIMENT:
FEAR OF REJECTION
Martha J. Welch, Ph.D.

Perls (1973) in applying field theory to the concept of normality

suggerts that when the environment and the organism stand in a relationship
of mutuality to each other, neither is the victim of the other. The
healthy person can live in a concerned way with the rest of the world
without being swallowed by it nor by withdrawing completely from
it. Those who exhibit neuroticism, on the other hand, act as if they
were victimized, as if they were powerless against overwhelming
odds. They are unable, neither to make good contact, nor to organize
their withdrawal, and their incapacity to discriminate further binds them
in a state of unresolved tension where the freedom of choice is lost. Such
persons are unable to distinguish properly between themselves and the
rest of the world, and adopt an immobile stance supported by a rigid
use of interactions which permit them to resist change and prevent
the development of awareness which will lead to refined sell-differentiation.
Polster and Polster (1973) have clearly delineated five major
channels of resistant interaction, which are not necessarily barriers to
be overcome, but rather creative ways of dealing with difficulties. They
are complex processes and pan of the wholeness of a person, however, the
person who is generally unaware of resistances, and those aspects of
self which lie behind a resistance, becomes his or her own victim and
loses the awareness of choice.
Perls (1976) stressed the central role played in neuroticism by the
fear of rejection, which is carefully established and maintained by the
person, primarily utilizing the resistant interaction of projection, and
which involves disownment of parts of the self and ascribing them to
the environment. The person rejects others for failing to meet his or
her ideal standards and projects that rejection onto others, thus becoming
the non-responsible victim, the martyr. While it is certainly true that the
person may actually experience rejection by some, he or she tends to
react to it in an exaggerated and embroidered fashion, and may even
A GESTALT EXPERIMENT: FEAR OF REJECTION

have created a situation to bring it about. The individual faii to detect

the subtleties and complexity of the situation and tends, instead, to extract
unjustified and self-oriented reasons for the experience. Thus the separation
has occurred, and the person's wish has been granted, while his or her
own rejection of the other has been carefully protected.
According to Enright (1970) the task of the therapist is to
help the client overcome barriers that block awareness-to help re-establish
conditions that allow the client to function well, using aU his abilities. The
Gestalt approach to therapy builds on actual present behavior; it focuses
on what is going on rather than on interpretations of what is occurring; and
it enhances the person's sense of responsibility for his own behavior.
Therapists with a Gestalt orientation such as Baumgardner (1975) have
pointed out the difficulty in adopting a descriptive word or phrase
which best apply to those entering therapy. Kopp (1972) preferred the
word "pilgrim," viewing both himself and the person entering therapy as
pilgrims, one initially perhaps more experienced than the other, setting out
on a journey toward discovery of one's true nature. Thus the active
participation of both is an essential aspect of the journey. That active
participation involves the use of the experiment, the integration of action
into the therapeutic setting (Polster and Polster, 1973, p. 234). The
experiment is a creative act entered by both parties and directly relating
to present reality (Zinker, 1977, pp. 127-128). The goal is to bring
into awareness those parts of the self which have been hidden in relative
safety. It represents an exploration, an examination, a creation, and it
flows directly from the person's experience, though it may depict a theme
common to the human experience.
Thus the therapist or client may suggest a new experiment or
one which has been found to be suitable for experiencing a theme often
seen in others, though it will likely be modified in some unique way as
the person participates in the experiment. Experiments are not suggested
automatically, pulled from a bag of tricks to impress the other person. They
flow from and fit a particular situation, and they are thoughtfully used,
within a particular situation, with a particular person and at a particular
time. The skill of the therapist as a sensitive, aware, and active individual
is oftentimes tested by the way experiments are used in the therapeutic
environment.
The experiment to be described below provides ways for individuals
to experience the process of approach, attachment, and separation in
reference to significant persons in their lives about whom some major
conflict exists. In addition to its usefulness for examining conflicts about
relationships it is particularly sensitive t o the fears of rejection and can allow
persons to encounter their own projection in an immediate kind of way. It
can be a very powerful experience and the competence of the therapist is
important in the timing used in suggesting the exercise, in the level of
experience chosen, and in guiding the client through the process.
The experiment can be suggested on several levels depending on the
client's sense of readiness for the experience. A thorough exploration of
the client's sense of being "stuck" is important as a base, as is the
willingness of the person to experience it. In group and dyad therapy,
members of a dyad can act it out directly. In individual therapy it
can be carried out as described below, imagined by the client, or carried
out as a homework task. M y preference in individual therapy is that it
be conducted in my presence rather than as a homework task, so that
I may guide the client through the experience, given its potential for
arousing newly felt and powerful feelings.
Once the client, the situation, and the time seem appropriate, the
experiment is introduced and conducted as follows:
O n each of two pieces of paper, I draw a stick figure, in such a
way so that the human figure is minimally represented. I then hand
one to the client and keep one for myself. The client and therapist
then hold the figures, facing each other but separated by some distance.
The client is asked to attend to personal awareness-body, thoughts, and
feelings, as she or he moves through the experience. Four activities are
then followed in the sequence as indicated below:
1.A (client) and B (therapist) slowly move their papers toward
each other until they almost touch.
2. B (therapist) turns paper and moves away while A (client)
remains still.
3. A and B bring their papers close together facing each other;
A (client) turns paper and moves slowly away while B (therapist)
remains still.
4. A and B bring their papers close together facing each other; both
turn their papers and move away from each other at the same
time.
The client is asked after all four steps, or after each step, to attend to
personal awarenesses and allow them to arise, followed by discussion with
the therapist. The most immediate approach involves focused attention with
discussion after each step.

Tha G G i d 1 0 u r ~ Vol
I 11,.?lu 1
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A GESTALT EXPERLMENT: FEAR OF REJECTION

In the clients with whom this exercise has been conducted, a

variety of responses have been reported. The strength of responses has
also varied, and the experiment has led to further definition of the
conflict experienced by clients.
Reported anxiety by clients at the beginning of the experience is
common, and reoccurs just before the client is "left." In the first few
minutes, the anxiety may prevent clients from investing the figures
with meaning but very quickly, the client's figure becomes self, while the
therapist's drawing represents a very significant person in the client's
life. Thus far no client with whom I have used the experiment has
equated me with my drawing.
Clients for whom fear of rejection is a pervading issue often
used the word "rejection" or related phrases or words in their language,
such as "betrayal," or "left out." My impression is that when new
learning has occurred in reference to the client's fear of rejection, the
frequency of such words and phrases drops considerably, and parallels
a growing awareness of boundaries, responsibility and choice.
In general, the following responses have been observed andor
reported by clients to the four steps:
Step 1 . Coming together-A sense of pleasure, accompanied by a
forward-moving posture, often coupled with a tentative
smile. Some clients, however, report confusion and un-
certainty which focuses into some fear when the step is
repeated. Subsequent exploration may reveal a fear of the
inability to sustain a relationship, a dread that the
relationship is bound to fail, or anticipation that personal
freedom may be lost.
Step 2. Being "rejectedN-An expression of hurt, followed by
anger. Sadness and loneliness are also reported and are
accompanied by tears, while a sense of helplessness is often
noted. When clients fully encounter their anger, they may
also encounter their strength which supports their growing
awareness of choice.
Step 3. Being the "rejector"-An awareness of personal strength
and power, sometimes almost gleeful in character and often
of much surprise to clients. Some clients report anxiety
and are hesitant to move to this step. A t such a point I may
ask them to stop and imagine this step, and may later
explore the safety parameters which are involved in the
 psychotherapeutic environment. Thus far, such a "desensi-
tizing" approach has encouraged clients to return to this
step and complete the experiment. Some clients report
anxiety about the sense of power they begin to feel, and
need to address their catastrophic expectations more
explicitly.
Step 4. M u t u l leaving-Tender sadness, associated with a sense of
relief. Tears may develop simultaneously with a tremulous
smile and some clients report a developing interest in
making a change in their personal lives.
The experiment involves several related dimensions of interest.
1. Awareness of Choice and Ownership: Several clients have
become aware that a number of choices are available to them in
a relationship. This awareness seems most clearly related to
owning their own strength and power and their wishes to
reject others which have formerly been projected outward.
2. The Process o/DecisionMaking: Awareness of choices can lead
to an examination of how clients experience the process of
decision-making, especially as it relates to their fears of change
associated with a belief that their continued existence depends
upon the presence of specific and significant persons. One
client had been feeling stuck in a relationship, where the grass
seemed equally green whether in or out of the relationship. She
persisted in staying in the relationship, yet found herself often
fantasizing that it would end when her partner grew tired of her.
Clarification of what she wanted and what she believed she
needed developed as a result of Step 4, and she subsequently
decided to stay in the relationship and activate an exploration of
the inherent difficulties in the relationship.
3. Personal Responsibility: The experiment's presentation of choices
also enables clients to become aware of the consequences of
making such choices. Such an awareness can flow into an
exploration of their willingness to take responsibility for the
consequences and to cope with them in their everyday lives.
4. Control: The behavioral mutuality of the first and fourth steps
stands in sharp contrast to the behavioral unilaterality of the
second and third steps. The experiment, thus, can provoke
considerable awareness of the tension and sadness involved in
passively doing nothing while the other person acts, in contrast

Tbs Gillol ] u u w i Vo1. I,, No. 1

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A GESTALT EXPERIMENT: FEAR OF REJECTION

to the excitement ot acting in concert with another.

One client was struck by how much waiting he had done in
anticipation of being left and grew aware of the frozen quality of
his relationship.
The active unilateral stance taken in Step 3 is often exciting to
clients, but a sense of incompleteness has sometimes been
reported when they look back at the person they have left, and
such clients report feeling more comfortable when we move to
to Step 4.
5 . Commitment and Change: The concept of commitment can be
clarified, both as a process within oneself and in terms of the
object of commitment. Clients are sometimes surprised to learn
that commitment does not mean that the relationship is "set
in concrete," never to change again. The limits of personal
commitment can be examined, and the concept can be expanded
to incorporate growth and change, both within and between
the individuals in the relationship. The concept of commitment,
then, is less easily evoked to manipulate the relationship so that
no change is permitted, and partners can further explore the
depth of their relationship.
In summary, this simple experiment can provoke a wide variety of
responses in reference to social relationships, and is especially sensitive to
fears of rejection which have blocked clients from exploring satisfying
alternatives to a dissatisfying relationship, and have prevented them from an
awareness of their own strength and power in the relationship.

REFERENCES

Baumgardner, Patricia. Bcok one: G@sfrom k k e Cowichon and Perls,

Frederick. Book two: Legacy from Fritz. Palo Alto: Science and
Behavior Books, Inc., 1975.
Enright, John. "An Introduction to Gestalt TechniquesM in Joan Fagan
and Irma Lee Shepherd (Eds). Gestalt Therapy Now. New York:
Harper and Row, 1970, pp. 107-124.
Kopp, Sheldon. Chapter 1, "Pilgrims and Disciples" in Jfyou meet the
Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! Palo Alto, CA: Science and
Behavior Books, 1972.
Perls, Frederick. "Gestalt Therapy: Retroflection, Introjection and
Projection" in Chris Hatcher and Phillip Itimelstein (Eds).
The Handbook of Gestalt Therapy. New York: Jason Aronson, Inc.,
1976,pp. 82-167.
Perls, Fritz. The Gestalt Apptoach and Eye Witness to Therapy.
Palo Alto: Science and Behavior Books, 1973.
Polster, Erving and Polster, Miriam. Gestalt Therapy Integrated. New
York: BrunneriMazel, 1973.
Zinker, Joseph. Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy. New York:
BrunnerIMazel, Publishers, 1977.

The Geitall ,uunxri Vol II No 1

89
GESTALT THERAPY WITH
PROFOUNDLY DISTURBED PERSONS
Claire D. Stratford and Lynn W. Brallier

The impetus to write this paper comes from each of our own pro-
cesses of integrating our professional training in social work and nursing,
our work with persons experiencing psychotic episodes, and our interest
and training in humanistic psychology, particularly Gestalt therapy. Chum-
ing over our ideas and work experiences together generated excitement and
a baseline of thinking about the use of Gestalt therapy in work settings with
a high percentage of people who are seriously disturbed.
As we see it, the term Gestalt refers to at least three distinct con-
cepts. O n a personal level, Gestalt as a humanistic approach to living pro-
vides a view of l i e and its meaning which encourages development of a
richness of sensory experiences. When acted upon, this philosophy can add
intensity, excitement and vitality to everyday life. Gestalt also refers to a
conceptual framework of psychological theory of personality and behavior.
Like many theories of personality, Gestalt theory attempts to be holistic in
nature and can be used to understand and predict a wide range of empirical
observations of human behavior. Thirdly, Gestalt refers to a theory and
methodology of psychotherapy which promotes changes toward dynamic,
integrative functioning of the individual. Our experience leads us to believe
that it can provide a base of creative treatment techniques to deal with per-
sons manifesting severe disorders.
 STRATFORD AND BRALLIER

Multiple Causality and the Here and Now

Because we are presenting ideas about the treatment of serious

psychiatric disturbances in an interactional way, it seems particularly im-
portant to define our beliefs concerning the etiology of the problems we pro-
pose to affect. The concept of multiple causality of severe disturbances has
been born of long debate between those who have researched biochemical
and genetic origins and those who have studied psychosis as a reaction to
confused communicative experiences. The debate continues today.
We believe these multiple forces are operative and causative in
various combinations of degree and intensity. Lie is indeed complex. What
appears clear to us is that, even though we are not yet able to be definitive in
pinpointing the origin(s) of patients' psychoses, we are left with the existen-
tial reality of encountering patients in the here and now as fellow pilgrims
searching out life's meanings. Even when we know the sources of andor
remedy for an organic or genetically determined severe disturbance, the per-
son has often already experienced changes in self-concept, in interactive pat-
terns, and in role relationships with others so that a massive amount of
relearning is required for the person to re-establish an ongoing lie process
which proves satisfactory.
While the phenothiazines and other drugs have been beneficial to
thousands of disturbed people, there is increasing concern regarding long-
term side effects. Although these drugs are often extremely valuable and at
times, perhaps, essential in a treatment program for a psychotic person,
there are seemingly endless residual communication and relationship issues
to deal with concurrently. With or without psychotropic drugs, then, how a
therapist perceives and relates to a person who is psychotic is a crucial ele-
ment in the process of restoring gratdying life experiences.
Gestalt theory, if applied with specific principles in mind, can be an
integral part of a process of reorganization, serving as a kind of "glue"
rather than "solvent" and allowing a person to become comfortable more
rapidly. It is indeed true that some techniques associated with Gestalt
therapy, such as heightening certain awarenesses, fantasy work, and reown-
ing of projections, can be anxiety-producing and may not be useful when
working with a person who is stressed to a point of psychosis. Therapists
who have misconceptions about or only a partial acquaintance with Gestalt
theory often encourage dramatic intensifications of emotions without
acknowledging the factors which govern selection and rationale for doing
this. These practitioners rarely utilize the slow gradations of Gestalt therapy
GESTALT THERAPY WITH PROFOUNDLY DISTURBED PERSONS

which are most useful with disorganized people. We emphasize careful

selectivity and intensiveness of intervention based on the degree of per-
sonality disintegration and the context of the moment.

Defining Health and Psychosis in Gestalt Terms

We prefer to practice from a health-oriented conceptual framework.

This view allows us to constantly be aware of the person's potential
wholeness and to make figural for ourselves the healthy parts of the per-
sonality which are missing. This consciousness of wholeness and health is
the ground out of which all therapeutic methods spring and become figural.
We find that, although we work with people who are experiencing severe
dysfunction, this theoretical base allows us to focus on fostering healthy
psychological processes and to relate to patients in human rather than
psychopathological terms.
In a Gestalt framework, a person who is healthy can maintain a high
degree of unblocked and sharply-focused awareness of self and environment
and can integrate these awarenesses into a perceived wholeness in such a
way as to be clear about what he wants at any given moment. The person
will then be able to move through life experiences by organizing and focus-
ing the energy gained from the awareness in a manner which promotes
development of meaningful behaviors which satisfy physical, psychological,
mental, emotional and spiritual needs. A healthy person, then, can move
gracefully through a need-satisfaction cycle of (1) perceiving something as
figural or clearly standing out from a rich background of ever-changing ob-
jects and events, (2) gaining energy and excitement from this clear percep-
tual experience, and (3) taking some kind of action which satisfies the ex-
citement, finishing that piece of business, and allowing another perceptual
experience to become figural. When a person is able to experience this need-
satisfaction cycle as a continuous process, he feels centered or balanced and
is willing to take responsibility for himself. Once a person has faith in the
process of the need-satisfaction cycle, that person is free to reach out for new
experiences, thus expanding sensuality, creativity, and contact with others.
In contrast, a person with psychotic symptoms experiences severe
blocking at various points of the need-satisfaction cycle. For instance, no
one perception may be figural. Internal and external perceptions and pro-
cesses are then easily confused so that a clear sense of the "I boundaries" is
not felt. Energy and excitement are usually present but are not directed and
resulting activity often does not meet the person's needs. In an extreme

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 STRATFORD AND BRALLIER

state of disorganization, energy is primarily mobilized to avoid unpleasant

stimuli and, in fact, much of the aversive stimuli may be self-produced. This
paradoxical quality is noted in the writings of the doublebind theorists such
as Bateson et al. (1) regarding schizophrenia, where it is suggested that
missing elements of the original double bind are supplied by the "bindee."
Such a view of psychosis in terms of the self-defeating and confusing rela-
tionship of organism and environment is also in keeping with the undif-
ferentiated ego mass described by Bowen (2).
Psychosis, then, involves any or all of the following: blocked or
distorted awareness of boundaries and needs, blocked or disorganized expen-
diture of energy, consequent low probability of meeting needs, and difficulty
in making meaningful and nourishing exchanges with others. Gestalt
theory provides a base from which to design re-learning experiences and in-
teractions for the patient who is having trouble anywhere along the need-
satisfaction cycle. If the problem is a characteristic or chronic discontinuity
in the need-satisfaction cycle, awareness and experience must be heightened
in the present and dealt with in a carefully-graded manner for change to take
place. On the other hand, during an acute episode, intensity must be
diminished sufficiently for boundaries to be established and a characteristic
pattern to emerge before possibilities for longer-term change can be in-
troduced.

Adaptations of Gestalt Theory to Disturbed Persons

As with all Gestalt work,the therapist is seen as a primary tool of

treatment and more attention is given to the client's internal experience and
the therapeutic interactional processes than to the content of the verbalized
material. Earlier we suggested the concepts of "solvent" and "glue."
Almost any tinkering with an individual's process can be done in a way
which Loosens structure, aUows new experiences, expands possibiities, and
often increases anxiety. Interventions which accomplish this act as solvent
for old "stuck" patterns. Likewise, processes can be affected in a way which
decreases stimuli, organizes energy, focuses on the familiar and/or comfor-
table and, therefore, stabilizes and "reglues." This regluing can be ac-
complished by biochemical and environmental manipulation when working
with people in large institutions, emergencies involving survival and other
situations where time and resources do not allow great attention to in-
dividual processes. We believe, however, that in most instances the
psychotherapeutic process is more likely than medication or the hospital set-
GESTALT T E R A P Y WITH PROFOUNDLY DISTURBED PERSONS

ting itself to help the patient gain a more permanent sense of steadiness and
integrity.
Gestalt Therapy requires a certain inventiveness and ingenuity on
the part of the therapist to select appropriate solvent or glue for the person
and the situation. Generally speaking, working with people experiencing
psychosis requires lots of glue to begin with, then carefully chosen small
amounts of solvent, well-timed, properly placed, and with the glue pot near-
by.

Awareness of the Present

Working with people's present experiences of interior and exterior

phenomena is more energizing and more likely to lead to change than talk-
ing about their future or past. By helping a person focus on his present ex-
perience, intense work can be done on difficulties with reality testing. In-
itially, a therapist must do a good deal of organizing, must be attentive to
anxiety levels, and must provide a context in which to organize available
energies. The problem of blocked or distorted awareness seen in persons
diagnosed as schizophrenic lends itself particularly weU to the Gestalt
framework of "figure-ground," i.e., that a natural process exists whereby
we become clearly aware of one bodily sensation, feeling, or thought at any
given moment which becomes figural or stands out from other stimuli.
Sometimes a person over-stimulates himself by not being able to differen-
tiate clearly between past, present and future, or among various choices in
the present, so that all impinge on his consciousness simultaneously. People
who are in psychotic states experience such "awareness scrambling" and
need the therapist's help to be definitive about their present experiences.
During this process it is the therapist's job to observe the particular scram-
ble pattern and to explicitly assist the patient to choose one focus at a time
for awareness. This assistance may take the form of the therapist bringing to
awareness comforting sensations and feelings of support.
A crucial matter in using this existential approach with those suffer-
ing severe perceptual disturbances is the therapist's responsibility in sorting
out and guiding the therapy so that focus on a present experience does not
produce overwhelming anxiety. Awareness of internal discomforts general-
ly can be classified as solvent; contact with internal comforts as glue. If a
person sees his survival threatened, it is important to avoid exaggeration
and heightened awareness of discomfort and to frequently return to
awareness of pleasing and comforting sensations and experience. Awareness

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94
 STRATFORD AND BRALLIER

without excessive anxiety is a precondition for contact and change. Confu-

sion is a state which is a helpful way station when working with a penon-
who is stuck and fairly well protected by his resistances. Focusing on or
staying with the experience of confusion is rarely productive in work with
people who are psychotic, however. Confidence in the process, i.e., the ef-
fectiveness of the basic need-satisfaction cycle is ill-founded in work with a
psychotic person. Allowing a person who is experiencing psychosis to stay
with his own process often leads to feelings of nothingness. The therapist,
then, must often be a source of guidance and organization to provide a path
for getting through the steps of the cycle. For instance, interruptions may
be made into the person's prolonged silence or brief, very structured ex-
periments may be suggested and tried during the therapy session.

The Concept of Contact

Contact occurs when people experience each other as separate and

vital entities and when their excitement or energy is directed toward one
another. Failure to make satisfying and growth-enhancing contact with
others constitutes the general description of all interpersonal problems,
noticable to the extreme in psychosis. The therapist must make extensive
use of her own sensitivity about the threats inherent in contacting another
human being. Indeed, the authenticity of the therapist is a crucial issue.
When a person is having major problems of self-definition, contact in any
form requires clarity and integrity on the part of the other. Psychosis often
involves either extremes of rigidity or lability. The therapist must model
clarity with flexibility and the interplay between these elements forms a ma-
jor process in therapy. Therapists who are successful and work well with
severely disturbed people are, irrespective of their theoretical base, able to
make good contact with clients. They are sensitive to minute gradations of
meaning and feeling expressed in a myriad of ways and can be flexible in
their responses without losing authenticity.
Three aspects of making meaningful personal contact with any per-
son, but particularly essential to contacting one who is psychotic, as describ
g Miriam Polster, are (8):(a) delineating contact boundaries;
ed by E ~ i n and
(b) attending to contact functions; and (c) balancing contact and withdrawal.
The contact boundary is the interface "at which one experiences the
'me' in relation to that which is 'not me' and, through this contact, both
are more clearly experienced" (8:102). Such I-boundaries can be experienc-
ed and described through awareness of one's body, of one's values, of which
GESTALT THERAPY WITH PROFOUNDLY DISTURBED PERSONS

experiences seem familiar, of ways in which one expresses oneself, and of

how one is willing to expose oneself to others. Working with a psychotic
person's body-boundaries, value boundaries, familiarity boundaries, etc., is
a way that helps him to get a clearer perceptual experience of his own
I-boundaries and forms the basis for all further work.
Initially, one must help clarify boundaries so that a person whose
anxiety level is high feels comforted, reassured and more certain of hi own
physiological and psychological limits. Before exploring feelings, it is
necessary to diminish fears of assimilation into another person's sphere of
influence, to decrease anxiety, to minimize chaotic experience, over
stimulation, or the possible extreme of feeling non-existent.
If a person is experiencing terror, medication is sometimes a necessi-
ty in order to control the physiological concommitants of such extreme anx-
iety and to allow basic organization to take place. However, overuse of
medication increases a patient's boundary problems and makes it more dif-
ficult for a person to experience himself as a whole person who is his own
agent of change. Very careful attention to adjustment of medications is
essential with increases and decreases closely tied to progress taking place.
Anything that assists in the differentiation process between client
and therapist will become groundwork for later more complex efforts and
changes. It is extremely important to pay attention to establishing boun-
daries between client and therapist, for the common but differentiated ex-
perience of these boundaries allows the greatest therapeutic impact. Boun-
daries must be constantly clarified as necessary and present, and it is impor-
tant to establish and re-establish many times the client's right to exist and
the right to experience himself as a separate emotional entity. Frequently
this is relearning of the right to disengage and differentiate from significant
others.
The art of therapy with the person whose anxiety level approaches
panic becomes that of determining what kind of boundary definition can be
perceived. Often work must begin by clearly establishing physical body
boundaries by sitting or standing at whatever distance allows the client to
perceive actual physical separateness. In order to establish boundaries in the
treatment situation, a therapist must provide data rather than interpreta-
tion, by repeatedly identifying which thoughts, feelings and sensations
belong to whom. Giving data to a person helps him feel noticed, differen-
tiated, validated and relieved. This in itself often constitutes a learning ex-
perience without pressure and usually results in a lower anxiety level and
notable changes in delusional systems. If there is disagreement about the
 STRATFORD AND BRALLIER

data between client and therapist, the Gestalt therapist does not try to con-
vince or coerce, but uses this opportunity to establish the differences and
underline the boundary between them. When the therapist too firmly inter-
prets, a client may feel confused, controlled, invalidated, dependent, and
often feels obligated to be grateful as well.
Using the Gestalt concept of boundaries in the manner just described
helps the psychotic person "pull in" and define himself. This same concept
can be applied to clients whose boundaries are so constricted that no new
growth is taking place. The therapist must be aware, then, when utilizing
the concept of boundaries, whether she is helping contract or expand them,
i.e., using "glue" or "solvent." In working with a person whose need-
satisfaction cycle is not effective, more modeling is required, smaller pieces
of experience must be used, and close attention must be paid to contact
functions.
Polster and Polster (8) define contact functions as the processes
available to us through which contact with others is achieved. Specifically,
the seven contact modes are touching, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting,
moving and speaking. When working with a person who is experiencing
catastrophic fears of annihilation when others attempt to make contact, the
therapist must choose carefully the modes of contact which will be least
threatening to the person's sense of his boundaries. Even the contact mode
of seeing may be anxiety-provoking for a psychotic person who is feeling
suspicious. For instance, if the client looks at the floor and the therapist is
increasingly aware of the one-sidedness of the visual contact, the therapist
may offer to look away and invite more thorough visual inspection of herself
by the other. They may then compare views of one another and, as a result,
the client can become more comfortable with the visual mode of con-
tact-both with seeing and being seen.
For each of us, there is a time to be fully with others and a time to
withdraw into ourselves. If we are able to maintain an awareness of which
we need and when, we may discover a rhythmic flow or pattern of aloneness
and togetherness. Oftentimes a psychotic person will not be in touch with a
rhythm or balance of contact and withdrawal, but will be stuck in the ex-
tremes, such as mania, severe depression or the avoidance apparent in a
paranoid state.
Work with a person who is stuck in either contact or withdrawal
centers around helping the person become aware that he is stuck and en-
couraging an experimental attitude so that he is willing to uy the opposite
behavior for brief periods, dealing with fright or even terror in the process.

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GESTALT THERAPY WITH PROFOUNDLY DISTURBED PERSONS

For instance, with a person who continually establishes isolation of himself

from others, the therapist can heighten that person's awareness of the
behavior by sharing her own experience of the situation and reporting that
she feels distant and out of contact with the other. The subtlety involved
here is to express such awareness without arousing the client's discomfort,
aiming instead to engage the client's interest and curiosity.
Once an experimental mode of operation is established, the therapist
can set up use of space as a prototype for work on distancing maneuvers.
She may suggest that the client change his body position or move to a place
in the room that would be even more comfortable-perhaps farther from the
therapist. After he has experienced some lowering of anxiety about being in
contact with the therapist, a suggestion can be made that he simply try look-
ing at, or moving slightly closer to, the therapist until he becomes uncom-
fortable, then move to a comfortable distance. This phenomenological ap-
proach in which the client exercises control of his gradations of experience
can be used repeatedly with a psychotic person. As he begins to get in touch
with his own inclinations to move in and out of contact with others, he
realizes that he can create this rhythm in a way that satisfies his needs.
Work on this process also helps the person become aware of his internal
controls of the contact he does or does not make with others, rather than ex-
ternalizing the control by feeling alone and rejected by others.

Utilizing Resistances

Thus far we have stressed the importance of focusing awareness, of

being attentive to the delineation of boundaries, and of helping develop con-
tact and withdrawal skills. Attending to these three areas of therapy with a
profoundly disturbed person precedes all other work. When a significant
change in awareness scrambling and ability to define boundaries has occur-
red, work may begin on forms of resistance--those characteristics and even
characterological interruptive behavior patterns used by troubled in-
dividuals to avoid awareness of some parts of themselves and their world,
and to avoid full contact with others. Perls (9) and Polster and Polster (8)
emphasize the value of resistances as ways of coping in a complex world. In-
stead of uying to remove or destroy the resistances of clients, Gestalt
therapists are interested in clients becoming fully aware of their resistances
and owning or claiming them as parts of themselves.
This respect for resistances is based on the premise that the behavior
of each of us, however seemingly destructive, was initially invented and self-
 STRATFORD AND BRALLIER 1

designed for survival. Although such behavioral patterns may be archaic

and no longer fruitful, they continue to arise out of a need related to per-
sonal integrity. With a psychotic person, the origin of being unfocused and
scattered often is based on wisdom learned through being a moving target in
a hostile interpersonal environment. It is useful to bear in mind that the five
most typical types of resistances-confluence, deflection, intrajection, pro-
jection and retroflection-allow for both seVcare and self-destruction.
Strong emphasis should be placed on both aspects of resistance, attending to
the constructive, even vital aspects of each resistance, as well as to the
destructive patterns. A healthy state consists of a full repertoire and flexible
use of resistances.
Confluence, the blending of boundaries, temporarily dissolves the in-
tegrity of two people and suspends their interaction as separate entities.
Confluence as a type of resistance achieves the avoidance of lasting contact
between two people by a process of superficially experiencing an
"alikeness" with each other. If a client is being confluent with the
therapist, he blends his boundaries with the therapist's so that a sense of self
is lost, and he behaves in a compliant, acquiescent manner which is directed
toward pleasing the therapist. The person's lack of a sense of separateness
makes almost any strong feelings such as anger, intimacy or sexual arousal
nonsatisfying or even dangerous, thereby precluding a close and nourishing
relationship. The main goal in working with the issue of confluence is to
teach the client how to find satisfying, intermittent and controllable con-
fluence. Therapy, then, begins with boundary clarification and proceeds to
work which heightens the individual's awareness of hi experience of
himself.
Deflection is a maneuver used to dilute contact and make it less im-
pactful. For instance, a person may avoid eye contact or may verbally avoid
contact by responding to the therapist with such things as silence, mumbl-
ing, nonsensical phrases, bizarre abstractions and inappropriate laughter.
While some deflection is useful as a mechanism to prevent flooding of con-
sciousness, its overuse results in isolation and no significant chances for
change. A Gestalt therapist, instead of trying to ignore, which is to deflect
from, or remove or barge through the person's deflection, will simply help
the other gain awareness of his deflecting behavior so that he can more easi-
ly choose whether or not to use it. Another important intervention is the
therapist's attempts to make contact more tolerable by sharing her own
awareness of her reaction to the deflective behavior. Statements of direct ex-
perience such as, "when you change the subject and look away, I feel dis-
GESTALT THERAPY WITH PROFOUNDLY DISTURBED PERSONS

tant from and out of touch with you," are often helpful toward regaining
contact.
lntrojection in Gestalt theory is broader than the psychoanalytic con-
cept of introjection since it includes the total process of incorporation of any
aspect of the environment. Each of us is constantly taking in new stimuli
and we must learn to be selective about what we want, how much and
when. How a person incorporates and integrates new environmental
material is influenced by and will further influence the nature of hie boun-
daries. A seriously disturbed person is likely to utlize the extremes in handl-
ing new material so will either reject it all or take it all in indiscriminately. If
introjection is the mode of choice, the person has succeeded only in further
disintegrating hi sense of self and, in turn, finds it more difficult to make
contact with others.
Work on introjects with a highly-disturbed person must proceed
slowly to avoid feelings of emptiness and non-existence. A Gestalt therapist
will attend to the person's present way of introjecting as it happens by help-
ing him be aware of his process of "taking in." If the person is willing, the
therapist and client can create an instant replay of the introjection scene.
During the replay, the therapist assists the patient by helping sort out small
pieces of assimilatable new experience and presiding over the tasting, chew-
ing, spitting out or swallowing of the experience. Again, a combination of
modeling, teaching and stage managing is necessary. Comments such as,
"That's an idea for your consideration," "What part of that suggestion do
you like and what part doesn't feel right for you?" and "Take your time
before you decide about that," are often useful.
Sorting out old introjects, which come in the form of "I should,"
and helping the client become aware instead of what he really wants is also
helpful, but must be done cautiously with the psychotic person if the
"
should" is being used tempararily as a way to control destructive im-
pulses.
Projection in a self-care sense is the extension of oneself beyond
one's acknowledged boundaries. It is also very common in seriously disturb-
ed persons as a resistance to contact. Hallucinations and delusional systems
certainly keep one out of touch with others and reduce possibilities for
growth and change. The person who projects in a paranoid way is not well
able to creatively use projections for empathizing with others, and is not us-
ing humor and fantasy to extend the edges of hi known world.
A general "glue" rule when using Gestalt theory to help a
psychotic person who is coping by projecting is to value as highly as possible
 STRATFORD AND BRALLIER

the underlying survival need which is being expressed. The therapist must
take care not to introduce additional projections of her own. She can
demonstrate a reality testing process by saying, "This is just a hunch I have
about you-it may not be so. Tell me if it fit. for you." A t times the
therapist can also gently assist a person to reclaim a projection if his terror
level about the projected material is not too high. For instance, if a client is
complaining about a characteristic of another person, a casual and non-
insistent enquiry into whether he has ever experienced himself as being like
the other person may lay the groundwork for actually reclaiming the pro-
jected feeling or thought at a later time.
Retroflection is the turning back on oneself the impulses and
behavior intended for another or desired from another. The result of
retroflected behavior is that the individual holds his excitement and does not
make contact with others. As with the preceding resistances, reuoflection is
not considered unhealthy in and of itself. For instance, both tender and
hostile impulses can be turned inward. Unfortunately, retroflection in a
psychotic person often appears as bizarre or destructive behavior, such as
compulsively rocking one's body or in some way harming or mutilating
one's own body. Unchecked retroflection of hostility results in suicide, just
as unchecked acting on hostile impulses may result in assault or murder.
Therapy dealing with the retroflection of hostility in a seriously
disturbed person must be delayed until the person has sufficient trust in the
therapist and concept of his own boundaries to deal with hi anger. The
client should not be in any way coerced into working on retroflected anger
since this could act as a solvent and result in high anxiety and loss of control
in a potentially destructive way. The safest level for beginning work is with
fantasy: the client's retroflected behavior can be noticed and mentioned to
him to heighten awareness of it..The therapist can then go on with a com-
ment such as, "lf you were to imagine doing that to someone else, who
would it be?" The path is then open for verbal expression of anger. Once
this has begun, the therapist is responsible to help the client stay with his
anger until some sense of closure is felt. This provides the glue which is
necessary to help keep feelings from later turning into actions.

Enactment of Polarities

The imporatnt Gestalt formulation about human behavior is that of

polarities or opposing forces within us. A n infinite number of opposing
thoughts, feelings, sensations and impulses which constantly emerge and
GESTALT THERAPY WITH PROFOUNDLY DISTURBED PERSONS

collide within us can cause anxiety and experiences of disintegration. A

seriously disturbed individual's world is largely made up of such collisions.
Polarity work is focused on helping people become more fully aware
of each of the two opposing parts of themselves, such as aggressiveness and
submissiveness, cruelty and kindness. When this awareness is accompl'ih-
ed, clients are helped to restore contact with these opposing parts so that
they can be integrated into their consciousness of themselves. This
awareness and integration allows more choices of and control over behavior.
For instance, if cruelty is disowned and is instead split off and acted out as
"
not me,'' polarity work could assist the person to claim both his kindness
and cruelty as operative parts of himself which are under his control.
The process of creating a verbal dialogue between the two opposing
parts of the personality by enacting these parts is often helpful with a
disturbed client, but can be used only after a solid therapeutic relationship
has been established. "Empty chair" techniques can act as solvent because
of heightened awareness of the two separate parts of the self. However, if the
client already perceives parts of himself as separate people who are making
conflicting demands, the dialogue process can be a highly useful integrative
experience, serving as glue for the person who has been using solvent on
himself. Brallier and Hoffman (5) have reported successful dialogue work
with a psychotic client and caution that the therapist must constantly
reassure the person that the parts being enacted are seen by the therapist as
two parts of the client's personality, not two separate people.

Dreamwork

Gestalt therapists usually help make dreams more vivid by re-

quesung that a client relate the dream in the present tense. By returning to
the most significant events, objects or characteristics of the dream and enac-
ting them, awareness of split-off parts of the self is heightened and integra-
tion becomes possible. The same cautions apply to this level of therapy as to
polarity work when the client is psychotic. One useful adjustment in techni-
que is to provide glue by asking the client to relate the dream and then
report any strengthening or comforting parts of it again. Naming or titling a
dream encapsulates and cognitively controls a dream. The client can also be
asked to tell the dream again until he experiences discomfort. He is then
directed to take control of this discomfort by fantasizing a wanted outcome
and reporting this new ending out loud. in our experience, this is a very
helpful method of designing a situation in which the psychotic person can

Ths Gailnli ,,,urn! Vol I, No 1

102
 STRATFORD AND BRALLIER

begin to regain feelings of control over his own behavior and life situation.

Summary

A basic tenet of Gestalt therapy is that an individual's best chance

for growth and change lies in being fully aware of his own experiences.
When awareness is heightened and focused, a person will proceed in the
need-satisfaction cycle. This paper illustrates our conviction that, since the
process of change is similar for all of us, focusing on this process by using
Gestalt theory and methodology is a valid and very useful conceptual
framework for psychotherapy with persons labeled psychotic. Modifications
in method are suggested which help the psychotic person experience safety,
control and wholeness of self.

References

1. Bateson, G., Jackson, D., Haley, J., Weakland, J., "Toward a Theory of
Schizophrenia," in Communication, Family and Marriage, Sec. 11.
Jackson, D., Ed., Science and Behavior Books, Inc., Palo Alto,
1968.

2. Bowen, M., "The Use of Family Theory in Clinical Practice," in

Changing Families, Chapter 13. Haley, J., Ed., Gmne and Stratton,
Inc., New York, 1971.

3. Polster, E. and Polster, M., Gestalt Therapy Integrated. BrunnerIMazel,

New York, 1973.

4. Perls, F., The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy. Science
and Behavior Books, Palo Alto, 1973.

5. Brallier, L. and Hoffman, B., "Assisting a Psychotic Patient With the

Integrative Process," Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Prac-
tice, 8:304, 1971.
 Real People Press announces two new books:
Windows to Our Children: a gestalt approach to children and
adolescents, by Violet Oaklander, Ph.D. 325 pp. 6" x 9" il-
lustrated. bibliography. $4.50 paper ($8.00 cloth).
"I am particularly excited about this book because I believe i t
is a major contribution on Gestalt Therapy. It is certainly the
first major publication on Gestalt Therapy with children. I t will
be of great value to therapists, and especially valuable in bring-
ing humanistic considerations to this special work with
children." -Amold R. Beisser, M.D.
"This book brings together a wide range of key resources that
offer pathways for life and energy in child therapy. I see many
possibilities-especially in a moment of being stuck or lost-to
structure the therapy and move it to new spaces of awareness and
knowing." -Clark E. Moustakas.
"Windows to Our Children is both a powerful and a gentle
book. I t is an excellent example of nourishing gestalt, and it is ab-
solutely the best thing I have seen for working with children and
adolescents in terms of its quality and breath.''
-George I. Brown.
Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming, by
Richard Bandler and John Grinder. 195 pp. 6" x 9" bibliography.
$4.50 paper ($8.00 cloth).
"A readable, practical, and entertaining book about a challeng-
ing, original, and promising new discipline. I recommend it."
-Dan Goleman, Associate Editor of Psychology Today.
"This book shows you how to do a little magic and change the
way you see, hear, feel, and imagine the world you live in. I t
presents new therapeutic techniques which can teach you some
surprising things about yourself." -Sam Keen.
Special Offer to Readers of the Gestalt Journal:
Discount: 20% on any prepaid order (received before August
31, 1979)for two or more books from the following list: Windows
to Our Children. Frogs into Princes. Gestalt Therapy Verbatim.
I n and Out the Garbage Pail. Gestalt is. Awareness. Don't Push
the River. Person to Person. Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain.
AdditionalBonus: For each five paperbound books you order,
you may choose one free paperbound book from the following
titles: Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, Gestalt is, and Person to P e r
son. For each 5 hardbound hooks you order, you may choose one
free hardbound copy of Gestalt is or Awareness. (Garbage Pail
and Person to Person are not available in hardbound). This is the
equivalent of an additional 20% discount.
The discounted price is $3.60 per book, paper, and $6.40 hard-
bound. Please tell us exactly what you want, enclose a check for
the exact amount-no postage or handling charges-and send it
to: Real People Press, Box F, Moab, Utah 84532.

Gerua iovrnaivni rr, NO i

104
BOOK REVIEWS

Oaklander, Violet; Windows to Our Children; Real People Press,

Moah Utah, 1979 $4.50 (soft cover) $8.00 (hard cover)

Violet Oaklander is a woman with enough courage, skill, and ex-

perience to write a down-to-earth, easy-to-read, practical book about emo-
tionally disturbed children. For years, these children have been needing peo-
ple like her to tell and write their story. She shares her experiences of them
with respect, with dignity, with wonder, and above all, with loving care. She
states "I wanted to write a book about what I do, how I do it, and what I
think about working with children, rather than a book to impress." In Win-
dows lo Our Children, she tells her story in her own way and ends up im-
pressing the reader with her skill as well as with the knowledge and caring
she brings to the children with whom she works.
In therapy, helping children become aware of their existence in their
world is an art. She demonstrates the process of working with children as a
gentle, flowing o n e a n organic event. By giving numerous examples of her
own inner intuitive, creative flowing self, she demonstrates how she com-
bines herself with the child and what the child presents to her. She begins
with what she experiences with the child and not what she thinks or has
heard about the child. She looks at what is, experiences what is, explores
BOOK REVIEWS

what is, in order to learn from the child how to go deeper.

Many methods and techniques are presented through a wide variety
of materials. Most could easily be used by teachers in regular classroom set-
tings or by parents: making all kinds of things, storytelling, poetry and pup-
pets, sensory experiences, creative dramatics, and play therapy. The
materials needed are either easy to find or inexpensive to buy. Much of what
is suggested is already in the average home and typical classrwm. What is
important is the ways she suggests using these materials-the methods and
techniques- in order to gain insights into the inner thoughts and feelings
of children. Only through allowing children to be expressive of what they
are thinking, feeling, and doing with the materials can the therapist, parent,
or teacher begin to truly see and understand what is important to children.
Oaklander goes beyond offering the now popular "One Hundred and
One Lessons for Johnny and Susie"-type activities. She clearly, and repeated-
ly, offers her own ideas of how to be with children. Direct, honest, non-
judgemental, accepting, amiable. She advises "Avoid interpretationsnheck
out guesses and hunches with the chid.'' It is all too easy for adults to inter
pret what children do through adult-type experiences rather than allow
children to interpret what they are doing in terns of their own experiences.
The goal is always to allow children opportunities to become aware of their
existences in their worlds, to let them know there may be differences between
what they are thinking and what others are thinking of them.
It is generally difficult for parents to decide their child needs therapy,
and there seems to be no general statement about when a child should be in
therapy or whether the problem will resolve itself. Oaklander frankly admits
to not knowing of a formula for seeking a therapist. Instead, she gives ex-
amples of children she has treated, the reasons they were treated, and the
ways they responded to treatment. This kind of example giving, or model-
ing, should give parents of disturbed children far more support in seeking
help than a set of rules or a complicated formula to follow. She further
demystifies the therapy process by giving a clear account of her procedures
from the first session to termination.
It is also generally difficult for teachers to know how to deal with
emotionally disturbed students in their classrooms, particularly if they have
had little training or experience in doing so. Many of the methods suggested
are easily adaptable to classrwm settings. While it would not be possible to
follow through in depth with all the children in a particular class, a teacher
could choose an activity for all and then focus his or her attention on a par-
ticular child while implementing it. If the teacher knew the child and the
parents well enough, it would even be possible to suggest this book and help
the parents do some activities at home by providing materials and further
consultation to determine how things were working out. If parents became
involved in this way, they could determine on their own that they and their
child need help beyond that available through school settings.
There can be no doubt that what Oaklander presents comes from
personal experiences. What she presents and the way she presents it flow
from her years of being with healthy as wellas with disturbed children. Her
ongoing search for new skills and new experiences, along with her will-
ingness to risk and experiment is evident from beginning to end. Her
unrelenting honesty with herself in assessing what works well for her even
allows her to be objective with methods and techniques she personally finds
uncomfortable. She does not tell others what they should or should not do.
She simply and movingly tells her story and in so doing reaches out and
touches the reader. She gives freely of herself and so allows the reader new
personal insights, new tools, and new ideas with which they too may
become more able to see through the windows of children.

Corsini, Raymond J. (Ed); Current Psycholherapies;

F.E. Peacock. 1979 (2nd Edition) $11.50 (p)
Wedding, Dan & Corsini, Raymond J. (Eds); Great Cases in Psychotherapy;
F.E. Peacock, 1979 $7.95 (p)

Current Psychothe;rapies and its companion reader, Great Cases in

Psychotherapy are obviously intended for use in a classroom setting, and
can be of considerable value in both university settings and in post-graduate
training centers. Many might find some disagreement with one or two of
the 1 3 "modern" therapies that the editor has elected to include and
possibly with one or two that have been omitted. In his introduction to Cur-
rent Psychotherapies, editor Corsini offers his criterion, "Generally, I have
taken a conservative position and have given preference, all things con-
sidered, to well-established systems that have proven their validity through
popularity and survival."
The volume opens with a chapter by Jacob Arlow on
"Psychoanalysis" and concludes with John Mam's chapter on "Human
Potential," the weakest offering in the book. In between are chapters that
range from competent to excellent. Included are: "Adlerian
BOOK REVIEWS

Psychotherapy," by Harold Mosak; "Analytical Psychotherapy," by Yofam

Kaufmann; "Person-Centered Therapy," by Betty Meador and Carl Rogers;
"Rational-Emotive Thetapy," by Albert Ellis; "Behavioral Psycho
therapy," by Dianne Chambless and Alan Goldstein; "Reality Therapy," by
W i a m Glasser and Leonard Zunin; "Experiential Psychotherapy," by
Eugene Gendlin; "Transactional Analysis," by John Dusay and Katherine
Mulholland Dusay; "Psychodrama," by Leon Fine; "Family Therapy," by
Vincent Foley; and "Gestalt Therapy," by James Simkin.
The companion reader, Great Cases in Psychotherapy, contains one
or more case presentation from each approach represented in the text. In
most instances, the cases offered involve clinicians other than the authors in
Modern Psychotherapies. Found here are Freud, Adler, Jung, Rogers,
Wolpe, Berne, Moreno, Erickson, Perls and others.
The chapter in Modem Psychotherapies by Simkin is neither as con-
cise nor comprehensive as it might be, but does offer a reasonably good
overview of the historical development of Gestalt as well as a clear presenta-
tion of what many term "west-coast" style Gestalt.
The focus of Simkin's presentation is on the material that was
"foreground" for Perls during his later years. For example, a glaring omis-
sion is the contact-bonndry interferenc that many Gestalt therapists,
especially those who have trained with Laura Perls, Isadore From, and the
Polsters, consider basic to Gestalt theory.
In addition, while Simkin describes in detail the Gestalt approach as
applied to workshops and groups, he dismisses the use of Gestalt in an in-
dividual setting by referring the reader elsewhere. Since the use of Gestalt in
an individual setting is by far more wide spread than in the workshop for-
mat, one cannot help but wonder if Simkin tends to only see Gestalt as what
he does, regardless of what many other informed and skilled practitioners
may be doing.
Great Cases in Psychotherapy offers "The Case of Jane" from Fritz
Perls' Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. It is a good example of the type of dream
work that Perls was doing in his later years and fits well with the Simkin
chapter in the text.
Current Psychotherapies and the companion reader, Great Cases in
Psychotherapy work well together and make excellent material for use in
courses that hope to supply students with a serious introduction to the
psychotherapies being "practiced" today.
-Joe Wysong
 BOOKS RECEIVED
Asher, Maxine; Ancient Energy: The Key to the Universe;Harper & Row,
1979 $8.95 (H)
Bandler, Richard & Grinder, John; Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic
Programming; Real People Press, 1979 $8.00 (H) 54.50 @)
Capps, Walter H. &Wright, Wendy M. (eds); Silent Fire: An Invitation to
Western Mysticism; Harper Forum, 1978 $5.95 (p)
Conklin, Robert; Hou' to Get People to do Things; Contemporary Books,
1979 $9.95 (kl)
Da Liu; I Ching Numerology; Harper & Row, 1979 $4.95 @)
Dement, William C.; Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep:
Exploring the World of Sleep; Norton, 1978 $3.95 @)
Evans, Gail; The Family Circle Guide to Self-help; Ballantine, 1979
$2.25 @)
Field, Frank; Dr. Frank Field's Diet Book; Ballentine, 1979 $1.95 (p)
Fracchia, Charles A,; Living Together Alone: The New American
Monasticism; Harper & Row, 1979 $5.95 @)
Frieze, Irene H. (ed); Women and Sex Roles: A Social Psychological
Perspective; Norton, 1978 $13.95 (H) $8.95 (p)
Gunther, Bernard; DyingforEnlightment; Harper & Row, 1979 $6.95 (p)
Inayac Khan, Pir Vilayet; The Message in Our Time; Harper & Row, 1979
$6.95 (p)
Levenkron, Steven; The Best Little Girl in the World; Contemporary
Books, 1978 $8.95 (H)
Petzold, Hilarion & Brown, George I; Gestalt-Padagofik: Konzepte Der
Integratiuen Erziehung; Pfeiffer (Munich) 1977 DM 32 (p)
Rogo, D. Scott €2Bayless, Raymond; Phone Callsfrom the Dead; Prentice-
Hall, 1979 $8.95 (H)
 NOTES ON THE AUTHORS
LYNN BRALLIER is a psychotherapist who has been in clinical practice
since earning her master's degree in psychiatric nursing from Case
Western Reserve University in 1968. A t the writing of her paper,
she was Director of the Crisis Intervention Service for the
Psychiatric Institute of Washington, D.C. and worked with many
severely disturbed people in that setting. Currently, Lynn is Director
of the Stress Management Center of Metropolitan Washington. In
her private practice, she works with many clients who have pro-
foundly disturbed bodies and will be writing a Ph.D. dissertation on
her wholistic approach to clients with cancer.

ED ELKIN earned his dcctorate in clinical psychology from Tufts Univer-

sity. Trained in Gestalt therapy by both Fritz Perls and Laura Perls,
he is the primary developer of transpersonal Gestalt therapy wherein
"You do your thing and I do mine" is complemented by love, com-
passion, and service. He is a member of the Gestalt Institute of
Washington, D.C. and is a world traveler.

GENIE LABORDE, Ph.D., participated in three Ph.D. programs and five

children. She is over-educated in Modem English, F i e Art,
Gestalt, and child-care. She sometimes paints and the paintings sell
better now that she's closed her gallery. She co-authored a book of
humorous essays, Tranquilizers for His Cup, published by Double-
day. She commutes between Palo Alto and Santa Barbara to teach
Introject Awareness to graduate students in confluent education.
She teaches the same course to therapists, housewives, corporation
presidents, and physicists in Palo Alto but there it's called, "It's
OK to Play."

JEFFREY A. SCHALER is a Gestalt psychotherapist and practitioner of

Lomi Body Work. He is President oi the Gestalt Institute of
Washington, D.C., where he has taught Gestalt therapy to profes-
sionals for the past several years. A past member of the Board of
Directors of the Lomi School Foundation, he has taught numerous
courses in Gestalt therapy and Lomi Work at area colleges and pro-
fessional training programs around Washington, D.C. since 1973.
CLAIRE STRATFORD is a social worker whose primary work is the de-
velopment of community support services for seriously disturbed
people in a community mental health center in Saratoga Springs,
New York. She has worked as a psychotherapist for the past thirteen
years. She is an associate staff member of the Gestalt Institute of
Cleveland and received training there. She has a particular interest
in the design and implementation of process oriented milieu
therapy.

MARTHA J. WELCH, Ph.D., is a graduate of the Post-Graduate Training

Program of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, and of Case Western
Reserve University in Psychology. Formerly she was employed by
the Mental Development Center of Cleveland, and was in private
practice there. Presently she is on the faculty of the School of N u r s ~
ing, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Illinois, and con-
ducts a private practice in CollinsviUe, Illinois using primarily the
Gestalt approach to psychotherapy.

JOE WYSONG is the Director of The Center for Gestalt Development,

which publishes The Gestalt Journal, The Geslalt Dzrectory, and
other publications and resources related to Gestalt therapy. He
serves on the Faculty of The New School for Social Research in New
York City, where he also maintains a private practice and occa-
sionally trains other therapists in Gestalt.

GARY YONTEF, Ph.D., is a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, A.B.P.P.,

and Clinical Social Worker in private practice with Gestalt
Associates in Santa Monica, California. He is Chairman of the
Training Committee and past president of the Gestalt Therapy In-
stitute of Los Angeles. He was formerly on the U C.L.A.
Psychology Department faculty and is author of "A Review of the
Practice of Gestalt Therapy." He has trained with Jim Simkin and
Fritz Perls and several trainers of the Gestalt Therapy Institute of
Los Angeles. He stresses I-Thou contact as the central route to
awareness in any type of Gestalt therapy work.

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