a well lived life - gestalt eseji
TRANSCRIPT
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Comments on A Well-Lived Life: Essays-in Gestalt Therapy
Sylvia Crocker's A Well-Lived Life is the work
o
a
daring and creative thinker, offering a bold reconceptualization
of Gestalt therapy that extends all the way from its philosophical
foundation to the nuances of its clinical application. n prose
that is clear as a bell, Crocker fully exposes that depth and
power of Gestalt therapy's field theoretical model, deftly moving
from individual to larger systems work and back again, and
capturing the full range of human psychological phenomena as
she goes.
From the acquisition and maintenance of simple
behavioral habits, to the construction of personal narrative and
myth, Crocker's Gestalt therapy model is equally at home and
applicable. Her vision
o
Gestalt therapy is at the same time
startlingly unique and comfortably familiar. She is firmly rooted
in Gestalt therapy's "phenomenological behaviorism," but at the
same time offers us a model for assessing and working with self
functions which is remarkably creative, and represents an
important new contribution to the field.
And throughout the text, interpolated between her
provocative t h e o n · ~ i c l formulations,
we
encounter Crocker the
clinician--moving straight ahead, getting right at the issue,
making sense, and all the while, concretely instructive regarding
the nature o the work. This is a book that will make a
difference, challenging the way you think about the practice, the
craft of psychotherapy.
--
Mark
McConville Gestalt Therapist and Trainer, Author
o Adolescence: Psychotherapy and the Emergent Self
In a series
o
essays, Sylvia Crocker brings her
philosophical mind to present a comprehensive framework for
Gestalt therapy. She integrates our original theoretical
underpinnings with additional insights from human development
and a wide range
o other contemporary theories (ranging from
chaos theory to spirituality). She provides a rich perspective
which expands our basic theoretical and clinical framework and
provides a positive Gestalt model for mental health. A Well
ived
Life
is an original and challenging book for both students
and practitioners o Gestalt therapy
--
Iris Fodor
Gestalt Therapist, Professor, New York
University, contributing author to
The Voice
of
Shame.
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Sylvia Crocker has wrought out o the experiences of her
life and soul the new synthesis Gestalt therapists have been
awaiting since PHG burst upon the world in 1951. For all too
many the work o Vol II, Paul Goodman's seminal contribution,
has been daunting, while the experiments o Frederick Perls'
first volume have been neglected as his later style of the videos
became increasingly disesteemed. The result has been a splitting
o a seamless whole in spite o the authors' insistence they be
read together. An unfortunate emphasis on phenomenal versus
experiential that excludes a more productive integration is
inevitable.
Dr. Crocker has found the philosophic sources
o
Gestalt
therapy in Aristotle and traced its development through the
Platonic influences o the Scholastics, Kant, James and Dewey,
the process philosophers, existentialists and the Gestalt
psychologists. Her work is on a broad yet detailed canvas, very ·
much the hologram she describes so well.
Moreover, in founding Gestalt therapy so firmly she has
created her integration accessible, hugely utilitarian and crucial.
Her analysis of the operations and powers of the human soul in
Aristotle thoroughly supports and spreads before the practitioner
relations and experiments that are the heart and soul o Gestalt
therapy. Out
o
this perspective Crocker has with authority and
detail insisted the therapy is good science as it moves back and
forth in the reality of the session and in the world, indeed a
program for the next century. Here is indeed ground on which to
stand.
In a touching celebration of prayer in its many senses she
resonates exactly that interest o Frederick Perls fifty years ago
when he became fascinated with prayer and its power. His
fascination was o course from the demand side of prayer which
followed from his conviction that every question concealed a
demand which was better made openly. Does God hear
demands?
Sylvia Crocker has written a testament o
faith, science,
therapy, and the progress of a pilgrim. Her autobiographical
chapter with the background that drove her work and creative
insight that became this Gestalt therapist is nothing less than
soaring. t will strengthen and succour those o
us
chronically
unmoored in our moments o doubt and despair.
Richard Kitzler Senior Trainer, New York Institute for
Gestalt Therapy.
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This is the book I wish I could have written. It ranks
right up there with her mentors', Erving and Miriam Polster's,
estalt Therapy Integrated
which I had the good fortune
to
read as a rough draft when it was being composed while I was
in training with them at GIC-Cleveland. I have always
experienced Sylvia's writing as eloquent and this series o
essays on Gestalt therapy are no exception. In fact, her essays
emerge as a treatise that far surpasses her oginal intent--"to
present the theory of Gestalt therapy in its full scope and
elegance, and to show how the methods of Gestalt therapy come
directly out of the theory." She not only accomplished that goal
but also does it in such a way as to provide the reader with a
"treat"
Without regard for the topic being addressed, Sylvia's
writing is cogent and clear. Her flowing style entices and
supports the reader to want to go farther and deeper. I
experience her linguistic ability akin to love making in a long
standing, loving relationship. It is clear that there are no quick
fixes or gimmicks, but rather a lot
o
organic and organismic
flow that comes from commitment to a growthful process. As in
a rich and meaningful human relationship, this obviously comes
from Sylvia's rich, meaningful and committed love relationship
with Gestalt therapy. Her cognitions (the word symbols and
ideas she chooses) seem
to
flow from her whole being--heart
and mind, body and soul, from the very essence
o
her being.
In fact, in her writing style Sylvia presents a model
o
the
"assimilation" and "whole-making" processes that are so
eloquently discussed as central in our theory. To paraphrase and
quote from her essay
A
Well-Lived Life," Sylvia presents the
essentials of maturity by saying "a person's organic wholeness
becomes full integrity." I believe that she has demonstrated this
very process in her creation
o
this treatise. Just as all good
psychotherapy is both art and science, so is this book
o
essays.
t is an outstanding addition to the broadening awareness and
deeper understanding
o
Gestalt therapy. This contribution to
the furtherance o Gestalt therapy exemplifies the work of an
authentic author whose pen reveals the complexities of a
brilliant, well-traveled, wise and seasoned psychotherapist
whose life is being well lived.
-- Ansel Woldt Professor Emeritus, Kent State University,
Founding Secretary of the Association for the Advancement of
Gestalt Therapy, Associate Editor
o
the Gestalt Review.
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SELECTED
Tffi S
FROM
GESTAL
TPRESS
ORGANIZATIONAL
CONSULTING:
A
GESTALT
APPROACH
Edwin
C.
Nevis
GESTALT RECONSIDERED: A NEW APPROACH
TO
CONTACT
AND
RESISTANCE
Gordon Wheeler
GESTALT THERAPY: PERSPECTIVES AND APPLICATIONS
Edwin
C.
Nevis editor
COMMUNITY
AND
CONFLUENCE: UNDOING THE CLINCH OF OPPRESSION
Philip Lichtenberg
ENCOUNfERING
BIGOTRY:
BEFRIENDING
PROJECTING PERSONS
IN
EVERYDAY LIFE
Philip Lichtenberg Janneke van Beusekom Dorothy Gibbons
ADOLESCENCE: PSYCHOTHERAPY AND
TilE
EMERGENT SELF
Mark McConville
ON
INTIMATE
GROUND:
A
GESTALT APPROACH TO WORKING WITH COUPLES
Gordon Wheeler and Stephanie Backman
BODY PROCESS: WORKING WITH THE BODY IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
James
I.
Kepner
HERE, NOW, NEXT: PAUL GOODMAN AND THE
ORIGINS
OF GESTALT THERAPY
Taylor Stoehr
CRAZY
HOPE FINITE
EXPERIENCE
Paul Goodman edited
by
Taylor Stoehr
IN SEARCH OF GOOD
FORM:
GESTALT THERAPY
WITH
COUPLES
AND
FAMILIES
Joseph
C.
Zinker
THE VOICE OF SHAME: SILENCE AND CONNECTION IN PSYCHOTIIERAPY
Robert
G.
Lee and Gordon Wheeler
HEALING TASKS: PSYCHOTHERAPY WITH ADULT SURVIVORS
OF
CHILDHOOD ABUSE
James I Kepner
GETTING BEYOND SOBRIETY: CLINICAL APPROACHES TO LONG-TERM
RECOVERY
Michael Craig Clemmens
BACK
TO
THE BEANSTALK:
ENCHANTMENT AND
REALITY
FOR
COUPLES
Judith
R.
Brown
THE DREAMER AND THE DREAM: ESSAYS AND REFLECTIONS ON GESTALT THERAPY
Rainette Eden Fants edited by Arthur Roberts
A
WELL-LIVED
LIFE: ESSAYS
IN GESTALT THERAPY
Sylvia Fleming Crocker
FROM THE RADICAL CENTER: THE HEART
OF
GESTALT THERAPY
Erving and Miriam Polster
BEYOND
INDMDUALISM:
TOWARD
A
NEW UNDERSTANDING
OF
SELF, RELATIONSHIP,
AND EXPERIENCE Gordon Wheeler
SKETCHES:
AN ANTIIOLOGY
OF
ESSAYS, ART AND
POETRY
Joseph
C.
Zinker
THE
HEART OF
DEVELOPMENT: GESTALT
APPROACHES TO WORKING WITH
CHILDREN, ADOLESCENTS,
AND
THEIR WORLDS
2
Volumes)
Mark McConville and Gordon Wheeler editors
BODY
OF AWARENESS:
A
SOMATIC DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH
TO
PSYCHOTHERAPY
Ruella Frank
VALUES OF CONNECTION:
A
RELATIONAL APPROACH TO
ETHICS
Robert
G. Lee
READING PAUL GOODMAN
Gordon Wheeler editor
GESTALT THERAPY: LIVING CREATIVELY TODAY Gonzague Masquelier
THE EVOLUTION
OF
GESTALT THERAPY Deborah Ullman and Gordon Wheeler, editors
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WELL LIVED
LIFE
Essays in Gestalt Therapy
Sylvia Fleming
Crocker,
Ph D
with an introduct ion by
judi th R Brown and
George
I Brown
and an
editor s
foreword
by
Deborah Ullman
Gestalt
Institute
of
leveland
Press
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COPYRIGHT 1
999
by GestaltPress
Excerpts from J
Fagan
and I Shepherd Gestalt Therapy Now and F Perls,
P
Hefferline and
P
Goodman Gestalt Therapy: excitement and Growth in
the Human Personality used
by
permission.
A version
of
Essay IV Opposing Paradigms in Gestalt Therapy and
Psychoanalysis appeared
in
Gestalt Review V2:4, 1998.
All rights reserved
Published
by
GestaltPress
127 Abby Court
Santa Cruz, CA 9 5062
and
165
Rt 6A
Orleans, MA
02653
Distributed by The Analytic Press, Inc., Mahwah, NJ
ISBN 0 881
63 319 4
Cover y Saphire Graphic Design
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For Helen who believed in me long
before I could believe in myself.
For George and
Judith
who generously
encouraged and supported me from the
beginning of my life as a Gestalt therapist.
For my daughters Sarah and Trena whose
lives show
that
generations
of
shaming
and hurt can be brought to an end.
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A WELL-LIVED LIFE
Essays in Gestalt Therapy
CONTENTS
FOREWORD by Deborah Ullman
INTRODUCTION by Judith nd George rown
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
PROLOGUE
PART ONE: AN APPROACH TO HUMAN CHANGE
v
1
5
Essay
:
The Unity
o
Theory and Method in Gestalt Therapy
16
An Overview of Gestalt Therapy 16
The Human Organism 20
The biological field
21
Theory of the organism
21
Contact 22
Whole-making 24
Goal-seeking behavior 25
The Methods
o Gestalt Therapy 26
The therapeutic relationship 26
The experiment 29
Awareness work 30
Strategic: Experience Cycle vs self-function
analysis o contact 31
Tactical: Phenomenology o therapist client 32
Amplification, exaggeration, and refraction 34
Therapeutic role-playing 35
Homework 39
Working with cognition 39
The wider field: couples, families, groups,
education, organizations 42
Conclusion
43
Essay
II:
Processes o Contact--A Dynamic Model o the Self 44
Introduction 44
Self-functions 48
Interested excitement function
51
Decision-making function 54
Choosing function 56
Whole-making or synthesizing function
61
Habit-formation function 65
Contact-and-withdrawal function 67
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The six-function model as a diagnostic tool 7
Essay III: Functional and Dysfunctional Processes of Contact 73
Introduction 73
A case example--Adam and Martha 77
~ ~ ~
~
~ ~
~
Confluence
88
Transference 89
Retroflection 93
Egotism 94
Proflection
96
Deflection IOO
Conclusions about contact distortions 102
The broader perspective: the double focus of the Gestalt
therapy process 106
PART TWO: THE PHILOSOPHICAL GROUND
Essay
IV:
Opposing Paradigms [Aristotelian vs Platonic] in
Gestalt Therapy and Psychoanalysis. 110
Introduction
II
0
Contrasting visions of what is real 115
Aristotle's analytical tools for understanding wholeness and
processes
of
change . I19
Three Platonic philosophical problems 125
The mind-body problem 125
The problem
of
knowing the unique individual 134
Knowing and acting 144
Conclusion 159
Essay
V:
Foundations
of
the Concept
of
the Self'' 162
Introduction 162
Psyche, soul, and self
63
The self as the system of contacts in a difficult field and as
the agent of growth. 167
Agency, continuity through time, organic wholeness,
affectivity, and I 175
Agency 8
Temporal Continuity or Identity Through Change
~
Self-Coherence 185
Self-Affectivity 187
1 --Foundation of Its Meaning 192
The need for a theory of human development 192
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Essay VI: All There Is,
Is
Now--A Gestalt Theory of
Human Nature 194
Introduction 194
How
are processes of contact possible? 195
Field theory 202
Fractals and holograms 209
The pervasiveness
of
process 212
Personal self-knowledge 215
Knowledge of the individuals and the therapeutic task 216
PART THREE: HUMAN MATURITY AND FULALLMENT
Essay
VII:
A Well-Lived Life--A Gestalt Perspective 220
Introduction 220
Personallife 220
f butterllies and paradoxes ·222
Growing through paradoxes 227
What is psychological health? 233
The nature of authenticity 241
The individual as clear figure 246
The fulfilled self--maturing the foundations 255
Essay VIII: Meetings of Persons--Reflections on Authentic
Relationships 256
Introduction 256
The moral life
261
Friendship 274
Patterns of effective communication 282
Conflict Situations 286
Getting Needs and Desires Met 288
Mfinnation and Praise 288
Thanking and Acknowledging 289
Being Heard and Listening 290
Intimate relationships 294
Presence 298
Conmnttnent 300
Welcoming the self-revelation of the other 301
Intimate relationships in the broader field 306
Intimacy in Gestalt therapy 307
The place of
intimacy in human life 308
3ssay IX: ''The Spiritual Dimension of Gestalt Therapy 309
Introduction 309
Several meanings of human spirituality and
the spiritual 309
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A phenomenology
o
the spiritual -- the experience
o
mystery 311
The central role of spirituality
in
Gestalt theory and practice 320
The Jo-Hari window 322
The Jo-Hari window-Syl 322
Apotheosis: honoring the mystery
in
everyday life 328
PARTFOUR: BEYONDTHE20THCENTURY
Essay
X:
The Strengths of Gestalt Therapy as a New
Paradigm 337
Introduction 337
Gestalt therapy's theory as field-theoretical and holistic 338
Evaluation
as
a scientific theory 340
Scope 340
Consistency 342
Parsimony 343
Fruitfulness 344
Evaluation
as
a clinical theory 347
Healthy and unhealthy functioning and their conditions 347
Therapeutic fruitfulness
3 50
The coming synthesis 353
EPILOGUE 358
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
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oreword
0h, it's you
S.C.
Crocker, 999
How hungry I always am when offered a plate of
discourse
on
Gestalt ideas, theory, philosophy, methodology,
the works. What a satisfying experience this has been, to work
with Dr. Sylvia Fleming Crocker on this book, A Well-lived
Life: ssays in Gestalt Therapy.
Gestalt therapy is both an interactive experiential art
and
a richly fertile philosophical
and
theoretical school of
thought. These are, of course, not inherently contradictory
characteristics. Just as a holistic perspective supports a life
of integrated affect and cognition, body, heart, mind and soul,
so a particular therapist may well be of artistic and
philosophical temperament. Clearly Gestalt is attractive to
highly intuitive, imaginative, artistic people and to lovers of
the intellect as well, deep thinking folks looking for a way to
understand
human
potential that offers
us
hope for the future
of the
human
race. All
of
us
know
these aspects
of ourselves,
the artist and the intellectual, the risk-taking spontaneous
part
·and
the sound thinking truth-seeker.
The book you are holding, A Well-Lived Life ssays in
Gestalt Therapy by Sylvia Fleming Crocker will carry you
across these
polarities from Aristotle's insights about
happiness, right up to reflections on how people actually
change, moment to moment, in the course of therapy. What
makes this trip pleasurable and worthwhile, what allows us
to
move
from Kierkegaard s notions
on
existence to Daniel
Stern's or
Paul
Goodman s premises about the relational self,
is
that Sylvia Crocker's irrepressibly enthusiastic voice
is
right there with us, guiding our every footfall.
s
she offers
examples
from both her life and
her
therapeutic practice,
you
get to know this for thr ight fireball of a deep thinking
homespun
woman
as if she were a favorite cousin. More
personal than
an
on-line chat room, A Well-Lived Life is at
times as comfortable as a porch swing visit over a
glass
of
lemonade,
at times, as sputteringly frustrating as
an
argument
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that challenges beliefs you have gone to
ed
with and gotten
up
with every day of your thinking life.
Here are reflections on existentialism, Platonian
idealism,
how
to work with a couple
in
a failing marriage,
Kant's imperative, Heidegger's phenomenology, new contact
resistances or processes, one therapist's approach to a client's
living struggle with unfinished business,
and
the spiritual
nature
of
a well-lived life.
Laura Perls said The basic concepts
of
Gestalt therapy
are
philosophical and aesthetic rather than technical
1992). Given this assertion
by one
of Gestalt therapy's
founders, how appropriate that this comprehensive collection
of reflections
on
Gestalt theory,
and
discourse
on
Gestalt
therapy's methods, should be offered to us by Dr. Crocker, a
philosophy professor who has studied interior design. The
layout and arrangement
of
ideas are comfortable and inspiring.
While the terrain she covers is vast, she
takes
us into
unexplored crevises in the bedrock of Gestalt theory with the
assurance and
attention to detail of a naturalist leading a guided
tour. Thus
she
brings in Aristotle
and
Husser , C.S. Lewis
and
Suber, all distilled through her fine mind,
engaged
with and
brought
to
life
on
the
pages
of her book.
Those of us
in
the Gestalt community
who
have been
gathering at conferences over the years have grown to expect
a thoughtful, often stimulating, exchange when
we
see Sylvia
Crocker.
Now
we can carry her inexhaustable self
home
with
us in
this idea-packed volume.
Editing Sylvia's collection of
essays has
been
an
ambitious undertaking for me. As a bohemian bodyworker with
a background
in
broadcasting
and
a
home
on
Cape
Cod.
I found a
different sort
of
home in Gestalt ideas back
in
1983. This
was
when
Margaret Pat Korb introduced me to Gestalt
down
in
Gainesville, Florida.
From
that time I immersed myself in
Gestalt training groups, also reading everything I could find on
Gestalt theory, existentialism and phenomenology. Since then I
have undertaken two training programs at the Gestalt Institute
of Cleveland, and
have been working as
an
associate editor with
GIC Press.
All of this
has
served well to prepare
me
for
engaging
with Sylvia Cocker
on
shaping her illustrious
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treatise into the book
you are now about
to read.
The
project
has
been an exercise in cultivating skillful means observing
disparate contact styles embracing difference with radical
respect
and
developing friendship through long-distance
communication. humility contact styles diplomacy and long
distance communication. In part these dynamics are
characteristic
of
the author-editor relationship qualities of
this particular kind of field: the author hands over her
ambitious tour-de-force; the editor reacts and interacts
according
to
what
she
finds satisfying or confusing
as
a reader.
Here are conditions for a lively sometimes dicey relationship.
The
dynamics of this specific project led like all gcxxi contact
experience to meaningful reconsideration while not always
agreement
on
both sides.
Sylvia Crocker
does
not ask
us
to agree with her.
Rather
she
insists that we listen to and consider
how
she
arrived
at
her points
of
view and that
we
search our own minds
and
hearts for our reading on the subject.
This
is after all
what we as Gestalt therapists
c and
see
in
our lives and
practices:
we
listen; notice what is novel or incongruous
here; assimilate for ourselves and support our clients.
We
throw out what
is
not helpful
and
re-orient ourselves
and
our
clients based on our new understanding. With awareness
we
explore how this new position feels and readjust our ideas and
feelings to the now different circumstances or field
we
coinhabit after going through this ongoing life process. Here is
a fresh look at how
we cb
what
we cb
and how our theory of
human nature relates to certain leading thinkers of Eastern
and Western civilization.
We
are as
a culture hungry for wise women leaders
today. t is time for more vocal spokeswomen in
the
Gestalt
community. There
was
of
course Laura Perls in the original
New
York study group.
Even
before that
she was
there with
Fritz or Frederick hashing out the ideas for go Hunger and
Agression identified
as
the earliest sketch for and precurser
to Gestalt therapy.
Long
after all that Laura was training
and
touching people in New York and Cleveland and all over the
world.
Then
there were Sonia March Nevis and Miriam
Polster Irma Shepherd Rennie Fantz Judith Brown and
others -- all valued by those lucky
enough
to have trained or
iii
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done personal therapy work with them, or who encountered
them at conference workshops, even
found
their relatively
scarce writings. My
own
teacher, Pat Korb, co-authored a
popular Gestalt text,
Gestalt Therapy Practice
nd
Theory
(1980,
1989). More recently Lynn Jacobs, Carolyn
Leukensmeyer, Iris Fodor, Penny Backman, Ruella Frank,
Mary Ann Kraus,
Frances
Baker and Dorothy Siminovitch are a
few
of a newer generation of esteemed trainers whose voices
are being heard as original-thinking Gestalt women.
nd
here is Sylvia Fleming Crocker, philosopher,
rugged theoretical scholar, Wyoming's 'country preacher' of
Gestalt, mother of two brides-to-be, and needlepoint
craftsperson extraordinaire.
Yes, she
seems
to e telling
us,
we c
change
by
becoming
who we
are and
look
who I turn out to
be
There is
something so innocent and excited
and
exciting about Sylvia's
personal voice in this book. She is, at
once,
authoritative and
curious.
One
aspect
of
the book's magic
is
that sense of amazed
identification. "Oh, I see you." "Ah, you're like me." "I
know that experience." "We've been here together before,
right?" "This feels like an ancient re-enactment." A Well-
Lived Life
is
all new, at once lofty
and
evocative, yet
down-to
Earth, somehow familiar.
"Oh,
it s
you " Sylvia Crocker exclaims " ...
n an
unexpected face-to-face meeting with a deer in
the
woods
...
",
describing that uncanny feel of a dimension of life which
cannot, ultimately, be understood ... " "Oh, it's you" we find
ourselves feeling as we "honor the mystery"
in
our common
experiences,
he·ar
old fellows from other
eras
conjured
up
as
Gestaltists in disguise. Open yourself to her
book
and your
adventure with Sylvia Crocker may reveal that quality of
at
homeness in new and wonderful
ways.
And most
of
all, enjoy-
you're
in
for a fascinating trip
Deborah Ullman
Orleans, MA. March, 1
999
v
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INTRODUCTION
To read this book is to be in touch with--and touched by
--an original thinker, a serious scholar who has made an
exhaustive study of philosophy, psychology and the theory and
practice of Gestalt therapy. You will read exquisite prose,
always clear, no matter how complex the ideas presented. While
I (Judith) was sitting with the manuscript beside me, divided as
it was into separate essays, a friend stopped
by.
She picked up
the one I had been reading and began looking at it.
ter
a
couple of minutes she remarked: "Each sentence is wonderful
She has managed to write what it's all about so well, so
succinctly. You want to savor both the writing and the thoughts.
It's not rhetoric, it's poetics."
I found that once I (Judith) began to read the manuscript
I was caught. If I had thought I would simply skim through the
essays and thus be motivated to write an introduction I soon
discovered dipping in and out was not enough for me. Crocker
drew me in and kept me totally engaged. I read the entire work
intently. She carried me along farther and deeper than I had ever
thought I wanted to go. For those who want to sample the
expertise of Sylvia Crocker, begin with Essay IV to appreciate
how she portrays the solid philosophical foundations that
support Gestalt theory and practice. Or just start with Essay I
and proceed on a different kind
of
Gestalt adventure, where you
will encounter a prodigious resource of knowledge, wisdom,
and evocative ideas to examine and reflect on.
For many years after the death of Fritz Perls in 1970,
there were few additions to already existent books authored by
Perls on theory and methods of Gestalt therapy. Among the
exceptions were Latner ( 1973) and Polster and Polster (
1973
.
Perls, Hefferline and Goodman had authored the volume that
many have considered foundational, Gestalt Therapy:
Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality published
in 1951. From the few small centers of Gestalt therapy in New
York, Cleveland, Florida and California more and more seeds of
this new approach dispersed over time and took root. Institutes
were established in the United States, Europe, South America,
and Australia. In the mid-seventies the first English-language
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Gestalt Journal was created; later from Buenos Aires
to
Moscow, in numerous places, in various languages, others came
into being. In the last decade ever-growing numbers o people,
enriched by their own experiences with the Gestalt approach,
have been inspired to write books covering various aspects of
theory and practice, resulting in a large and still growing
collection of Gestalt publications. Yet there has been a huge gap
in the literature, that Crocker undertook to fill. She states:
When I set out
to
write this book my intention was to present
the theory o Gestalt therapy in its full scope and elegance, and
to show how the methods o Gestalt therapy come directly out of
the theory. This is something no one had yet done. ow we
have a definitive book, eminently readable and engaging,
the
capstone in the growing library of theory and practice.
In his preface to Ego Hunger and Aggression (1947),
Perls presented his early formulations of what would become
Gestalt therapy as a contribution to organismic (psychosomatic)
medicine (1992:xiv). In this same preface he makes
disparaging remarks about rigid, static convictions rather than
elastic theories which must be examined and re-examined.
Laura Perls, in the collection
o
her talks and articles,
Living at
the Boundary (1992), spelled out and described what Gestalt
therapy was for her and how she used all aspects of herself to
facilitate and support the contact functions of her clients. She
also expressed fear that the theory
o
Gestalt therapy could
become what she referred to as a fixed gestalt. She wrote the
dry sorting-out and summarizing o the Gestalt experience into
the pigeonholes labeled Theory, Techniques, Amplifications,
and Expectations o
Accomplishment is entirely out
o
tune with
the holistic and organismic philosophy o Gestalt ( 1992: 130)
With a full half century under its belt, the growing
up
and maturing of Gestalt therapy must be acknowledged. The
freshness and integrity o the early writings must not be lost.
Nor can we forget their cautions. We perceive that Crocker
makes explicit what has been implicit in Gestalt therapy since its
inception. She has devoted herself to, and brought to
completion, the enormous task of placing Gestalt Therapy in the
world, not geographically but philosophically. Accepted and
widely used
as
this approach is now, it is fitting that it is
provided, by way
o
this book, with a substructure on which it
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can remain elastic and be examined and re-examined. .
As we read Crocker
we
are reminded of Darwin's
famous explorations in Central nd South America. Along with
all his other collections of flora and fauna,
he
cut square-foot
samples of jungle soil, examined them millimeter by millimeter,
organism by organism, categorized them and fit them into a
biological system. Crocker does an equally fastidious jo of
leaving no assumption, definition, concept, or principle
unanalyzed. She dissects, unravels, and in true Gestalt fashion,
chews up, thoroughly digests, and then with clarity and
conviction, creates an organized whole. For example,
if
one
were to collect a random sample of the methods used by Gestalt
therapists, yes, even the most creative, spur-of-the-moment
interventions, one would see
how
each, in its context, is
grounded in the elegant and comprehensive framework which
Crocker sets forth.
Not only does she lay out the bits and pieces she digs up
from what has been a primary source
of
Gestalt theory, the
Perls, Hefferline and Goodman book, she boldly expands and
makes more meaningful and whole what she finds there. The
topic of the ''self-functions serves as a fine illustration. She
considers Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman's designation
of
the
functions of the self, i.e. id, ego, and personality, as inadequate.
In her intensive examination and reflection
on
what real live,
people actually
do
in the process of living and interacting with
their environment-- including other people, of course--she
broadens and deepens the issue, formulating six self-functions
in her model of the self and explicating how each affects the
others. The usefulness, she claims, is two-fold: first to extend
Gestalt therapy's theory of the self and, second, to provide a
diagnostic tool which will aid the Gestalt therapist in the process
of therapy.
The book is full of such nuggests for those of us who
practice Gestalt, and for those who just think about it. Each
reader will have a journey of discovery. She can in a single
sentence eludicate an idea. In
ll
the years we have been
working in different cultures we have found the concept
resentment one of the most difficult to communicate. Some
languages do not have n equivalent meaning. Crocker solves
the problem in fifteen words: Resentment is the natural
emotional response to a situation which is viewed as being
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unfair." Easily translatable and understood
by
all
Another nugget has to
do
with meaning and meaning
making in the Gestalt process. Until now, in Gestalt we have
described the role of the mind not only as negative, being a
principal source of interrupting process, but also in healthy·
functioning contributing to making meaning out of our
experience. Whether the meaning-making occurs through the
guidance
o
the therapist or more desirably
by
the client
independently, how this occurs has not been clear. Fritz Perls'
definition o learning as discovering that something is possible,
is a way o framing the meaning making-process. Crocker
delves into this issue and makes significant contributions. She
replaces meaning-making with "wholemaking" and states,
"Wholemaking is central to all contact process." And further,
"The wholemaking function
o
the self is the ability ...
to
make
wholes out o the data of experience. This function has been
largely neglected in the theory
o
Gestalt therapy, in spite of the
fact that it was the primary focus of the Gestalt psychologists.
n actual fact it informs the very nature o human experience,
and impacts all o the selfs functions."
The author
o
this book has assumed the task
o
writing
a series
o
essays that embrace all aspects of being human. Her
opening question, "What is Gestalt therapy?" is the gateway to
discussions far more encompassing than one might imagine
obligatory to answer this question. Yet how can one answer the
question, "What is Gestalt Therapy" without seriously and
meaningfully making clear and specific the nature· of being
human? What is the human experience? How do people learn
and change? What is the character o human relationships? She
works her way in and out, above and below, and around and
through these issues. Yet she always comes back to a central
point: Gestalt therapy is a phenomenological perspective. She
writes, "As we approach the concrete individual we can perceive
that person not only as a representative o humankind, but we
are able also to clothe that abstract understanding with the unique
particulars o that specific person."
Crocker describes Gestalt therapy as a new paradigm.
This is a bold statement for one who surely knows and grasps
the meaning
o
this much over-used word. She asserts "it
involves a distinctive way o looking at things and events in the
actual, everyday world--it casts fresh light on whatever is
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viewed through its lens.
Crocker's work is grounded, not in secondary sources,
or what someone else has said or interpreted about Plato,
Aristotle, Perls, Goodman, or Kant, but always from her own
understandings emanating directly from her contact and
reflections upon the original materials. She clearly has a passion
for learning and has spent her years reading and deeply
exploring literature and a number o disciplines. She can soar
into the ether o philosophy and also appropriately ground her
ideas in what are easily recognized as the experiences of real
people living their lives. At times she shares with the reader her
experiences; even when they are not labeled as such, she
emerges as a down-to-earth person who knows life first-hand.
One o her illustrations of n experience o ecstasy is seeing
one's infant's first smile that comes unexpected, unbidden.
In the final sentence of her impressive essay, The
Foundations o the Concept of the Self'', Crocker states, If
such a theory is to have 'the ring o truth' it must be developed
within a philosophical framework which is non-reductionistic,
one which is compatible with the current movements in science,
and which is recognizable in everyday life. Without reservation
this description holds true for her treatment of the theory and
method
o Gestalt therapy throughout this book.
This is a seminal book. It should be required reading,
not only for those in training in Gestalt therapy but also for
experienced practitioners in Gestalt and other approaches. This
is the book on what Gestalt therapy is, and what it is not, and on
what principles it is based.
Judith and George Brown
Santa Barbara, California
July, 1998
Judith Brown is a Gestalt therapist and trainer, and the author o
Back to the Beanstalk
and he
I in Science.
George I Brown
is Professor Emeritus o the University o California, Santa
Barbara, Gestalt trainer, and author
o Human Teaching for
Human Learning: n Introduction to Confluent pducation
and The Live Classroom
and with Uri Merry
The Neurotic
Behavior
of
Organizations.
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Author s
reface
AUTHOR S PREFACE
In Appreciation
Many teachers, friends, and colleagues have read and
commented on the manuscript
o
this book. All have expressed
enthusiasm for the project and have offered support and
encouragement. Most have made a number
o
helpful
suggestions. Joseph Melnick praised the book
in
an early form
and gave me a number o good ideas for revision. Judith Brown
read the entire first draft. giving numerous detailed suggestions
about both content and style. George
I
Brown. a primary
supporter throughout my career as a Gestalt therapist.
encouraged me to write the book and praised the result. t was.
incidentally, George Brown who first organized the Association
for the Advancement o Gestalt Therapy's Theory Development
Committee t the 1990 Gestalt Journal Conference in Boston.
and put my name forward as the Committee's first chair. Erving
Polster and Miriam Polster each read parts o the revised
manuscript and engaged me in several stimulating dialogues on
specific issues. Robert Harman gave a helpful critical reading o
most
o
the essays as I wrote them, while Edward W.L. Smith
expressed enthusiastic support after he read one o the early
drafts o the whole manuscript. My friendship with Richard
Kitzler over the years has also been important to me. The
recurrent discussions I had with him about various parts
o
the
book, his appreciation
o
the project as a whole, and his
encouragement not to let anyone or anything stop me from
writing the book, were enduring sources
o
support throughout
the writing process. Les Greenberg read a later draft
o
the
manuscript and gave me some helpful ideas for reorganizing the
essays into a more reader-friendly form. A number
o
others
have also had positive reactions to the book. Among them are:
Rachel Brier
o
the Gestalt Institute
o
the Berkshires, Felicia
Carroll o the Violet Oaklander Institute, Gertrude Harrow o the
.Gestalt Institute o Los Angeles, Sylvie Schoch de Neuforn o
the Gestalt Institute
o
Paris, Zish Ziembinski
o
the Gestalt
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Author s Preface
Institute
o
Perth, Australia, and Rosemarie Wulf
o
Berlin.
I want to express
my
appreciation
to
Gordon Wheeler
who, as Editor in Chief of GIC Press, oversaw the entire
process--from conception to publication--of this book. Thanks
to
Gordon also for handling the overall revision o "Opposing
Paradigms in Gestalt Therapy and Psychoanalysis" and "The
Spiritual Dimension o Gestalt Therapy." His suggestions
improved the quality o both essays. I am grateful also to Edwin
Nevis who, in addition to supporting the publication of the
book, made a number of helpful suggestions for improving
"Opposing Paradigms in Gestalt Therapy and Psychoanalysis."
Others have helped me with specific essays. Pat Korb served as
editor
o
the essays "Foundations
o
the Concept of the Self''
and "All There Is, Is Now--A Gestalt Theory
o
Human
Nature." Paul Shane edited the essay A Well-Lived Life--A
Gestalt Perspective." Judith Brown guided the revision of the
essays "Meetings
o
Persons: Reflections on Authentic
Relationships" and "The Strengths of Gestalt Therapy as a
New
Paradigm." Many thanks to Judith for her efforts, both early
and late. Thanks also to Mariam Wheeler Gates for her skillful
copy editing and her enthusiasm for the text--and for suggesting
that the best title for this book is A Well-lived Life. I owe a
special debt of gratitude to Deborah Ullman, who served as the
overall project director and who personally edited "The Unity o
Theory and Methods
in
Gestalt Therapy," "Processes o
Contact--A Dynamic Model of the Self," and "Functional and
Dysfunctional Processes o Contact." In addition, Deborah not
only facilitated my making good use of the editors who were in
charge o the other specific essays, she shared her good
judgment with me all along· the way. Over the period o many
months, Deborah gave me not only support and encouragement,
she gave the book project great quantities o time which she
could scarcely spare. Any thanks I can express pale alongside
the gratitude I feel for the help she freely gave
I also want to
express
my
appreciation to the trainers and
my
fellow trainees at the Gestalt Therapy Institute of Los
Angeles--both in Los Angeles and at the European Summer
Residential Workshops--for the overall learning, the processes
of personal therapy, and the ongoing stimulation which being
with them over a period o years has given me. In particular, I
want to thank Gertrude Harrow for her generosity to me as my
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Autlwr s Preface
personal therapist, mentor, and friend.
Several friends have been especially important as sources
o
personal support. Each in his or her own way has also
helped in the "birth" of this collection o essays. I am grateful
to
Betty King for helping me find my way into the field of Gestalt.
therapy, and for offering me many years
o
friendship and
support. Pat McGinley, a former counselor t the University o
Wyoming, has been
my
sounding board and partner in dialogue
on
numerous topics in the field o counseling and Gestalt
therapy for nearly two decades. Richard Pasewark, the former
head of the Department
o Psychology at the University of
Wyoming, offered me friendship and intellectual stimulation for
many of the years he lived in Laramie. Helen Butler, who has
been my friend ever since we met at Stephens College over four
decades ago, listened with saint-like patience as I thought
through each essay aloud in preparation for the writing itself.
Then she copyread every draft
o
every essay in the book,
making numerous helpful suggestions about style and clarity. In
addition to taking on the burden o a number of everyday tasks,
she very helpfully made numerous trips to Kinko's and to the
Post Office to duplicate and mail one or more of the essays. All
o
her efforts and her personal support, as well as her
enthusiasm for the entire project have been invaluable.
It should be clear that, in many ways, the production of
this book has been a group effort. Many busy people have
given me their time as well as the benefit of their knowledge and
their critical judgment. In every case, the spirit o friendship and
helpfulness has infused ll o the interpersonal contact and has
kept me going throughout the entire writing and rewriting
process. I am aware that I have been greatly blessed
A Note on the Language
of
ender
At this time in our culture many o us who write continue
to struggle with finding a manner o expression which is as clear
and elegant as possible and, at the same time, is fully inclusive.
t is not yet possible
to
find a completely happy solution
to
this
problem. The constant repetition
o
such cumbersome usage as
"him or her," "his/her," "him-/herself" is unacceptable to me
s
a
writer. I have experimented with using the impersonal "they,"
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Author s reface
their, and themselves, but that seems contrived and
awkward, especially when applied to the individual person.
Therefore, I have arbitrarily decided
to
use, in most cases, the
masculine pronoun when referring
to
the general case and
to
use
the feminine pronoun when speaking
o
a therapist. Like
Gordon Wheeler (1998) I offer apologies to ll sides and have
hopes o better times in the language and in the culture (p.lO).
Until then we will have to settle for imperfect solutions to a
difficult problem.
Sylvia Fleming Crocker
July 1998
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Prologue
PROLOGU
Of Tortoises
and
ares
When Isadore From died in 1994 the "founding era" of
Gestalt therapy came to a close. All three of the original thinkers
of the Gestalt approach
to
psychotherapy had already died--Fritz
Perls
in
1970, Paul Goodman in 1972, and Laura Perls in 1990.
Although Isadore From was not a writer, he was a member of
the original study group led by Fritz and Laura in the 1950's and
60's. He also went, along with Fritz, Paul Goodman and Paul
Weisz, to Cleveland
to
train a group of therapists in the theory
and practice of Gestalt therapy. This group became the Gestalt
Institute of Cleveland. The early Gestalt community continued
to
grow and Fritz later went
to
California
to
give training
workshops and also collaborated there with Jim Simkin, another
of the premier trainers in Gestalt therapy. Laura Perls remained
in ew York City, training Gestalt therapists there and
elsewhere for the remainder
of
her life.
Since the publication in 1951 of
Gestalt Therapy
Excitement
and
Growth in the Human Personality
by Fritz
Perls, Ralph Hefferline, and Paul Goodman, Gestalt therapy
institutes have sprung up all over the United States, Canada, and
Europe (including countries which were formerly behind the
Iron Curtain), and in many places in Mexico, South America,
and Australia. Today there are thousands of practicing Gestalt
therapists. Yet in the United States Gestalt therapy appears
to
many people in the field of psychotherapy to have "passed on
by," and is even being entirely dropped from some recent
textbooks on types of psychotherapy
Gestalt therapy, however, has been like an underground
river, gathering strength and momentum
as
it has flowed
on
during the four and a half decades since the publication of the
Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman text. The "second" and "third
generation" of trainers have collectively trained thousands of
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Prologue
only by trained mental health practitioners but by individuals
who had merely learned
to
play with a bag of "Gestalt tricks".
There is no doubt that many people have abused Gestalt
methods for the sake of their own personal grandiosity, and that,
as with other models, some clients have been exploited by some
practitioners of Gestalt therapy. All
o
this, together with the
earlier and somewhat notorious "Gloria" film, in which Perls is
shown working with Gloria--a volunteer client with whom Carl
Rogers and Albert Ellis were also shown working--led a great
many people
to
think o Gestalt therapy as an intrinsically rude
and confrontational method, lacking in both gentleness and a
respect for clients, and practiced by people with questionable
moral standards. This is the negative legacy of Fritz Perls. The
impact of Perls
on
the history of Gestalt therapy is therefore a
mixed blessing. His positive legacy is, of course, more long
lasting, since without Perls Gestalt might never have been
developed. t must be pointed out, however, that without the
collaboration of Laura Perls, Fritz would probably not have been
able
to
conceptualize this new therapy properly, particularly in
the earlier text
Ego Hunger nd Aggression
(1969); and
without Paul Goodman, Perls would not have been able to give
the theory solid philosophical grounding and adequate
expression.
In some ways, Fritz was like the hare in the old story
o
the race between the tortoise and the hare, while Laura, Isadore
From, Jim Simkin, and many of the members
o
the New York
and Cleveland Institutes were more like the tortoise. As the
story goes, the hare and the tortoise begin the race together, the
tortoise plodding slowly along and the hare sporting his speed
and agility
by
hopping ll over the place,
on
and off the race
course. But as the hare becomes distracted by his narcissistic
exploits, the tortoise steadily moves on, never taking his mind
off the goal. The hare has all the temporary glory--but the
tortoise wins the race The point is that throughout the history
o Gestalt therapy there have been steady "tortoises" who have
plodded carefully along, seriously thinking through the
theoretical implications of the original theory of Gestalt therapy,
thereby expanding its methods to apply to an ever increasing
number o problems, populations, and institutions.
This process has gone on among a great number of the
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rologue
Gestalt trainers, and the developments in Gestalt theory and
practice have found expression in the writings of a very large
number o Gestalt therapists. Today there are dozens of books
in a number o languages by Gestalt writers on the subject of
Gestalt therapy, as well as a number of Gestalt journals in the
United States, England, continental Europe, and Australia. This
is the work of the tortoises o Gestalt therapy. Using the earlier
metaphor, this process has been like the river which has gone
underground, leaving only a shallow stream on the surface. But
in fact, this river s underground flow, having gained
momentum, has reemerged as a potentially powerful force
within the field of psychotherapy. As a result
o
the steady and
thoughtful work of Gestalt theorists and trainers since the early
1950 s, Gestalt therapy presents itself here at the end of the 20th
century as an approach to human change which is holistic and
thoroughly respectful of the individual human being. This
approach possesses a theory of great scope and scientific
sophistication, as well as methods which are preeminently
powerful and have a broad range of application.
The Intended udience For This Book
This book is intended, first of all, to be a clear,
comprehensive, and unified statement of the theory of Gestalt
therapy and its direct implications for clinical practice. During
the time I functioned as chair o the Theory Development
Committee of the Association for the Advancement o Gestalt
Therapy ( 1990-1996), I began to see that there was a growing
need for a comprehensive treatment of Gestalt therapy s theory
and methods. While the Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman text
( 1951) has endured. as the authoritative statement of the nature of
Gestalt therapy, it is a difficult book to understand. This is due
partly to Goodman s literary style, and partly to the fact that
Goodman himself seems not to have resolved some important
issues, (particularly questions concerning the nature o the self
and the nature and number of contact distortions). Moreover,
many of the arguments, especially in Part of the theoretical
volume, which are directed against psychoanalysis seem dated
and somewhat irrelevant, since the influence o psychoanalysis
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rologue
philosophy. Although I had been an existentialist since the mid
1950's, had never even heard
o
Gestalt therapy until the early
1970's, when sought the help o a psychiatrist in Riverside,
California. He said he was a "Gestalt therapist," which told me
nothing at the time. But as I began to understand what that
meant in the course
o
the therapy I was stricken with regret. I
realized that here was what amounted to an empirical application
o existentialist principles--if only I had known about it before
had gotten a Ph.D. in philosophy In my mind it was too late
and too overwhelming to contemplate starting another doctoral
program in clinical psychology. And since professional
philosophers seemed uninterested in existentialism, believed I
had somehow "missed my calling."
But what
was my
calling? I had resigned my tenure
track faculty position at Marquette University in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin to move with my family to California. y 1975 I had
resigned from California State College, San Bernardino, to
move again, this time to Wyoming where my husband and a
colleague had a too-good-to-pass-up opportunity to set up a
graduate program in resource economics at the University o
Wyoming in Laramie. Wyoming seemed like "the middle
o
nowhere." With almost no prospect
o
teaching philosophy
beyond a temporary position that first year, I wondered "where
to now?" Shortly after moving to Laramie I became friends with
Betty King, also a new person in town. We discovered that we
were both interested in Gestalt therapy. She told me that she had
attended a number
o
training workshops in Gestalt,
psychodrama, client centered therapy, and other humanistic
approaches to human behavior. Later she invited me to attend
some workshops in Gestalt and in psychodrama with her. By
that time had begun reading everything could find on the
subject of Gestalt therapy, not because I had any hope o ever
becoming a therapist, but simply because I was totally fascinated
by the subject. The workshops intensified my fascination. In
the spring o 1979 I was asked to make a presentation on Gestalt
therapy to the first year doctoral students in clinical psychology
at the University o Wyoming.
t
was then my husband
suggested that pursue serious training.
In the winter o 1980, with joy and excitement, set off
for the Gestalt Training Center
o
San Diego where I had the
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rologue
privilege of training with Miriam and Erving Polster. I found
the training to be so intensely stimulating that I wrote papers for
nine straight days after I returned. "Proflection" (1981) and
"Truth and Foolishness in the Gestalt 'Prayer"' (1983) were
among the several papers produced within that period. I had
written and published a number
of articles on other subjects in
the 1970's, but I had begun to think my writing days were over
since I was now going off on another path. I was surprised at
how readily ideas about Gestalt therapy came to me and that I
was actually able to write about process. I was also taken aback
by the positive reception these papers received, since I was so
new to the field and living in Wyoming--"the middle
of
nowhere." Gradually it dawned on me that perhaps I was
finding a new--maybe even my "real"--calling
Although Betty and I had facilitated several weekend
workshops before we studied with the Polsters, neither
of
us
had a practice at that time.
e
opened a modest practice in the
summer of 1980, after we had completed the first half of our
training. Since that time I have maintained a private practice
both in Laramie and in a cluster of small
ranching/mining/lumbering towns in a county about a hundred
miles west
of
there. My work in this rural area has given me
opportunities to work with a much greater variety of
populations, including children, than would have been possible
in
the university town.
In 1981, about a year after I finished my training with
the Polsters, I began working on a master's degree in counseling
at the University of Wyoming. This was to strengthen my
background in psychology and in counseling methods, to
prepare for a coming licensing law in Wyoming (there had been
none), and to establish my "legitimacy" as a therapist. Since the
early 1980's I have continued to write journal articles and to be a
presenter at a number of Gestalt conferences. In the 1990's I
received five years of intensive training at the Gestalt Therapy
Institute of Los Angeles, and attended five of that Institute's
Summer Residential workshops in various countries
in
Europe.
I was also among those Gestalt therapists at the Gestalt
Journal's Chicago conference in 1989 who met to establish the
organization which has come to be named the Association for the
Advancement of Gestalt Therapy (AAGT). I have served on that
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Prologue
organization's Executive Committee for a number o years and
for six years I was the chair of the Theory Development
Committee. In some ways, this book is a direct result of my
work as chair of that committee. But in a more comprehensive
way,
as
I look back in time, I realize that I began working on the
book in 1955.
In the fall
o
1955 I was taking an ethics course as part
of my philosophy major at the University o Missouri,
Columbia. One of the texts we read was Kierkegaard's Fear
and Trembling
(1954) which profoundly affected me
by
leading
me to understand the nature of faith as a relationship of trust,
and
to
contemplate what it means to live with ambiguity and to
act with incomplete knowledge. Some time later I "accidentally"
received William Barrett's Irrational Man (
1958 --1
had
forgotten to send
in
the card to a book club I belonged to. Those
two books changed my life I finally had the word that
explained to me why I had rebelled so often against rigid rules
and one-size-fits-all standards and policies: I discovered that I
was an
existentialist
Although I finished my undergraduate degree in
philosophy in 1957 I had always viewed it as preparation for my
intended study of comparative religion. During the two years in
the early 1950's that I was at Stephens College, in Columbia,
Missouri, I had taken a two-semester course in the history and
philosophy of oriental art to fulfill a requirement for
my
rt
major in interior design. I had been stunned
by
the depth
o
spirituality in Eastern religions and the similarities among the
world's major religions. Later I wanted to share with others,
through teaching, my understanding and my fascination with
these things. In the fall o 1957 I went off to Northwestern
University as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow to take a master's
degree in history and literature of religions, with a speciality in
Hinduism. However, it was the two courses in Old Testament
and the one in early church history, taken at Garrett Seminary on
the Northwestern campus, which most profoundly affected my
way of thinking. Studying the Old Testament further developed
in me the holistic mentality which is characteristic of both the
existentialist and the Hebraic minds. Then, in studying the
formation of the central doctrines o Christianity which were
expressed in the early creeds, I began to grasp the importance
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Prologue
and the difficulties
o
expressing lived experience through
concepts and language.
My
undergraduate study of aesthetics-
which stressed "art as expression" (Berndtson 1969)--as well as
Hans Lietzmann's 4-volume History o the Early hurch
(1953) increased
my
fascination and deepened
my
appreciation
of those who struggled in the early days o the Church to find
exactly the least untrue way to say what their experiences
meant. Ever since that time, I have been concerned with trying
to find "just the right way" to say what I think and feel: to
express my experience in the "least untrue way."
After a 10-month dash to my master's degree I was so
burned-out that I needed
to
take a couple of years off to work
and to consider what to do next. During that period o my life I
realized that I was better suited to a career o teaching
philosophy rather than religion, so I returned to the University
o
Missouri to work on a Ph.D. and to teach philosophy as a
graduate assistant. In the fall semester of 1960, a few weeks
after I finished a seminar on Aristotle, I had an electrifying
experience. I finally understood Aristotle from the standpoint of
his biological and process-oriented writings, and I realized that
for him "to be is to act, to have effects." I understood that
Aristotle's is an anti-materialist position: only the higher
functions explain morphology and/or subordinate living
processes. Looking back on that event, I was so excited I
imagine some people thought I had lost my mind Plato, Kant,
and Whitehead were the other figures from that period who
deeply influenced my thinking. To this list must be added
Donald Oliver's course in metaphysics which was taught as a
"theory
o
order" (see Oliver 1951).
t
taught me how to look at
a whole philosophical system as an attempt to give order to what
human beings think and experience, and somehow to shed light
on the relationships between and among "the one and the many."
Moreover, I learned from being married for twenty five years to
Tom Crocker, an economist, how to think like a micro
economist. This enabled me to see systems
in
motion," to
understand their kaleidoscopic movement, and to grasp the
central role played by choice in human systems and,
analogously, in all systems involving life forms. All of these
influences helped to shape the way I think and how I write.
Through all of this I remained an existentialist, and I
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rologue
believed I would finally have an opportunity to explore
existentialism
by
writing my dissertation on one of its major
figures and/or issues. But, alas, after a couple of years of
reading I could find nothing that captured my interest and
mobilized my
energies.
ter
a time of frustration I decided
to
read only works in philosophy which interested me, and so I
began
to
read widely in the general field. One day I took
up
a
collection of contemporary essays on the ontological argument
for God's existence, and suddenly I felt excited by certain
ontological and systems problems which
the
debate about the
argument raised in my mind. As a result, I wrote my
dissertation as a kind of applied exercise in the theory of
order. It proved to be a project which demanded that I learn
(under the benevolent lash
of
my major professor, r t h ~ r
Bemdtson) the kind
of
precision and rigor of expression which
lastingly informed my ability to write, and engendered my love
of it to this day.
As I began my dissertation I wondered what on earth this
had to do with existentialism. Had I passed up the chance to
really get into it at long last? But eventually I discovered that
what I learned through writing that dissertation strengthened
my
mental ability to understand a wide range of philosophical texts
and issues. And as I later taught a variety of courses in
philosophy, including courses in existentialism, I began to think
that nothing had been wasted in my education. But I was soon
shaken in that conviction by discovering Gestalt therapy. It
seemed then that most of my education had actually taken me
away from the place I discovered--perhaps too late--I wanted to
be. At the age of 40 I felt it was just too late to start over. But
then, a year and a half later, the door on my career as a teacher
of
philosophy began to close forever. What was I to do? Who
was
I?
What would become of me? Was all that work for
nothing?
I wrestled with these questions for three years. And
while I enjoyed the volunteer work I was doing during that
period, it did not answer my intensely existential questions.
Those answers came gradually as I began to take workshops in
Gestalt therapy and in psychodrama. But it was only as I
became a practicing Gestalt therapist and then began to write in
the field of Gestalt that my understanding
of
the answers to
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Prologue
those questions became an illumination. While I still
do
not
have complete answers,
I
now see that all of the elements of my
education--the training in philosophy and in world religions,
learning to grapple with difficult ideas and to express my
thoughts in writing, my training in Gestalt therapy and extensive
contact with other Gestalt therapists from all over the world-
have added up to one thing. And to this must be added the
profound impact of what I as a naive young girl from South
Carolina, learned at Stephens College about the value
of
being a
woman and the deep appreciation of ll of the arts I cultivated
there, including the immense value--to me as a person, a writer,
and a therapist--of having an internalized sense of design,
measure, balance, harmony, and proportion.
All of these learnings and the personal experiences I
have had--in therapy and in everyday life--have taken me on the
voyage
o
self discovery
which the writing of this book has
been. The exploration of how the many pieces in my life fit
together, and how the variety of elements in Gestalt therapy
make a consistent and elegant whole, has been a journey filled
with light and joy. For this
I
feel profound gratitude to the many
friends, teachers, and colleagues who have led, pushed, and
accompanied me along the way.
S.F.C.
6 98
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The Unity
of
Theory and Method in Gestalt Therapy
ssay I
THE UNITY OF THEORY
ND METHOD
in
gestalt therapy
n Overview of
Gestalt Therapy
The question most frequently put to Gestalt therapists is
What is Gestalt therapy? On the surface it might appear that
there are as many answers to this question as there are Gestalt
therapists, since how a given therapist does Gestalt therapy will
always bear the stamp of that therapist's own personality.
Nevertheless, in whatever ways Gestalt therapy
is
carried on the
therapist is guided by a basic point o view about human living
which is grounded in a well-developed theoretical structure. A
comprehensive answer to the question, What is Gestalt
therapy? would be incomplete, and perhaps misleading,
without an explication of that point o view and the fundamental
tenets o Gestalt therapy's theory. The first aim o this essay,
therefore, is
to
state as clearly and as succinctly as possible the
theoretical framework on which Gestalt therapy
is
based. Its
second aim is intimately connected to the first: to show how the
major methods used by Gestalt therapists come directly out o
the theory. A corollary o this is that whatever methods a
Gestalt therapist adopts from other therapeutic approaches will
be tailored
to
Gestalt purposes by being rethought in terms of
Gestalt theory.
Before giving a systematic answer to the question,
What is Gestalt therapy? , I will begin with the short answer I
give in relatively brief conversations. Gestalt therapy is a
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The Unity ofTheory and Method n Gestalt Therapy
holistic and interpersonal approach to human change.
explain that the German word
Gestalt
means: (
1
an organized
whole
whose organization makes it more than the sum of its
parts; and it also means (2) a
pattern.
Gestalt therapy draws on
both o
these meanings.
First, Gestalt therapists understand and work
therapeutically with their clients as persons who live
organismically in a number of inseparable and interpenetrating
dimensions, i.e. who--often simultaneously--live bodily,
cognitively, emotionally, purposively, aesthetically, spiritually,
interpersonally, socially, and economically. Thus we make no
real
distinction between mind, body, feelings, values, and
purposes. These are understood as interpenetrating aspects o
the living o the human organism, which constantly and
reciprocally influence each other. In the processes o Gestalt
therapy the therapist frequently works with all o
the dimensions
o
the client s life, often shuttling back and forth between
awareness o bodily sensations, emotional response, desires,
and cognitive assumptions. In this way clients come to a clearer
awareness o the many-layered responses which influence how
they feel and behave. Awareness
o
and experimentation with
these responses ultimately help our clients to have a greater
range o choice about
how
they live their lives.
Pattern, the second meaning of
Gestalt
is equally
important to the work
o
the Gestalt therapist. Gestalt therapy
is
a field theory, always taking as the basic unit o its focus the
field o the human organism-environment. No person can
be
understood in isolation from the environmental fields of which
that person is a member; therefore we take into account the
reciprocal influences between the individual and his family,
social and economic groups, intimate relationships, and the
relationship with the therapist. These complex sets of
relationships in which the client lives, together with his own
peculiar internal organization and temperament, determine and
are, therefore, the keys to understanding the recurrent patterns
of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral response which are
typical for a given individual. As the client comes to see with
increasing clarity how he typically responds to recurrent
situations, and as he is able to discern the typical consequences
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The Unity
of heory
and Method in Gestalt Therapy
of these responses,
he
is
in
a better position
to
make a conscious
choice either to remain
as he
is, or to undertake a process of
change.
How
a person lives in the present
is
partly a function of
his own changing internal organization, and partly a function of
the fields of which he has been an element, both currently and
over the course of his lifetime. Therefore,
in
order to bring
about change, the therapist must help the person to reorganize
his inner life so that complex responses and cognitions will
become the ground of a more satisfying and fulfilling life, and
the therapist must help
to
bring about change
in
the current fields
in
which the client lives. Most of the time
the
therapist works
with the individual, indirectly altering
the
dynamics
o
the fields
in which the client lives by helping him to behave differently.
However, Gestalt therapists often directly influence the fields
themselves
by
working with couples, families, small and large
groups, and organizations.
The central fact of human life,
as
well as the lives
o
all
organisms, is
contact
understood as meetings of various kinds
with others. All life, of whatever form, occurs in cycles of
contact with others and withdrawal for rest, regeneration, and
assimilation. The human organism
as
a living whole or Gestalt
is always in an environmental context, with which
we
must
necessarily have ongoing commerce throughout the course of
our lives. The forms of contact are as complex and as
multifaceted as the full range of human experience, since all
experience is
the
result of various processes of contacting.
Through the evolutionary process, all organisms are wired for
effective and fulfilling contact with others in their environments.
To put the point another way, all organisms have evolved along
paths which have
given
them the powers necessary to grapple
with their environments in ways which allow them to survive,
and to achieve that mature state in which they can function in
ways which are normal and natural for the kind
o
organism they
are. Like every •)ther organism, human beings have a natural
capacity for self-regulation and adaptation to changing
circumstances. We are born with the innate capacity to be aware
of what
we
need for ourselves and to meet the demands the
environment makes on
us.
We are also innately equipped with
everything necessary to learn how to discover what the
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The Unity
of heory
and Method in estalt Therapy
possibilities are for meeting those needs, demands, and for
capitalizing on the opportunities that are available to
us
But this innate capacity requires a nurturing environment
for its development, and unfortunately, that kind of environment
is often missing. Yet, amazingly, human beings find ways to
adapt
to
all but the most defeating circumstances. Those
adaptive behaviors which permit a person to survive a
hostile/insulting/neglectful situation become second nature.
These behaviors are then carried into adult life as the typical
patterns which the person uses, usually without awareness, in
dealing with situations which are similar to--but significantly
different from--those for which they were adapted in the first
place. So, for example, a person whose needs were ignored or
punished
in
childhood may, in adult life, refuse to ask for help;
and even conceal and feel ashamed of ever needing help.
Further, the person may not even recognize it when it
is
offered.
This pattern obviously has a host of detrimental consequences
for the quality of a person's life.
In
health, and in the absence of danger, the processes of
contact (and withdrawal) go on relatively smoothly, while in
dysfunction all of this can be skewed and distorted. There is
thus the loss of a clear internal awareness of a person's own
needs and desires, and the frequent substitution of the needs and
desires of others in place of his own. Poor contact can also
come about from distorted and/or unrealistic perceptions of
the
environmental context. These skewd perceptions lead the
person to fail to appreciate the demands and/or the opportunities
of a situation where contact is to occur. The loss of either
external or internal clarity and responsiveness leads to
distortions in a person's subsequent perceptions; confusions
and conflicts about what
he
ought to do and what the
possibilities for doing it are; and loss of the sense of what his
own priorities are. Not only does this interfere with normal
decision-making processes, but once a decision is made, the
person often is unable or unwilling to act on that decision. The
loss
o
internal clarity and self-responsiveness, together with
inhospitable environmental conditions, leads a person to draw
distorted and erroneous conclusions about the world, other
people, and himself; these then have a limiting effect
on
his
ability to function. This combination also leads to behavioral