NOVEMBER ISSUE - IN AND OUT OF GESTALT THERAPY

GESTALT THERAPY AS A WAY OF LIFE

Fritz Perls

          IN AND OUT OF GESTALT THERAPY

Lately, I have been inspired by the late old master and principal founder of Gestalt Therapy Dr. Fritz Perls. His autobiography “In and Out of the Garbage Pail,” (1970) written and published by Bob Hall. It was his last book written about one year before his death. My own Gestalt teacher and Mentor Jorge Rosner, was a close friend of Fritz and spent many years with him at Esalen, CA. and Chicago. When Fritz was ill with pancreatic cancer, he made two major decisions: first to call his wife Laura in New York and second, he refused to stay in bed when the nurse ordered him to do so. He told the nurse: “I will not be told what to do!” then he stood up and then fell down and died. The year was 1970.

Re-reading his autobiography, I am inspired by his clear and direct way to express himself in the ‘here and now’. I want to write like he did – just starting with a short verse by Fritz:

“In and out the garbage pail

Put I my creation

Be it lively, be it stale

Sadness or elation”

Yet, he admits that he wants to impress, to show off…he wrote poetry as a young man in Berlin in 1934. I also want to ‘show off’ that I write poetry and even published a book and now am writing Haiku poems. A Japanese Haiku is written in only three lines but show the whole ‘gestalt’ - the full image in words to state the whole.

Fritz wrote in “verbatim” form, just as the words came out of his thinking without editing but letting the mind flow like a river. I am sitting at my writing desk and begin to let ‘the river flow’, just writing the sentences as they emerge from my thinking without rehearsing: “what to say?” More about Fritz:

Frtiz shifted from Freud to Existentialism. Like me, I stopped reading Freud’s books and entered the world of “BE HERE NOW” IN 1971. Most if not all of Freud’s discoveries as an analyst, became obsolete with the latest brain research and neuropsychology. Gestalt became a ‘cool’ therapy in my training years and continued into the 90’s and up to 2012.

I agree with Fritz that all theories and hypothesis are simply fantasies about how the world functions. Once they are verified and are applicable in actual practice, they become reality. All ideas are articles of faith (like all religions) and the same applies to my attitude towards Gestalt today.

As I experience the ‘gestalt world’ today, I see and feel that the field is becoming more and more an intellectual (mind) exercise in the training institutes and the courses look more and more like some sort of ‘brain washing’ of students learning Gestalt therapy. We are split between the experiential and experimental gestalt approach and the rules and theories that are written in books. Now this structured curriculum is called a “new wave of training” and a “contemporary/relational phenomenon” that is becoming more out of touch with the real world of practice. There is a kind of ‘no man’s land’ populated with strong forces that split self and otherness apart. We are split between the life healing, experiential and experimental process of being present and the requirements and rules to complete the ‘subject’ in order to receive a certificate. Creative encounter has no place in today’s gestalt training. Gestalt contact, relationship, physical touch is not on and forbidden and ethical rules mandate the therapy work not the person as a professional practitioner. As Fritz stated: “This intermediate, (I call programmed method) is populated with prejudices, complexes, catastrophic expectations, intellectual activity, perfectionism and mental jabbering, and words, words at all times”(p36).

Since gestalt therapy officially begun in New York and with the publication of the GESTALT book in 1951, we suddenly entered the world of a new, creative phenomenology. Fritz published an earlier book EGO, HUNGER AND AGGRESSION in South Africa (1942) but even he claims that it was only an attempt to ‘learn how to type’. He was not well received by the readers that were not impressed by the title and yet, the open-ended ‘dialogical’ text was a creative adjustment for Fritz and the beginnings of a new way of working with people.

Brisbane city

Now, it is 2015 and I have lived in Australia since 1978. Arrived on a cold month of July and reporting to my job at the University of Queensland, Department of Social Work. Soon I met a couple of psychiatrists that were very interested in Gestalt therapy and they had a private practice clinic in the city. I was offered a working space to conduct groups and thus the Brisbane Gestalt Institute was born. My friend and graduate in gestalt from the Toronto Gestalt Institute, Dr .James Oldham established an institute in Melbourne a year earlier.  We both were at the Toronto Institute under Jorge Rosner and Dr. Harvey Freedman as our teachers.

I am attempting to imitate Fritz’s style of writing – just flowing as the river with my words here. I am reflecting on the first gestalt training group in Brisbane and Jorge Rosner arrived here to run our training group. I called his style “the Rosnerian Gestalt” model. He came in January and about 30 students arrived at a residential facility. The program was simple and experiential. Morning body work, then small group work discussing theory, then Gestalt ‘hot seat’ work as established by Fritz at Esalen and more encounter group work.

On the last day, Jorge suggested we all take our clothing off and begin to examine our body as it is. This created a big fear and nervousness in the group. Jorge suggested that those who do not want to participate in this “body reading” exercise, may leave. No one left and we proceeded to volunteer to stand before the group – first, facing the group and then turnaround with the back to the group, on a side and front again. The group seriously studied the person and made comments about the body aspects that they saw and how the body shape is telling us a lot about the inner person. Jorge’s comments had a very uncanny accuracy revealing the inner person’s issues by looking at the body. He then mentioned his work with Eva Reich, daughter of Wilhelm Reich who was Fritz’s analyst during his studies in Germany. We learned to take risks to be alive and feel open to all the life experiences. In Australia the Gestalt movement was a joy of discovering that learning is possible. Creative learning. Whatever we did, it was full of fun and engagement. Our activities were not for purely economic reasons (marketing) but we were learning to shift ourselves from rigid cultural ethics to a new path: making a difference in the world.

I need to tell the Australian gestalt history because it developed as a special model of training and evolved into a wonderful community of institutes.

 ( Note: due to a request from Brian O'Neill I am deleting his rather complete account of the Gestalt in Australia and add my own personal account)

Here is a short history of Gestalt in Australia:

Last October was my birthday and I am aware that I am living now more than 70 years in Brisbane, Australia. I still love my life here and have a very full history myself. " Why Not?" was the word spoken by my Mentor Jorge Rosner.... "What is the worst that can happen"? I will now reflect on my history and how my contribution and that of others have made Gestalt therapy flower here:

The gestalt training centres – 1976 to 1980

In 1976, Don Diespecker, initiated ac ourse in gestalt therapy as part of a University of Wollongong psychology programme. In 1980, he established the Wollongong Gestalt Centre. When he left in 1984, to live in the Bellingen valley, Brian and Jenny O’Neill developed the Illawarra Gestalt centre and continued training students in the region.

Dr. James Oldham began offering Gestalt training to groups he formed in Melbourne. The Institute was  formed in 1979  In July of 1978, I, Yaro Starak arrived in Brisbane from from Toronto, Canada and began teaching social work at Queensland University; together with psychiatrist Barry Blicharski, Peter Mulholland and Patty Oliver, we established the Brisbane Gestalt Centre. Barry became my best friend and we continued to share training events when he moved to Sydney. 

In 1981, James Oldham developed the Gestalt Institute of Perth. WA. Early graduates, such as Zish Ziembinski and Richard Hester (Perth), joined the Institute as trainers in 1984 and were later joined by Claudia Rosenbach-Ziembinski from Germany.

 

 

After Barry retired to his land at Ulladula NSW in 1997, Rhonda Gibson-Long and Phillip Oldfield continued to manage the training at the Sydney Gestalt Centre  under the same name.

While these two institutes closed, others opened such as the Gestalt Practitioners Training Sydney (GPTS) in 2003. This institute was primarily founded by former faculty members and/or graduates of the Illawarra Gestalt Centre, under the direction of Michael Reed and Judy Leung. In 2009, the new directors became Ashleigh Woolridge and Maria Dolenc.

In 2006, Yaro Starak was invited to become the director of the new Terrigal Gestalt Institute (TGI), situated in NSW. It was initiated by a graduate of the Brisbane Institute, Tanya Field. Later, Dinah Buchanan became the next director. The Institute closed in 2013.

 

Theoretical contributions through books and articles

http://gestaltarttherapy.com/1/books_for_sale_585828.html

 The first book (published in Melbourne) was Risking Being Alive (Oldham, Key and Starak, 1981). This first Australian text includes numerous experiments. As the authors state in the introduction, gestalt therapy is not only working with clients but taking a risk to grow and change our lives.

Australian gestalt therapists have also contributed to the literature on gestalt therapy through several books written especially by therapists and teachers. I have contributed, along with others in Australia & New Zealand to tow major publications: GROUNDS FOR GESTALT AND MORE GROUNDS FOR GESTALT. Edited by Yaro Starak, Anne Macleane and Anna Bernett.

 

The Brisbane Gestalt Institute has four publications on a range of topics related to Gestalt therapy. “Risking Being Alive” by James Oldham, Yaro Starak & Tony Key, “Group Work Skills” by Yaro Starak and “The Princess and the Dragon” a manual for couples work in Gestalt therapy by Yaro Starak.

http://gestaltarttherapy.com/1/books_for_sale_585827.html

Finally, the Illawarra Gestalt Centre has made contributions to the theory, practice and training of gestalt therapists through articles, commentaries, book chapters and books. This has occurred in several interrelated fields, specifically in couple and family therapy, supervision and training, field theory and the development of community in gestalt therapy.

Gestalt Therapy associations and societies

The first large national conference for Experiential Psychotherapies, entitled Crossing Boundaries, was held at Queensland University in 1988. Hosted by the Brisbane Gestalt Institute. The major coordinators were Yaro Starak & Barry Blicharsky. The conference was attended by several hundred practitioners from around the country, many of whom were gestalt therapists. There were movements from this conference to establish ongoing professional bodies, such as an association of art therapists, however connecting gestalt therapists as an association was to take another decade.

This was at a time when gestalt therapy training was becoming standardized and accredited through GANZ. This created an ethos of measurable standards (competencies) in training therapists with the expectation that this should lead to measurable standards of efficacy. The move to join PACFA, an organisation that covered all therapies in Australia, begun a long road of demise of GANZ as a true representative of Gestalt Therapists.

This move to access academic requirements for higher education rushed several centres to gain higher education accreditation, and the tension begun between the experiential learning in gestalt therapy and the ‘neat boxes’ of academic regulators.
 

Future challenges in Australia:

I am not sure about the future - it is not yet here and the past is a nice way to recall and boast about my work and life. Fritz already stated that  "all theories and hypothesis are of value only if they fit the observable facts" - That is experience is the source of real knowledge. My observations and experience shows me that the challenges that face GANZ and the community it represents is in the NOW!. The future work of "gestaltists" is to show that academic work is good and also experiential work is good. Since even the most reliable observation is an abstraction, it is imperative to include all the elements: What is reliable observation, what is fantasy and what is evidence.

Market Forces and Accreditation

Changes in funding models by the Federal Government for mental health and couples and family therapy create a challenge for gestalt therapy, especially in its ability to maintain its uniqueness and difference while attending to forces in the wider field. In particular, there is a challenge to demonstrate evidence-based practice. So far, Directors of training have run after the academic accreditations and on the way they lost the soul of Gestalt as Fritz and his followers established. Many gestalt leaders are now 'managers' of paperwork to keep being accredited and at what cost? Many are showing anastrophic fantasies that more business will come as a result of accreditation. Many play roles and games in fantasy that create a mental chaos, self-torture and limitless wish needs. (Perls, 1970)

PACFA CEO secured a catastrophic fantasy when it was stated in a report:

"It would appear that unless GANZ and psychotherapy bodies such as the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA), can access such accreditation and government funding, then the market will ultimately direct people to services such as psychology instead".
That statement, for me, spelled the demise of Gestalt therapy and GANZ.

 

IN AND OUT OF GESTALT THERAPY - THE DEMISE OF GANZ.

                                          

I am sitting here and wandering: “what happened?” It seems that the ‘baby was thrown out along with the structural bath water”. The ‘cliché’ comes from an old story about bathing in the middle ages. On a Saturday night, the family took a bath in order to be clean for church on Sunday. Father went first then mother and then the kids (there were many of them) and somehow, as the water was getting more and more murky, the last one, a baby was thrown out with the dirty water. The family just could not see the baby there. So, I am looking at the whole Gestalt rush to get accreditation and student fee payment by governments and recognition as academic training. The whole community (Gestalt family) became blinded by the ‘requirements dirt’ and unknowingly threw out what Brian O'Neill indicated:

“It would seem clear that if gestalt therapy seeks to continue as psychotherapy practice in Australia, particularly with the support of the government funding being accessed by psychologists, it must either seek registration from government.”

No! It was not clear then nor is it now! Yet we all felt a fear of ‘dying’ as a community and as viable and strong therapy. The very SOUL that was Gestalt therapy is disappearing. I went to study Gestalt therapy as a young psychologist and social worker and felt that soul sense in every corner of the world where I met students and staff. As I am going out of the present community in Australia I want to share with you my reflections as they are in 2015. Comments are welcome:

Some time ago, as the director and the Brisbane Gestalt Institute (founded in 1979) I wrote a short discussion paper for the DOT (Directors of Training) meeting in 1990 entitled “IS THE SPIRIT OF GESTALT DYING?” my rationale to write this paper was based on my hearing words spoken by many participants at Gestalt conferences, student comments and training faculty that somehow the ‘spirit’ of what attracted us to learning and practicing gestalt therapy is no longer apparent. The ‘soul’ is going out and only the format or structure is still apparent.

Why is the spirit ‘dying’?

Sam Keen made a very good definition of the word spirit: “Spirit is the capacity to transcend the encapsulation (rigidity) of a persona-lity (mask) To transcend the roles and myths that inform the adult Ego….spirit is the realisation that we are embodied within a continuum, that we are alive only when a universal life-force flows through us like breath through lungs, like the wind through the forest.”(A Passionate Life, 1988).

Therefore, I am coming more and more to the sad realisation that GANZ, the Association of Gestalt Australia & New Zealand is on the brink of losing its soul or spirit quality. There seems to be a creeping invasion of the bureaucratic ‘virus’ where we experience from the outside a tyranny of ‘standardising’, ‘streamlining’, ‘equalising’, demanding ‘requirements’ and making the whole process a dead academic exercise. This invasive, rule oriented development is clearly leaving the ‘spirit’ or life-force of Gestalt out of the core of teaching and learning.

At this time, I want to highlight (only one example)this loss of Spirit in Gestalt as represented by GANZ. The story is my and my wife’s experience with the ‘management’ of our publication of a workshop we completed at the GANZ conference in 2014 entitled:” Gestalt Therapy and Art Therapy”. The editors of the GANZ journal asked all presenters to write a report about the workshop so it could be published in the Journal. The papers were spread out in two publications. My wife Gemma (co-presenter) and two participants at our workshop volunteered to contribute and the paper was submitted to the editor. The paper was to be published in April 2015.

After several ‘reviews’ of the paper by some unknown readers (no dialog here) the editor sent me a criticism and attached an old GANZ journal to look at the papers published. Here is the quote from the email dated Dec 30.

“I’ve copied you in to an email that lets you download the recent issue of the Journal that has several examples of presentations at the conference. I can see that you’ve made some changes, however your paper still falls short of describing what actually happened, including the structure and process of the workshop, instructions to participants, how SIDICAIR was used etc. – like you put in your submission. Have a look at the articles in the Journal”

This comment was a total surprise to all of us who wrote exactly what he is saying is missing. Perhaps he only read the GANZ conference proposal? So, we sent the paper to two senior Gestalt trainers and know editors of gestalt books and journals and received a very positive response with only a few corrections. In consultation with the contributors of the paper, we responded to the editor that we are confident that the paper is well written and we ask that the reader make comments when the paper is published. I received a reply that he is not publishing the paper as it stands.Thus, I have had the opportunity to experience directly this demise of spirit in Gestalt. There is a lot of 'pigeon-holing as to what must be done right.

The Gestalt Spirit almost dead!

“Gestalt therapy is a continually undergoing innovation and expansion in whatever direction is possible and with whatever means are available between the therapist and the patient in the actual therapeutic situation” L. Perls.(1992). Experiential work is the main ‘teacher’ of innovation and evidence based practice.

Gestalt as an innovative process is sadly declining by the ongoing evaporation of actual contact with the field and a certain ‘death’ of the Spirit that was the main energy driver in the early days of its founding by Fritz Perls, Laura Perls, The Polsters and many others. Now the so called ‘contemporary gestalt movement is dividing Gestalt into “originalists” and “relationalists” (D. Bloom, 2011).

The ‘new relationalists’ seem to feel that the ‘old originalists’ who propose a contact and dialogue is a turn away from Gestalt psychotherapy. They claim that the therapist is some sort of stage director proposing ‘role plays’ and experiments to the patient. While the ‘reraltionalist’ emphasises the importance of therapy with “compassion, kindness, wisdom, equanimity and humility”. (Yontef 2009). There seems to be a real fear of somehow ‘shaming’ the patient. No wonder that the current “Mindfulness” method is already entering the Gestalt practice as if to ‘calm down’ the fear of shaming. What is now being forgotten is the fact that Carl Rogers and Martin Buber pioneered the dialogical encounter with the Client-centred model and the I-Thou principle. To relegate them to the “originalist box” is to clearly become blinded to the essence of Soul in therapy.

The danger of ‘splitting hairs’.

The original search of gestalt therapy was to enhance the curios and the alive in the human soul. When I went to Esalen Institute just after Fritz Perls died, I was amazed at the multitude of human potential experiments there. We explored marathon groups, encounter groups, massage training, Psychodrama, bodywork, Rolfing, and so on. Today students enter a Master’s program and undertake a series of subjects like Awareness 102, Contact functions 203 and so on; finally a  presentation of a thesis on some research about Gestalt therapy. We are entering a field of a confused mental duality created by requirements and academic subjects. When Soul or Spirit is lost, the mind begins to structure dualities and anything that needs integration will not work. The whole is not there and when only the mind is at work, then confusion and theory and books explaining that confusion get the upper hand to no real effect.

In my own gestalt training, I was exploring the process of awareness, emotional release, body work, group therapy and was told to drop any books and not to read anything for a period of one year. As a young academic, I was shocked. How am I supposed to learn anything without the readings? I was told to do my personal work and learn by experience. Abraham Maslow was correct when he proposed the idea of Peak Experience. It makes a person healthy and alive and that process can help the person achieve Peak Experiences – in other words connect with Soul. Here, the books are useless.

To enable to heal the current split between the so called “Relationalists” and “Originalists” we need to come to the classic Gestalt encounter in dialogue with the two:

Relationalist: “I am humane, compassionate, humble and empathic”

Originalist: “Bull shit, you are totally in YOUR MIND. You just think and do not feel!

Relationalist: “As you speak, I feel hurt, ashamed”…

Originalist: “Transcend your mind set, enter into LOVE!”

Relationalist: “And what am I to do with Love”?

Originalist: “You must use that word to communicate with me. Love is an encounter with Spirit. It is not dual, it has no subject nor object. LOVE and SPIRIT are ONE!

Summary

To summarise this discussion, here is a quote from Dan Bloom, fellow of the NY Gestalt Institute:

“What could divide the NY Gestalt community (and others in the world) into “originalists” and “relationalists” is the defending the implicit relationality of basic Gestalt therapy theory and claim to have been trained to be relationally from the forming days of Gestalt therapy to those who style themselves as “course correctors”. Shifting Gestalt therapy away from the original ‘individualist’ model to a ‘dialogical’, relational Gestalt’. NONE are on the correct path. Life is not one or the other. Life is transcendental (both-and). Attempting to claim one aspect as the right or good one is a big mistake. Gestalt means WHOLE. We are not separate from Nature (Spirit) We ARE nature. It is absurd to claim that one mental set of beliefs is better, more contemporaneous’ than other.”(2011)

The Gestalt community does not need a new ‘split’. Over the past 30 years we had a plethora of splits. West Coast Gestalt vs East Coast Gestalt. Gestalt and other modalities, Gestalt and Mindfulness and so on. All this leads to more intellectual arguments at conferences but leaves students unimpressed.

Fritz Perls, Laura Perls, the Polsters, Zinker and many others may be defined as ‘originalists’ they are - in the sense that they were the original writers and contributors to the vast wisdom if Gestalt therapy. Yontef, Jacobs, Hycner and others may be defined as ‘relationalists’. However all have quoted and used the philosophy of Martin Buber: I-Thou vs I-It dynamics of human nature. We are all built on the previous creators of something new and then we add more to the “cauldron of knowledge”. Many concepts that were only experimental in the early days of Gestalt Therapy are now being more refined, more clarified and more explicit as well as researched over time. There is no need to split and separate and if separation happens (like in any relation), So, my advice is: do the right thing and place two chairs in front of each other and create a dialogue until integration happens.

That is the challenge!

“Mind is all your beliefs collected together.

 Openness means no-mind, openness means:

You put your mind aside and then you are

Ready to look into life again and again

In a new way – not with the old eyes”

OSHO

"Introjection and projection
Retroflection, oh behold
Will not suffer more neglection
Wishing to be called.

Jump out of the garbage pail
Have a conversation
That the reader can avail
Himself of your location"
F. Perls.