REFLECTIONS YARO - JANUARY & FEBRUARY – 2016.

 

 

  

I want to begin this new “reflections” paper with a poem I wrote at the time my teacher, Jorge Rosner died in Toronto, Canada.

SEVENTY-TWO AND BLIND

I am seventy-two and blind.

I know where I am, dear wife.

Where are you?

I know where I am, my dear daughters.

Where are you?

I know where I am, my dear friends.

Where are you?

I am seventy-two and blind.

I smell the fragrance of the flowers.

I know where I am.

Where are you?

I am seventy-two and blind.

I imagine the majesty of the trees.

I know where I am.

Where are you?

I am seventy-two and blind.

I can taste a good book.

I know where I am.

Where are you?

I can hear the children laughter.

I know where I am.

Where are you?

I am seventy-two and blind.

I experience the fullness of existence.

I know where I am…

Do you?

Jorge died on May 14^th 1994. This is a time, now, to celebrate the man who knew Fritz Perls and then developed the Toronto Gestalt Institute in Canada and was its director until the end of his life.

One interesting way to make Jorge ‘alive’ again is to offer to readers an interview he made in 1980’s

The interview is about Jorge and how he met Fritz, the major founder of Gestalt Therapy.* Dr. Charles Brodeur is the interviewer:

CHARLES: When did you first meet Fritz Perls?

JORGE: I met Fritz in 1966. I wanted to speak with him, but he obviously didn’t speak to strangers, so I made no attempt. We just passed each other. That was in California, at Esalen. Then my friends and I invited Fritz to give a seminar in Chicago. Fritz came to Chicago and we got together for the seminar. Mostly, I remember his fantastic timing, the sense he had of his audience.

When he finally started to work, he asked who wanted to work. Since I had never so-called “worked”, I didn’t know what the hell it was all about. It didn’t seem like a big deal, so I got up and worked.

CHARLES: Did that experience with Fritz hook you on Gestalt?

JORGE: No, I still wasn’t hooked after working. In fact, I didn’t know what I got out of it anyhow. It was a demonstration for the rest of the audience. Fritz asked me to attack him. I did the normal thing. I told him, “I don’t know you; how can I attack you or say something I don’t like about you?” He repeated the instruction. I told him that he was a chain-smoker, and I didn’t like that about him. That evening there was a party. Fritz was there, and I went up to him to apologize for saying what I had said. I didn’t even get the apology out when he said to me, very clipped and sharp, something like: “You said it. It’s your responsibility.” He then turned and walked away from me. My immediate reaction was to get angry at him, thinking him rude and crude.

Later that evening a light lit up somewhere in my head. Whether or not he had been considerate, I had agreed to do what he had asked. As far as I was concerned, he was right. Whatever I say, prodded or not, is in fact my responsibility. I was intrigued by the man, and at the same time had no desire to learn Gestalt Therapy. I was intrigued by his personality. I wanted to know more about Fritz, about the person, about what I called his neuroses and his strengths. That was the way I got hooked, by the personality of the man himself.

CHARLES: What further contact did you have with Fritz after that encounter with him in Chicago?

JORGE: I met him again in California, at Esalen. Our meetings went on like this for some time. Since we could be with him only a few times in California, my Chicago friends and I invited him a number of times to Chicago for weekend seminars. Until the time of his death, I met with Fritz on a fairly regular basis. I spent time with him privately as his chauffeur and companion when he was doing demonstration-lectures in Chicago.

In this way I was able to get to know and appreciate Fritz. The more I saw of him on a person basis, the more I was hooked. With Fritz, I experienced Gestalt as a way of life, and not simply as a specific modality of therapy.

CHARLES: Can you recall any other memorable impressions of Fritz aside from your first meeting with him?

JORGE: I spent some time with Fritz, either at luncheons or driving with him, sharing views of many people in the United States that we both knew. I enjoyed listening to Fritz with his one-line capsules of these people. They were like little cartoons for me. What really connected me to him as a teacher was his way of seeing. I enjoy seeing things pictorially. He could do that very, very well.

CHARLES: How did Fritz influence your work and your own personal life-style?

JORGE: I certainly increased my awareness from knowing Fritz, awareness of myself and others. I also increased my sense of responsibility. I now accept that any and every act or statement of mine is my responsibility. With this insight has come a tremendous difference in my sense of freedom. Looking back, I realize that what I gained most from Fritz is a deeper appreciation for what freedom means to me.

CHARLES: I experience you as a person with great respect for individual freedom, as well as a person with seemingly unlimited resourcefulness. How did you achieve this?

JORGE: By taking responsibility for my life. This is very clear to me. I am responsible for whatever I say, think or do. In this way I am free.

CHARLES: How do you see yourself doing things differently from Fritz?

JORGE: I wouldn’t say that Fritz was a scholar, although I know that he was well read. Also as a psychiatrist, he had a rich background in the field of psychotherapy. My training was my experience in surviving, taking responsibility for making my own way in the world, creating my own jobs for a living. What I bring to my work is a greater clarity about my responsibility and what responsibility means. I also bring into my work, which may or may not be called therapy, an understanding that life as we now live it is in our own hands, that each and every one of us can in fact be freer, fuller human beings.

CHARLES: How are you now experiencing that freeness and fullness in your own life?

JORGE: By making choices. Sometimes I do not immediately act on the choices that I make. If I have the little picture in my mind of what I want, I set my path, my work, my way of life in the direction what will get me where I want to go.

CHARLES: What are some changes or choices that you have made most recently?

JORGE: Most recently I have been living out a somewhat schizophrenic existence. I always have had a great need to be productive in this existence. At the same time I always have had a great need for privacy, to be alone, to be quiet, to have more time for what might be called an inner search for who I am. My present way of doing this is to live on my farm, where there is no talk of therapy or of administration or business. Then I spend some time as director of the Gestalt Institute. It’s not a matter of my simply changing locations geographically, or going into another setting of therapeutic work with different individuals and groups. What I am doing is much more difficult; I am jumping back and forth into two totally different life-styles.

Now I am experimenting with living out these two life-styles. I don’t know my next step yet. When I have a desire, a need to fulfil myself in another way, I will most probably go that way. Since Fritz, I see this process as uncovering more parts of myself, experiencing myself more and more as a fuller human being. Before Fritz, before Gestalt, I didn’t know how to do this.

CHARLES: How would you sum up your impressions and experience with Fritz?

JORGE: Not many human beings, in my experience, have the courage that Fritz had to live out the very depths of their neuroses, their hell, in order to live honestly. We may call them neuroses, or whatever. Fritz was the only person I have ever known who was ready to live his life as honestly as I experienced him to be living. Of course, in that honesty were many strange parts to the man. As far as I could see, however, he was honest to himself. For me, in his own way, Fritz had integrity . . . and kindness. I know many who hated his guts and might have called him cruel. What I saw was a profound sense of caring, both in his work and in what he was doing with his existence. If someone wanted to work with him, Fritz would give that person encouragement and support. This is what I remember about Fritz - his integrity, his strength.

*Charles Claude Brodeur, PhD is an Associate Professor of Psychology, Faculty of Education, University of Toronto, Canada

 

   Working with the 'Hot Seat" in Brisbane, Australia.

Having looked at Jorge Rosner from the perspective of his learning from Fritz, I want to continue to write about MY encounter with Jorge and how he ‘hooked’ me to study Gestalt Therapy.

I first met Jorge in 1971 as my trainer and teacher in Toronto, Canada. I was one of the selected 25 students to form the first Gestalt Institute of Toronto training group. He came to run our group the first night and I was petrified with fear of his huge presence. For the first year of my training, I was avoiding what he called “hot seat work”. I was ‘into’ observing the ‘work’ of others who would jump at the opportunity to be working with Jorge. He came from Chicago every weekend  to lead the workshops while Dr.Harvey Freedman would do the training in the evenings every week. We also had trainers from USA such as Stella Resnick, Tom Munsen, Laura Perls, Isadore  From and others.

Jorge worked with Fritz Perls from the time he met him at a workshop in Chicago. Dr. Frederick (Fritz) Perls, originally a Freudian analyst, was influenced by the principles of Gestalt psychology and existential philosophy, and by the many new approaches developing in the late 1960’s. Fritz  Perls impressed his students and the world with therapy training that was unique, dynamic and on the leading edge. He incorporated contact with the therapist into the client’s work and was well known for his “hot seat” method in group therapy at Esalen, California.

 Jorge Rosner came to work in Toronto with Dr. Harvey Freedman. Dr. Freedman studied with Fritz until September 1969, at that time Dr. Perls, then living at Lake Cowichan, British Columbia, Canada, appointed Dr. Freedman as Clinical Director of his Gestalt Institute in Canada on Vancouver Island – a position he planned to take up the following year. When Fritz died in Chicago in March of 1970, Dr. Freedman and his family cancelled their plans to move to Vancouver Island. Instead, in September 1970, with the help of Dr. Harold Silver and Dr. Peter Brawley, he founded the Gestalt Institute of Toronto and established an official space at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

In 1971, during a trip to Mexico for a conference, Dr. Freedman met Jorge Rosner, who had trained at the Gestalt Institute of Chicago that enjoyed frequents visits by Fritz Perls. At that time Rosner was a contemporary and colleague of Virginia Satir, Alexander Lowen, and Alan Watts. Dr. Freedman invited Rosner to come to Toronto to give a demonstration workshop, which was very well received. Dr. Freedman then invited Rosner to join the Faculty of the new institute. The work they did drew large numbers of students to the program. Together with other Faculty members, like Yaro I. Starak, James Oldham and Tony Key, they developed an approach to training leaders and therapists, which continues as the basis of present day programming at the Institute. Dr. Freedman once described Jorge Rosner as one of the most naturally brilliant therapists he had ever known.

 Jorge Rosner eventually became the Institute’s Executive Director. He lived Gestalt and incorporated his background in drama, various forms of bodywork, and his study of Tibetan Buddhism into his work. He also founded, taught, and practiced at Gestalt institutes in Scandinavia and Australia, along with teaching in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Mexico, Poland, The Netherlands, England, and Greece. With the support of students and graduates, Jorge Rosner continued to lead the Gestalt Institute of Toronto until his death in May 1994.

Jorge inspired me to create and develop myself as a gestalt therapist and enabled me to become a founder and director of the Brisbane Gestalt institute and the Terrigal Gestalt Institute in Australia.

“Have the guts – take a deep breath and walk (don’t run) through the wall of flame. It is fearful every time, but on the other side of the flame is FREEDOM – Fullness. Staying on this side is DEATH. What do I want to take out of Life? J. R.

My hatred stops - only when can find Compassion. A Love- Connection. In that instance I know that THAT person is also human – and their frailties seem less frail.” J.R. 

 Jorge Rosner with Lama Govinda - Spiritual teacher