NOVEMBER BLOG - 2019

THE GERBIL IN A CAGE AND DUCK SOUP

 NOVEMBER -  2019 BLOG  REFLECTIONS YARO

Dear readers,

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 is still in my memory. 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 on the bed 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. 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 (evidence based), 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 academic ‘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 seems to have 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” Perls (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.

Now, it is 2019 and I have lived in Australia since 1978.  I arrived on a cold month of July and while reporting to my job at the University of Queensland, Department of Social Work, 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 a 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 (my teacher) 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, sidewise 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.

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

THE GERBIL IN A CAGE AND DUCK SOUP

October is my birthday month and November a time when the old year is getting ready to leave and the new year is coming. Not just the new year but also the start of a new decade

My reflections about the journey of Gestalt therapy over the 50 years now, seems like a run of a hamster (Gerbil) in a wheel cage. This is a powerful image for me today as I am thinking about my own experience working and living as a gestalt therapist. The journey took me around the world many times and across Australia too. It was exiting experiencing a huge following of trainees wanting a new method of working and being. Over the years Gestalt Therapy has continued to expand both geographically and within our own society. It has come to be taught in India and Japan. Most striking at this stage has been the expansion of Gestalt Therapy into the culture, as distinct from the counter-culture (in which it originated) as it has come to be taught in universities, applied to business and so forth. Related to this diffusion of Gestalt Therapy into mainstream society has been what we may call its institutionalisation. Meaning that it has penetrated the established institutions and Gestalt practice has crystallized into many Gestalt training centres throughout the world that are practically (if not academically) accredited and may offer, in turn, accreditation. While we may assume that in this process there have developed refinements in Gestalt education and supervision, we should also be aware of how the adoption of psycho-spiritual values by the establishment and society at large also entails a process of compromise and adjustments to the mainstream.

Thus, it is legitimate to ask whether, along with the great international and intercultural diffusion of Gestalt Therapy in the last 50 years and with the existence of excellent representatives of the approach in many countries, there has also taken place a dilution. Here I quote a Sufi story about Nasrudin:

Nasruddin's famous "duck soup" joke: The story goes that a kinsman came to see Nasruddin from the country and brought a duck. Nasruddin was grateful, had the bird cooked, and shared it with his guest. Presently another visitor arrived. He was a friend, as he said, "of the man who gave you the duck." Nasruddin fed him well. This happened several times. Nasruddin's home became like a restaurant for out-of-town visitors. Everyone was a friend and some even removed from the original donor of the duck. Finally, Nasruddin became exasperated. One day there was a knock at the door and a stranger appeared. "I am a friend of the friend of the friend of the man who brought you the duck from the country," he said. "Come in," said Nasruddin. They seated themselves at the table, and Nasruddin asked his wife to bring the soup. When the guest tasted it, it seemed to be nothing more than warm water. "What sort of a soup is this?" he asked the Mulla. "That," said Nasruddin, "is the soup of the soup of the soup of the duck." Claudio Naranjo: “Gestalt after Fritz”.

EAST – WEST DIVISION

This division of East and West was not truly a division of a whole into two, however, but the long- term consequence of an increasing opposition that Fritz Perls and his activity was burdened his older associates. It is not surprising that those associates of Fritz who during the New York years competed intensely with him. They became only increasingly competitive once Fritz embraced his late and anti-theoretical and intuitionist creed, when the words "bullshit" and "mindfucking" became prominent in his vocabulary and when he considered the Gestalt Therapy book of the fifties obsolete and sought new associates and relationships. It is easy to understand how they did not only respond to rejection with rejection but also, taking Fritz's West Coast triumph as a defeat, sought its (and his) invalidation.

Many were subtle and restrained in the expression of their disapproval in the course of Fritz's lifetime, after Fritz's death they have supported an increasing denigration of Fritz, as if wanting to bury him and to minimize his imprint in the annals of history, at least in the sense of taking away his pre-eminence vis-a-vis Laura Perls and Paul Goodman.

So here we see the emerging ‘gerbil in a round cage’ The splits and separations within gestalt training institutes in Australia created an illusion of many groups and that led to the creation of GANZ the Gestalt Association of Australia & New Zealand. Round and round we all went and finally exhausted by so much dissent and changes that the Association perished as a viable place for growth. At that time I wrote an article regarding the demise of Gestalt as we all knew but, the round “cage” kept turning and turning. Here is a brief history of the Australian gestalt movement as I experienced it. A more complete version is written by Brian O’Neil*.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GESTALT TRAINING IN AUSTRALIA

Gestalt Therapy arrived in Australia around 1971. The University of New England at Armidale sponsored overseas leaders to come and introduce to their student body and the public at large the innovations in psychotherapy that were sweeping North America. Dr William Schutz introduced the "Esalen Spirit" to Armidale. Although he never acknowledged himself as a Gestalt therapist, Dr Schutz did demonstrate Gestalt Awareness techniques and methods in his encounter group  workshops at Armidale.

Patti Oliver-Nolan and Dick Armstrong, both clinical psychologists were the first Gestalt Therapists that established on-going training.  Patti worked in Brisbane and Dick in Sydney and Melbourne. However, neither Patti nor Dick had any integrative training in Gestalt Therapy. The official beginning in training in Gestalt Therapy started in 1974 when Dr. James Oldham arrived from Toronto, Canada, having completed his 3-year training at the Gestalt Institute of Toronto. James, an Australian born psychiatrist, established a training institute in Melbourne and Perth.

In Brisbane, Patti Oliver-Nolan and a psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Mullholland, were conducting Gestalt groups based on their excitement and hungry reading of Perls' and Polsters' books. Finally, in 1976, both Peter and Patti went to the USA and participated in gestalt training courses offered by Drs. Miriam and Erving Polster in San Diego. For two years this Gestalt training group did not have a centre or a home base until Dr. Barry Blicharski, a psychiatrist who also had been involved in various gestalt workshops, established the Boundary Road Centre. The Centre was the hub of experiential psychotherapies for many years until Dr. Blicharski moved to Sydney, where he continued to promote Gestalt therapy and experiential therapy.

Before Barry left for Sydney, Yaro Starak arrived on the scene in 1978, Yaro was trained at the Gestalt Institute of Toronto and was a faculty member there for four years. He was in the same group as Dr. James Oldham. Yaro Starak, a lecturer in Social Work at the University of Queensland, established a formal three-year training programme in Brisbane. The programme has successfully graduated Gestalt therapist for over 17 years.

In Sydney, Gestalt Therapy did not enjoy a good name due to a shortage of leaders that had the training, professional qualifications and the dedication to the art of Gestalt therapy. At Dr Blicharski's centre Gestalt Therapy took an important centre of the stage and a gestalt training programme developed which had a good reputation amongst the public.  Sydney Centre under Director Anna Bernet, a graduate from the Brisbane Gestalt Centre was expanding and promoting the training programmes at a rapid pace. The institute closed after Anna died.However the new Sydney Gestalt institute developed with Rhonda G. Long and Phil Oldfield as directors.

With Gestalt Training in Perth celebrating 15 years of activities, Melbourne 17 years, Queensland 17 years and Sydney 14 years Gestalt Therapy has clearly taken deep roots in the fertile soil of Australia.

However, the “gerbil in the cage” started to move again and round and round we went.

Having read and re-read Brian’s review of Gestalt Therapy in Australia, 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 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 into the 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 2019. Your comments are welcome:

Some time ago, as the director of  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. All is becoming an ‘academic’ exercise.

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 personality (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 beaurocratic ‘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) of the loss of Spirit in Gestalt as represented by GANZ. The story is my experience with the ‘management’(editors) of the GANZ publication. It was a workshop my wife and I completed at the GANZ  conference entitled:” Gestalt Therapy and Art Therapy”. The editors of the GANZ journal asked all presenters to write a report about their 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 editors 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 into 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 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. We wrote exactly what he is saying is missing. Perhaps they only read the GANZ conference proposal? So, we sent the paper to two senior Gestalt trainers and known 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 editors 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 from the editors that the paper is not being published in the journal as it stands.

Thus, I have had the opportunity to experience directly this demise of spirit in Gestalt.

The Gestalt Spirit - 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 – makes the round cage happen!

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.

CONCLUSION

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 reflection, 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)

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