The Gestalt Prayer
I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped.
(Fritz Perls, "Gestalt Therapy Verbatim", 1969)
Gestalt Therapy
Gestalt Therapy is eclectic, drawing on knowledge from a wide range of schools of psychology and philosophy.
The basic theory was developed and adapted by Fritz (Frederick) Perls and others, drawing on research by mainly German Gestalt researchers from the 1920’s and 1930’s.
Fritz Perls was also a Freudian psychoanalyst and was in therapy with Wilhelm Reich (at that time the technical director of Psychanalysis) from whom he also learnt a great deal, especially that the body is a crucial part of therapy.
Although the conclusions of Gestalt Therapy vary sometimes from most other schools of philosophy and psychology, nevertheless Gestalt therapy is built on those other human intellectual adventures and researches through the ages.
The important thing is to experiment, try to suspend our usual judgements and to stay with the present situation in a safe therapeutic environment. As the session progresses the relevant material often changes substantially as a creative solution is found to unfinished situations.
One of the most exciting things about Gestalt Therapy is it’s insistence upon practical experiment rather than just talk or theorising. It’s theories stand or fall upon personal experiencing rather than blind faith in the “authorities” of society.
Instead of the old prevalent idea in psychology of the patient /client knowing virtually nothing and the therapist having powerful secret knowledge, Gestalt Therapy emphasises the client getting and using the tools of psychotherapy themselves.
Perhaps the other most important aspect of Gestalt Therapy is it’s insistence upon including the body in the experiments rather than carrying on the idea of a separate body and mind, which is so entrenched in our society at all levels.
Although this belief in a separate body and mind is historically so entrenched in our society it is infact erroneous and based on false premises. In this outlook Fritz Perls was influenced greatly by Wilhelm Reich who pioneered body therapy and the functional identity of body and mind.
Another important concept in Gestalt Therapy is that the organism and environment are both part of one unitary field and the two cannot truly be separated, although our society seems to have a chronic inbuilt tendency to do just that.
Some of the techniques used in Gestalt include concentrating on body tensions to see how they evolve, seeing where holes occur in body awareness, trying to match up symmetries such as between the left and right sides of the body, and shuttling between the body and images and between one part of the body and another.
One can also talk to parts of the body as in the empty chair technique. Infact as you get more experienced many types of technique and many variations on using the techniques come to mind in the therapeutic context.
The main point to remember is that we do not use these awareness techniques in a mechanical way as in a sort of pre-determined program, but in a therapeutic way to resolve unfinished situations in a creative way in the present. In other words to allow new Gestalt formation to occur without or with at least less blocking and resistances.
The best place to go for a detailed discussion of all these points is the 1951 Gestalt Therapy Book by Perls, Hefferline and Goodman which is a masterly discussion of psychology and society.
It repays detailed study and gives a program of awareness experiments to do on yourself which are a crucial part of the process. Some people find it too academic for them but if so then there are other simpler Gestalt books by Fritz Perls and others such as “Gestalt Therapy Verbatim” by Perls which are useful simpler introductions.
There are many other more recent supposedly Gestalt type books, articles and training courses available from various sources, but I would treat them with some caution as many seem to be running their own race and to have little to do with the real Gestalt theory as exemplified by Fritz Perls.
This process of later conservative and commercial minded people jumping on the bandwagon, and of pioneering work being captured and distorted by lesser figures is of course very familiar in the history of science generally and most famously in the field of psychology, most obviously with Sigmund Freud’s work and to some extent that of Wilhelm Reich, whose work has often been appropriated by those who want to cash in on the more marketable aspects of the discoveries but chuck out the more challenging and revolutionary aspects.
Anyone familiar with the talk-only obsession of orthodox psychoanalysis or the even worse current psychiatric drug therapy will realise how liberating and important these superior conceptions of Wilhelm Reich and Fritz Perls about psychology and humanity really are.
It is useless to treat body and mind separately as the higher versions at least of Ayurvedic Indian and Traditional Chinese medicine have always known.
Projection, Retroflection and Introjection.
These three classic psychological terms are discussed at length in the Gestalt Therapy Book as a way of illustrating the basic building blocks of the Gestalt theory. Even if you don’t want to wade through all the theory in the book it is at least worth familiarising yourself with a basic understanding of the three mechanisms so that you can recognise their effects and have some idea of how to deal with them therapeutically. All three mechanisms are healthy functions of the organism except when continued chronically without awareness from a past situation and time.
Projection is when something that really belongs to the individual is projected outwards onto something in the external environment and then perceived as if it is infact coming back at the organism from the environment. Projection is also a healthy function of the organism, but unhealthy when done chronically and unconsciously.
Retroflection is when an impulse is turned back upon the organism itself rather than continuing outwards towards it’s original goal. This of course is rational when it is done consciously for a reason, but irrational when maintained chronically for no present reason, in other words when it has become an unconscious and unnecessary block. Such mechanisms become chronic and it takes a lot of therapy to finally change them into a more natural way of functioning.
Introjection is when something has been swallowed down without being broken up and fully assimilated by the organism. This is very common of course in an unnatural armoured society such as we live in today. We are speaking psychologically of course, but the analogy with food is quite informative. These introjects remains as a foreign body poisoning the psyche unless regurgitated and rejected and dealt with in the present to see what can be assimilated and what is alien. It is as if the introject is an alien stuck in the organism but one cannot vomit it out because of strong unconscious resistances.
On dreams. Various techniques are used to work on dreams, some from other psychology schools and some more associated with Gestalt Therapy from the outset.
One approach is to see dreams as a creation in the here and now which can be modified by applying the various awareness techniques during the therapy session. This is different from just trying to interpret a dream or get a meaning of a dream symbol from a list in a dream interpretation book.
On the other hand such lists of symbol meanings and attempts to interpret a dream are not excluded and can of course assist at times.
he emphasis in Gestalt though is more on actively seeing how the dream content changes when we work on it in the present, as well as trying to fit the dream creation into the bigger picture of the person’s life. In other words we have to work therapeutically not mechanically, emotions have to come into it not just theories or dry academic knowledge.
You can play a part in the dream for example, such as being a figure which appears in the dream or an inanimate object such as a table or a rock or whatever appears in the dream. We try to feel the emotion of the figure or object and we can also set up a dialogue with other people or things in the dream.
We can also talk to a part of the dream or get various parts to talk to each other in order to try to promote change and integration. This is the empty chair technique well known in Gestalt Therapy where one person talks to a fantasied one or one thing talks to another thing.
The techniques to use and how to use them tends to suggest itself in a session, and skill grows of course with practise and training and experience. If one thing does not work move onto another, we don’t have to try to be infallible!
We can also shuttle between the dream and the present, or even between one part of the dream and another part. We can try to feel the emotion of the dream and of it’s component parts, and to introduce changes into the ongoing dream sequence for example. We can relate this emotional feel back to the body in the present, for example we may find that there is a tension or a void in body feeling when we contact a particular area of the dream, or a new idea emerges and so on.
Being adventurous and creative in these sessions is of course desirable in order to fill in the gaps in awareness and to put stress on the resistances or blocks to perception and to try to come to a creative conclusion in the present.
It is worth mentioning that we can also use similar techniques on daydreams (waking fantasies) not just asleep dreams. Works of art we look at or produce ourselves also can be worked on in the same way using these sorts of awareness tehniques.
As with everything else the more you know the more you can do, so any dream theories and knowledge and techniques from other approaches can be useful to help with therapy. Even if we might not fully agree with the theories of Freud or Jung or anyone else on dreams we still can learn something from them so wide reading and an open mind are recommended.
Psychodrama for example uses techniques to work on waking fantasies or daydreams and in a Gestalt session dreams can be lived through as if they are happening now, as in a sense they are since we actively create the dream or fantasy. As stated earlier you don’t have to jettison other knowledge just because you are using Gestalt Therapy, you can apply these other methods with a Gestalt outlook.
It is often said that dreams are the unconscious appearing in a disguised form because the waking mind is not ready to deal with the content in a more obvious way. Therapy aims to gradually make it possible to be able to deal with the problems and opportunities of dreams in the full waking state. This requires accepting anxiety and working through it and reintegrating separated parts of the character structure into the coherent whole that they are supposed to be.
It is also good to try and keep an open mind where therapy is concerned, sometimes a bit of lateral thinking can open up new avenues and unblock an impasse. Life moves in a natural way not in a straight line necessarily, and Gestalt aims to stay in touch with ongoing life as it unfolds in front of us.
Infact whilst dreams may be as Sigmund Freud said ‘the royal road to the unconscious’ they are not as important in psychotherapy as many people believe. Dreams only become of central significance in psychotherapy after all previous blocks have been largely resolved and therapy has reached the pelvic segment of armour where the most explosive emotions and deepest longings are held.
In order to understand more about this process of armouring and it’s controlled release in psychotherapy you will need to read books by Wilhelm Reich and/or the best summary of Reich’s work which is “Man in the Trap” by Dr. Elsworth Baker one of Reich’s foremost assistants.
Before that final pelvic armouring stage is reached in therapy dreams are interesting, sometimes helpful, but tend to leave you running around in circles in terms of real breakthroughs that change the person’s life fundamentally.
This situation is much to the bewilderment of generations of psychotherapists of all types who of course do not understand why intensive dreamwork does not give the life changing results they expected.
Other theorists on dreams worth considering are definitely Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud who both made important contributions to dream technique and theory as well as popularising the discoveries and ideas of psychology.
Gestalt Therapy has somewhat different conclusions in many places from Freud and even more from Jung too but it does not help to throw out the baby with the bathwater and much of their work is of great value.
Practical Therapy. What do you do if you do not have a vast knowledge of character structure, cannot understand the person from a deeper perspective, their dreams do not make any sense to you and so on? Let’s face it most of us are in this position to some degree, and even very competent therapists can find themselves out of their depth at times, but you will be pleased to know that Gestalt Therapy has some sort of an answer.
We can put it this way, "the therapy is the diagnosis", which means that even without a coherent diagnosis or plan we can still concentrate on the here and now in order to try for a creative solution of some sort in the present. Using the awareness techniques we can get some sort of integration of previously unaware material and this can lead onto encountering further obstacles and attempts at a creative solution.
Another dictum to keep in mind is “move onto the next resistance” which means as long as you are in touch with avoidance and obstacles you are in touch with the real problem.
Of course the more you know the more you can do, but even without being the ideal supertherapist you can still use the Gestalt technique and Gestalt outlook in any situation to achieve at least something, and it really works too!
You will need to practise Gestalt techniques on yourself first though so you have real experience of what it is really about.
Remember Gestalt Therapy shows you that you can do a great deal yourself, indeed ultimately that you are the only person who can release yourself from your emotional blocks, since you are the one who actively identifies with the need to block and maintains the block.
All you need to do is start ‘mobilizing your own resources’ and step by step proceed to a creative solution to past unfinished situations in the present. This of course is not always easy, as strong resistances and explosive emotional material have to be painfully relived and reintegrated into the present.
Physical Disease. Physical disease in our society for the most part occurs when the character blocks have affected the body after years of inhibition both mental and physical. If you ever read Wilhelm Reich’s famous book “The Cancer Biopathy” in which he solved the cancer mystery in the 1930’s and 1940’s, it will be an instructive and enlightening experience which is very different from the usual myopic view peddled by orthodox psychology and medicine.
The body and mind are a psychosomatic unity and should not be viewed separately as is the normal outlook historically in our society unfortunately. The Gestalt Therapy book has a very good discussion of this problem, but it is more comprehensively explained in Wilhelm Reich’s written works or in “Man in The Trap” by Dr. Elsworth Baker which summarises Wilhelm Reich’s discoveries.
Even so with Gestalt Therapy at least there is an understanding that the physical and mental are not separate and that physical disease is usually caused by long term psychological character blocks which have affected the body. There are also practical experiments to do with your breathing, body awareness, concentrating on body tensions and the like which at least help to release inhibition and unaware throttling of normal life functions.
So with Gestalt Therapy you are already at least one step ahead of the normal compartmentalised outlook prevalent in psychology and medicine and philosophy in modern society. With Gestalt you may not know everything but at least you know some basic truths about this world. After all as the famous saying goes,
“In the country of the blind the one eyed man is king”.
I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped.
(Fritz Perls, "Gestalt Therapy Verbatim", 1969)
Gestalt Therapy
Gestalt Therapy is eclectic, drawing on knowledge from a wide range of schools of psychology and philosophy.
The basic theory was developed and adapted by Fritz (Frederick) Perls and others, drawing on research by mainly German Gestalt researchers from the 1920’s and 1930’s.
Fritz Perls was also a Freudian psychoanalyst and was in therapy with Wilhelm Reich (at that time the technical director of Psychanalysis) from whom he also learnt a great deal, especially that the body is a crucial part of therapy.
Although the conclusions of Gestalt Therapy vary sometimes from most other schools of philosophy and psychology, nevertheless Gestalt therapy is built on those other human intellectual adventures and researches through the ages.
The important thing is to experiment, try to suspend our usual judgements and to stay with the present situation in a safe therapeutic environment. As the session progresses the relevant material often changes substantially as a creative solution is found to unfinished situations.
One of the most exciting things about Gestalt Therapy is it’s insistence upon practical experiment rather than just talk or theorising. It’s theories stand or fall upon personal experiencing rather than blind faith in the “authorities” of society.
Instead of the old prevalent idea in psychology of the patient /client knowing virtually nothing and the therapist having powerful secret knowledge, Gestalt Therapy emphasises the client getting and using the tools of psychotherapy themselves.
Perhaps the other most important aspect of Gestalt Therapy is it’s insistence upon including the body in the experiments rather than carrying on the idea of a separate body and mind, which is so entrenched in our society at all levels.
Although this belief in a separate body and mind is historically so entrenched in our society it is infact erroneous and based on false premises. In this outlook Fritz Perls was influenced greatly by Wilhelm Reich who pioneered body therapy and the functional identity of body and mind.
Another important concept in Gestalt Therapy is that the organism and environment are both part of one unitary field and the two cannot truly be separated, although our society seems to have a chronic inbuilt tendency to do just that.
Some of the techniques used in Gestalt include concentrating on body tensions to see how they evolve, seeing where holes occur in body awareness, trying to match up symmetries such as between the left and right sides of the body, and shuttling between the body and images and between one part of the body and another.
One can also talk to parts of the body as in the empty chair technique. Infact as you get more experienced many types of technique and many variations on using the techniques come to mind in the therapeutic context.
The main point to remember is that we do not use these awareness techniques in a mechanical way as in a sort of pre-determined program, but in a therapeutic way to resolve unfinished situations in a creative way in the present. In other words to allow new Gestalt formation to occur without or with at least less blocking and resistances.
The best place to go for a detailed discussion of all these points is the 1951 Gestalt Therapy Book by Perls, Hefferline and Goodman which is a masterly discussion of psychology and society.
It repays detailed study and gives a program of awareness experiments to do on yourself which are a crucial part of the process. Some people find it too academic for them but if so then there are other simpler Gestalt books by Fritz Perls and others such as “Gestalt Therapy Verbatim” by Perls which are useful simpler introductions.
There are many other more recent supposedly Gestalt type books, articles and training courses available from various sources, but I would treat them with some caution as many seem to be running their own race and to have little to do with the real Gestalt theory as exemplified by Fritz Perls.
This process of later conservative and commercial minded people jumping on the bandwagon, and of pioneering work being captured and distorted by lesser figures is of course very familiar in the history of science generally and most famously in the field of psychology, most obviously with Sigmund Freud’s work and to some extent that of Wilhelm Reich, whose work has often been appropriated by those who want to cash in on the more marketable aspects of the discoveries but chuck out the more challenging and revolutionary aspects.
Anyone familiar with the talk-only obsession of orthodox psychoanalysis or the even worse current psychiatric drug therapy will realise how liberating and important these superior conceptions of Wilhelm Reich and Fritz Perls about psychology and humanity really are.
It is useless to treat body and mind separately as the higher versions at least of Ayurvedic Indian and Traditional Chinese medicine have always known.
Projection, Retroflection and Introjection.
These three classic psychological terms are discussed at length in the Gestalt Therapy Book as a way of illustrating the basic building blocks of the Gestalt theory. Even if you don’t want to wade through all the theory in the book it is at least worth familiarising yourself with a basic understanding of the three mechanisms so that you can recognise their effects and have some idea of how to deal with them therapeutically. All three mechanisms are healthy functions of the organism except when continued chronically without awareness from a past situation and time.
Projection is when something that really belongs to the individual is projected outwards onto something in the external environment and then perceived as if it is infact coming back at the organism from the environment. Projection is also a healthy function of the organism, but unhealthy when done chronically and unconsciously.
Retroflection is when an impulse is turned back upon the organism itself rather than continuing outwards towards it’s original goal. This of course is rational when it is done consciously for a reason, but irrational when maintained chronically for no present reason, in other words when it has become an unconscious and unnecessary block. Such mechanisms become chronic and it takes a lot of therapy to finally change them into a more natural way of functioning.
Introjection is when something has been swallowed down without being broken up and fully assimilated by the organism. This is very common of course in an unnatural armoured society such as we live in today. We are speaking psychologically of course, but the analogy with food is quite informative. These introjects remains as a foreign body poisoning the psyche unless regurgitated and rejected and dealt with in the present to see what can be assimilated and what is alien. It is as if the introject is an alien stuck in the organism but one cannot vomit it out because of strong unconscious resistances.
On dreams. Various techniques are used to work on dreams, some from other psychology schools and some more associated with Gestalt Therapy from the outset.
One approach is to see dreams as a creation in the here and now which can be modified by applying the various awareness techniques during the therapy session. This is different from just trying to interpret a dream or get a meaning of a dream symbol from a list in a dream interpretation book.
On the other hand such lists of symbol meanings and attempts to interpret a dream are not excluded and can of course assist at times.
he emphasis in Gestalt though is more on actively seeing how the dream content changes when we work on it in the present, as well as trying to fit the dream creation into the bigger picture of the person’s life. In other words we have to work therapeutically not mechanically, emotions have to come into it not just theories or dry academic knowledge.
You can play a part in the dream for example, such as being a figure which appears in the dream or an inanimate object such as a table or a rock or whatever appears in the dream. We try to feel the emotion of the figure or object and we can also set up a dialogue with other people or things in the dream.
We can also talk to a part of the dream or get various parts to talk to each other in order to try to promote change and integration. This is the empty chair technique well known in Gestalt Therapy where one person talks to a fantasied one or one thing talks to another thing.
The techniques to use and how to use them tends to suggest itself in a session, and skill grows of course with practise and training and experience. If one thing does not work move onto another, we don’t have to try to be infallible!
We can also shuttle between the dream and the present, or even between one part of the dream and another part. We can try to feel the emotion of the dream and of it’s component parts, and to introduce changes into the ongoing dream sequence for example. We can relate this emotional feel back to the body in the present, for example we may find that there is a tension or a void in body feeling when we contact a particular area of the dream, or a new idea emerges and so on.
Being adventurous and creative in these sessions is of course desirable in order to fill in the gaps in awareness and to put stress on the resistances or blocks to perception and to try to come to a creative conclusion in the present.
It is worth mentioning that we can also use similar techniques on daydreams (waking fantasies) not just asleep dreams. Works of art we look at or produce ourselves also can be worked on in the same way using these sorts of awareness tehniques.
As with everything else the more you know the more you can do, so any dream theories and knowledge and techniques from other approaches can be useful to help with therapy. Even if we might not fully agree with the theories of Freud or Jung or anyone else on dreams we still can learn something from them so wide reading and an open mind are recommended.
Psychodrama for example uses techniques to work on waking fantasies or daydreams and in a Gestalt session dreams can be lived through as if they are happening now, as in a sense they are since we actively create the dream or fantasy. As stated earlier you don’t have to jettison other knowledge just because you are using Gestalt Therapy, you can apply these other methods with a Gestalt outlook.
It is often said that dreams are the unconscious appearing in a disguised form because the waking mind is not ready to deal with the content in a more obvious way. Therapy aims to gradually make it possible to be able to deal with the problems and opportunities of dreams in the full waking state. This requires accepting anxiety and working through it and reintegrating separated parts of the character structure into the coherent whole that they are supposed to be.
It is also good to try and keep an open mind where therapy is concerned, sometimes a bit of lateral thinking can open up new avenues and unblock an impasse. Life moves in a natural way not in a straight line necessarily, and Gestalt aims to stay in touch with ongoing life as it unfolds in front of us.
Infact whilst dreams may be as Sigmund Freud said ‘the royal road to the unconscious’ they are not as important in psychotherapy as many people believe. Dreams only become of central significance in psychotherapy after all previous blocks have been largely resolved and therapy has reached the pelvic segment of armour where the most explosive emotions and deepest longings are held.
In order to understand more about this process of armouring and it’s controlled release in psychotherapy you will need to read books by Wilhelm Reich and/or the best summary of Reich’s work which is “Man in the Trap” by Dr. Elsworth Baker one of Reich’s foremost assistants.
Before that final pelvic armouring stage is reached in therapy dreams are interesting, sometimes helpful, but tend to leave you running around in circles in terms of real breakthroughs that change the person’s life fundamentally.
This situation is much to the bewilderment of generations of psychotherapists of all types who of course do not understand why intensive dreamwork does not give the life changing results they expected.
Other theorists on dreams worth considering are definitely Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud who both made important contributions to dream technique and theory as well as popularising the discoveries and ideas of psychology.
Gestalt Therapy has somewhat different conclusions in many places from Freud and even more from Jung too but it does not help to throw out the baby with the bathwater and much of their work is of great value.
Practical Therapy. What do you do if you do not have a vast knowledge of character structure, cannot understand the person from a deeper perspective, their dreams do not make any sense to you and so on? Let’s face it most of us are in this position to some degree, and even very competent therapists can find themselves out of their depth at times, but you will be pleased to know that Gestalt Therapy has some sort of an answer.
We can put it this way, "the therapy is the diagnosis", which means that even without a coherent diagnosis or plan we can still concentrate on the here and now in order to try for a creative solution of some sort in the present. Using the awareness techniques we can get some sort of integration of previously unaware material and this can lead onto encountering further obstacles and attempts at a creative solution.
Another dictum to keep in mind is “move onto the next resistance” which means as long as you are in touch with avoidance and obstacles you are in touch with the real problem.
Of course the more you know the more you can do, but even without being the ideal supertherapist you can still use the Gestalt technique and Gestalt outlook in any situation to achieve at least something, and it really works too!
You will need to practise Gestalt techniques on yourself first though so you have real experience of what it is really about.
Remember Gestalt Therapy shows you that you can do a great deal yourself, indeed ultimately that you are the only person who can release yourself from your emotional blocks, since you are the one who actively identifies with the need to block and maintains the block.
All you need to do is start ‘mobilizing your own resources’ and step by step proceed to a creative solution to past unfinished situations in the present. This of course is not always easy, as strong resistances and explosive emotional material have to be painfully relived and reintegrated into the present.
Physical Disease. Physical disease in our society for the most part occurs when the character blocks have affected the body after years of inhibition both mental and physical. If you ever read Wilhelm Reich’s famous book “The Cancer Biopathy” in which he solved the cancer mystery in the 1930’s and 1940’s, it will be an instructive and enlightening experience which is very different from the usual myopic view peddled by orthodox psychology and medicine.
The body and mind are a psychosomatic unity and should not be viewed separately as is the normal outlook historically in our society unfortunately. The Gestalt Therapy book has a very good discussion of this problem, but it is more comprehensively explained in Wilhelm Reich’s written works or in “Man in The Trap” by Dr. Elsworth Baker which summarises Wilhelm Reich’s discoveries.
Even so with Gestalt Therapy at least there is an understanding that the physical and mental are not separate and that physical disease is usually caused by long term psychological character blocks which have affected the body. There are also practical experiments to do with your breathing, body awareness, concentrating on body tensions and the like which at least help to release inhibition and unaware throttling of normal life functions.
So with Gestalt Therapy you are already at least one step ahead of the normal compartmentalised outlook prevalent in psychology and medicine and philosophy in modern society. With Gestalt you may not know everything but at least you know some basic truths about this world. After all as the famous saying goes,
“In the country of the blind the one eyed man is king”.