INTERRUPTING THE INTERRUPTIONS

PART I: RETROFLECTION

Excepted from Chapter 5

GESTALT THERAPY UNFOLDED:
from THEORY to PRACTICE
BY KENNETH MEYER, PH D 2016
RAVENSWOOD PRESS
(in preparation)

Posted by permission of the author

 Chapter 5
The INTERRUPTIONS to CONTACTING

If for any reason doing so raises anxiety we have thousands of ways of interrupting
the natural progress of moving toward completion of a figure or an act. These can be
momentary and quite deliberate, as when deciding it is better to keep ones counsel
to oneself rather than provoke a controversy. Others can be brought to bear so
quickly that they can hardly be described as deliberate, but are in awareness
enough that the maneuver is apparent to oneself immediately afterwards. Others
have become quite habitual, so long-standing and automatic that they are hard to
notice by oneself, or to retrieve without the therapist bringing attention to it and
encouraging exploration.

Interruptions has become the shorthand for interruptions of the sequence of

contacting, and it is our clients less deliberate interruptions that we must become
alert to as therapists. In many ways the concept serves the same function in our
theory as defense mechanisms does in psychodynamic theories, cataloging the
ways in which we manage to avoid discomforting thoughts, insights and impulses,
managing to keep unwelcome perceptions and thoughts from becoming figural for
us.

Our foundational text lists five kinds of interruptions to making or assimilating

contact that are employed to lessen anxiety: Retroflection, Introjection, Projection,
Confluence and Egotism. However, we must remember that the grouping of these
creative efforts into five categories is our imposition, for our convenience in speaking
about them, on the infinite variety of solutions that our clients have developed for
dealing with the constraints, punishments and/or rewards they have encountered in
their lives.

And it is important to emphasize that these avoidant strategies were originally just as
creative as the potential acts of figure-formation they are summoned to avoid. Even
the most embedded, habitual, unconscious defenses were at one time the clients
creative adaptations to the particular circumstances that shaped them.

And Isadore From adds an additional caveat: nothing we see in the therapeutic
situation can be considered an interruption by observation alone; it is, rather, a sign
of a possible interruption of contact-making. When defining the elements of our
theory we engage in abstractions, so can sound as if we are describing an objective
situation. In the consultation room, however, we must remind ourselves that what
we observe are mere indications of what might possibly be valuable to explore
further with our client. Only this mutual exploration will determine if there is a
interruptive aspect.

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 RETROFLECTION

Retroflecting refers to turning an impulse back on ones self rather than expressing it
or aggressing outward to the environment. Aggressing in this context simply
carries its literal meaning of movement toward contacting, not necessarily with
any sort of anger or attack. This turning back both stifles and hides the initial
impulse. We have many common phrases that convey this picture of using ones own
muscles to stop what other muscles are impelled to do: keeping a stiff upper lip,
sitting on ones hands, biting ones tongue, etc.

You may find that some teachers use the term retroflection in a more, to me,
diluted and imprecise manner, referring to anything that is self-reflective. This
includes criticizing oneself, beating up on ones self and even self-soothing
gestures. Labeling these as retroflections only leads to confusion and a weakens
the usefulness of the concept. Also, when PHG was written it was common among
academic psychologists to consider thinking as internalized speech, so you will find
thinking referred to as retroflected speaking, a now outmoded understanding of
the thought process.

Given the Reichian origins of the concept, I much prefer to reserve it for those
instances where one is actually doing something active to inhibit oneself.

WILHELM REICH

Ironically, this concept of retroflection, which hardly exists now in psychoanalytic

theory, comes to us by way of Freud. Freuds original formulation is referred to as
the theory of actual neurosis, a sort of toxic theory in which neurotic symptoms --
hypochondriacal complaints and somatic manifestations -- are caused by
undischarged libido. When Freud discovered that his clients were in fact having
satisfying sexual encounters he began developing the theory of psychogenic
neurosis, attributing symptoms to the patients past experiences rather than current
functioning.

The question was: what, really, does it mean to have a satisfying sexual
encounter? It was the youngest and most energetic of Freuds students, Wilhelm
Reich, who kept the theory of actual neurosis alive long after Freud abandoned it.
When he made detailed inquiries into the nuances of his patients sexual experiences,
he found a great deal more sexual inhibition than Freud and his students had
uncovered. Reich, who was raised in a rural farm setting, was in fact much more
comfortable with discussing the actuality of sex than his urban, and urbane, fellow
psychoanalysts.

Reich concluded that nothing less than a full-body orgasm would result in an
adequate discharge of libido, and the furtive, semi-repressed sexual encounters of

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the Victorian era hardly promoted this. Reichs life became dedicated to the tracing
of this libidinal energy, this life-force -- which he eventually called orgone energy.
Along the way, he advocated sex-education and birth control for adolescents, began
low-cost psychotherapy clinics, wrote about how sexual repression is a method of
political control, developed the theory of what we now call character disorders and
laid the foundations for research on the authoritarian personality. He was a busy
man, and suffered greatly for being decades ahead of his time.

The approach to psychotherapy that Reich eventually developed concentrates on the

body, and how one in the present can suppress somatic expression. His theory will
sound a little strange to us today, but Reich was a brilliant polymath who tried to
integrate the latest scientific, biological and medical findings into his theories. These
included the then recent discoveries of the sympathetic and parasympathetic
nervous systems, and the embryological concept that ontogeny recapitulates
phylogeny.

Since as embryos we go through a stage similar to a segmented earthworm, our

musculature actually develops from distinct segments. Considering that the libidinal
energy travels length-wise through the body, whereas the musculature is organized
in segments around the core, suppression of the life-force can occur when one or
more of these body segments contract to stifle the flow of energy through the body.
The heirs today to Reichs theory and method are known as Bioenergetics and Core-
Energetics.

The other heir to Reichs insights was Fritz Perls, who attended Reichs seminars in
Vienna, was in supervisory analysis with him in Berlin and later was his patient when
they both came to the United States. So it is from Reich that we get the fundamental
idea that no matter how or when inhibitions and defenses were developed, they are
maintained by and accessed through present behavior. And it is from Reich that we
learn the basic paradigm for retroflection: what in other theories is seen as
repression that somehow takes place in ones psyche, is actually a present activity
of using ones own muscles to suppress oneself.

NOTICING RETROFLECTIONS

Michael Vincent Miller tells of a time when he was in supervision with Isadore From
when everyone smoked, even in therapy. Michael was extinguishing a cigarette in
the ashtray when From said to him, You realize, Michael, that you are taking much
longer to put that cigarette out than is necessary. And indeed, Michael realized he
was holding back saying something that he thought Isadore might disapprove of. I
relay this story to convey how subtle retroflecting can be.

I have noticed that beginning therapists have a tendency, out of their concern to get
sessions started in a Gestalt manner, to grasp at the first gesture the client makes,

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or the first emotional word in the clients presentation. At the beginning of my
Gestalt therapy training I was told to notice splits, such as incongruences between
voice and content, or two hands that are doing different things, or an obvious
contrast between the upper and lower body. I still find this good advice for
beginners: scanning the client for such incongruences can help you both relax and at
the same time be more likely to notice indications of possible unaware retroflectings.

When we look at how children develop self-restraint the process of retroflecting is

abundantly, and sometimes amusingly, clear. Told not to touch a vase, a child may
reach out toward the vase, and then take the other hand to catch hold of the hand
reaching out. A small boy, told not to touch anything during a visit to a relative, will
walk around with his hands clasped behind his back.

I once was having lunch at a table in a deli when a mother and her three year-old
daughter sat down at the next table. Apparently the man slicing meat behind the
counter was the girls father, for she called out to him, DADDY! The mother
admonished her: Dont shout out to Daddy while he is working. The little girl took
the rebuke seriously; when she next shouted out DADDY! she did so with her hand
over her mouth.

This is how we learn self-restraint. It is the subtle vestiges of this process, of using
one activity to restrain another, that we are looking for in therapy. These may be
barely noticeable in social conversation an unfinished sentence, a clinched jaw, one
hand holding the other -- but with the understanding that defenses are things we
actively do they will begin to stand out to you. Retroflections are both visible (or in
cases audible) to the therapist and accessible to the clients awareness. This is how
Gestalt therapy can work without needing interpretation.

I suggest working with retroflecting early in therapy for several reasons. First of all, it
is unique to Gestalt therapy and therefore indicates from the beginning that this
process is going to be different than any they have seen on television or experienced
in previous therapy. Second, it introduces the fact that ones body has information
that is extremely useful, not just ones mind.

And third, since retroflecting involves using your own energy to restrain yourself, a
good deal of bound-up energy is released and available immediately, even if
temporarily. This demonstrates to the client that change is possible and to some
extent under their control. Such relief is of course temporary, but helps with the
demoralization that brings clients to therapy in the first place.

When I say that retroflecting can be at times be heard, I am not contradicting my

stance that retroflections are muscular, not verbal. If you listen carefully, you can
hear the change in voice or an intake of breath that indicates that something is being
held back, all of which takes muscular control. But what we are more likely to notice

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may be verbal, such words that serve to diminish the impact of a statement or a
sudden change in wording.

Here is 16 year-old Larry, telling me about his new class. While it is the partial word
that caught my attention, there was also a slight intake of breath when he broke off
his sentence:

L: The teacher is b. its not a very good class.

T: It sounded to me as if you were about to say something else something

with a B. Bullshit? Boring? Blimey?

L: [Slightly smiling] Yeah, hes booor-ring.

T: I notice that your whole body relaxed when you said what you started to
say in the first place. Do your feel that?

The fact that a 16 year-old finds his teacher boring was not a revelation to either of
us! However, his actually feeling the contrast between being on guard and becoming
more open with me became an important reference point for us.

Many clients, particularly new ones, are startled when an unaware gesture or
movement is remarked upon, and react with a great deal of self-consciousness. It is
not at all unusual for someone to abruptly stop their movement or change position,
even suddenly moving their hands or feet to what they think of as a more neutral or
natural position. It is very important to reassure clients, in this example Cathy, that
they are not doing anything wrong, that in fact it is what therapy is all about:

T: I am noticing that when you began talking about your boyfriend, you
placed your left foot on your right one.

C: [Abruptly placing both feet evenly on the ground]

T: No, I am not suggesting you dont sit like that. On the contrary, your feet
might have some important information to add to what you are telling me.

This next part is important because clients often expect you to have an implicit
interpretation of their behavior, imagining that you are using a Socratic method to
lead them to a conclusion that you have already made.

T: The body often has important information that we are not able to verbalize
right away. I have no idea what your feet are doing like that, or saying,
but it often turns out to be meaningful. If you put your feet back the way

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 they were -- your left foot over your right -- together we may be able
find out.

C: Okay. [Puts one foot on top of the other again].

EXPLORING RETROFLECTIONS

Transcripts can illustrate effective technique, but they convey little of the alternating
excitement, puzzlement and humor displayed during this kind of experimentation. So
lets continue with the example from a session with Cathy, but with the
understanding that a transcript like this can sound very mechanical as they do not
capture much of the interplay of mutual exploration:

T: Now, just put all your attention in your right foot. Remember, you first did
this when talking about your relationship.

It is typical in this kind of scenario for a therapist to say next: Now give your foot a
voice. The problem with this instruction is that giving it a voice, and only a voice, is
exactly that happens! A dialog then continues with talking heads rather than a fuller
body awareness. I find it better, particularly with clients not previously exposed to
Gestalt methods, to approach it the following way, and slowly:

T: Is there anything you can say about your experience if your whole self were
just your right foot?

C: [Immediately and spontaneously] Well, I certainly cant move, can I?

T: Now, that sounds to me pretty relevant to what we were talking about.

But does it seem relevant to you?

C: I do feel stuck in the relationship.

T: Now lets see what it is like if you put your entire attention into your left
foot, the one on top. What is your experience if you were only that foot?

C: Hmmm [Concentrating] I feel settled. I dont want to do anything rash -

- you dont know what youre getting into if you change anything.

T: There may be a way to find out a bit more. Do you want to continue with
another experiment?

C: Okay.

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 T: Now concentrate again on your right foot, and remove the foot that is on
top. See what you experience when the other is removed as if you were
only your right foot.

C: Okay. [Places left foot on the ground]. I feel energy in my foot now,
actually my leg. [Quickly] I guess I feel like kicking.

T: Youre not sure? Actually, I dont see the slightest movement, no beginning
of a kick. So take your time now, and tell me when you can what you
actually become aware of in your foot and leg.

C: Hmmm. [Concentrating]. Actually, I notice that my heel is firmer on the

floor than my toes its as if Im pushing back.

T: Go ahead and push see if thats the movement you are starting.

C: Yeah, and it makes sense to me. I dont want to kick or fuss or fight or
anything. I want to just quietly back out of the relationship.

T: Quietly?

C: Yeah Dont do anything rash, you know.

Let me describe anowther paradigmatic situation that illustrates what to me is the

most important aspect of working with retroflection: enacting the retroflecting
movement itself before focusing on the suppressed expression.

While Joe is telling me of an incident with his father I notice that his left hand is
covering his right, which might be in a loose fist. When I bring his attention to it he is
curious, and concentrates on his right hand.

J: Maybe Im a bit angry.

T: Do you want to find out? There may be a way we can find out more.

J: Yes.

T: Instead of concentrating on your right hand, we are going to explore your

left. Sit in this other chair facing yourself.

J: [Moves to opposite chair].

T: Now, do what your left hand was doing in regard to your right. But do it
with both hands.

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 J: [Reaches out with both hands toward the client chair, as if covering his
hand].

T: Now, can you put this gesture into words?

J: [Emphatically] Dont show your anger! [More calmly] Its okay to be angry,
but dont show it -- it will only get you in trouble.

T: Now come back. Can you answer your question -- are you angry with him?

J: [More expressive than he was initially] Yes, more than I thought. [Holding
a fist up and shaking it] I want to shake my fist at him, not hit him.

What has happened here? I have no doubt that if I had, as many barely-trained
Gestalt-style therapists do, encouraged him to do outward what you are doing to
yourself, he could have been coached toward expressing his anger by hitting a
pillow. But the precise issue here is not unexpressed anger, it is his need to hide
his anger. Once he acknowledged this, his anxiety lessened enough that he could
actually feel the exact nuances of what he had hidden from himself -- a declarative
shaking of his fist, not an impulse to strike out any more than that.

This only emerged because I suggested he take the role of his left hand, the one that
was hiding his anger. I could have, like Cathy above, had him simply dialog between
his two hands. But there is a bit of a trick here: by asking him to do the stopping
outwards he is actually beginning to use the hand that is innervated. His arms are
mobilized, his chest expands and his voice strengthens. When he comes back to the
client chair his entire body is energized, and the precise gesture of his right hand that
had been suppressed is now apparent to both of us.

Here is a further example of how important enacting the retroflecting is as important

as encouraging the impulse that is being stopped: Fred is talking to his mother in the
empty chair, and while his words and voice are a little angry, his fingers are quite
strongly digging into his legs. When I bring his attention to this, he is so horrified he
actually sits on his hands!

It is tempting, a temptation often given in to by imitators of Gestalt therapy, to

encourage him to express his oral rage by tearing into his virtual mother. I had no
question that this was his impulse, not only because his digging his nails into himself
was so extreme, but because his teeth were clinched and jaw pulsating. All he really
needed was permission to let lose -- and if this had seemed the right thing to do I
would have gladly sacrificed a pillow for him t0 rip.

T: You reacted pretty strongly to my observation.

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 F: I am angry with her. But I dont want to hurt her.

T: I can see that. So much so that you are sitting on your hands. Are there
words to go with that?

F: I am angry with you, Mom. But I cant blame everything on you.

The suppressive side of retroflecting is not to be ignored. The very tension in Freds
fingers, the digging that indicated his rage, was at the same time a sign of how
strongly he had to defend against it. And his doubling down on his retroflection by
sitting on his hands showed the degree of his anxiety about his rage. Enacting the
suppression, rather than the impulse, allowed him to release enough tension that the
empty-chair dialog could become meaningful. He could tolerate recognizing his rage
only because his fighting against it was also recognized and honored.

FACILITATION

I have of course picked ideal sessions for illustration. Having done so, let me go
ahead and comment on several aspects of technique that bear emphasis.

Voicing:

You will find numerous instances of Fritz and others saying, Give that a voice, or
Be the such-and-such. In a group, particularly at an Esalen workshop, participants
become acculturated and know from example how to enter into a role. In our own
practices we often need to more fully facilitate the client becoming a part of the
body or a figure in a dream or a projection.

The first step is to direct the clients attention: Put your full attention in your right
foot. Notice that I say in your right foot, not on. There is a subtle but
important distinction between observing from what most people label as themselves
-- the middle of the head behind the eyes -- and letting the feeling-tone of the foot
become figural.

The second step is to enhance this by instructing the client to experience her foot as
if it is your whole self. Sometimes it is helpful to ask for a general quality or feeling-
tone in that part of the body, and then see if the client can let that spread beyond
that part.

The main lesson is that asking a client to be a part needs to be facilitated, slowly
and skillfully. Many of these techniques come to us via theater, and one needs the
skill and patience of a director to facilitate them!

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Pacing:

Pacing, of course, is something very difficult to convey in a transcript. When Cathy

immediately exclaimed, I certainly cant move, can I? it sounded to me like a
genuine and spontaneous response to the experiment. But when she just as
immediately said that she may want to kick, she sounded much more tentative and
hesitant. It is extremely important to notice these differences, so slow things down
and encourage the client to let the response to experiments emerge, however slowly
and patiently you both have to wait.

Clients have a tendency to want to answer your queries, and one must develop an ear
for when a client is answering out of compliance. I guess. can be a polite way of
saying, Your experiment didnt really work. And it wont, if you both dont give it
time!

Enactment:

The method of working with retroflecting is often referred to as undoing

retroflections. The problem with this way of putting it is that the emphasis is on the
release of suppressed impulses, rather than both parts of the retroflection. One of
the wonderful things about Gestalt psychotherapy is that it does encourage
enactment -- the full use of body, movement and voice. But this has led to an over-
emphasis on drama and release for its own sake. Or for the sake of a therapist who
feels s/he has been effective when an inhibited client can be helped to yell or have
a tantrum.

It is not unusual, therefore, for a poorly trained therapist to try to get the client to
kick, scream or beat on pillows, minimizing or even ignoring the suppressive half of
the retroflection. All of this coaching only serves to help the client bypass the anxiety
that made them suppress a feeling or action in the first place. Yes, we want to help
our clients find the means and energy to release their inhibitions, but the route to this
is through enacting the part of the retroflection that is holding themselves back.

This is actually a concrete example of the Paradoxical Theory of Change: starting

with where the client is at. Truncated impulses and gestures might be what catches
our attention, but the place to start is how they are stopping themselves.
Retroflecting is where they are at.

Meaning:

In our emphasis on movement, expression and the body the importance of meaning
is sometimes overlooked. There is a very basic Gestalt psychology principle that
meaning is derived from context. That is why once we shift from talking to engaging
in an active experiment I occasionally remind the client the context in which their

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retroflecting arose. Otherwise it is too easy to get off on tangents, following
associations and speculations rather understandings based on the original situation.

And notice that Cathys last comment, Dont do anything rash, emerged from her
playing the inhibitory aspect of her retroflecting. Her living with this injunction
became a crucial theme in her treatment. There are crucial meanings that emerge
from voicing the suppressive half of a retroflection, most often important introjects.
Which brings us to the next interruption of contacting.

INTROJECTING

When we learn something without assimilating it to what we already know or believe

it remains as a sort of parasite, a foreign body that is not quite incorporated but also
not quite rejected, robbing us of our full resources and effectiveness. Internalizing
these not fully digested beliefs, instructions and injunctions is what we mean by
intojecting.

Fritz Perls developed his view of introjecting quite early in his career, and if Freud or
Freuds circle had accepted Fritzs theories we may not have Gestalt psychotherapy
as we know it today. The irony is that Fritzs formulations fit very well with Freuds
paradigm, which based psychological development on the stages of bodily focus:
oral, anal and genital.

Fritz noticed that there was an important stage missing: after the oral sucking stage
comes the eruption of teeth, an extremely important event for both mother and
child! At some point the child must learn when to bite and chew, and when not to!
This oral aggressive stage was the take-off point for Fritz -- what we take in from our
environment must me chewed, not swallowed whole. This was totally
consistent with the psychoanalytic way of using biological metaphors, so became for
him a schema for how we must be critical and discriminating, deconstructing the
lessons we are force-fed by our society. In this metaphor, assimilating food requires
first destroying it. While his theory was quite commensurate with the analytic way
of thinking, his conclusion was too radical, and Fritzs paper was not well received.

The other major influence on our understanding of introjection is Karen Horney,

Fritzs analyst in Berlin and later in New York. Basking in the Bohemian atmosphere
of Berlin, they shared a passion for theatre, a disregard for conformity and a more
holistic view of therapy. Horney broke from orthodox psychoanalytic thought and
emphasized the tyranny of the shoulds, concentrating more on the importance of
superego injunctions in the development of neurosis rather than unconscious drives.
She defined neurosis as the pursuit of an idealized self that cannot be attained, the
pursuit of which is rigid, inflexible and anxiety- producing since there version of what
should be is imaginary, an ideal we have been taught.

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We should understand that introjecting is a natural part of learning. You can see
three-year-olds imitating adults; trying on various ego-ideals is a natural part of
adolescence. Painting instructors ask their students to paint in the style of a
particular artist, and fledgling composers are given the exercise of composing in the
style of specific masters. This introjecting is deliberate and serves a purpose of which
one is aware.

We consider introjecting unhealthy, however, when we adopt rules, ideals and ways
of being as our own without awareness that we are doing so, and without
questioning or digesting them. These core beliefs, about our how world works and
our place in it, are most often construed from things we are told or observe during
our most impressionable and least discriminating years. If these are not eventually
deconstructed and digested they become fixed gestalts that structure our actions
and worldview without being integrated with who we have actually become, nor
what the world and society have become.

So, as Horney, Perls and Goodman describe, introjected ideas and beliefs can become
less conscious, driving compulsive, fixed behavior. It is these, as Goodman puts it,
forgotten interpersonal relations that without our awareness continue to influence
our beliefs about the world and our relation to it. These are the introjects we
become alert to during therapy.

IDENTIFYING INTROJECTS

Our foundational texts, Ego, Hunger and Aggression and Gestalt Therapy, emphasize
working in the present, so concentrate on the current introjecting of clients,
particularly their vulnerability to be compliant with the therapist and adopt her
beliefs. Goodman does give some acknowledgment that the personality-function of
the client often incorporates mistaken concepts of oneself, introjects, ego-ideals,
masks, etc.

And he mentions, but almost as an aside, the pervasive influence of forgotten

interpersonal relations that remain unaware and in the background. The major
contribution of Marilyn Rosanes-Berrett was her understanding of the importance, in
long-term treatment, of identifying and working with these forgotten introjected
figures.

Gestalt therapy and counseling texts often refer to introjects as powerful

messages..a belief, idea or feeling in relation to oneself (Shub, 2000, p. 99) or
societal rules (Joyce and Sills, 2010, p. 125), as if it is these verbal formulations that
need to be addressed. Such messages, though, are seldom delivered verbally; they
are conveyed by a look, voice-tone, gesture, example and all manner of non-verbal
ways.

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Although at times these verbal summaries can be useful to refer to -- a vocabulary
and reference that develops between me and a client -- effective work with introjects
requires actually identifying the felt presence of important introjected figures. But
initially working with these introjects as if they were only verbal formulations can
become an intellectual and mutually misleading endeavor. This understanding, that
introjects are internal dialogues with felt presences, can help you identify important
introjects without veering off on to a wordy and philosophical direction, which often
ends in the pretense of destroying the belief.

Joy is a 30 year-old social worker who quite consistently made a tsk

sound in the middle or at end of her sentences. She was quite
unaware of this until I brought her attention to it, and at that point I
suggested that she make only the tsk sound for awhile. Almost
immediately a gesture spontaneously joined the sound: a flicking of
her right hand, as if shooing a fly away. My suggestion then was she
see what words might go with it. The words also came immediately:
Thats not important. Thats my mother, dismissive. Her attitude is
that nothing but her concerns are important.

So we now had a verbal formulation that we both could refer to when relevant: her
youre not important belief about herself. But it is crucial to recognize that these
words were never spoken, and that the influence on her present behavior is better
noted by the presence of her mother in her tsking habit, not by verbal memory or
belief. Joy now had a very specific cue for catching herself treating herself, or letting
herself by treated, as not important.

The presence of internalized important figures can sometimes be perceived through

somatic cues. Linda, for example feels her face get warm when her mother is
present for her, as if standing over her, whereas the back of her neck gets warm
when the nuns are present, sneaking up behind her. Summarizing this as her good
girl introject would not only miss the embodied presence of her different
environments, but the subtle though important distinctions between being a good
daughter versus a good Catholic-school girl.

Sometimes important introjects can be identified by a change in voice, as if there

were really someone else speaking. When Cathy said You know, Dont do anything
rash, it was clear from her voice that she was quoting a lesson heard repeatedly.

It is common for Gestalt counseling texts to suggest asking Who told you that?
when a client discovers an injunction that has been limiting them, or has undermined
their self-esteem. However, asking this question when all one is presented with are
the words is premature. Without the tone, emphasis and voice this more often than
not leads to bouts of speculation rather than valid experiential work.

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Since the process of introjecting means that it becomes difficult for the client to
distinguish between how they were indoctrinated and their own understandings or
ideas, it is difficult to tease these apart. Doing a gestalt dialogue based solely on
verbal formulations, having the client travel back-and-forth between two chairs,
makes it seem as if the client is declaring their distance from the introjected rule, but
seldom very convincingly -- too me or to the client! Intellectual propositions
engender intellectual counter-propositions, hardly the stuff of genuine interplay and
experiential discovery.

Tom, for example, discovered that his fear of taking time off is the injunction:
Always work as hard as you can. Can he really be encouraged to declare, No, I
will not work as hard as I can? Or to plead, But that is not fair; I need time off?

Instead, tracking who is present for him evolved into an entire scenario: his mothers
constant complaints that his father never works hard enough. It is this entire scene
that became the focus of the work: his fathers dejected posture and his mothers
harpy voice. But the main thing is that he could certainly find the will to oppose her
now that the vividness of this scene was identified as the introject, rather than the
proverb he first presented.

Also, once you understand introjects as actually experienced presences, you can often
simply ask clients if anyone is present for them: Who is watching? or Who is your
audience?

I have also found that such inquiries quickly identify not only the usual cast of
characters -- parents, teachers, coaches, the Church -- but introjects that clients
have created themselves by visualizing their sense of being watched: The
Committee in the Sky, The Neighbors, Keepers of My Permanent Record.
These general introjects are not at all as abstract or vague as the labels that clients
give; they also are felt presences that exist in a virtual space. On further inquiry it is
clear that these clients already have clear visualizations of these entities and point to
them in a very specific direction, usually somewhere above.

WORKING WITH INTROJECTS

I have written elsewhere about the integration of the relational and psychodramatic
approaches to Gestalt psychotherapy (Meyer, 2013) and Friedman (2003) has traced
several overlooked connections between PHG and Perlss later work. But if we take
seriously that we all have various, sundry and overlapping audiences present to us,
then the methods imported from psychodrama seem a natural set of experiments to
employ.

Chairwork is best begun when you detect someone already present in the room --
usually to the client but sometimes first to the therapist. This is why I tell students to

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never put your mother in the chair, my pithy way to convey that, ideally, no one is
to be put in the empty chair. They are already present, and usually not in a chair!d
Besides, mothers seldom sit in chairs; they hover over you, or flit busily about, or
come into your bedroom at inconvenient moments -- but seldom sit.

When I first began taking the role of therapist, Fritz Perls was watching me from
above. He was a more intimidating presence for me than Marilyn, who was actually
there in three dimensions. So called chairwork would have consisted of speaking
to him not in a chair, but where I experienced him: a bit to my right and above at a
45-degree angle.

My point is actually a simple one, the same as for any good Gestalt therapy: proceed
from where the client is at. In regard to working with introjected figures, this means
detecting when an introject is already present and continuing phenomenological
inquiry from there: Where is this person? What is his or her expression? Posture?
And so forth until as the scene is clear. You do not have to create a scenario; you just
have to explicate the one already emerging for your client.

This visualization -- or hallucination, though we avoid using that word! -- does not
have to be particularly vivid for the client to experience facial expressions, gestures,
posture, etc. These all come across and have an impact if the client can just sense
the gestalt of the figure.

FACILITATION

When I was in psychoanalysis my analyst one day said, Since you are talking about
your Dad, would you want to sit up and talk to him in this chair, as if he were here?
No way! was my reply, and that was the end of it. He must have attended a
weekend workshop!

How different

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