GESTALT REVIEW

Editor

Joseph Melnick, Ph.D.

Associate Editors

Pauline Rose Clance, Ph.D.

Reinhard Fuhr, Ph.D.
Joel Latner, Ph.D.
Sonia March Nevis, Ph.D.
Robert W. Resnick, Ph.D.
Ansel L. Woldt, Ed.D.

Editorial Board

Jack Aylward, Ed.D., United States Gaie Houston, M.A., England

George Brown, Ph.D., United States Francisco Huneeus, M.D., Chile
W. Warner Burke, Ph.D., United States James I. Kepner, Ph.D., United States
Todd Burley, Ph.D., United States Philip Lichtenberg, Ph.D., United States
Janine Corbeil, M.A.Psych., Canada Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb, Ph.D., Italy
Sylvia Fleming Crocker, Ph.D., United States Lars Marmgren, M.Sci., Sweden
Dalia Etzion, Ph.D., Israel Malcolm Parlett, Ph.D., England
Bud Feder, Ph.D., United States Deborah L. Plummer, Ph.D., United States
Iris E. Fodor, Ph.D., United States Erving Polster, Ph.D., United States
Isabel Fredericson, Ph.D., United States Miri am Polster, Ph.D., United States
Jon Frew, Ph.D., United States Jean-Marie Robine, France
Norman Friedman, Ph.D., United States Ilana Rubenfeld, United States
Leslie S. Greenberg, Ph.D., Canada Paul Shane, United States
Joseph H. Handlon, Ph.D., United States Marta Slemenson, M.A., Argentina
Robert L. Harman, Ed.D., United States Milan Sreckovic, Ph.D., France
Cynthia Oudejans Harris, M.D., United States Gordon Wheeler, Ph.D., United States
Carl W. Hodges, M.S.W., United States Joseph Chaim Zinker, Ph.D., United States

Managing Editor Editorial Assistant
Shari Buchwald Desirae Page Savona
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A PUBLICATION OF THE GESTALT INTERNATIONAL STUDY CENTER.

EDWIN C. NEVIS, PH.D., DIRECTOR
 GESTALT REVIEW

Volume 3 1999 Number 3


Editorial
Joseph Melnick, Ph.D. 173

Paths for the Future: From a Culture of

Indifference Toward a Gestalt of Hope
Selma Ciornai, Ph.D. 178

A Gestalt Approach to the Treatment of Gambling

Norman F. Shub, B.C.D. 190

The Butterfly Effect in Therapy:

Not Every Flap of a Butterfly’s Wing . . .
Alan Meara 205

Autism in Gestalt Theory: Toward

a Gestalt Theory of Personality
Guadalupe Amescua, Ph.D. 226

Academic Anxieties: A Gestalt Approach

Cara Garcia, Ph.D., Susan Baker, M.A.,
and Robert deMayo, Ph.D. 239

Cultural Action for Freedom:

Paulo Freire as Gestaltist
Peter Philippson, M.Sc. 251

Abstracts
The Ethical Use of Touch in Psychotherapy
Pauline Rose Clance, Ph.D. 259

Gestalt and Somatics: The New Integration

Cynthia Cook, Michael Clemmens, Ph.D.,
Gail Feinstein, CSW, Ruella Frank, Ph.D.,
Susan Gregory 260
What’s Behind the Empty Chair? A Visual
Presentation of Gestalt Therapy Theory and Concepts
Liv Estrup, M.A. 262

A Somatic and Developmental Approach

to Gestalt Therapy
Ruella Frank, Ph.D. 263

A Bird May Love a Fish, But Where Would

They Live? Couple’s Therapy
Robert W. Resnick, Ph.D. and Rita F. Resnick, Ph.D. 264

Theatre and Therapy: Toward a Field Theoretical

Understanding of the Dream
Arthur Roberts, M.A. and Janet Sonenberg, M.F.A. 265

Female Sexual Dysfunctions and Gestalt Therapy

Ceylan Tugrul, Ph.D. 266

Feminist Relational Theories and Gestalt Therapy:

A Lively Dialogue
Deborah Ullman, B.A. and Mary Ann Kraus, Psy.D. 267

Adding Womens Voices: Feminism and

Gestalt Therapy
Ruth Wolfert, M’Lou Caring, Cynthia Cook,
Gail Feinstein, Iris Fodor, Zelda Friedman,
Alice Gertsman, Susan Jurkowski, Maria Kirchner 268
Gestalt Review, 3(3):173–177, 1999

Editorial


J O S E P H M E L N I C K, Ph.D.

consisting of papers from

I
AM PLEASED TO PRESENT OUR CURRENT ISSUE
the third annual Association for the Advancement of Gestalt
Therapy (AAGT) Conference held in Cleveland in May of 1998. I
am writing this editorial at an interesting time, for just in the last month,
I have attended two important Gestalt conferences. The first was the
Gestalt International Organization and Systems Development (OSD)
Conference, May 13–16, 1999, in Cleveland, Ohio, and the second was
the fourth annual AAGT Conference held this Spring in New York,
May 28–31.

OSD Conference

The Gestalt OSD conference was the first international gathering of its
kind. 1 Although the application of Gestalt principles to organizations
is not a new endeavor, its popularity is rapidly increasing, and the
conference was certainly a testimony to its growth. Gestalt practitio-
ners are well suited to lend their expertise to the dilemmas faced by
organizations dealing with the ever-quickening pace of change as
multicultural and multinational organizations reconfigure through
mergers, acquisitions and alliances.
The conference consisted of a wide array of workshops, with each
having a strong experiential component. Gestalt concepts, such as
building ground, multiple figures, emerging patterns, dealing with
resistance, unit of work, and the experience cycle, formed the theo-
retical ground for many of the presentations. Some examples are: The
Workforce of the 21st Century—Implications for Gestalt OSD; Gen-
eration X and the Gestalt Approach to Team Development; Applying
High-Contact Modes in Large Group Change Settings; Complexity
Theory and Gestalt OSD; Gestalt Organizational Work in Religious


1
There was one other Gestalt organizational conference, though smaller in scope,
organized by Carolyn Lukensmeyer and Edwin Nevis in 1983.
173  1999 The Analytic Press
174 JOSEPH MELNICK


Settings; and Working with Resistance in the Executive Coaching

Process.

AAGT Conference

The AAGT Conference was equally stimulating. It matched the OSD

conference in its international flavor, (approximately 30 percent of both
conferences consisted of non-U.S. residents). The theme of the confer-
ence was Bridging Our Diversity, Expanding Our Vision, and many of
its workshops were also cutting edge. Some examples are: Self as Story;
Gestalt Narration, Narrative Gestalt; How Politics, Policy and Reim-
bursement Impact Gestalt Therapy in the World; Awareness of Ground:
Therapy with Diverse Lesbian Couples; Crises as Flourishing; A Gestalt
Approach to Holistic Health: A Model to Work with Illness; Contact
and Intimacy in Gestalt Group Therapy; and Pathways of Song: Sens-
ing Self Through Singing.
At both conferences there were numerous instances in which par-
ticipants were required to make decisions and had difficulty doing so.
A closer look at these situations indicates confusion about how to build
and maintain good relationships while at the same time carrying out
organizational tasks. Even the organizational practitioners—with pre-
sumably greater sophistication in these matters—seemed hampered
at times by emphasizing work at the interpersonal levels as the major
aspect of decision making.
That this issue exists for Gestalt organizations is not very surpris-
ing because Gestalt therapy was never formulated to solve large sys-
tem dilemmas. 2 The Gestalt approach rests on a base of awareness,
authenticity, and contact, in short, the creation of intimacy, not the
solving of work problems or tasks by groups.
Glancing back at our historical roots, we know that Gestalt therapy
first gained popularity in the 1960s and 1970s at a time when psycho-
therapy was beginning to rebel against the highly structured medical
model format. By focusing on the here and now, dialogue, and the
diminishment of patient-therapist hierarchy, the Gestalt approach
helped redefine the therapeutic relationship. It was transformed into
an intimate relationship in which awareness of self and the other and contact
were the guiding principles.


2
Although the founders of Gestalt therapy had a great interest in society as a whole
and in large order change, the Gestalt approach was originally designed for individual
psychotherapy and only later applied to intimate and semi-intimate systems such as
couples, families, and therapy groups.
EDITORIAL 175


The important question that emerged from these two conferences is

whether this model can successfully be applied to large groups where
the goals include, but are not limited to, the creation of contact.
I would label our traditional way of relating as intimate and ac-
knowledge that Gestaltists are drawn to it by training and character. A
second model I would call strategic, and I believe that this approach is
less consistent with how Gestaltists live their lives.
In a presentation at the OSD conference, entitled Intimacy in the Post
Modern Organization, Stephanie Backman and I (1999) discussed some
of the basic differences in the intimate versus strategic approaches. 3

INTIMATE 4 STRATEGIC
Joining (associating) is the goal Product is the goal
Nonhierarchical Hierarchical
Consensual Democratic–authoritative
Fewer constraints More time limits
Focus on awareness Focus on action
Here and now Future oriented
Process Structure
Spontaneous Planful

In our presentation we argued that intimate systems, (couples,

friends, etc.), often run into trouble with tasks and problems because
they do not have enough strategic skills and that strategic systems
often fail with tasks because of the strategists’ lack of intimacy skills
and concerns. Maybe the question should be “What is the correct blend
of intimate and strategic perspectives and skills necessary to move
our organizations forward?”

The Polsters

The AAGT conference also featured a tribute to Erving and Miriam

Polster, who are stepping down from the running of the Gestalt Train-
ing Institute of San Diego, which they co-founded 25 years ago. Beyond
their formal contributions, it is their presence, generosity, and authen-


3
Strategic versus Intimate approach was primarily developed by Sonia March Nevis,
along with Edwin Nevis, Joseph Zinker, Stephanie Backman, and me.
4
This artificial division of experience into categories is meant solely for illustrative
purposes. Further, because of a number of significant societal influences such as the femi-
nist movement and the flattening of organizational hierarchies, many, if not most, orga-
nizations are becoming more intimate—for good and bad. Ironically, I find that it is of-
ten more difficult to teach strategic skills to intimate systems than the reverse.
176 JOSEPH MELNICK


ticity that most stand out. As individuals, they are excellent examples
of living Gestalt theory. We are pleased that they will continue to write,
teach, and serve on our editorial board and wish them well.

Our Current Issue

Our current issue reflects the diversity of the Gestalt approach. The
authors come from England, Brazil, Australia, and Mexico, in addi-
tion to the United States. And what of their topics?
We begin with Selma Ciornai’s keynote address, “Paths for the Future:
From a Culture of Indifference Toward a Gestalt of Hope.” Ciornai
describes Gestalt therapy as it has evolved in Brazil from the 1960s
through the present. She talks of it within the context of an evolving
culture and focuses on how it has affected both its practitioners and its
patients. Ciornai challenges us to focus more seriously on the interrela-
tionship between the personal and the social and cultural.
Our second article is “A Gestalt Approach to the Treatment of Gam-
bling” by Norman F. Shub. After first giving an overview of gambling
in the United States, Shub asks the important question, “What can we
gain by applying a Gestalt perspective to this problem?” He views
gambling as more of a characterological than an addiction issue, and
details an elegant treatment model that emphasizes a family context
and a supportive environment. He ends with a case study that dem-
onstrates the model at work.
Our next article is Alan B. Meara’s “The Butterfly Effect in Therapy:
Not Every Flap of a Butterfly’s Wing . . .” In this wide-ranging essay,
Meara presents a new way of viewing and analyzing group process
and development. Grounding his article in Gestalt theory, he draws
from Group Dynamics and the emerging field of Chaos and Complex-
ity Theory. He ends with a creative and intriguing “mini-experiment”
by demonstrating how his model can be tested empirically.
Next we present Guadalupe Amescua’s “Autism in Gestalt Theory:
Toward a Gestalt Theory of Personality.” Drawing from Gestalt prin-
ciples such as contact and boundary disturbance and her extensive
experience, Amescua presents a model for the treatment of autism.
She ends with a detailed case study that helps to illuminate her theo-
retical concepts.
Cara Garcia, Susan Baker, and Robert deMayo present “Academic
Anxieties: A Gestalt Approach.” They apply the Gestalt perspective to
specific types of academic anxieties, utilizing basic Gestalt concepts
such as boundary disturbances, the safe emergency and definition of
anxiety. The paper is filled with specific suggestions concerning how
to work with academic anxiety as well as an excellent case example.
EDITORIAL 177


Our last paper is Peter Philippson’s “Cultural Action for Freedom:

Paulo Freire as Gestaltist.” Philippson describes the philosophy and
“liberating education” of Freire, one of the most influential, widely
known educators of our time. He finds much in common with a Gestalt
approach, including self as relational and growth as arising from
dialogue and interaction. However, Freire has a specific concern—the
political dimension. He believes that we must face the culture of domi-
nation. Those who are being subjugated must be willing to confront
those that dominate. Otherwise dialogue is impossible.
We end this issue with a series of abstracts from presenters at the
1998 AAGT conference. Some of these abstracts represent papers that
we were unable to accept because of space limitations. Others consist
of presentations that were submitted as abstracts, not full-length articles.
By presenting these abstracts, we hope to allow you, the reader, to
be informed regarding recent, cutting-edge work with the Gestalt
approach. We also hope to encourage you to contact these authors to
learn more about their interests or to initiate dialogue, if your inter-
ests are similar.
One last bit of news that I would like to share is the inauguration of
our Gestalt Review web page. It will feature articles, letters, and much
more. Please visit us at http://www.GestaltReview.com.

References

Backman, P. & Melnick, J. (1999), Intimacy in the post-Modern Organization.

Workshop presented at the first GIC International OSD Conference, Cleve-
land, OH.
Perls, F., Hefferline, R. & Goodman, P. (1951), Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and
Growth in the Human Personality. New York: Julian Press.
Gestalt Review, 3(3):178–189, 1999

Paths for the Future: From a Culture of

Indifference Toward a Gestalt of Hope


S E L M A C I O R N A I, Ph.D.

This paper, presented as one of the keynote speeches in the opening

panel “Voices From 3 Continents” at the AAGT Third Conference, elabo-
rates on present and future perspectives for Gestalt therapy through a
review of its major tendencies over the last decades. The article begins
by giving an overall view of Brazil’s socioeconomic context 1 and goes
on by putting into context past and present tendencies of Gestalt therapy
within the cultural, political, and economic world scenario in which
Brazil is inserted. The author then elaborates on the current crises of
psychotherapeutic practice and on the “culture of growing indifference”
that colors this decade. Questioning the validity of such concepts as
“organismic self-regulation” and “intrinsic evaluation” as parameters
for ethics, philosophy of life, and healthy functioning for Gestalt therapy
in the decades to come, the author proposes a perspective for Gestalt
therapy that she metaphorically calls “Gestalt of Hope”: an ethos of
solidarity and collective responsibility where the interrelation between
personal and social factors, and individual and cultural aspects, will be
truly considered in our work within a field perspective.

Introduction: Tracing the Context

INCE THE TITLE OF THIS PANEL is “Voices From 3 Continents”, I would

S first like to say that my presence was mainly as a voice from

Brazil, because despite many similarities, the history of develop-
ment of Brazil, a Portuguese-speaking country, and of the Gestalt
movement in Brazil differ in many ways from that of our neighboring
Spanish-speaking countries.
Because of this, as my perspective for Gestalt therapy in the future—
about which I shall elaborate on later—departs from the context where

Selma Ciornai, Ph.D. is a Gestalt practitioner, senior teacher of the Gestalt Training
Program at Institute Sedes Sapientiae, Sao Paulo, Brazil; and is on the editorial board
of Revista de Gestalt.
1
Since this paper was written in the first semester of 1998, it does not reflect Brazil’s
recent economic difficulties, disseminated in the media.
178  1999 The Analytic Press
PATHS FOR THE FUTURE 179


I live, I want to start off by giving you an overall idea of our country.
Brazil has a surface area that occupies half of South America’s terri-
tory, is almost as large as the United States, and has approximately 180
million inhabitants. Apart from the native Brazilians, who (as in the
United States) were exploited and massacred, Brazil’s population basi-
cally stems from the country’s Portuguese colonization. When colonized,
Brazil was not seen as a place to settle down but, rather, as a source of
natural wealth such as sugar, noble wood, gold, and precious stones,
which were exploited for the sole purpose of sending these riches back
to Portugal. Furthermore, we also had a large percentage of people of
African origin; in Brazil, slavery lasted longer and was more widespread
than in any other country of the Western hemisphere. In fact, several
sociologists believe that these origins somehow provided an ethos of
economic exploitation and inequality that, until today, influences the
way institutions, groups, and classes developed in our country.
Brazil today still harbors acute and baffling disparities in terms of
socioeconomic development, basic living conditions and the educational
level of the population. According to UNICEF (1998), we still have 17
percent illiteracy among the adult population, which amounts to over
19 million people.
In terms of class differences and income distribution, the gap be-
tween the rich and poor is the widest worldwide. The wealthiest 1 per-
cent of the population earn more than the 40 percent that makes up the
poorest. Among those, the income of 29 percent of the population is
less than one dollar per day (Rocha 1997, UNICEF 1997).
There are rural areas in the Northeast of Brazil, where the develop-
ment of modern industrialized cities has not yet arrived, and the politi-
cal system is still almost feudal. There are a few rich landowners, while
the rest of the people live in a state of absolute misery. As in other places
in Brazil, there is a high percentage of infant mortality caused by mal-
nutrition and lack of the most basic sanitary conditions.
On the other hand, Brazil has extremely modern and developed
metropolitan areas, with overcrowded skylines marked by skyscrap-
ers. These cities have sophisticated universities, hospitals, and cultural
and economic centers that are well in line with those of developed coun-
tries—although in these metropolitan areas there are large pockets of
poverty where the minimum living conditions for human dignity are
completely absent. Furthermore, like other metropolitan areas world-
wide, Brazilian cities face problems such as the increasing number of
homeless, a scaring rise in urban violence, and drug traffic and use.
Politically, as in most South American countries, from 1964 we lived
under a military dictatorship that lasted for 21 years and ended in 1985
with the election of a civilian president. Today we live in a democracy,
180 SELMA CIORNAI


but this process of democratization has not yet eliminated the huge
class and economic differences that exist in our country.
Within this background of disparity, Gestalt therapy was introduced
in Brazil and basically developed in the large cities, among the upper
middle class and middle class levels of the population. During the last
30 years, it has basically developed in the same ways as in Europe and
in the United States, and I would like next to mention several aspects
that I consider important in these developments.

Gestalt in the 1960s and 1970s in Brazil and the World

Last month we read in the newspapers of the 30th anniversary of the

events that burst forth in May 1968 in Paris. In the words of a Brazilian
journalist:

The 60’s were bloody and convulsive years. All socially oppressed
groups—protested and fought for their rights, to change the world.
Those were years of demolition and transformation of all param-
eters that oriented people’s lives . . . years of big dreams and at
lot of ingenuity [Toledo, 1991, p. 7].

We were indeed a generation that contested, that put ourselves

against the mainstream establishment trying to be revolutionary in all
spheres of our lives. We wanted to change the world, the institutions,
families, and people, and we saw ourselves as agents of transforma-
tion for a new era. Gestalt therapy was totally inserted into this context.
Perls (1969), in the introduction to Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, explicitly
stated that there was a struggle between fascism and humanism going
on and that he believed that there was only one way to build the path
to deep social changes: to free people from their inner tyrannies and
become more real (pp. 1–4).
Vinacour (1995), an Argentine Gestalt therapist, asserts that, if the
counterculture movements pointed to the crisis of modernity, the crisis
of reason, Gestalt was the therapy that most extended psychological
support to this movement. He wrote: “Never before had a psychothera-
peutic school been so identified with a proposal for social transforma-
tion, and never before had a psychotherapy been so closely identified
with a movement by the public at large” (p. 4).
However, from the early 1970s onward, counterculture movements
gradually ebbed from the global social scenario. The energy of trans-
formation turned to a different polarity, more inward, directed toward
the freeing of each one’s energetic blocks and conflicts, toward each
individual’s inner searches. Therapy was concentrated in clinics and
PATHS FOR THE FUTURE 181


centers devoted to human growth, where a diversity of workshops was

held. It was the period coined by Lash as being the “culture of
narcissism.”
But in Brazil, as in other parts of Latin America, the mid-1960s and
the 1970s had an additional configuration: they were also known as the
lead years, an obscure and violent period marked with military dicta-
torships, torture, imprisonment, abuse of civil rights, and repression of
freedom and of any critical thinking or political opposition. Slemenson
(1998) points out that in Latin America therapies were havens of liberty,
where people found refuge and consolation against the fear, brutality,
and insensitivity that reigned at the time. On the other hand, the “lead
years” were also “golden years,” years of euphoria and economic
expansion, and as a consequence, therapy also expanded because the
upper middle classes had the funds to pay for it.

Tendencies of the Gestalt Movement in the 1980s

In the mid-1980s “the dream seemed to have ended,” and a period began
in which the values of the 1960s were questioned: socialism and class
equality as a utopia, the right to pleasure and to be different, the liber-
tarian romanticism, and the epistemology of irrationalities that accom-
panied the crisis of reason. Concurrently, a movement of questioning
and reformulations in Gestalt therapy began in the world and also in
Brazil, which has continued to date and which I think can be organized
into three basic tendencies:

1. As Gestalt therapy work began to develop by means of therapeutic

processes that were longer than the short and intense workshops
that had characterized the greater part of Gestalt work in the 1960s
and 1970s, a need arose for a more careful understanding that would
be more attentive to the complexity of our inner dynamics, to the
inner landscapes of our psychological intimacies, and to our indi-
vidual developmental history. A search for a deeper and more subtle
existential understanding regarding the forms that the Gestalts are
being experienced, those that have already been experienced, and
those that we desire to experience, interact, and dynamically con-
figure themselves in our lives, frequently with more enduring traces
and hidden aspects more difficult to access (Ciornai, 1991b, 1995,
1998). This movement was manifested both in the search for theo-
retical references that were outside Gestalt therapy, as well as in the
further development of Gestalt therapy’s own theoretical approach.
2. The second tendency was that of attributing more attention to the
human relationship, which was manifested in making figural to our
182 SELMA CIORNAI
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attention the quality of the therapeutic relationship in itself. The

dialogic relationship (Yontef,1993) by embodying the phenomeno-
logical and noninterpretive posture of Gestalt therapy, coupled with
an attitude of really being there for the other, with kindness, warmth,
empathy, and inclusion, became a part of all training courses and
study groups in Brazil. On the other hand, Gestalt therapists started
to study and search for ways to work with Gestalt therapy with
more enduring intimate relations, or intimate systems, as the staff of
the Center of Studies of Intimate Systems of the Gestalt Institute of
Cleveland (Zinker, 1994) call it, that is, couples, families, partners,
and inter-group relations.
3. The third tendency that I see is that of a magnifying lens directed
towardsthe relation with the environment, to the cultural, social and
family influences in our interiority, with a shift to a more accentu-
ated field perspective and paradigm in Gestalt therapy thinking and
practice. This shift was also accompanied by the use of Gestalt
therapy in organizational contexts, a new trend that started to grow
considerably during this decade.

The Situation in the 1990s

These tendencies have been present in Brazil during the last 10 years.
However, in the 1990s important changes have taken place in our coun-
try. Brazil has opened to the world, and, within the possibilities of a
third-world country, has accompanied the globalization movement that
has become part of the world scenario. With this globalization of markets
and financial systems, like other countries, we have felt the repercus-
sions in the tightened funds for government programs targeted to the
population—the “Welfare State.”
In Brazil, this movement has been accompanied by extremely high
interest rates in order to attract foreign investment, privatization of
state-owned companies and the opening up of the country for imports—
which caused the bankruptcy and closing of many Brazilian industries.
This is not to mention the enormous foreign debt contracted during the
1960s, without prefixed interest rates, which snowballed into a sum
that is impossible to pay. This debt has caused the country to allocate a
large portion of its Gross Domestic Product to pay the interest on the
World Bank loans, subordinating it to interests that do not represent
the majority of the population.
This situation has caused an increasing wave of unemployment and
urban violence, which has placed the country on the brink of despair.
Newspapers have printed horrific images of the misery that the victims
PATHS FOR THE FUTURE 183


of the Northeast drought have been suffering, coupled with images of

the ransacking of food warehouses and supermarkets.

The Crisis in Psychotherapeutic Practice

In what concerns clinical psychology, this crisis has caused an enor-

mous slump in private clinical practice. The middle class, which used
to pay psychotherapy for personal growth, is being flattened more and
more, and funds are short. Therapists are “in crisis.” In all the Brazilian
cities, Gestalt therapists, as well as others, have felt the impact of a
sharp decrease in their clientele and in their purchasing power to pay
for treatment. In addressing the similar issue of increased scarcity in
private psychotherapeutic practice in the United States, Miller (1997)
ironically stated that within a few years “private practice will serve
only a few wealthy people who are willing and able to pay for therapy
as though they are purchasing a beautiful hand-crafted cabinet made
of fine wood. The rest will shop for mass produced packages compris-
ing ten sessions of cognitive therapy or behavior mod and a year ’s
supply of Prozac” (p. 61).
In Brazil, this has caused various professionals to attend patients at
longer intervals, supplementing treatment with telephone calls or, for
clients living in other cities, via the Internet. Some professionals are
specializing in shorter-term treatments as crisis therapy.
Others have began to work with companies or with groups with
specific problems: professional guidance for adolescents, the elderly,
patients with AIDS, cancer, anorexia, psychomotor difficulties, and so
on. Many have turned to university teaching jobs, and it is quite inter-
esting to note that a byproduct of this crisis is the considerable increase
in the number of professors with a Gestalt approach in universities,
both in theoretical courses and in clinical supervision. Others are
resorting to work at hospitals and other mental health institutions or
are working with insurance plans that pay very little. Training centers
in Gestalt therapy are offering groups and workshops directed to the
public at large on existential themes that permeate daily life, such as
relationships with children, sexuality, drugs, and other topics. Training
is also being given to professionals that work with people on a wider
scale, such as social workers and multiprofessional teams.
On the other hand, it is impossible to remain insensitive to the drama
of the unemployed, homeless, and the destitute people who live in our
country and to continue with psychotherapeutic practices that are alien-
ated from the reality surrounding us. In line with this, several centers
of Gestalt therapy training have developed community-related
184 SELMA CIORNAI
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programs for the low-income population, in which students work un-

der our supervision. In other programs our students have been work-
ing directly in community centers for the needy and have brought their
experience as material for course supervision.
As a result, we have felt the need to prepare ourselves and our
students to work in other types of activity: to work in a more flexible
manner, within community contexts, with more severe cases, and with
the needy population. In the last Brazilian Congress on Gestalt Therapy,
the main theme for presentations and panels was the social practice of
Gestalt therapy in community contexts.

The Culture of Growing Indifference

The impact of economic, sociocultural, and political factors in people’s

inner lives has also been impossible to disregard for another reason:
violence is so present in our lives today that not a single family in São
Paulo or Rio de Janeiro has escaped at least one of its members being
mugged three or four times. Some people even walk around with two
wallets, one for themselves and one for the thief; air conditioned cars
have become a need because it has become too rash to drive with open
windows; the places in which we live are becoming bunkers, with ever
more sophisticated alarm and security systems.
On the other hand, the world is living through a period devoid of
utopias and ideals, in which there is a crisis of ethics and values amidst
a frightful increase of fanatical religious and messianic movements. We
are living through a dehumanized period. In Brazil, the country was
completely stunned by the news that a group of adolescents from rich
families had set fire and burned to death an Indian who was sleeping
on a bus stop after having participated in a demonstration in favor of
Indian’s rights. Even more shocking was the boys’ explanation that they
had thought the Indian to be a “beggar,” since it has become known
that other beggars had already been burnt to death by upper class ado-
lescents in Brasilia. On the same note, the world has been astonished
with the news of the adolescent killings in the United States, which
have hit the headlines in the past months.
When commenting on these events in the article entitled “Faces of
Immorality,” Costa (1998), a Brazilian anthropologist, stated that the
crime committed by the Brazilian boys goes way beyond a hideous
assassination that is representative of our culture at the end of this
century, because it is a crime of indifference. Costa pointed out that an
enormous social inequality is the cradle of millions of youths who are
accustomed to viewing others as nonpersons and who hold in contempt
those who are not part of their shopping-center culture. Looking out of
PATHS FOR THE FUTURE 185


the windows of their imported cars, these youths view the spectacle of
their neighboring world with complete indifference: the hungry, the
street children begging for the things that come so easily to them.
On the other hand, the streets are filled with children and muggers
who will kill for a pair of sneakers and to whom a pull of the trigger
probably gives them the same sensation of power that is felt by the rich
man’s son, who, with the same gesture, pulls out his credit card to pay
a bill.
Considering that Gestalt therapy was born in the vanguard of move-
ments of ruptures and transformations, in view of this world of grow-
ing indifference and dehumanization, it seems quite pertinent to review
the question of ethics in Gestalt therapy. In 1951, Perls Hefferline, and
Goodman wrote:

By desensitizing themselves . . . most persons seem to conceive a

“reality” that is tolerable, to which they can adjust with a measure
of happiness. . . . By and large, we exist in a chronic emergency
and most of our forces of love and wit, anger and indignation, are
repressed or dulled. . . . [But] it is impossible for anyone to be
extremely happy until we are more happy more generally
[pp. 250–251].

Perls et al. (1951 p. iv) wrote about organismic self-regulation and

about one’s intrinsic evaluation as a philosophy and as an ethical basis
for a new life, as opposed to comparative or neurotic ones. In this regard,
when writing about the relationship of Gestalt therapy and the coun-
terculture movement of the 1960s, Vinacour (1995) considers that one
of the original core proposals of Gestalt—the search to unblock the
energetic flow in each person’s movement of figure–background
formation, aiming toward organismic self-regulation—is basically a
proposal to return to the “Savage-self,” to a idealized naturalism, a
return to the style of primitive communities romantically idealized by
those who live in an industrialized society (p. 8). In affirming that in
general the critical viewpoint of Gestalt therapy in the 1960s with re-
gard to society still stands, he questions whether in the mid-1990s this
course still seems valid to us.

Toward a Gestalt of Hope

I do not have an answer for these questions; I am sharing with you my

consternation. But I have some considerations that may contribute to
our reflections.
186 SELMA CIORNAI


Last year, I spoke of my longings for what I metaphorically named

the “Gestalt of Hope” (Ciornai, 1998). Gestalt therapy, from the 1960s
to the early 1980s, was impregnated with the liberating energy of the
counterculture movements, with its emphasis on experimenting with
alternative lifestyles, with its emphasis on people freeing themselves
from inner ties and limiting patterns of relating to themselves and to
others. I said that, in my point of view, this liberating energy impreg-
nated with hope and vitality most therapeutic experiences of the time
and that this is an aspect that, in my perception, needs to be recovered.
Today I see that the term Gestalt of Hope can be expanded beyond
this connotation. 1 Shifting away from an atomistic view of human
beings, Gestalt therapy has long conceptualized that the individual can
only be understood as a relational being, as a living system in a con-
stant interdependent relation with the environment. Wheeler (1996)
points out that this represented a radical shift to a field paradigm in
psychotherapy. This view is close to that of modern physics and of most
oriental and spiritual philosophies that point to the unity of all things,
to the importance of recognizing ourselves as manifestations of uni-
versal energy and, consequently, rediscovering our connection with the
wind, the stars, the tides, nature, and other people (Ciornai, 1991a).
However, although this view is imbedded in our most basic theo-
retical foundations, in our practice it has often been reduced to a very
narrow focus. I believe that in Gestalt therapy we should find paths
that could lead us to really consider the interrelation between personal
and social factors, between cultural and individual aspects in our work.
I think that we need to enlarge the concepts of organismic self-regula-
tion and intrinsic evaluation to a field perspective, helping people to
become more aware of both their connection and interrelation with
broader systems, as well as their power to help transform them. Gestalt
therapy needs to redeem its faith in humans’ capacity to be artists of
their own existence, in their possibilities of transcending limits and
conditionings even in the most inhospitable conditions.
I think that as therapists, when we help people individually or
collectively to be aware and perceive themselves in relationships, to
figure out and reconfigure relations with oneself, with others and the
world, when we teach them to take human experience away from the

1
Considering these ideas, in a recent letter to me Rubenfeld wrote: “When you think
of a Gestalt of Hope, I wonder, in what dimensions are you thinking? The intrapersonal? The
interpersonal? The socio-political? The eco-spiritual or transpersonal? What possible combi-
nation?” He sent me in addition the short text The Expanding Universe (1997),which
for him “contains the basis for hope.” His input was inspiring and triggered in me a
recovery of thoughts expressed in a text I first presented in 1989 (Ciornai 1991a) that I
cite below.
PATHS FOR THE FUTURE 187


stream of the routine of daily life, putting it under new lights, mixing
the old with the new, the known with the dreamed, and the feared with
the glimpsed, we are confirming the libertarian tradition of Gestalt
Therapy2 (Cio, rnai 1991a)
I believe that we can thus help create a true “Gestalt of Hope,” an
ethos of solidarity and respect for all forms of existence, in which we
can extend our awareness beyond our personal limits, broadening our
sense of responsibility and our boundaries to where “I am I, but I am
also you, and you are you but you are also me.”

Acknowledgments

In order to prepare this work, I requested information from various

Brazilian cities regarding the practice and teaching of Gestalt therapy,
and I have relied on the accounts of the following Gestalt therapy
colleagues

• Afonso H. L. da Fonseca, Centro de Psic. Fenomenológico-

Existencial, Maceió
• “Boletim de Gestalt Terapia do Triângulo Mineiro,” Uberlândia
• Departamento de Gestalt Terapia, Inst.Sedes Sapientiae, São Paulo
• Elaine C. Ramazzini, São Paulo
• Enila Chagas–Centro de Estudos de Gestalt Terapia de Brasília
• Jorge J. J. Boris, Universidade do Ceará, Fortaleza
• Jorge P. Ribeiro,–Inst. de Gestalt Terapia de Brasília
• Lindomar Pacheco and Tercia Simioli, Inst. de Gestalt Terapia do
Mato Grosso do Sul
• Miguel Angel Liello, Centro de Estudos de Gestalt do Rio Grande
do Sul, Porto Alegre
• Rosane L. G. Bernardini, Configuração/ Centro de Est. e Ativ.
Gestálticas, Florianópolis
• Sandra Salomão, Centro de Aperf. e Desenv. em Gestalt Terapia,
Rio de Janeiro
• Sergio Buarque, Recife
• Sergio Lizias, Inst. Gestalt do Ceará, Fortaleza
• Terezinha M. Silveira, VITA / Clínica de Psicoterapia, Rio de
Janeiro

2
A few days after I finished writing this paper, I attended a lecture by Michael
Vincent Miller in São Paulo, Brazil, entitled “Gestalt therapy at the end of the century:
From disappointment to liberation”, that had an important resonance to the ideas I
organized in this paper. He stated that, in his view, therapy at its best is always revolu-
tionary, as it teaches people that they do not need to conform, that the reality they live
need not be the only possible reality.
188 SELMA CIORNAI


• Virginia E. S. M. Costa, Inst. de Treinamento e Pesquisa em Gestalt

Terapia de Goiânia
• Wanderléa B. Ferreira, Universidade da Amazônia, Belém

I also relied on the assistance of Lygia Bove (Commission of Justice

and Peace) and Fany Davidovitch (IBGE—Brazilian Institute of Geogra-
phy), who provided me with precious data to analyze the current
Brazilian situation.
Furthermore, I would like to thank my friends Myrian Bove Fernandes
(Gestalt therapist) and Annie Dymetman (Sociologist) for reading this
work and giving me valuable suggestions, as well as my friend Paul
Shane (Gestalt therapist) for his valuable help in the last editing of the
English version of the text.

References

Ciornai, S. (1991a), Em que acreditamos? [In what do we believe?] Gestalt Terapia

J., 1: 30–39.
 (1991b), Gestalt terapia hoje: Resgate e expansão [Gestalt therapy today:
Redeeming and expansion]. Revista de Gestalt, 1:5–31.
 (1995), The importance of the background in Gestalt therapy. Gestalt J.,
18:7–39.
 (1998), Gestalt therapy in Brazil. Gestalt Rev., 2:108–118.
Costa, J. F. (1998), Faces da imoralidade [Faces of immorality]. Folha de São
Paulo, V, p. 12, March 15.
Hycner, R. (1988), Between person and person: Towards a dialogical psycho-
therapy. New York: The Gestalt Journal Press.
Jacobs, L. M. (1989), Dialogue in Gestalt theory and therapy. Gestalt J., 12:25–67.
Miller, M. V. (1997), The emptiness of Gestalt therapy. Gestalt J., 20:2.
Perls, F. (1969), Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. Lafayette, CA: Real People Press.
, Hefferline, R. & Goodman, P. (1951), Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and
Growth in the Human Personality. New York: Dell Publication.
Rocha, J. (1997), Brazil in Focus: A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture. Lon-
don: Latin American Bureau, New York: Interlink Books.
Rubenfeld, F. (1997), The expanding universe Unpublished manuscript.
Slemenson, M. (1998), Gestalt therapy in Argentina: Revolution, evolution,
and contributions. Gestalt Rev., 2:2–?.
Toledo, S. (1991), Éramos rebeldes com causa [We were rebels with cause].
J. do Brasil, Idéias/Ensaios, p. 7, June 6.
UNICEF (1997), Progress of Nations.
UNICEF (1998), Situação Mundial da Infância. [The Situation of World’s Infancy]
Vinacour, C. A. (1995), Nuevos aportes al enfoque Gestaltico: Su insercion en
el presente y su proyeccion futura [New contributions to the Gestalt
approach: Its insertion in the present and its future projection]. Buenos Aires.
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

Wheeler, G. (1996), Self and shame: A new paradigm for psychotherapy. In:
The Voice of Shame: Silence and Connection in Psychotherapy, ed. R. G. Lee &
G. Wheeler. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, pp. 23–58.
Yontef, G.(1993), Gestalt therapy: A dialogic method. In: Awareness, Dialogue
and Process: Essays on Gestalt Therapy. ed. G. Yontef. Highland, NY: Gestalt
Journal Press, pp 203–237.
Zinker, J. (1994), In Search of Good Form: Gestalt Therapy With Couples and Fami-
lies. New York: Jossey Bass.

Selma Ciornai, Ph.D.

Rua Paulistânea, 46 ap. 82
05440-000 SP Brasil
Gestalt Review, 3(3):190–204, 1999

A Gestalt Approach to the

Treatment of Gambling


N O R M A N F. S H U B, B.C.D.

Gambling is a serious and growing problem. Standard treatment pro-

grams commonly address symptoms, but their recidivism rate is nearly
80 percent. My colleagues and I believe that compulsive or addictive
gambling is a manifestation of a character disorder marked by the
gambler ’s failure to get physical and emotional needs met and by a
lack of behavioral options. We believe that Gestalt therapy in a familial
setting can successfully treat gamblers. Gestalt therapy forces gamblers
to see their character picture and their behavior ’s effect on others and to
develop more options for operating in the world.

AMBLING EXACTS TERRIBLE PERSONAL AND SOCIAL COSTS (Abt, 1997),

G and gambling worldwide is increasing. Gamblers are often

secretive and manipulative, and years may pass before it becomes
known that they have raided their corporate funds or pushed their fami-
lies to the brink of bankruptcy and disaster. At some point in their lives,
45 to 50 percent of gamblers engage in some form of crime to obtain
money (Lesieur, 1984). Gamblers go to extreme lengths to keep their
gambling secret. Gambling is a problem that, in many ways, society
supports and engenders and a problem that has often seemed
treatment-proof. Gambling’s devastating consequences include the loss
of social support, the breaking of family relationships, professional and
employment failure, and criminal acts.
Various ideological explanations for gambling have been proposed
over time, but none has been widely accepted. Symptom control, the
primary intervention method, has not helped the majority of people
who struggle with this issue. The National Center for Compulsive
Gambling, which the casinos bankroll, has funded much of the sparse
gambling research. To the researchers’ credit, however, they have shown

Norman Shub is President of Gestalt Associates, Inc. and Clinical Director of Ge-
stalt Institute of Central Ohio.

190  1999 The Analytic Press

THE TREATMENT OF GAMBLING 191


that, over the last 25 years, the recidivism rate for compulsive gam-
blers receiving standard treatment methods is as high as 80 percent
(Jarvis, 1998). The tremendous explosion in gambling opportunities and
the dramatic increase in adolescent gambling mandates that the Gestalt
community consider this population.
Although various Gestalt-oriented writers, such as Michael
Clemmens (1997), have examined addiction in interesting and impor-
tant ways, the specifics of gambling have not been adequately
addressed. I believe that gambling is different from other problems and
that Gestalt therapy can help gamblers.

The Etiology of Gambling

The gambling literature has changed over the years, but no consensus
exists on etiological issues or even on addiction issues vis-à-vis
gambling. Researchers once thought that gamblers had some form of
anxiety problem, which they used gambling to manage (Waters, 1994).
Then, in the 1970s and 1980s, the theory was that gamblers had Post-
Traumatic Stress Disorder and gambled in reaction to reexperiencing
an earlier trauma. Current literature is beginning to view gambling as
a personality or character disorder (Blaszczynski and McConaghy, 1997).
Characterologic rigidity would account for the difficulty of treating
many gamblers and for the high recidivism rate.
Few gambling programs, however, address characterologic issues
or have a methodology for helping characterologic people develop
more flexibility. Most treatment involves neurotic conflict resolution/
managing systems through Gamblers Anonymous (GA) or other struc-
tured approaches. I want to examine gambling from the Gestalt
approach and to sketch a model that I believe has helped and will
continue to help gamblers find other ways to make more contactful
choices throughout their lives.

Why Gestalt?

My colleagues and I first became interested in gamblers as a result of

our ongoing character disorder treatment program (Shub, 1994a). We
now believe that the Gestalt approach can be particularly helpful for
working with gamblers.
First, gamblers love to talk about why they gamble, a pointless
endeavor. In therapy, gamblers want to introspectively slice and dice
their early childhood experiences, but they continue gambling while
wasting time obtaining “insights.” Gestalt is about how, not why, so gam-
blers cannot ramble on intellectually when the rambling itself becomes
192 NORMAN F. SHUB


the issue to examine. Attending to the moment forces gamblers to

begin experiencing the impact of their gambling on themselves and the
world.
Second, Gestalt forces gamblers to experience their character struc-
ture in the present. Typically, an inveterate long-term gambler like Joe
comes to me for therapy with his wife Sally for their initial session. Joe
wants to talk intellectually and generally about why he has developed
this terrible gambling problem that has hurt Sally so much. However,
he totally ignores the fact that Sally is crying; he does not acknowledge
or respond to her pain.
I ask Joe to pay attention to Sally, to notice what occurs in the moment
as she cries and talks about trying to love him and the impact of his
gambling on her and the children. By attending to the contact and ex-
periencing Sally in the Gestalt process, Joe begins to glimpse his char-
acter structure—the narrow, rigid way he interacts with everyone. The
Gestalt approach to awareness and contact allows gamblers to experi-
ence their character ’s rigidity and its effect on people they care about
in the present.
Third, Gestalt is an experimental psychotherapeutic process, and
experimentation allows people with rigid character traits to develop
options for being different. When Joe finally can experience other
people’s pain, he can then experience his own behavioral rigidity and
narrowness and can explore different ways of making contact. When
Joe finally understands that he is a liar and that lying is part of his
gambling, he begins to understand his “stuckness” on the honesty/
dishonesty continuum.
Joe can then begin to experiment with different ways of behaving.
He can say, “I don’t know,” or “We’ll talk about this later,” or “I only
want to talk about part of this now.” Joe can hear what he says and be
honest about his misrepresentations. Joe is more able to express his
feelings or start to explore the truth, even though doing so might
disappoint others or get him “in trouble” again.
The precise experiments I devise to give gamblers a sense of their
“stuckness” or to help them explore options are profoundly impor-
tant to them. I do not tell them to control their gambling or not to gamble
or to avoid gamblers. I help them learn how to be more present in the
world, and the satisfaction they receive makes it much easier for them
not to gamble and to devote their energies to more stimulating activities.
Fourth, assuming that gamblers cannot identify and meet their emo-
tional needs, it follows that they do not have the support systems that
will make a difference. By focusing on contact and contact skills, a
Gestalt approach helps gamblers develop the capacity to form relation-
ships that are not gambling-based or dishonest. This is a critical element
in Gestalt’s contact-based approach to gambling. By helping gamblers
THE TREATMENT OF GAMBLING 193


to listen, respond, ask, take, and give and to experience and value what
is coming toward them, Gestalt therapy gives them a more satisfying
alternative. It allows them to feel more connected to the world, with
less need to find alternative sources of satisfaction.

Character Disorders and Gambling: A Closer Look

Character is the stylistic way in which an individual interacts with the

environment. The Polsters (1973) approached this subject with their
discussion of I boundaries, but they never fully developed it. Everyone
has a character, which begins to develop at birth. Our characters are
made up of traits that form a whole style of relating to the world. The
ability to be fluid and to develop characterologic flexibility depends
almost wholly on the investment of the parents and other people in a
child’s world.
For example, if I ask a person a question, he can say that he does
not want to tell me, he is not sure or the question irritates him, he can
give me part of the answer, or he can lie or reply in other ways. He has
a wide range of responses. A characterologically impaired person,
however, does not develop the options or the fluidity to move freely
on the honesty/dishonesty continuum. He may always lie, not even
realizing that other choices exist. His ways of dealing with any aspect
of that continuum are narrow and usually repetitive.
When three, four, or five traits rigidify and a person has little
flexibility, a character disorder develops. Four or five inflexible core
traits coalesce into a rigid, inflexible style of being in the world. This is
not like a neurotic, compartmentalized person. A character problem cuts
across every aspect of a person’s life and influences the contact in ev-
ery relationship. For example, a person with a limited range on the
honesty/dishonesty continuum may resort to lying and exaggerating
with everyone in some way or another—and not be aware of doing so.
As people’s character structure narrows as they develop and as they
encounter more and more negative experiences in the environment
(which further narrows their character), only a few possibilities remain
after a while to which they can turn for satisfaction: drugs, alcohol,
food, gambling, sex. These options can quickly become destructive.
In terms of the relationship to gambling, I believe that numerous
character patterns exist in the world but that 14 or 15 general catego-
ries of rigidity exist that would be included in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual if it were oriented more fairly toward characterologic
issues. I believe that gamblers tend to display one of these character
problems and that each character disorder encompasses a different
group of core traits.
194 NORMAN F. SHUB
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Gamblers can have a variety of different character structures. A schiz-

oid woman who is robotic, unemotional and insensitive to the suffer-
ing of others has a different group of core traits than a narcissist or an
infantile person. Each client is different, of course, but structures have
been named because they seem to reappear regularly, and they help to
categorize what therapists see.
The four character structures that we have experienced clinically that
seem to encompass most gamblers are histrionic, infantile, narcissistic,
and avoidant. As many gamblers grew up, lack of parental investment
and the pain it caused, proximity to other gamblers, a gang mentality,
or a host of other possibilities led to their character becoming less and
less flexible.

Identifying Character Problems

To identify character problems, we use present-centered diagnosis

(Shub, 1994b), a Gestalt-based methodology that sketches the self’s
current functioning in the moment. A client starts therapy with a
diagnosis—which is not a static label but a description of the self’s
current functioning. For example, Jenny is histrionic. She wants to be
taken care of, she is attention-seeking, she has difficulty giving to others,
she is insensitive and demanding, and she wants everyone to focus on
her. Because Jenny is histrionic, she does not get her needs met well.
“That’s just Jenny,” people think.
As Jenny’s treatment progresses, her diagnosis changes. The block
to contact, which lies in the structure of the self, eases; the self evolves,
and Jenny begins to grow. As her therapy evolves, Jenny’s diagnosis
changes, until eventually there is no diagnosis, just dealing with issues
as they emerge in the present.

Our Treatment Model

Basic Assumptions
Gambling Is Not Just an Addiction. My colleagues and I believe that
gambling is not just an addiction like alcoholism, drug abuse, and some
other addictive phenomena. We believe that the gamblers’ narrow-
ness of behavioral options, their isolation and their inability to meet
their emotional needs join to create the gambling addiction. Thus we
believe that the key to helping gamblers make better contact is not to
focus on extinguishing the addictive behavior. Rather, we focus on open-
ing up the character ’s narrowness and on softening the characterologic
rigidity. For us, gambling is a character or personality problem, and
THE TREATMENT OF GAMBLING 195


most treatment programs do not succeed because they fail to address

that problem.
In our model, therapy with gamblers must address the gamblers’
failure to meet their emotional needs, the impact of their behavior on
others, and the rigidity of their core traits that limit their behavioral
options. Finally, the therapy must work to change the gambler ’s char-
acter, which is the hardest part of the self to change (Milan, 1981, p. 3;
Shub, 1994a).
Therapy Must Occur in the Family Context. We believe that gambling
must be addressed, particularly at the beginning of therapy, in the
context of family or significant others. This approach contradicts
traditional gambling rehab programs, which isolate and focus on the
gambler. Because gambling is a character problem, however, we believe
that part of the motivation to change arises when gamblers truly feel
their behavior ’s impact on others.
In addition, true and lasting change cannot occur until gamblers
understand and can move freely on all the behavioral continua on
which they may display rigid core traits. This means understanding
not just the gambling problem, but the gambler ’s full character picture
on all the continua: for example, honesty/dishonesty, responsibility/
irresponsibility, sensitivity/insensitivity, and investment in self/invest-
ment in others. Our clinical experience supports our belief that the best
way to achieve that result is to work with the people gamblers know
best—those who feel the impact of the gamblers’ behavior. We do not
treat gamblers alone unless there is no alternative.
Gamblers Anonymous May Not Work. GA has made an enormous con-
tribution to addressing the gambling problem in America and other
countries. For some gamblers, however, the GA approach can make the
situation worse rather than better. Most gamblers do not know how to
meet their emotional needs—a daily struggle for everyone, not just
gamblers. Most gambling treatment programs, including GA, do not
deal specifically with the core character traits (although they do deal
with character generally through the step program). Thus, bonding
gamblers to GA can block their ability to achieve necessary insights.
People can disagree with us about the definition of gambling, what
gamblers need to do, how gamblers learn, and whether gambling is a
character problem. But we believe that, without question, GA some-
times puts gamblers with people who do not know how to meet their
needs and who are not sufficiently committed on an interpersonal level
to work with the gamblers. By that, we mean not just working to stop
the gambling but working to help the gamblers become more contactful
human beings.
196 NORMAN F. SHUB
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Gambling Is Transitory. From the Gestalt point of view, gambling is,

like all phenomena, transitory. The rigidity of the gambling problem
indicates to us that part of the self is blocked or “stuck” and cannot
continue to be an aspect of the evolving whole. The goal of treating
gamblers is to transcend the block and support the redeployment of
as much of the growth process as possible. As Gestalt therapists, we
view gambling not as something to be extinguished, but as something
to be brought into awareness, experienced, and moved beyond.
Gamblers Must Not Be Labeled. “Bad” Society has already labeled most
characterologic people, including gamblers, as “bad.” They are not
viewed as people burdened with rigid characters that cause them to
act constantly in the same patterned way. They are viewed as dishonest
criminals and evil people who steal their children’s milk money and so
forth. People often say that gamblers are the scum of the earth, and this
image permeates our culture. Gamblers encounter these perceptions
all the time, and they usually shut out the world even more in order to
negate the pain of the words.
We do not think that gamblers are “bad” people or that they pur-
posefully want to hurt their families. We believe that most gamblers
do care about themselves and others, but they have no ability to express
their feelings or to connect with others. The gamblers we treat feel re-
spected, even though they do things that we do not support. They feel
valued, even though they act in ways that we have difficulty accept-
ing. But we accept them for the sake of bringing them to awareness and
increasing their options.
I do want to be very clear about several points. I also want to
emphasize that, although I believe that most gamblers are charactero-
logic, other kinds of phenomena that block contact, such as obsessive-
compulsive and anxiety disorders, can be associated with gambling.
We do not believe that our model is definitive.

Length of Treatment
For us, the treatment process with gamblers lasts anywhere from 8
months to a year. Sessions are at least 2 hours, longer if the family comes
from far away. And though we may sound mercenary, our policy—an
absolute requirement—is pay in advance. If we even suspect that a client
has a gambling problem, we require payment for three to five sessions
up front and then further payment for the next group of sessions when
those are finished. Using the family money to gamble is a common
method of subverting, demoralizing, and stopping treatment. Demand-
ing payment up front decreases the risk that a client will gamble away
the family’s money and will be unable to invest in therapy to address
the problem.
THE TREATMENT OF GAMBLING 197


Payment up front is critical for ensuring that gamblers must come

back and face their responsibilities. Therapists new to working with
gamblers cannot imagine the money problems they will face if they
treat gamblers like other clients. When gamblers need money, therapy
often is the easiest place from which to take it.

The Importance of Support

I like gamblers, as I like most characterologic clients. Some of my re-
sponse results from my struggles with my own character (Shub, 1995),
but I also tend to see the special qualities in these people. Working with
gamblers requires respect, boundary sensitivity, and confrontation,
linked with an equal amount of support. A proud man cannot easily
hear the brutal truths about what he is doing to his family. He will not
be open to hearing and feeling unless he believes that I care about,
support, like, and authentically appreciate him. He will see the attempt
to look at his character as an attack.
The therapist in the family setting must provide enough support for
clients so that they can share what is being said. Support facilitates the
confrontation, keeps gamblers from thinking they are bad, keeps the
family from blaming or labeling the gambler as bad, and acknowledges
how difficult it is for gamblers to look at their character structure.
When characterologic clients figure everything out, they are going
to feel ashamed. Shame is a byproduct of understanding their charac-
ter. Toward the end of treatment, however, I try to mitigate too much
self-blame and shame by helping the client understand how the
character developed.
In the early days, as my colleagues and I felt our way, we had prob-
lems with clients becoming antagonistic. In the last 10 years, we have
gained more experience. Now, because of the serious support and caring
we give them, we seldom see clients polarize, get angry, and leave with-
out sticking with the process.

Intimate System Versus Group Work

If no intimate system exists, we may use friends who are willing to
come in for four or five sessions. That has been a successful approach
for beginning the therapy. If gamblers have absolutely nobody, we may
put them in a therapy group to begin the process. Then, after they have
established some relationships within the group, we attempt to use the
interactive contact process to help them identify their character struc-
ture in the group setting. Usually—if no family or friends are avail-
able—a combination of individual work to discuss what goes on in the
group and group work can help gamblers see their character structure
and the way they interact with the external environment.
198 NORMAN F. SHUB
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We have found that putting gamblers together in groups allows them

to gamble together or to support each other in their excuse making
rather than examining their character. We do not put more than one
gambler in a group, and we do not put gamblers together in therapy.
They will simply encourage each other and will not stay focused on the
character work.
The most difficult gamblers to treat are couples who both gamble,
although they are rare. We treat them as a couple and bring in their
children or other people to help them develop their character picture.
At least four people are needed—the couple and two other people to
help.

Therapy with John: An Example

The Background
I consult for a religious denomination that sent John to me from out of
state under the threat of being defrocked. John had served in three
different churches. Each went bankrupt, and it seemed clear that John
was stealing operating fund money to gamble. John was sharp, how-
ever, and no one could absolutely prove that he took the money. John’s
parishioners loved him, and he kept getting reassigned because he
was charismatic and intelligent. John believed in his mission and his
pastoring work, but he was so connected to gambling that his com-
mitment was not strong enough to override his need to gamble. Will
alone cannot change character.
John saw me with his wife, Elaine, and five children. I insisted, as
always, that the whole family come. John fought the idea of bringing
everyone. He argued, refused, and threatened before agreeing to come
in. As he said later, facing all this would be much more difficult with
his family there, even though they were frightened and intimidated.
Because I had some power in this situation through the church (most
gamblers come to therapy involuntarily), I insisted, and the family
arrived together.

The Early Sessions

As with any characterologic client, I did not discuss John’s problem in
the first session. I did not suggest GA or that he stop gambling or call
me if he gambled. I address the character structure first because, if clients
do not develop more flexibility on some of their rigid continua, they
will never be able to meet their needs from a different perspective. They
will not change. Character work is the foundation to everything posi-
tive that will happen in the therapy.
THE TREATMENT OF GAMBLING 199


At the first session, John’s children were so frightened that John must
have threatened or terrified them about what was going to happen. To
repeat, I do not work with gamblers alone. An interactive environment
increases the potential that they will see their character and eventually
address their rigidity. Other people who can relate what they experi-
ence make therapy with gamblers more powerful.
I shared with the family how I felt about John lighting a cigar and
flicking ashes on my rug despite my large No Smoking sign. Elaine
immediately looked frightened, the older son grew rigid, the younger
son glared at me, and one of the two little girls, Julie, had a tear in her
eye.
My goal was to begin drawing John’s character picture, not to discuss
gambling or the missing church money. I wanted to help John experi-
ence his behavior ’s impact on others. I moved between John, who was
giving everyone an intense shut-up-and-don’t-say-anything look, and
Julie and just talked to her for a minute. She said she was scared that I
had said something to her dad about not smoking because “he doesn’t
listen. My dad doesn’t listen.” That was the first piece of the character
picture that I was trying to tease out.
My going too far would cause John to read my actions as a narcis-
sistic attack, and he would likely strike out at his family to shut them
up on the way home. By the second session, they would be closed and
retraumatized. So I allowed Julie to say what she had to say without
building on it, restating it, talking about it with John, or asking the
others to respond to it. I just let her words hang there in the room.
This teasing out of the character picture lets me identify and under-
stand the gambler ’s character structure intellectually. It helps the gam-
bler begin to understand and experience his behavior ’s impact on the
others without inducing shame or anger.
I ended the first session with the thought that maybe John had
difficulty paying attention to others and that he tended to pay more
attention to himself. I also identified some of the family’s reaction
to my observations, such as their anger at me and their fear. I did
not push the conversation far because I did not want John to strike
out.
In the second session, as we began to reengage and make contact,
something important happened as I discussed honesty and openness.
John Jr. said he was mad at his dad for taking the money from his piggy
bank. He had saved $23 to buy a model airplane, and it was gone. John
would steal the money he needed from his own children—typical
gambling behavior. John Jr. started crying, and I took that piece, added
it to the others, and developed more of John’s character structure out
loud.
200 NORMAN F. SHUB
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As John Jr. cried, I looked at Elaine (not at John) and remarked, “It
must be really hard for these kids that your husband takes money from
their piggy banks.” I did not speak to John because I was not ready to
look at and deal with him directly, but I was trying to get his character
picture out on the table. I did not think he was sufficiently in touch
with his behavior ’s impact on the others. For the first time, however,
John did not interrupt. He actually was quiet for a moment, and he saw
and heard his son’s pain. He did gloss it over and try to change the
subject. When that did not work, he tried to attack me while I attempted
to keep his character picture on the table.
By the fifth session, after Elaine had talked about how lonely she felt
and the kids talked some about how they did not get what they needed
from their dad, John had grown to the point where he was able to intel-
lectually and emotionally begin to feel his behavior ’s impact on others.
He began to see his preoccupation with himself and his inattentiveness
to others. He began to see that he wanted to be given to but not to give,
that he was stuck on the honesty/dishonesty and responsibility/irre-
sponsibility continua, and that he would strike out at his family when
they acted in ways he did not like. John began to see, understand, and
feel those traits and to articulate them to his family.
As John’s character opened up, as he began to experiment with his
core traits, and as he began to meet more of his needs, his urge to
gamble began to decrease slowly.

The Experimentation Phase

Eventually, John could truly own his character, name his core traits,
and talk—both inside and outside of sessions—about his behavior ’s
impact on others. Then I began to introduce experiments into the family
sessions.
We use two types of experiments to open up rigid traits. The first
deepens clients’ experience of their “stuckness” and lets them experi-
ence in their daily life their lack of options on one of the trait continua.
The second gives them opportunities to develop new ways of being
(see Shub, 1994a, for a detailed discussion of experiments).
Our experiments are not abstract or metaphoric, such as sculpting
or visualizations. All are designed to cut right into a client’s moment-
to-moment experience and are based on the way clients interact with
the people in their lives (hence the importance of having those people
in the therapy). Once a client has owned his or her character structure,
we pick one trait to start working with, usually the one that most inter-
feres with contact. Trying to work with more than one trait at a time
will confuse the client.
THE TREATMENT OF GAMBLING 201


After John had owned his character, he was willing to hear more
from his family than he had been earlier. So I started with the honesty/
dishonesty continuum and, after several sessions, asked each family
member to write down something untrue that John said during the next
2 weeks and seal it in an envelope for the next session.
I used those writings to explore with John how his behavior could
have been different in the moment. Still not discussing gambling per
se, I used the family experiences to begin opening up John’s rigid char-
acter structure. John’s son Billy sobbed, “You promised me you would
come to my Little League game, and in 2 years, you’ve never come to a
game. You always say you’ll come, but you don’t.” In the moment, John
and I explored how he could have said, “I’m busy,” “I’ll let you know,”
“I need to think about it,” “I will come,” “I can’t come, but let’s try to
find another alternative so I can support you.” John began to explore
on his honesty/dishonesty continuum options for being different so as
not to cause Billy such pain.
John could not say no to those he was close to. He made promises
but seldom followed through on them. His responses varied, but
essentially each was dishonest. However, as John explored his family’s
writings, he began to work on the options available to him on the hon-
esty/dishonesty continuum.
As John’s honesty/dishonesty continuum opened up and we shifted
to his responsibility/irresponsibility continuum, John’s feedback from
his family and the people in his life was so positive that he began to
accelerate his character work on his own. Soon he was experimenting
with many different ways of being and was receiving even more posi-
tive support from the environment.
Another reason for families to participate in treatment is that gam-
blers sometimes undergo rapid behavioral changes that can upset the
family’s homoeostatic balance. If a man who has never attended his
children’s activities, never tucked them in at night and never shared
his emotions with them suddenly starts doing so, the children will
react. They may be frightened or angry, may become depressed, and
may have difficulty accepting the new behavior. Having everyone share
the supportive environment of the therapy allows the family to deal
with the changes in the characterologic member and their own reac-
tions to those changes.
Many therapists give homework, and many clients fight it. In our
model for treating gambling, working on the issues outside the sessions
is critical. In the truest Gestalt sense, the client, not the therapist, must
derive the experience’s meaning. Experiments must be precise and must
cut right to the core of the trait, either to establish “stuckness” in it or
teach options for dealing with it.
202 NORMAN F. SHUB
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The best experiments constitute a “next step” that take the clients
incrementally a little bit further. They do not depend upon complicated
instructions that the client must remember. Complicated experiments
tend not to work for the gambler or the family, and the simple next-
step rule has proven most successful. But whatever is identified in the
session must be experienced outside the session to result in serious
change.
After a trait has been opened and a client begins to have more options
for behavior in the world, usually we find that, by the second trait, the
client has gotten such powerful positive feedback that profound changes
can occur rapidly. An example is the schizoidal man who has never
touched his kids. He is robotic and has no emotional connections. We
address his character structure, it opens up, and he begins to tuck his
kids in at night and act in entirely different ways. He becomes warmer,
gentler, and more caring. His children, at first, are shocked but eventu-
ally come to trust and love their “new” dad.
Clients start experimenting on their own, and the therapist cannot
stop them. If clients get good responses from the environment, the
treatment accelerates. After working on one or two traits, clients will
begin to experiment on their own with their core traits. They will do
much of the work without being told to because the environment
responds so positively.

The Transition Phase

When John was able authentically to own and work experimentally with
his core character traits to develop more options, he began to feel an
emotional connection with his family and a deeper contact satisfaction.
In our individual work, he and I then moved to the transition phase, in
which I explored with John how he became a gambler and worked with
him to mitigate his self-blame. We examined what had happened to
him growing up and how his difficult and painful childhood situation
provided him with few opportunities for expanding his traits so that
he constantly narrowed down some of the key ones.

Some Thoughts on Characterologic Clients

In my experience, neurotic people suffering from anxiety or depression

find that other people empathize with their suffering. Characterologic
people, however, often are labeled bad, and the perception that charac-
terologic people can never change is widespread. I have experienced
this struggle myself, so when I work with characterologic gamblers, I
try to provide equal amounts of support and confrontation. These people
THE TREATMENT OF GAMBLING 203


need to feel that I care about them. Even when I put my arm around a
client and tell him that he is a real sleeze bag, that he is really screwing
up his family, or that I cannot believe he is acting as he does, he feels
the emotional connection. This is a critical part of our work together.
When a therapist precisely identifies a gambler ’s character struc-
ture, the relief is enormous. It certainly was true for me. “Somebody
else knows and is saying what I know about my behavior. Somebody
else knows how I treat the world and is not just telling me that stop-
ping gambling will fix everything.”
People who see our work demonstrated always want to know why
the clients come back. Gamblers come back because we really like them
and they know it and because we tell them and help them hear impor-
tant truths that they have known on some level but have never
confronted. We have experienced hundreds of times the relief that char-
acterologic clients feel when their character structure is precisely
identified.

Conclusion

Our model pictures compulsive or addictive gambling as a character

problem. Gamblers’ emotional and physical needs are not being met.
Their options for interaction with the environment are so narrow that
they gamble to meet those needs. I have discussed the importance of
therapy in an intimate setting, and I have sketched the general stages
of therapy with gamblers. I have also emphasized how much Gestalt’s
present-centered, hear-and-now, contact-focus approach has allowed
gamblers to truly experience themselves rather than to endlessly discuss
gambling.
The three goals of standard gambling treatment programs are, first,
to arrest or stop the gambling; second, to develop social skills so that
gamblers can cope better; and third, to reinforce, with the support of
other gamblers, a nongambling lifestyle. My colleagues and I attempt
none of these goals.
Our objective is to identify the gambler ’s character structure and
core traits and to get the gambler to own the character, which means
seeing it, feeling it, and articulating it outside of therapy. If the gam-
bler cannot take responsibility on an emotional level without the thera-
pist, then the process is therapy-dependent and will grind on and on
without much change.
Clients must be able to do outside the session what they do in the
session so they can self-support their own growth. Gambling clients
should be able to sit down anywhere they feel safe, look someone else
in the eye, and state what they have discovered about themselves,
204 NORMAN F. SHUB


meaning it and feeling it: “I don’t want to do this to the people in my

life anymore.” And what they say cannot just be confined to gambling:
“I don’t want to lie”; “I don’t want to be irresponsible”; “I don’t want
to strike out every time someone doesn’t do what I tell them to do.”
One of my fondest wishes is that more therapists, particularly Gestalt
therapists, will become interested in seeing and working with gamblers,
since gamblers far outnumber the therapists who work with them. I
also hope for more optimism and more dialogue about different ways
that this group of people can be treated by Gestalt therapy.

References

Abt, V. (1997), Betting on the future: Gambling in Nevada and elsewhere.

J. of Gambling Behav., 4(1):61–65.
Blaszczynski, A. & McConaghy, N. (1997), Antisocial personality disorder in
pathological gambling. J. Gambling Studies, 3:121.
Clemmens, M. (1997), Getting Beyond Sobriety. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Jarvis, S. (1998), From the view of a compulsive gambler recidivist. J. Gambling
Ther., 4:316.
Lesieur, H. (1984), The Chase: Career of the Compulsive Gambler. Cambridge, MA:
Chenkman Books.
Milan, T. (1981), Disorders of Personality, DSM-III: Axis II. New York: Wiley.
Polster, E. & Polster, M. (1973), Gestalt Therapy Integrated: Contours of Theory
and Practice. New York: Bruner/Mazel.
Shub, N. (1994a), The Process of Character Work: An Introduction. Columbus,
OH: Gestalt Associates.
 (1994b), The Self and Present-Centered Diagnosis. Columbus, OH:
Gestalt Associates.
 (1995), The struggle of the characterologic therapist. In: A Perilous Call-
ing: The Hazards of Psychotherapy Practice, ed. M. Sussman. New York: Wiley,
pp. 174–192..
Waters, G. D. (1994), The gambling life style, part one: Theory. J. Gambling
Studies, 10:159–167.

Norman Shub
100 Outerbelt Street, Suite A
Columbus, Ohio 42313
Gestalt Review, 3(3):205–225, 1999

The Butterfly Effect in Therapy:

Not Every Flap of a Butterfly’s Wing . . .


A L A N M E A R A, B. Comm. (Hons)

This paper presents aspects of Complexity, particularly Chaos theory

and self-organization, and explores their usefulness for the theory of
Gestalt practice. Traditional systems theory is reviewed from
Complexity’s nonlinear systems perspective, and examples are given
of how the theory may relate to practitioner experience in individual
and group work. The self-organization process is described as a model
of change where order emerges from the system itself, rather than being
imposed externally. A way of researching self-organization dynamics
in Gestalt personal development groups is outlined, and some early
findings are presented.


Alan Meara is Director of Training at the Gestalt Therapy & Training Centre, Brisbane,
Australia. He also works with organizations and is researching self organization in
social systems as a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate School of Management at the Uni-
versity of Queensland.
205  1999 The Analytic Press
206 ALAN MEARA
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ESTALT T HERAPY OWES ITS ORIGINS TO MANY SOURCES in Western and

G Eastern philosophy, psychology, social change theories, and the

physical sciences via Lewin (Shepherd, 1977). The synthesis of
these various strands into a coherent whole was largely the work of
Frederick (Fritz) and Laura Perls and Paul Goodman, beginning with
the publication of Ego, Hunger and Aggression by Fritz originally in
1947. Contemporary descriptions of the essence of Gestalt therapy
emphasize three “pillars”: phenomenology, field theory, and dialogue.
Field theory is related (to some degree, Parlett, 1991) to General
Systems Theory, which was formulated in the 1950s and 1960s. In this
article I want to view Gestalt therapy group process through a new set
of lenses, those of nonlinear systems dynamics, and illustrate what
this new field can add to Gestalt group therapy theory.
In the first part of the paper, I will outline key concepts from non-
linear systems theory framed in a generally historical development of
ways of viewing Nonlinear systems. The ways discussed are Deter-
ministic Chaos, Self-Organization, and Complexity. As is consistent
with the topic area, the different ways are intimately related, sharing
some, but not all, of the key concepts from each. Some of the new
concepts are attractors, sensitive dependence on initial conditions,
fractals, far from equilibrium, and bifurcation.
In the next part of the paper, I will give examples of how these
concepts more closely match experiences in facilitating groups and
argue for a revision of some Gestalt therapy systems theory. Huckabay
(1992) provides an excellent starting point for this review of systems
theory, group dynamics, and Gestalt theories. She discusses systems
concepts that are important in the application of Gestalt theory to small
groups, viz., holism, open/closed systems, neg/entropy, homeosta-
sis, and equifinality.
I will then show how these concepts may be limiting in understand-
ing change in groups and will propose some descriptions of Gestalt
group process in terms of self-organization and the implications for
facilitators. Finally, I will describe a possible way of conducting
research in Gestalt practice guided by a philosophy of science that
honors both phenomenological and nonlinear systems worldviews. My
main question is: “Is there evidence of self-organization in the process
dynamics of Gestalt Personal Development Groups as assessed by lan-
guage usage?” Writing about this topic presents a challenge; there are
many figures to build from the ground before the pattern emerges.
The pattern is also evolving, so this paper is a work in progress.

Deterministic Chaos
Chaos theory (Gleick, 1987; Abraham and Gilgen,1995; Capra, 1996) is
a way to see patterns in what might be considered random data or
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT IN THERAPY 207
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chaos. (I will use small “c” chaos to represent the idea of randomness,
and capital “C” Chaos to represent the kind of Chaos that paradoxi-
cally contains order.) In particular, Chaos theory attends to a system
that is

• Complex: having many components that interact

• Dynamical: what happened earlier affects what happens now and
so on
• Nonlinear: the relationship between changes in components is not
necessarily proportional

In such systems, nonlinear systems for short, a small change in one

component may have large effects elsewhere. This is the so-called “but-
terfly effect”: the flap of a butterfly’s wing in Brazil sets off a tornado
in Texas. I will show later how it is that not every flap causes a
tornado—somewhat of a relief.
Chaos theory was the first figure to emerge in the nonlinear systems
field. What was significant about Chaos theory was that it was an
acknowledgment in the physical sciences that the nature of world is
more appropriately thought of as sets of open systems. The errors,
noise, or variations that both the physical and social sciences had
sought to exclude from experimenting in the search for causal, predic-
tive laws, are in fact part of open system growth, change, or adaptation
Edward Lorenz’s discovery in 1960 of chaotic behavior in weather
models (Briggs and Peat, 1989) exemplifies the main way Chaos theory
is applied. That is, a mathematical model of a complex dynamical non-
linear system is constructed. Let’s look at a linear equation first. An
example is a fixed interest loan over a fixed time. An equation for this
is Interest earned = Interest rate × Amount invested, giving a sense of
certainty. “Interest rate” represents a parameter—something that mod-
erates the process described by the equation. A parameter may have
different possible values (e.g., 10% or 5%), and usually one value is
chosen for the calculation. The other two terms in the equation are
called variables—they are like the inputs and outputs of the process.
However, life is more complex than that, and a set of nonlinear equa-
tions describing investment outcomes might allow, say, for compound
interest, changes to the rate of interest, inflation, and taxation effects.
Such equations allow variables to interact with each other, which cre-
ates a circular causality process. Here, it is difficult to say what causes
what, as “all things are connected.”
Lorenz used such a set of nonlinear equations to make a mathemati-
cal model of the weather. He set some parameters at usual levels, put
in some starting values of the variables (e.g., temperature, pressure,
wind velocity), and let the model loose to calculate how variables
208 ALAN MEARA
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changes over time. This is called iteration, like feeding in your knowl-
edge of the client from the last Gestalt session into the current session.
What Lorenz discovered inadvertently was that only a small variation
in one of the input values led to a wildly different outcome—the effect
of nonlinearity. It was discovered that the diversive behavior depended
on the values of the parameters, the moderators. For some parameter
choices, the behavior over time between different runs of iteration was
similar, no matter what starting points were chosen.
Lorenz’s “error” led to the development of the concept of Determin-
istic Chaos, deterministic, because not only was the system determined
by the equations, but also the apparently Chaotic behaviors observed
weren’t random, but ordered. The order in Deterministic Chaos is most
clearly described mathematically; however, instead, I want to present
some descriptions of the types of order found, using the idea of
“attractors.”
As mentioned earlier, if the weather system model’s parameters are
“set” in a particular way, then no matter how the system is tweaked, it
will settle back to the same behavior or state. When a system returns
to the same state after disturbance, we can say there is a point attractor
(like rolling a ping-pong ball into an upturned bowl). Such a process
may be familiar as homeostasis or organismic self-regulation (Perls,
1969); however, more complex processes are possible in this model.
Under different parameter settings, the system can flip-flop between
two points, called a line attractor. Change the parameters, and the
system visits four states—a “figure of eight” attractor.
Under other settings still, the system follows a weird path, where
complex repetitive patterns occur that contain many possible states.
Lorenz’s model, given the settings he used, revealed one of these
strange, or Chaotic attractors, which when graphically represented,
coincidentally resembled a butterfly. Strange attractors are so called
since they have mathematically unusual properties, and nothing like
them had been seen before. The fact that small changes in inputs yield
noticeably different outcomes, the butterfly effect, is technically termed
sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
Strange attractors have a characteristic labelled fractal. This means
that attractor images are viewed at different scales; they are almost
superposable, or self-similar. In some cases the patterns are exact.
Fractals are readily observable in nature in the structures of, for
example, trees ( the overall shape of the tree, compared to the shape
of a branch, and then a twig), ferns, clouds, feathers, lungs, and so on.
A strange attractor means a system can visit many possible states, but
not all possible states, since doing so would be real randomness or
small “c” chaos. Capital “C” Chaos is in fact an order that is revealed
by an attractor.
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT IN THERAPY 209


If we now take a helicopter view of the model or system, we can

observe that, at certain critical values of the parameter settings, the
system changes behavior from one attractor type to another. These
points are called bifurcation points, since they represent points where
different sets of possible states emerge and from which the system
chooses “by itself.” For strange attractors, the behaviors of the sys-
tems are explainable by its equation, but on the other hand, the system’s
choice of any particular state is unpredictable. The equations that are
found to reveal deterministic chaos can be quite simple, and so Chaos
is often described as complexity emerging from simplicity.
The concepts of Chaos have proven to be useful metaphors for as-
pects of social phenomena and also raised methodological issues for
social science (Loye and Eisler, 1987). The limitations of Deterministic
Chaos as an actual model for social change come from its basis in
mathematical models of reality, with a fixed set of rules (the equa-
tions) and an iteration process, which is set at particular time inter-
vals ie (i.e., sampling”). Yet, if we observe physical systems rather
than equations, a similar change process to that occurring in Chaos
can be seen. Prigogine (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984) called this process
self-organization.

Self-Organization
Prigogine and Stengers (1984) give an archetypal example of self-
organization as the production of Benard cells, a noticeable beehive-
like pattern of hexagonal cells which spontaneously form in heated
fluids in an open container at a particular level of heating.
While the experimenter can change the conditions, it is the system
itself that determines which way it will respond—the origin of the
term self-organizing. In the case of the hexagonal cells, the response/
choice is indicated by the direction of fluid flow within the cells. The
new structures are described by qualitatively different variables than
the preemergent structures, and unexpected forces can prove to be
influential. In the Benard cells, gravity, usually insignificant in such
situations, comes into play.
Prigogine’s Nobel Prize–winning contribution was to formulate a
new relationship between entropy (degree of disorder in a system)
and equilibrium (a balanced, resting state). In his schema, only isolated
systems, ones where there are no interactions with the environment,
are at equilibrium. Equilibrium systems are characterized by maximum
entropy or disorder—some teenagers’ rooms! Most actual systems can
be considered to be some “distance” from equilibrium, and Prigogine
distinguished between near equilibrium systems and far from equilib-
rium systems (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984).
210 ALAN MEARA
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A system that is near equilibrium, he calls a closed system; although

such systems still exchange some forms of energy with the environ-
ment, they are closed to others, for example, a thermos flask. Prigogine
discovered that near equilibrium systems settle to a state that mini-
mizes entropy production (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984), perhaps a
new description of homeostasis. Open systems are considered to be
far from equilibrium, with free exchange of energy with the environ-
ment. Here, as long as the system can import energy, it can avoid a
buildup of entropy by dissipating it through self-organization.
The hexagonal Benard cells in the heated fluid are a physical example
of self-organizing system behavior, far from equilibrium. Self-organi-
zation describes how a system (a semi-bounded part of the field) adapts
or changes in relating with its environment, as in the following
summary description of change through self-organization:

When an open system is far from equilibrium, under the influence of a

driving force, random fluctuations either internal or external to the
system are amplified within the system, involving systemwide
communication, and experimentation occurs with possible new con-
figurations. With reference to its history, the system may settle into a
new configuration that may be more adaptive to its environmental
conditions and allow disorder (entropy) to be exported.

Each of the factors in the description is an essential element in self-

organizing. The role of amplification (positive feedback) and
systemwide communication were the surprising elements in
Prigogine’s discovery. A contentious issue is that of the systems history
being a factor—do inanimate systems have a memory? The driving
force is related to a parameter that moves the system through an evo-
lutionary process (e.g., heat applied to the Benard Cell fluid). There is
a relationship to the aforementioned helicopter view of Chaos here, in
that if an open system keeps importing energy, then a generic devel-
opmental process can be described.
The generic developmental process is represented by a bifurcation
diagram as shown in Figure 1. The single line at the beginning of the
bifurcation tree represents a system near equilibrium, where the system
returns to a steady state if disturbed. In Chaos terms, there is a point
attractor. Open systems, however, may manifest the more complex and
strange attractors, by moving further from equilibrium. At first,
fluctuations are dampened and do not effect a change in the state of
the system. Then, at a bifurcation point, the self-organization process
occurs, and the system experiments and moves to a new configuration
that is a choice from at least two alternative states that are different in
nature to the earlier states. Further and further from equilibrium, more
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT IN THERAPY 211


Figure 1 Bifurcation Diagram illustrating a set of pathways that a system

may explore as it moves further from equilibrium (to the right) and passes
through bifurcation points where change occurs. The vertical scale is an indi-
cation of relative “value” of available states.

bifurcations are experienced and more and more possible states are
available. Note that fundamental change only occurs at bifurcation
points, and new configurations emerge, as in holism.
Holism also relates to the systemwide communication between
elements of a system seen in self-organization—all the molecules in
the heated fluid communicate to order themselves as a whole pattern
spontaneously. Between bifurcation points the system inhibits change
to its current configuration, no matter how far from equilibrium the
driving force takes the system. No matter how the butterfly flaps,
tornados aren’t forthcoming. Note that the term far from equilibrium
contains more information about system dynamics than the Lewinian
quasi-stable or dynamic equilibrium.
A configuration, like the attractors of a Chaotic system, can be rep-
resented mathematically as a state, or a point in what is called state
space. A state space is a way of showing the “state of play” in a system
in a shorthand way, often graphically. Figure 2 illustrates a point in a
hypothetical state space constructed from the three dimensions—
inclusion, control, and openness—in Schutz’s model of group devel-
opment (Mennecke et al., 1992). Group development models will be
explored more fully later in this paper.
At any point in time, the system could be characterized by the value
of each dimension (variable), assuming it could be measured. The same
idea is behind a sociogram, where participants physically represent
212 ALAN MEARA
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their stance on an issue relative to scales mapped out in the dimen-

sions of the room. The point in Figure 2 represents a state where a
group is high in inclusion and low in control and openness.
Given far from equilibrium conditions, perhaps the “trace” of such
states visited over time in the state space may reveal an attractor, a set
of states to which the system limits itself. The trace may also reveal a
shift from one pattern to another, evidence that change through self-
organization is present. Self-organization, like Chaos, is proving a use-
ful metaphor for social system behavior.
Self-organization as a model for social phenomena is somewhat lim-
ited by assumptions that subcomponents in the system do not change
and that the individuals in each type of subcomponent are identical,
as, for example, the molecules of the fluid in the Benard cells. If we
allow for microdiversity, that is, the individual components (molecules,
variables in a nonlinear equation, individuals of a species in popula-
tions) are not identical and we also allow possible change at all sys-
tem levels, we enter the realm of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), or
Complexity. We also move closer to living systems dynamics and per-
haps the field of Field theory.
Compared to the example of heated fluid system, living systems
appear to have the capacity to “reach out and adjust the heat.” That is,
we can modify our driving force or some overall control parameter in
order to move along a bifurcation tree in either direction, or to stay in
the same configuration. The latter is the notion of “resistance” only if
we believe that moving further from equilibrium is advantageous. The
tendency for living systems to maintain their structure is known as
autopoiesis, a relative of self-organization and which Portele (1989) has
written about in Gestalt terms. Autopoiesis, however, does not deal
well with spontaneous reorganization, and I’m not going to review it
here.

Figure 2 Example of a state space, with the dimensions of inclusion, con-

trol, and openness. The point represents a system state characterised by high
inclusion and low control and openness.
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT IN THERAPY 213
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Complexity

Complexity is both a catch-all phrase for nonlinear systems thinking

and a term with a specific focus. Capra (1996) gives a comprehensive
review of the animals in the complexity zoo. These various “animals”
do not live in perfect harmony, with various models holding sway in
different places. The “edge of chaos” approach as outlined by
Marmgren (1998) is one. Others are to found in Holland (Marmgren,
1998) and Allen (1996). The specific focus of complexity is stated by
Kauffman (see Capra, 1996, Chapter 9), who noted how incredibly com-
plex, open systems produce a limited number of unexpected patterns.
Here, simplicity comes from complexity. In nature we see predation,
parasitism, symbiosis as examples of a limited number of ways of
animal species interacting. A parallel in Gestalt could be the seven or
eight relating styles such as introjection.
A common tool for the study of complexity is a network model such
as artificial intelligence networks, which are too complex to model
mathematically, but can be observed as they ‘run’. Boids, as described
by Marmgren (1998) is a good example. Complexity deals with
Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), which include the possibility of
the system and its environment co-evolving, even co-creating. The
exploration of complex adaptive systems is beyond the scope of this
paper. However, CAS incorporate both self organizing and Chaotic
dynamics (Allen, 1996). There is evidence of Chaotic dynamics in the
physiological characteristics of an individual’s subsystems, and at
group level (Lichtenberg and Knox, 1991; Kelso, 1995). It is to self-
organization that I wish to relate Gestalt theory and practice.

Gestalt Theory

The three pillars of Gestalt are considered to be Phenomenology, Dia-

logue, and Field theory (Resnick, 1995). Parlett (1991) raises the issue
of whether systems theory reflects field theory. I believe that self-
organization bridges both, although I’m not mounting a formal
argument here. Perhaps field theory plus boundaries lead to systems
theory, or systems theory minus boundaries leads to field theory! I
want to focus now on how nonlinear systems theory impacts on the
systems theory “traditionally” taught to Gestaltists.
I want to refer to a systems model of a group from time to time,
which is presented in Figure 3. There are three layers in the system—
the group, the individual, and psychological subsystems. Each layer
is nested within another. I have chosen a way of subdividing the indi-
vidual as a way to incorporate emergent properties in transitions from
214 ALAN MEARA
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one layer to another. In the research, to be described later, the subdivi-

sions relate to identifying feelings, thoughts, sensations, and so on in
personal experience. Other ways of subdivision are also possible, as
in Marmgern’s (1998) holons.
The model represents, then, a nested hierarchy. I am assuming that
the subsystems do not change; that is, there are no new emotions, or
that vision does evolve to another sense, for example. This is a self-
organizing system then, not a CAS.
The systems concepts I want to review from a nonlinear systems
perspective are Holism, Open versus Closed Systems, Entropy, Ho-
meostasis, and Equifinality, as Huckabay (1992) has presented as useful
in Gestalt group work.
Holism incorporates the notions of nested systems, and the proper-
ties of the whole are different to the properties of the parts. Huckabay
(1992, p. 307) gives the example of an individual and group issue being
similar, “reverberating.” Rather than conclude that holism means that
is not possible to know a group issue from an individual issue, or that
the needs of a member must be subordinated to group, I contend the
opposite.

Figure 3 Nested system model of a group, with group, individual, and sub-
system levels. The dotted line through one individual indicates a ‘cycle of
experience’ process operating at that level, drawing on subsystem information.
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT IN THERAPY 215


I suggest that the example supports the idea of a strange attractor

present at all layers of a group as a far from equilibrium system. With
a strange attractor, the dynamics of the individuals and the group are
self-similar, or perhaps fractal. If holism, as Kaplan and Kaplan (1991)
argue, is seen as continual coherent reorganization, or an evolution of
wholeness of a system, then the facilitator must also be a participant
in order to “sense” the dynamics of the fractal. This is somewhat like
noticing a parallel process in one-to-one therapy. When the facilitator
shares his immediate experience in a group and encourages others to
interact, he is contributing to more group development than if work-
ing in the “wagon wheel” way as an individual therapist with mem-
bers one at a time.
The distinction of open versus closed systems reflects a polarity based
on boundary permeability to energy or information. The closed system
referred to by Huckabay (1992) is more properly an isolated system.
She states that the degree of openness or closedness depends on bound-
ary conditions. Nonlinear dynamics is associated with a process of
circular causality, which means that, while the individual in a group
affects group dynamics, contemporaneously the dynamics affect the
individual. With such an interplay of boundaries, it is not so much
that the “condition of the boundaries will determine the system’s abil-
ity for self regulation” (Huckabay, 1992, p. 308) but that the conditions
of the boundaries, as observed, are a reflection of how the system is
self-organizing.
I suggest a more important consideration is distance from equilib-
rium. A group is free to interact with its environment and so is an open
system. At any point in time, the states that the group system may
visit depend on how far from equilibrium it is. In between bifurca-
tions its behavior approximates that of a closed system, allowing living
systems to “own” both poles.
Entropy, or degree of disorder, appears to catch up with systems
eventually, as Huckabay (1992, p. 308) illustrates with the example of
a pan of water being removed from the stove and cooling down. She
also adds that living systems generate negentropy, defined as infor-
mation, to balance this. However, in Prigogine’s self-organization, we
have seen earlier how a pan of oil and living systems use energy to
find a new way to configure, and export entropy. Rather than seeing
information shared by the group members as representing increasing
negentropy, information sharing could be viewed as one of the factors
that contributes to the capacity to risk restructuring through self-
organization. All parts of the system need to be involved, as in the
definition earlier. Information sharing in a group is maximized by
individuals sharing the state of their subsystems—what they are think-
ing, feeling (emotionally and bodily), and noticing. Exactly what
216 ALAN MEARA
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represents entropy is a difficult question; information is only one way

of defining entropic processes. Experientially, candidates could be emo-
tional release or the satisfaction phase in the experiential cycle.
Homeostasis is described by Huckabay (1992, p. 308) as a living
system’s tendency to maintain a steady state, or the “return of organ-
ismic balance” (Perls, 1969, p. 45). For self-organizing systems, this is
only one possibility. Huckabay’s example is the self-regulation of body
temperature to “normal.” Here, steady state means a fixed value. Such
system behavior is only characteristic of closed systems near equilib-
rium, such as thermostats. Living systems shift their “normal” tem-
perature during sleep and, for example, during infection.
The apparent paradox of “homeostasis requiring constant adapta-
tion to a changing set of environmental circumstances” (Huckabay,
1992, p. 309) can be resolved by referring to attractor dynamics. Near
equilibrium systems display homeostasis returning to point attractors
after a disturbance. Further from equilibrium systems can visit a num-
ber of dynamically stable states, depending on the complexity of the
particular attractor. Here homeostasis has more the sense of the system
tending to stay with its current attractor, or position, along a bifurcation
tree, rather than a particular state.
Equifinality means that a system ends up in the same place even
with different initial conditions, and so there are many paths to an
endpoint. Huckabay (1992, p. 309) gives the example of a group find-
ing different ways to meet a need for closeness. Far from equilibrium,
however, many roads lead to many places, only one of which places is
Rome.
In individual therapy and in group work, there are times when the
therapist–client system faces several figures, forming from competing
needs, and chooses one. The therapist does not usually know until
after the choice where the work will go, and the “size” of the issue.
This aligns with the unpredictability of progression, metaphorically,
along a bifurcation tree, where the y axis may represent a form of per-
sonal effectiveness.
It may be that a piece of therapy or process work represents a revis-
iting of previous choice points along the client systems’ bifurcation
tree, in order to be able to shift from one branch to another in the
current stage of development. The earlier along the tree, the bigger
the shift. I believe this a more useful way to think of development
paths than equifinality is. Equifinality also carries the implication that
there is a particular place that the client should be getting to and may
entrap a therapist into solution generation rather than exploration. In
general then, I argue that general systems theory concepts would be
more grounded in practice if enhanced with the newer concepts from
complexity of far from equilibrium, attractors, and bifurcation.
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT IN THERAPY 217
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Group Development

I next want to turn to the issue of group development and reframe some
current ideas in the light of nonlinear systems concepts. The issue is
addressed as “stage related interventions” in Huckabay’s article (1992,
pp. 319–327), based on Schutz’s group model. A general overview of
group development models is provided by Mennecke et al. (1992), which
divides such models into progressive, cyclic, and nonsequential cat-
egories. Progressive models imply that groups exhibit an increasing
degree of maturity and performance over time (e.g., forming, norming,
storming, performing). Cyclical models imply a recurring or linear se-
quence of events that are similar to the human experience of birth,
growth, and death. Nonsequential models imply no particular sequence,
rather events that occur are contingent on factors that change the focus
of the group’s activities.
The latter category includes Gersick’s (1988) nonlinear model, which
is based on punctuated equilibrium, an animal from the Complexity
zoo, and essentially suggests all groups develop by a mid-life bifurca-
tion. The emergence of these later models signals an acceptance that
deficiencies exist in traditional group dynamic models, particularly
when practitioners try to make sense of what is happening in a group.
Smith and Gemmill (1991) have pioneered exploration of self-organi-
zation in groups, with Gemmill having a Gestalt background.
Huckabay (1992) follows Elaine Kepner (1980) with adaptations of
a model originated by Schutz who identified stages of identity, influ-
ence, and intimacy. Schutz and others acknowledged that some groups
seem to revisit earlier themes and that the development sequence is
often erratic. From a self-organization perspective, such behavior is to
be expected if the group can move itself back and forth along the
bifurcation tree. The facilitator tasks associated with the various stages
in Schutz’s model, for example, connecting people in the identity stage
and staying out of the way in later stages (Kepner, 1980), are valid,
but may apply at any time in group life. Rather than “certain predict-
able figures will emerge from the background” (Frew, 1997, p. 135), I
would say “be open to the unexpected and work with the liveliest
figure.”
Group models tend to define group issues in terms of individual
behaviors such as that statements of isolation indicate a group inclu-
sion issue. To examine the possibility of self-organizing processes in a
group, I have chosen to use the Cleveland school’s Cycle of Experience
model (see Appendix A). The model outlines the process by which an
organism interacts with the environment either adaptively or conser-
vatively. Each stage or phase in the cycle represents ways in which a
person (and in a group either participant or facilitator) engages with
218 ALAN MEARA
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the environment. One way to track a cycle in action is to listen for the
language used.
Languaging is given a key role in the coupling of living systems in
Maturana and Varela’s autopoiesis, which also influenced family
therapy via Bateson (Capra, 1996, pp. 279–280). A model of develop-
ment stages for groups proposed by Organization Development prac-
titioners Schein and Isaacs presents a series of bifurcations on the path
to Dialogue (Meara, 1997). It was argued that continual attention to
“I” language in the group facilitated the development of more com-
plex and contactful communication processes. It is not so important
for the research whether the cycle is indeed a sequential cycle, but
rather that a particular stage can be recognized from the language used.
The table in Appendix A contains a working draft of a coding process.
Later, I will describe how the order of visitation of language use will
be used to reveal hidden order.
I believe that figure formation and destruction and cycle of aware-
ness or experience has some resonance with complexity, as does
Marmgren (1998). Hidden order, as revealed by a repetitive pattern of
language may be an example of Marmgren‘s holons or “behavioral
atoms,” particularly a nonadaptive one (Marmgren, 1998, p. 43). I want
to relate the cycle specifically to self-organization.
Taking an individual’s experience in completing a Gestalt, a rough
matching could work like this: the system is by definition open. The
driving force is perhaps the press of unfinished business or a current
need. A fluctuation in the field, internal or external to the system, occurs
(sensation), history is referenced (awareness), and the fluctuation is
amplified (mobilisation of energy). The whole system communicates
(i.e., thoughts/feelings/sensation) and experiments through action. An
exchange with the environment occurs (“full” contact), and the asso-
ciated qualitative change in the system’s pattern of interacting stabi-
lizes (satisfaction) and adaptation is enhanced.
While the cycle of experience model represents a useful way of con-
sidering intra- and interpersonal process, there is dissatisfaction in
the Gestalt community about its usefulness for group process diagno-
sis. For example, Harman (1996) summarizes objections to suggestions
from Zinker (1994), (e.g. superimposed individual processes or a group
level cycle) and proposes one based on Perls’ neurotic layers: cliche
level, phobic or role-playing level, impasse level, implosive level, and
explosive level. Critchley and Casey (1989), on the other hand, utilize
the stages in the cycle as a helpful schema for diagnosing dysfunc-
tional organizational patterns. I am taking the view that the generic
process described by the cycle of experience applies at any system level.
Self-organization theory would suggest that stages in groups are not
sequential, but the group evolves from a beginning “state” and, through
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT IN THERAPY 219


a set of choices over time, selects paths on a bifurcation tree, which

lead to greater or lesser adaptability. Earlier choices may be revisited
and alternative paths chosen. The group may decide to remain in a
particular path and “resist” going further from equilibrium. The facili-
tator may provide fluctuations to test the system; however these may
not lead to the hurricane of change. The facilitator is also in the system
and may ignore fluctuations from the participants!
The concept of stages in group development may represent regions
of the bifurcation tree between bifurcations where linear-type behav-
ior, or a kind of homeostasis, is occurring. In stages further from
equilibrium, more states are available. The consequent increasing
exploration of state space relates to a higher fractal value and perhaps
a greater experience of connectedness—perhaps such is “I–Thou.”
My curiosity is—can these ideas be tested? O’Leary (1992) outlines
what amounts to a paucity of research into Gestalt practice. In the
spirit of engaging with the environment and experimenting, I wonder
specifically if there is evidence of self-organizing processes in the
process dynamics of Gestalt Personal Development Groups as assessed
by language usage?

A Bit of Philosophy

There are some features of nonlinear systems research that make it

difficult to place the study neatly in either a positivist or hermeneutic
framework. Gestalt, with its strongly phenomenological ontology, is
clearly hermeneutic in its application, and almost no research into why
change happens has been undertaken. Self-organization theory is
grounded in principles of open systems where quantitative predict-
ability and validity have been shown to be undefinable and must be
redefined in qualitative terms (Loye and Eisler, 1987). A new approach
is needed.
A philosophical framework exists that bridges the positivist/herme-
neutic views, and it is transcendental realism (Bhaskar, 1989), in
particular the social science form called critical naturalism. This
philosophy of science recognizes that the world is systemically open
and stratified into the real (the field), the actual (what is happening),
and the empirical (what is noticed). The goal of naturalism is to infer
the existence of real mechanisms that, if they come into play, produce
effects that are empirically measurable. Compatibity between critical
naturalism, nonlinear systems, and psychotherapeutic process is
becoming more apparent (Shotter, 1993). Incidentally, this approach
may imply a stronger link to transcendental phenomenology rather than
existential phenomenology. Bhaskar (1989) sees the purpose of scien-
tific inquiry as emancipation—Goodman may have approved.
220 ALAN MEARA
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An Experiment

The line of inquiry I have chosen starts with using the language of par-
ticipants, in 15 hours of Gestalt personal development groups, as an
indicator of communication process. Utterances are coded as types of
“I statements” or “interruptions,” and issues of whether they represent
contact or resistance as raised by Wheeler (1991) are set aside. From
these relatively raw observations, patterns over time may be revealed.
Interventions are coded separately as types of questions, directives, and
so on and the subsystem to which the intervention is focused.
At the individual level, by tracking the language of a particular par-
ticipant, it may be possible to see whether a particular characteristic
set of boundary functions exists. There are many possible questions.
Does their pattern in the first stages of group life remain over time? Is
there is shift to “I language” over their time in the group? How does
the facilitator ’s language change while working with a participant?
When does change not happen?
Some preliminary observations are presented below. The pattern of
language use in a short piece of work with a participant in the group
is reflected in the two graphs in Figure 4. A change in language pattern
seems to occur around utterances 25 to 28, signifying some kind of
transition or perhaps bifurcation. The transition is at about the half-
way mark, an unexpected result and lending some support to Gersick’s
punctuated equilibrium model (Mennecke et al., 1992).
Nonlinear analysis, however, uses various other tools to search for
patterns in data that are messy or random looking. One way to do
this, time series embedding, is to use a kind of state space that creates
a point in the space by plotting the current value of something on one
axis and the immediately prior value on the other axis, for example,
the percent vote for a particular political party this election on the x
axis and percent vote at the last election on the y axis. Each point does
not mean much by itself, but over time a pattern may emerge as more
points are added, and a regular pattern may signal an attractor. The
technique potentially reveals a pattern that may not be obvious from
an ordinary time series graph. The analysis is often presented graphi-
cally—the Gestalt can be grasped more easily.
The graph in Figure 5 represents such an analysis of a coded set of
interactions. For the convenience of the software, each type of state-
ment is allocated a number. Each statement’s code value is plotted
against the value of the utterance immediately before it. For example,
the point (10,10) in the uppermost right of the graph represents a sens-
ing (physical) statement, followed by another one. If this were a random
process, then the state space would be full with all possible combina-
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT IN THERAPY 221


Figure 4 Language patterns in a short therapeutic intervention. Each line

represents one of the possible interruptions (left box) or one of the phases in
the cycle (right box) as coded from the clients’ statements. A peak on a line
represents the occurrence of that type of statement. (Refer to Table in Appen-
dix A.) The numbers on the y axis should be ignored; they only facilitate the
separation of the lines.

tions represented. Instead, we can observe some structure in the trace—

perhaps some line attractors (the 45 degree scribbles) and perhaps some
self-similarity (fractalness) between the largest triangular figure and
smaller components.
The above analyses are presented as examples of possible ways of
gaining more understanding of what happens in Gestalt groups, to
view the figure from a different ground. This project currently abounds
with unfinished business, uncertainty, and the visiting of adaptive and
nonadaptive states—a process I have come to visualize as an unfold-
ing and an enfolding of life—“fractalling.” The study will continue
with much more coding of transcripts of group interactions and various
analyses.

Closure

The explanatory power of Nonlinear systems for change in social sys-

tems is yet to be fully demonstrated, and the field has its critics. I
believe that a dialogue between gestalt, group dynamics and complex-
ity may create (not every flap . . .) conditions for an emergence of a
more inclusive figure—a figure that can’t be predicted!
To return to Bhaskar ’s emancipatory stance for science, it is the eman-
cipation of leaders and facilitators that I am interested in, and natu-
rally this is a personal agenda. I mean emancipation from responsibility
for endpoints, for getting it right the first time, and from the demon of
222 ALAN MEARA


Figure 5 Time series embedding of a coded transcript of a group interac-

tion. The graph is a trace over time of points plotted by using the code value
of an utterence (x axis) and the code value of the immediately prior utterance
(y axis). Values 1–7 reflect interruptions; 8–14 are “I” statements.

What of the group level?

Rather than use existing group dynamics constructs to track events,

what if patterns such as those in Figure 5 change in a fundamental way
during group life? These may reveal bifurcation points.

By examining what happened near these shifts, if they exist, perhaps

some new insight into group level dynamics and intervening may be
possible.

The data could also be analyzed in terms of engagement of subsystems,

therapist interventions, group segments versus individual work and
the cross relationships between them.

control. Rather, a facilitator ’s responsibility may perhaps be shown by

a set of naturally occurring principles, to be to encourage connection at
all levels throughout the group, to provide some fluctuations, to accen-
tuate through amplifying, and above all, to stay open to uncertainty.

Appendix A
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT IN THERAPY 223
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Table Interruptions related to phases of experience and self-organization

processes, with associated sample statement types.

Phase Interruption and “I” language of Self-organization
diagnosis phase processes
Sensation Desensitization I sense/feel Open
I don’t notice (somatic)
Awareness Deflection I remember History
Its . . . (know)
Mobilization Introjection I could Amplify
I should
Action Projection I <do, express> Communication
They . . . <blame> . . .
Contact Retroflection I thou Experiment
I’m <label>
Satisfaction Egotism I feel Restructure
My performance (satisfied/whole)
Withdrawal Confluence Silence Export entropy
We are . . . (let go) Boundary reset
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Gestalt Review, 3(3):226–238, 1999

Autism in Gestalt Theory

Towards a Gestalt Theory of Personality


G U A D A L U P E A M E S C U A, Ph.D.

For us, who work with children and adolescents, it is very important to
have a developmental Gestalt theory, as well as a Gestalt approach to
psychopathology. Based on the theory of contact and the self, I con-
sider autism as a contact and boundary problem in which the child is
caught right at the boundary. Thus, we can think of a Gestalt approach
to autism. As a result of my experience with autistic children, I present
an explanation of the development of the child utilizing a Gestalt
perspective.

Introduction

I
have always been fascinated by theories of personality, the differ-
ent ways in which we can explain how a child’s development
unfolds, how he becomes structured as a subject, and how he
becomes a person. Apart from the theories themselves, I wondered at
the genius of those who developed them: Freud, Klein, Lacan, Dolto,
Wallon, Piaget, Mahler, Spitz.
How they have managed to create these wonderful theories is truly
an insurmountable mystery. Yes, of course, they did it through obser-
vation, but I wondered what has guided their observations and, after-
ward, how they have managed to turn the data into rich conceptualizations.
Ultimately, the answer is not that complicated. They created basic
categories that functioned as an axis, as a trunk from which the sec-
ondary concepts stemmed, and from there they gave shape to their ob-
servations about child development. But always, at all times, they
were guided by these basic categories.
On the other hand, for a long time I was pleased to see that Gestalt
therapy had developed a series of techniques for working with chil-

Guadalupe Amescua, Ph.D. is the Centro de Estudios e Investigacion Guestalticos,
Xalapa, Mexico and author of the book The Magic of Children: Gestalt Therapy with Chil-
dren, Mexico, 1995, Cuba, 1997.
226  1999 The Analytic Press
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dren and that particularly Violet Oaklander (1969) has made an unpar-
alleled contribution to child therapy. However, no one has developed a
theoretical basis to explain child development, and so it was necessary
to turn to other viewpoints.
In this article, I will try to explain child development from the point
of view of Gestalt psychotherapy. To do this I shall use some of the
basic Gestalt concepts, such as contact boundaries, theory of self, aware-
ness, and the experience cycle.
Also, I will illustrate these concepts through a description of my
relationship with, and observation of, an autistic child.

The Contact Boundaries

Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman (1951, p. 481) in a chapter appropri-

ately called “The Structure of Growth” develop the fundamental Gestalt
concept of contact boundaries. By contact boundaries we mean what
separates and connects two people. One begins where the other ends.
Contact boundaries separate and protect us. There are both physical
and psychological. Our physical border is our skin, but our psycho-
logical boundaries are more complex; they are structured and modi-
fied throughout our lives.
According to Perls et al., our life is shaped by experiences. The first
one is birth. From that moment on, we integrate the experiences and
the way in which we react to them. Each of these experiences, such as
to exist, to emerge from oneself, to establish contact, to remain; to build
and deconstruct shapes, is important in our development of self.
This process of creation and destruction of relationships can be fluid
or plagued by obstacles that will shape the child’s experience before
given situations, as well as the ways in which he will eventually con-
front them. Experiences occur at the limit between the organism and its
environment, and the contact is the sensory awareness, as well as the
motor behavior and the emotions.
In agreement with the existentialists, I propose that instead of
“organism” we use the concept of “person.” The term organism refers
to a biological origin and even though man is, effectively, an organism,
he is much more than that. Particularly considering Gestalt therapy
as a humanistic theory, the word person would be much more
appropriate.
When the child is born he is capable of sensory perceptions, as well
as motor and emotional responses, as he begins to react to his envi-
ronment. This sensory responsivity is something that he shares with
other animals. What, then, distinguishes him and turns him into a
human being?
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As postulated by Hegel (1947) and Buber (1979), man becomes such

at the moment he:

– acknowledges himself, as an image and through language,

– achieves consciousness of his own existence,
– is acknowledged by someone else,
– and, so, has established a relationship with another being beyond
his own self.

All of the above is what in Gestalt therapy is called contact.

Towards a Theory of Development

In the child’s development process we can distinguish two moments:

(1) first moment we could call the preperson, that is, the child as a bio-
logical being, but not yet having all the characteristics that are necessary
to consider him a person in the wider sense of the term, and (2) the
moment when he can be called a person.
During the preperson phase, the child is conscious of his environ-
ment, of some of his basic needs, and he can communicate them, but
he still lacks the capacity of being conscious of himself as a separate
entity and, so, he also lacks a clear consciousness of the other. To use
Buber ’s term, he is incapable of differentiating the I from the Thou.
To finally achieve this the child undergoes a process in his aware-
ness which can be explained using the categories of contact bound-
aries, awareness, functions of the self, experience cycle and defense
mechanisms.
Contact boundaries are present from the moment of birth. Never-
theless, they are still labile and fragile; the child can start to become
conscious of his surroundings but can’t differentiate himself completely
from them. According to Mahler (1959; all page numbers refer to the
1987 Mexican edition), the mother is the child’s first auxiliary “I.”
The child is born with a consciousness, and through it he can begin
acknowledging his world, both internally and externally. Through the
id function of the self, the child acknowledges his own needs, appetites
and impulses, and through an incipient motor function he seeks his
satisfaction to recover balance and pleasure. Contact is the awareness
of the field and the motor response given. In sum, contact is a creative
adjustment of the organism to its environment. The function of the con-
tact border is growth through creative adjustment.

Autism from a Gestalt Perspective

Considering the definition and characteristics of autism given by many

authors who work on this subject, autism is conceptualized as a severe
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social cognitive deficit (Castanedo, 1997). I will try to describe it from a

Gestalt perspective, utilizing concepts that I have emphasized through-
out this paper.
Autism can be considered a problem at the level of the contact bound-
aries and the self. I believe that it can be stated that autism is a hardening
of the contact boundaries. As Perls et al. (1951) said; “Experience oc-
curs at the limit between the organism and its environment, primarily
the surface of the skin and other sensory and motor organs” and they
continue “The objective of psychology is: 1. Experience is the final con-
tact, to function at the level of the organism’s boundaries and its envi-
ronment. 2. Every human function is an interaction in the organism/
environment field, social, cultural, animal and physical” (p. 3).
This involves thinking more in terms of a process, not only of the
contact that happens between, but also the way in which the experi-
ence occurs, which is given in terms of a relationship called growth.
Based on this perspective I consider autism a “toughening” of the lim-
its of the contact boundaries that blocks the communication of the organ-
ism with its environment, leaving the child isolated, in the sense that
his capacity to establish relationships is greatly diminished. As a result
his growth and development as a human being is interrupted, and his
potential becomes stagnant a variety of ways.
If Gestalt therapy considers interaction as the main human function,
then when these children stop interacting they are also left out of the
humanizing field, which leads them to relate with people as if they
were objects that are to be manipulated according to their needs. If we
consider autism in this perspective, it offers us the possibility to conceive
a form of intervention.
Gestalt theory compels us to search for a way to reestablish, or rather
to establish, contact for these kids. Agreeing with Zinker (1977), Polster
and Polster (1973) state, “the therapist parts from his/her own feel-
ings and uses his/her own state of mind as a therapeutic instrument. . . .
He/she must get syntonized with the person with which he/she is in
contact, becoming, in a certain way, a sounding board for whatever
happens between him/her and the patient” (p. 34), I might say that in
this case we, ourselves, become our best tools. This involves approach-
ing children with an open, receptive and accepting attitude. It also
involves a willingness to engage in an encounter in which we are will-
ing to open ourselves to confrontation, in which we offer our own selves
to the other.
When we approach a child whose contact boundaries are diminished,
our words bounce back and return, as if from a mirror. As a result, we
may find ourselves inventing symptoms out of nothing, silence, frus-
tration and uncertainty. An important question becomes how to make
those barriers flexible, how to make that projective “toughening” start
giving ground.
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For Polster and Polster (1973), “The border of the human being—the
border of the I—is determined by all of the range of his life experiences
and by the abilities may have acquired to assimilate new and intensi-
fied experiences” (p. 34) In this sense it is understood that the contact
boundaries are also shaped by the child’s experiences often through a
process of introjection.
Introjection is the generic mode of interaction between the individual
and his environment, and more specifically for the child, Polster and
Polster (1973) say:

A small child accepts anything that he does not experience as in-

stantaneously harmful. He accepts food in any way in which it is
offered or he spits it out . . . When he starts chewing he learns to
restructure what he ingests, but before that he just swallows his
impressions about what goes on in the world.

From this first need to take things as they come or get rid of them
each time that he can, is derived his notorious need to trust his
environment [pp. 80–81].

To an autistic child the outside environment is experienced as harm-

ful, so he has to defend himself from it. He introjects only a few things
at a very slow pace. Thus his development is slower than that of other
children. He does not trust his environment, so very little makes it
through his barriers. Because the things he does introject as a form of
learning from lived experiences are minimal, the child’s development
is impoverished, and the experiences that are introjected are not easily
assimilated.
For an introjected situation to be assimilated, it must be elaborated,
chewed up, that is, it must go through a process of internal integra-
tion. However, for this to happen there must be a certain distance
between the object and the subject, between what is introjected and the
person himself. For an autistic child there is no such distance. There is
not a clear differentiation of the I and the Thou; between internal and
external objects.
To think about autism in this way we need a frame of reference that
will offer us a possibility of intervention. It is clear that it will be neces-
sary to help the child become separate, to differentiate himself from
what is and what is not himself, where he begins and where he ends;
where his contact boundaries are, and we must help him distance
himself from objects so he can be able to work with his introjections
that have become coagulated, stuck to the walls, like other autistic
creatures such as insects.
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We know that at a linguistic level an autistic child is confused about

the use of pronouns. This is no coincidence. It is rather a reflection of
his impossibility to differentiate himself as an “I.” This way of working
with an autistic child is exemplified by my work with Olmo.
Olmo’s mother did a great job in this sense, because before I met him
she had already managed to get her child to make a clear differentia-
tion of the pronouns. He makes few mistakes when talking about him-
self or others, when using “I” or “you.” Only occasionally does he still
make verbal mistakes. For example, when we first met, he said: “You
invite you home,” when he meant to ask me to invite him to my house.
He had trouble structuring the correct sentence.
During our sessions I often insisted on asking what he wanted. The
separation begins when the individual becomes aware of his own in-
ternal needs and becomes able to express them, separating himself
from the other ’s desire, even from what the other wants from him.
Naturally, because Olmo was not able to perform by himself, he was
always under the surveillance of an older person, so he had always
been near his mother or to America, his caretaker, who did a great job
with him. She always kept him within sight and always held his hand
on the street.
Upon leaving the office, I would take him out on the street and ask
him where he wanted to go. The choice was not difficult for him. He
immediately said he wanted to go to the park to collect insects. At the
beginning I complied with his desire. As treatment progressed I told
him that we were going to a store so that he could buy something.
First, he had to decide what he wanted to buy. On the street I asked
him where the store was, so that he could find it himself. When we
arrived there I stayed outside, so he had to go in by himself and ask
for what he wanted. At first it was difficult and I had to go in and help
him. Then I would ask him to lead the way back to the office. He
certainly knew his way.
On another occasion he went to spend a weekend at my house. I’ve
done this several times because I believe that with children like Olmo
it is not enough to limit the work to the office. It is necessary to have
different environments and dimensions that offer them new challenges
and experiences, and to help them assimilate them.
In front of the house there is a park that is a big attraction for Olmo.
The first few times that he came to my home I went with him to the
park and he would hunt for insects. He baptized it “the cricket park”.
I made sure that he knew the way back home well and even let him go
by himself on one occasion. However, he had to let me know that he
wanted to go, and get consent. With this experiment we achieved a
separation of desires, and at the same time created rules and limits.
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I also told him how long he could stay in the park, although I knew
that he did not have a watch to keep track of the time and probably
didn’t understand the concept of time. Nevertheless, it was a way to
begin introducing him to it. I told him he had to be back in half an hour,
when it would be time to eat. He went and returned alone.
It is worth mentioning that even though I trusted him, I was also
worried about his reaction. When he returned there was an amazing
expression on his face. He was inaugurating his freedom, the possibil-
ity of becoming separate.
The next morning he got up early, and when I heard no sound, I
went to see where he was. I was surprised to find that he was not in the
house, even though the door and the front gate were closed. He had
gone out through a window and then managed to slip through the bars
of the gate to go to the park. When I saw him he was on his way back,
using the same route to get back in the house. I was surprised by his
intelligence and ability to get what he wanted. All this was necessary
in order to teach him to notice when he wanted to go out. Now Olmo’s
mother sends him to get things at the store, and he does it easily.
In autism, attention is either diffuse or overly focused, such as when
the child concentrates all of his attention on a single stimulus. It may
be self-generated like rocking the body back and forth, or an object
that seems like a prolongation of himself. This stimulus captures all of
his attention in such a way that the child is empty without it. He does
it because it means everything to him; it is his protection, his safety.
It could be said that his awareness is centered precisely at the limit
of his contact boundaries. We can’t say there is an internal relation-
ship or awareness, because there is no introspection or imaginative
process. The same is true externally. Again, the idea is, to stimulate
awareness through the therapeutic process, to have it circulate, recov-
ering its capacity to go from one object to the other, from the inside to
the outside.
Another characteristic of awareness is its relationship to language,
that is, the capacity to express symbolically what is perceived. An
autistic child is also impaired in this sense, because he cannot speak
about things, particularly when this requires a certain distance, imply-
ing a space-time dimension.
When I asked Olmo about his insects, about catching them or any-
thing related to them, he wouldn’t answer, and I realized what he could
and could not do. I also realized that his insect catching is an activity
that he has to engage in all by himself. He won’t let anybody else
participate. When I have tried to intervene, catching butterflies and
putting them in his jars, he has stopped me from doing it.
Once I went with him to a swimming pool, to work on learning a
ball game. Suddenly, he got out of the pool, attracted by some beautiful
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butterflies that were flying around in a field. He found a jar and con-
centrated all of his attention in catching them. He would approach them
slowly, hardly moving, completely absorbed; he would slowly stretch
his hand and, if he didn’t succeed, he would start all over again. A little
child approached him, attracted by Olmo’s actions. Olmo was furious
and asked the child to leave, pushing him, even. The child insisted on
watching the butterflies and Olmo had a big tantrum; he threw himself
to the floor screaming until the child went away. Then he become ab-
sorbed in his previous occupation, as if nothing had happened.
Now Olmo concentrates his attention on other stimuli as well. Al-
though he is still obsessive about them, it is an important step, because
the options of his awareness are moving and increasing.
He has also begun to be capable of introspection. At certain times he
can talk about himself, about what he has done, about the things he
likes, and even about his past, asking about it.

Nothingness
As I have previously written, the problem with autistic children is
precisely the feeling of non existence (Tustin, 1992). This is why they
grasp those objects that are a prolongation of their own bodies, which
represent them and allow them an illusion of existing with the
outside.
In El ser y la Nada Jean Paul Sartre reflects on non-existence and, at
the same time, about that which, through being, makes existence pos-
sible. He says: “Nothingness cannot be conceived outside of being or
as originating in Being . . . only what is can be annihilated, but first it
has to be” (p. 58). So, can we say that autistic children do not exist? or
rather, is there something that does not allow them to acknowledge
themselves as beings, as human?
It is important to call the autistic child forth into being from our own
being. To do this we must create a place for him, a place of trust where
he can begin to take his first steps into being, into becoming wholly
human. He will have to travel down the road of building a body and
distinguishing one thing from the other. In this sense, the therapist
creates the necessary conditions, metaphorically speaking:

The psychotherapist blows the weak flame of the psyche until it

catches, and that constant blowing means understanding the
source of the insecurity of these children and providing them a
situation within which they can begin to establish mental links
with a therapist with experience as a wet nurse. We call this child-
hood transference. For this to be established there must be a moder-
ate use of autistic objects and figures predominantly sensorial
[Tustin, 1992, p. 131].
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No and Why

At the beginning Olmo did not oppose anybody, at least not directly.
Actually the way in which the autistic child has to express his affirma-
tion is his clinging to the autistic object, because it’s what allows him to
continue existing. Nevertheless, it is not a full statement, because there
is no clear differentiation between being and non-being. To quote Sartre
again, he says that “this is enough to demonstrate that non-being does
not come to things through denial: on the contrary, denial is condi-
tioned and sustained by non-being” (Sartre, 1945, p. 47). The autistic
child does not intervene subjectively; he erases himself, he expects noth-
ing from the others and, so, he does not practice the denial function.
He doesn’t play, either.
In this individuation process there is a gap that opens between the
mother and the child, marked by absence. This lack gives birth to needs,
desires and expectations. An autistic child does not feel this separa-
tion. His deprivation has been so devastating that the child does not
allow himself to fully experience the absence, that, for him, is like a
“black hole” of “non-existence” (Tustin, 1992). He covers this lack as
best as he can by building himself an armor, a shell and by becoming
obsessively attached to objects.
Olmo did not say no. The first time I saw him he was calmly sitting
in the reception room. Even when I took his hand he still would not
acknowledge me. As a general rule he would not do any of the things
that I asked him to do, not to oppose me, but simply because he was
operating at another frequency, immersed in his own world.
As he has started emerging from that shell, he has begun to develop
a capacity for denial. At the beginning of each session I ask him what
he wants to do. I open a space for his desire. He goes to the toucan’s
cage and tries to open the door. I give voice to his desire. “You want to
open the toucan’s door. You want to take the toucan out.” He goes
toward the water and takes a glass. “You want water. You are thirsty
and so you want water.”
Now, after 1 year, Olmo openly expresses what he does not want. He
yells it out with all his strength: “Leave me alone! I don’t want to!” He
expresses his desires in the same manner: “I want to take this turtle
home. You will give me this turtle. I want to take it home.” Helping
him to express his desires, to say no, to affirm himself through denial;
and to always give him a choice, has been an important process in the
therapy.
In the development process, a child who has incorporated a capac-
ity for denial enters the “why” stage. To interrogate the other means
being present and asking about his being. Above all, it means the pos-
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sibility of establishing significant links and relationships, to go beyond

the barriers of the ego. To ask is to show interest, to make contact.
The autistic child does not ask or answer questions. There is no
interest. His echolalic language expects nothing of the other, or at least
it seems that way. But this is the barrier we must go through, trying
not to get caught in the vortex of repetition. We must grasp the impor-
tance of these repetitions: To repeat, to ask again. If we think of the
contact barriers as a circle engulfing the child, the repetition would be
like going around and around the circle’s perimeter, but with nothing
coming in or out.
Olmo repeats things. Once, when I was paying close attention to
his language and to what I was doing with it, I realized how I was
becoming trapped, precisely going around and around the perimeter,
and, obviously, eliminating the possibility of going in with him, of
establishing some type of contact. This made me stop to think and
find a way to make our dialogues circulate. Originally, when Olmo
repeated something I would repeat it too, trying to affirm what he
said, but he would only go on and on repeating. “I mustn’t catch crick-
ets, must I? I must not catch crickets, crickets must not be caught, yes,
leave them alone, I must not catch crickets.” I would repeat one of
those phrases, but we could go on and on indefinitely. when I realized
my mistake I started to introduce questions, thinking exactly about the
way children do it, and about how this helps them establish a rela-
tionship and search for meaning.
Afterward, when he started repeating, I would introduce a question:
“Why mustn’t you catch crickets?” I certainly was not expecting an
answer; he would go on with his repetition, but, in the same manner, I
would go on with the questions and answers. “You mustn’t catch crick-
ets because your eyes get infected. Why else do you think you mustn’t
catch them?” He would go on repeating and I would go on explaining.
“Another reason not to catch crickets is because they are going to die.
They need to be in the grass to eat.”
Gradually Olmo has developed a capacity to ask or answer ques-
tions. This also helps him to talk in a more spontaneous way about
himself. It is curious that there are even times when as soon as he sees
me or some other person the first thing he’ll do is ask: “How are you?
How do you feel?” I am aware that in a certain sense his questions are
still pretty automatic, but there is also something moving inside him,
because when he asks those questions he laughs.
For a child a question is something deeper than we realize. Often
the insistence is bothersome; or we might find the child’s constant
questions amusing. Nevertheless, it is another of the ways in which
the child builds himself. Sartre (1945) says:
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In every interpretation we stand before someone who interrogates

us. All interrogation presupposes a being who asks and a being
who is asked. It is not man’s primitive relationship with being-in-
itself; on the contrary, it stays within the limits of this relationship
and supposes it. On the other hand, we interrogate the interro-
gated being about something. This something about which I interro-
gate the being, participates in that being’s transcendence: I inter-
rogate the being about the way he is or about his being . . . That is,
over a background of preinterrogatory familiarity with the being
I expect from this being a revelation about his being or his way of
being [pp. 40–41].

Capacity to Play

Winnicott has already warned us that the absence of play in a child is

an indication of conflict. In autistic children there is a complete absence
of the capacity to play, as well as the capacity to imagine.
For a child, play is an activity through which he creates the image of
his body and a relationship with others. Also, play is a form of creating
situations the child lives through which may imply some conflict for
him. This implies the development of fantasy and, above all, the estab-
lishment of a symbolic order.
Play also happens at the intersection of the dimensions of space
and time. “A potential space between the infant and the mother . . .
assimilating experiences that confront him a) to the interior world (re-
lated with psychosomatic associations) and b) to the exterior reality.”
(Winnicott, 1969, pp. 64–65).
As a principle, when a child does not play it is seen as evidence of a
serious conflict within. The absence of play can be viewed from differ-
ent levels. For example, children with attention deficit, with or with-
out hyperactivity, establish games, but they are very superficial and/
or short lived. In the office they will grab one thing and drop it, and
then one after the other. There is no permanence.
Oaklander (1969) considers that children with attention deficit have
a problem at the level of the contact boundaries. They do not pay
attention, because they cannot make contact with reality. In other cases
the children play automatically without a great imaginative or fantasy
content. or awareness of the therapist.
Olmo doesn’t play. Sometimes he will arrange small farm animals
all around the perimeter of the room, or he will arrange them in
impeccable order in the sand box, but if I take one and try to play with
it, he protests energetically and puts it back in its place.
At first he was incapable of playing with a ball and I had to encour-
age and teach. On this occasion, he not only learned to play ball, but on
AUTISM IN GESTALT THEORY 237


our way back home, he initiated a word game in which I was supposed
to guess his name, then he would give a different one and laugh.
The woman who currently works in Olmo’s house and takes care of
him has a child that is 2 years younger. He plays with him, and some-
times participates in the insect hunting. I believe this will be a great
help for Olmo.
The initiation of playing is one of the main therapeutic challenges;
it is not an easy task. Winnicott believes that therapy is the superposi-
tion of two playing zones: the child’s and the therapist’s. In this case,
it is essential that the therapist know how to play and to get involved
in the games.
With Olmo we have engaged in games that deal with the delimita-
tion of surfaces, a game that aims not only to construct a body, but
also to delimit his contact boundaries, to differentiate himself from me,
to distinguish the I from the Thou. This game has evolved; Olmo is
gradually becoming more conscious of his own body and the meeting
of bodies. He asks to be tickled, expressing his needs, his desires and
his will, and at the same time, he engages in tickling.
What still remains to be done is to achieve a game where we can
engage the imagination, the capacity to generate ideas and the expres-
sion of emotions. The closer we have ever been to the expression of
emotions happened once when he was drawing and he asked that we
draw suns: a happy sun, a sad sun, an angry sun. But he still could not
identify himself projectively in the drawing.

Conclusion

Since gestalt therapy is a very young approach, there is much to do in

the field of psychopathology and also to develop a personality theory.
Many times the starting point is the abnormal behavior such as autism.
Working with Olmo taught me many things about child development.
Olmo now is 12 years old. After three years of treatment he is a child
that no longer meets the autistic diagnosis. He plays with other chil-
dren and has fantasies, he gets into other peoples conversations and
gives his opinion, he recognizes and expresses his feelings, he goes to
school and even says he has a girlfriend, and he understands abstract
concepts, future and past. There is still work to do with him, but he has
come a long way. He has taught me much.

References

Amescua, G. (1995), La magia de los Niños, Mexico, CEIG.

Buber, M. (1979), You and I. Argentina, Nueva Visión.
Castanedo, C. (1997), Psychological Basis of Special Education. España, CCS.
238 GUADALUPE AMESCUA


Mahler, M. (1959), Human Symbiosis and the Vicissitudes of Individuation. México,

J. Mortiz (1987).
Oaklander, V. (1969), Windows to our Children. Chile, Cuatro Vientos (1982).
Perls, Hefferline, Goodman (1951), Gestalt, Therapy, Excitement and Growth in
the Human Personality. New York, The Gestalt Journal (1994).
Polster & Polster (1973), Gestalt Therapy. Argentina, Amorrortu. (1991).
Sartre. J. P. (1945), El ser y la Nada. España, Losada. (1989).
Tustin, F. (1992), The Protector Shield in Children and Adults. Argentina,
Amorrortu.
Winnicott, D. (1969), Playing and Reality. Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Zinker, J. (1977), Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy. Argentina, Paidos (1979).

Estanzuela 10
Fracc. Pomona
Xalapa, Ver. 91190
México.
Gestalt Review, 3(3):239–250, 1999

Academic Anxieties:
A Gestalt Approach


C A R A G A R C I A, Ph.D.
S U S A N B A K E R, M.A.
R O B E R T D E M A Y O, Ph.D.

This paper shows Gestaltists how to use their Gestalt orientation to ad-
dress academic anxieties in situations such as teaching, supervising,
and presenting workshops. Academic anxieties manifest as test anxiety,
writer ’s block, stage fright, and so on. The dialectic of concentration—
interruption—recovery is used to analyze the structure of academic anxi-
eties and show how they occur throughout the Gestalt Cycle of Learn-
ing. Psychological safety is suggested as the underlying function of
academic anxiety. An extended example of a two-chair experiment is
used to illustrate a protocol for intervention. Suggestions for additional
preventions and interventions are provided.

Gestaltists Encounter Academic Anxieties

ARA IS LEADING A SUPERVISION GROUP . Her objective is to teach her

C supervisees how to present, analyze, and formulate interven-

tions. She notices that the presentations of Zev, one of the
supervisees, are continually characterized by references such as, “I
don’t really know if I’m doing this right,” and “Is this what you wanted
me to do?” “Should I give more background?” Cara hypothesizes that
Zev is anxious about his ability to make a group presentation.
Susan is leading a weekly eating disorder group. One of her objec-
tives is to teach the participants how to be observant to and journal
about their emotional experience as it parallels their food intake. One
member continually questions and criticizes the purpose of the journal
writing, stating that she can make “mental notes” instead. Susan wants
to know more about this process of mental note-taking. She suspects
that this group member is anxious about writing.

The authors are members of the Graduate School of Education and Psychology,
Pepperdine University.
239  1999 The Analytic Press
240 CARA GARCIA, SUSAN BAKER, AND ROBERT DEMAYO


Tara is presenting a workshop on peer mediation for adolescents.

Her objective is to give participants strategies for conceptualizing and
intervening in instances of peer conflict. The questions of several
participants lead her to suspect that they are anxious because they
doubt that the workshop strategies will be effective in their situations.
Bob is teaching a course in abnormal psychology. His objective is to
cover the material as stated in the course description, using slides and
videotapes to illustrate the theory. Several students in the course often
ask, “Will this be on the test?- leading Bob to believe that their test
anxiety is interfering with any deep mastery of the material.
The experiences of Cara, Susan, Tara, and Bob are typical of
Gestalists who wear several hats: in addition to their clinical work,
they are also workshop leaders, professors, and supervisors.
The premise of this paper is that a Gestalt approach can be used to
address the academic anxieties that are inherent in instructional situ-
ations. We intend to describe the kinds of academic anxieties and show
how the Gestaltist can bring his or her clinical strengths to address
academic anxieties in instructional situations.

The Need for a Gestalt Approach to Academic Anxieties

Instructional situations are structured so that students, supervisees,

and workshop participants are expected to meet the expectations of
the teacher. Likewise, the organization that secured the services of the
teacher is expecting the teacher to cause the students to meet the learn-
ing objectives. As a Gestaltist can quickly ascertain, these expectations
create an educational situation that is biased toward an “I–It” rather
than an “I–Thou” dynamic between the teacher and the organization
and between the teacher and the student.
Furthermore, when a student becomes anxious, he or she is typi-
cally given the proverbial peptalk: teachers tell anxious students to
relax, learn, go with the flow, because the teacher believes that the
student has the ability to achieve the objectives. However, peptalks
miss the point: it is the student’s. belief that is relevant to his taking
responsibility, working through anxieties, and meeting his learning
needs. Ironically, even Gestaltists will teach in a directive manner, not
realizing that they could shift to facilitating learning and use their thera-
peutic principles to bring the classroom alive. This shift is what class-
room teachers have dubbed, “from the sage on the stage to the guide
on the side.”
We believe that learning is like therapy: ideally, the teacher facili-
tates students’ awareness of their learning processes. Students gain
insight into the choices they make during their learning process; they
ACADEMIC ANXIETIES 241


take responsibility for their own learning, including their ability to

address their own academic anxiety issues. The learning process is
one in which the “teacher ’s” shift from “sage” to “facilitator” supports
the student’s shift from “other support” to “self-support,” a traditional
definition of the therapeutic process.

Dialectic Dialogue for Academic Anxieties

We began this article illustrating four scenarios in which academic

anxiety is occurring. Academic anxiety is a term we have coined to
describe the interruption of concentration on an academic task. In each
of the four scenarios, it is clear that the students’ concentration is
interrupted; and anxiety is a shorthand term for what the student is
experiencing. Anxiety is taken to be a state when a person is not fully
present in the moment. Academic anxiety is a state in which the stu-
dent is not fully present to an academic experience; concentration on
the academic task is interrupted.
The scenarios are specific examples of academic anxiety. They have
been drawn from a broader typology that includes:

• test anxiety
• writer ’s block
• stage fright, including speaking up in class
• reading reluctance, including avoiding or rushing through read-
ing assignments
• subject-specific anxiety (math, science, spelling, foreign language,
etc.)

Dialectic dialogue is another term that we have coined to serve as a

shorthand for instructional facilitation. By relating it to the underly-
ing philosophy of the learning process, we situate the term more in
the educational field than in the mental health field:

Thesis, or ←→ Antithesis, or




Concentration → Interruption
←

Synthesis, or
Recovery

The dialectic refers to:

• concentration, as Perls used the term, meaning the natural fasci-

nation with Gestalt formation and destruction, not forced or
242 CARA GARCIA, SUSAN BAKER, AND ROBERT DEMAYO


strained concentration. We see natural fascination in the learning

processes of infants and children when their learning is wonder-
full. It becomes imperiled to a great extent, ironically, by society’s
efforts to school the child for citizenship. These efforts often make
subject matter “academic” in the worst meaning of the word, wring-
ing the life out of the information and presenting vicarious experi-
ence through textbooks rather than “hands on” direct experience.
We use dialectic dialogue to intervene in order recover authentic,
present-centered concentration.
• interruption, our shorthand for the boundary disturbances that
emerge into foreground and disturb concentration: confluence,
deflections, introjections, projections, retroflections, and egotism.
We categorize them as interpersonal issues, intrapersonal issues,
and skill-related issues. Interruptions occur at every phase of learn-
ing just as they occur throughout the Cycle of Experience (Perls,
Hefferline, and Goodman, 1951).
• recovery, our term for homeostasis, the restoration of authentic
concentration after an interruption. Recovery of concentration
brings a new authentic moment with concentration different from
that preceding the interruption. Ideally, we seek concentration with
insight, reflecting the identification and alienation with aspects of
both the original concentration and interruption to form the syn-
thesis, the recovery.

The dialectic is the classic model in Gestalt therapy, Perls having

related it to differential thinking (1947, p. 14), and we find that it has
been an effective way of introducing educators to Gestalt theory. Ad-
ditionally, we have found that the depiction and phrase “dialectic
dialogue” has been acceptable to educators who prefer to have simple,
discrete techniques to adopt in their classroom teaching. As we have
begun to train psychology students in this work, we’ve found the
dialectic to be helpful in introducing them to addressing academic
anxiety issues as part of their clinical training.

Psychological Safety

All manner of academic engagements demand constant risk in order

to learn and grow. When students, concentration is interrupted by
thoughts, feelings, or tensions, we assume that it is for the purpose of
maintaining psychological safety. If a student cannot conceive of him-
self or herself as more knowledgeable or skilled in the way that the
instructional goals describe, then he/she must have a means of
stopping progress toward that goal. By tackling an academic task while
organismic energy is split into a portion that concentrates and a portion
ACADEMIC ANXIETIES 243


that interrupts, students are sure not to perform up to potential. This

creates an occasion to follow their “I can’t do this” with a self-righteous
“I told you so” when they fail. They have, however, manipulated them-
selves into staying in a safe, nongrowth place, which we need to bring
to their attention. From there, we can negotiate what support they
might need in order to believe that they can respond to the demands
on them in a more fully integrated condition.

Dialectics throughout the Gestalt Cycle of Experience

We think of learning on many different levels: learning during a unitary

task or lesson, during a unit of study such as a chapter of a text, or
learning during an entire course or even an entire curriculum. However,
at every level we view it as a cycle with a beginning, middle, and end.
We expect certain issues to emerge at the beginning, others to emerge
in the middle, and still others at the end. In other words, we conceive
of concentration–interruption–recovery dialectics throughout the cycle
of learning regardless of level. This is our reformulation of “distur-
bances” as they were conceived for the original Gestalt Cycle of
Experience (Perls et al., 1951) and later modified as functional–
dysfunctional polarities (Clarkson, 1989). our reformulation results in
a Gestalt Cycle of Learning Experiences (Figure 1), which illustrates
dialectic possibilities at each phase of a lesson (Garcia, 1998).
We suggest that the reader look over the Cycle and read the next
section on our clinical protocol, bearing in mind that we will show
how the Cycle and the protocol are used in an actual dialogue two
sections hence.

Protocol for Interventions

Our conception of the dialectic and the Cycle of Learning Experiences

translates directly into a means of case formulation for academic
anxiety.

Initial Interview
We ask the student to tell us what his experience is with the matter at
hand. We reframe the description as the dialectic of concentration–
interruption–recovery around skill, intrapersonal, or interpersonal
issues and verify that with the student.

Continuing the Interview

We ask the student to show us, by role-play or actual experience, his/
her experience as the academic anxiety is occurring. Here we watch
244 CARA GARCIA, SUSAN BAKER, AND ROBERT DEMAYO


Figure 1 The Gestalt Cycle of Learning Experience

how the dialectic emerges during the cycle of the learning experience.
We can then compare and contrast our experience of the process with
the student’s description.

Contract
We discuss our experience of the student’s learning, giving feedback
along the lines of Gestalt experiments that might grow from what we
observed. We make a contract with the student to address his issues,
sometimes writing out long-range goals and discussing how weekly
session time might be used.

Experiments
We refer to the contract each session and plan how to use time to get
assignments done, for example, agreeing that we will address interrup-
tions to concentration as they emerge during work on the assignment.
When an issue emerges, we explore it in a dialectic dialogue. When
we can’t grasp a student’s description of his/her anxiety, we can set
up a reverse role-play experiment in which we play the student, and
ACADEMIC ANXIETIES 245


the student directs us and plays any other significant characters in the
scenario. In this way we can check out our hypotheses of what the
student is experiencing, and if we get it wrong, the student will cor-
rect us until we better understand what her experience is like.

Feedback
We reflect on the insights about the student’s learning process that
were gained from the experiments. We discuss the implications for
the next assignment. We decide if there’s any change that needs to be
made on the contract based on what we learned.

Termination
We eventually complete our contract and reflect on a shift from other-
support to self-support. We discuss how the student will maintain self-
support and how she will know if/when she needs to return.

Two-Chair Intervention for an Academic Issue

The following example will contextualize the concepts of academic

anxiety and dialectic dialogue in a vignette in which Cara is leading a
supervision group. Noticing how she experiences her interactions with
one of the participants, she initiates the following dialogue. She follows
the clinical protocol that was introduced in the previous section. We
have placed the dialogue in the left column and linked it to the Cycle
of Experience and our clinical protocol in the right column.

C: Zev, you seem less than con- Initial interview

fident when you present your case
to the group. I notice that you of-
ten check with me for reassurance
and that you comment that you
don’t know what you’re doing. Is
this true for you?
Z: Yes.
C: On the other hand, you par-
ticipate every week, so you’re still
very much engaged with the
group, yes?
Z: Yes.
C: So altogether I experience a
part of you that freely participates
and a part of you that holds back.
Is that true for you?
We ask the student to verify what
his experience is with the matter
at hand. Here we are using the
same skills that we use in an early
session with a new client who has
told us and then shown us what
the presenting problem is.
We reframe the description as
a dialectic of concentration and in-
terruption.
This dialectic is occurring at the
beginning (bottom) of the Cycle.
Zev is available. This dialectic
of concentration–interruption is
246 CARA GARCIA, SUSAN BAKER, AND ROBERT DEMAYO

Z: Yes.
C: Were you aware of this split
in you?
Z: (Shakes head no. Smiling.)
(Nervous giggles from the
group.)
C: I wonder if it would benefit
your learning if you would experi-
ment with having a dialogue
between these Zev’s to discover
how they might resolve this
tension I notice.
Z: Okay.
C: I think you know the classic
two-chair format, yes? (Puts
chairs facing each other.)
Z: (Takes a seat. Closes eyes,
breathes slowly.)
C: Take a moment to see which
one you identify with.
Z: The part that holds back, the
Unsure.
C: And take a moment to visu-
alize the other. What will you call
him?
Z: The Whip!
C: (Draws arrows and labels it.)
Here’s the beginning of our dia-
lectic.
Whip ←→ Unsure
(The group laughs, perhaps
realizing that the theory that they
are studying is also happening in
the group.)
C: Ah . . . So would you take
the other chair and be the Whip
now? What does the Whip have
to say to the Unsure?
Z: I am just sick and tired of you
always asking questions.
You’re not a serious student.
You should know a lot more by
now. You must just be lazy.
begun by checking into a possible
intrapersonal issue.
We verify our hypotheses with
the student just as we do with cli-
ents in consultation in order to
maintain our. noninterpretive
stance as Gestaltists.
Contract
We make a contract with the stu-
dent to address his issue, stating
our goal so as to take responsibil-
ity for what we want.
On the Cycle, moving from
bottom to the left, Zev has been
attending and is setting his pur-
pose for learning from the forth-
coming experiment.
Experiment
We address interruptions to con-
centration as they emerge during
work in supervision group just as
we would in a consultation
session.
We slow down the process to
increase awareness of the many
aspects of experience: body sen-
sations, thoughts, feelings.
On the Cycle of Experience,
Zev has revealed introjected ma-
terial with the shorthand name of
“Whip.” Zev may also be feeling
self-conscious about the group’s
response This may need to be
explored before moving on with
the experiment.
ACADEMIC ANXIETIES

C: Could the Unsure respond to
what the Whip has just said?
Z: (Switches chairs; addresses
Whip.) That’s not true! I may be
unsure at times but I’m not lazy. I
get my work done. And your bul-
lying me doesn’t help!
C: Does the Whip want to
respond?
Z: (Moves to Whip’s chair.) I
only get on you for your own
good.
I’m afraid that the competition
for jobs is going to be fierce, and
you need to know as much as you
can as fast as you can.
(Switches chairs.)
Well, I know that your concerns
are justified, but your criticisms
don’t help me to feel confident
about learning or performing. I
need you there as a reminder to
do my best, but I also need some
freedom from you to try out new
things and not be afraid of not
knowing everything right away.
C: Can the whip agree to that?
Z: I can try.
C: what do you mean?
Z: (Switches chairs.) I guess I
do have a pretty tight grip. I can
back off during class and explo-
ration time and then come on
strong when it’s time to prepare
for a test.
C: How does that sound to the
Unsure?
Z: It’s a start . . .
C: (Draws dialectic triangle.)
Here’s the dialectic of concentra-
tion (Whip), interruption (Un-
sure), and recovery (Back off . . .
Come on strong) in this instance.
247
The introjected beliefs come to
awareness.
We prompt the student as a way
of giving other-support.
More prompting to identify,
exaggerate, and clarify the differ-
ences between the owned and
disowned aspects of the self-in-
process.
In terms of the Cycle of Experi-
ence, Zev’s projection of choice-
fulness onto others in the job
market comes to awareness.
When the student can switch
without prompting, it may be a
sign of increased self-support.
Here the student begins to state
what he needs and when he needs
it. It appears to be the third aspect
of the dialect, the synthesis, which
we term recovery.
Verifying that recovery is tak-
ing place.
In terms of the Cycle of Experi-
ence, Zev appears to be monitor-
ing his process and releasing the
grip he has on himself, a retrof-
lection of energy.
In terms of the Cycle of Experi-
ence, Zev appears to be reflecting
rather than obsessing over this
matter. He seems to be attaining
good closure.
248 CARA GARCIA, SUSAN BAKER, AND ROBERT DEMAYO


Whip ←→ Unsure


→

←
Back off during classtime.
Come on strong before tests.

C: Zev, there might also be an Feedhack

issue between you and me which We discuss implications for
we can work on later, agreed? further learning.
Z: Sure.

Suggested Practices

As the example with Zev illustrates, Gestalt technology such as the

two-chair experiment are as relevant in learning situations as in gen-
eral consultation. We would be remiss, however, if we left the reader
with the impression that the example of Zev is illustrative of the range
of prevention and intervention strategies that the Gestaltist might
employ. Below is a brief, nonexhaustive list of preventions and inter-
ventions for Gestaltists to consider in their efforts to help students
maximize their learning.

Prevention
Introduce the topic of academic anxiety as part of the expectations given
at the beginning of a class, supervision group, or workshop. We like to
speak of academic anxiety as an interruption to concentration as we
have above. Our experience has been that students respond with
statements of relief and feelings of acceptance, which open them to
investigation.
Use a self-disclosing example of your own academic anxiety to show
that you are understanding and accepting of academic anxiety. We have
found that students feel joined by this type of “I–thou” expression.
Recommend that students share their struggles with the group. Tradi-
tional “rounds” are the means for accomplishing this goal. Addition-
ally, we have found that the writing experience is a powerful tool. In a
single session or workshop, Gestaltists might use periodic 3-minute
“quickwrites” for reflection; longer learning experiences can use
extended journaling to explore issues causing anxiety.
End each learning experience with a reflection that includes students’
learning about their academic anxiety issues. We value learning about
ourselves as much as we value learning about the world.
ACADEMIC ANXIETIES 249


Intervention
Initiate dialectic dialogue when you suspect an instance of unaware aca-
demic anxiety. For example, if a student casts continual glances in your
direction, you might invite dialogue to explore both the student’s and
your own experience of the situation. The example of Zev has illus-
trated this.
Appoint a “process person” to help watch for academic anxiety issues
that emerge. This person watches for signs of interruption to concen-
tration and brings them to the attention of the group. Our experience
has been that the process person is particularly invaluable when we
are more in touch with the subject matter than how the students are
processing it.
Follow through the processing of academic anxiety issues “after the
fact” on email or newsgroups wherein students can discuss interrup-
tions that they became aware of after face-to-face interaction. We have
found that email and telephone interventions can be effective means
by which students can express late-breaking insights until the Cycle
of Learning reaches closure.

Extensions to Educational Therapy

We hope that Gestaltists will experiment with our suggestions as they
carry out their various academic activities. For those who discover
that they enjoy using their Gestalt orientation to explore the learning
of their students, as well as their own teaching, we recommend that
they consider expanding the scope of their practice to include educa-
tional therapy. Educational therapy is the term we use to describe the
treatment of academic anxieties, a process of addressing the specific
academic needs of students in the manner we have described through-
out this paper. We believe that the scope and practice of psychotherapy
for the 21st century will be more inclusive of academic issues (deMayo
and Garcia, 1997) with schools becoming a major center for the deliv-
ery of social services (Garcia, 1997), as can be seen in the Healthy Start
Program of the California Department of Education. This funding is
used to place social workers and psychotherapists at elementary
schools for the direct delivery of services at the site but primarily to
coordinate the delivery of services across a wide range of providers.

Summary
In summary, the principles and techniques of Gestalt therapy can aid
in the prevention and treatment of academic anxiety issues of students,
250 CARA GARCIA, SUSAN BAKER, AND ROBERT DEMAYO


supervisees, or workshop participants. We hope that the ideas we have

presented in this paper can stimulate Gestalt therapists to remember
that Gestalt principles and treatment techniques are highly relevant
to the process of learning. We further hope that Gestaltists will bring
their skills to bear in conceptualizing and addressing academic anxiety
issues as they emerge for themselves, their clients, supervisees, and
workshop participants.

References

Clarkson, P. (1989), Gestalt Counseling in Action. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

deMayo, R. & Garcia, C. (1997), A Gestalt approach to educational therapy.
The Educational Therapist, 18:14-16.
Garcia, C. (1997), Educational therapy: An ancillary to family therapy. Progress:
Family Systems Research and Therapy, 6:1-5. Encino, CA: Phillips Graduate
Institute.
 (1998), Two Scared to Learn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Perls, F. (1947), Ego, Hunger, and Aggression. New York: Random House.
Perls, F., Hefferline, R. & Goodman, P. (1951), Gestalt Therapy. New York: Dell.

Pepperdine University
Graduate School of Education and Psychology
400 Corporate Point, Ste. 437
Culver City, CA 90230-7615
Gestalt Review, 3(3):251–258, 1999

Cultural Action for Freedom:

Paulo Freire as Gestaltist


P E T E R P H I L I P P S O N, M.SC.

In this paper, I follow as much as possible the format and content of

my workshop at the AAGT Conference in Cleveland, June 1998. I present
the approach of the Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire and its con-
nection to the theory and practice of Gestalt therapy. I pay particular
attention to issues of power and domination as factors in education and
in psychotherapy.

N THIS ARTICLE I AM ATTEMPTING not only to present the work of the

I Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire, but also to do so in a way

that is consistent with his philosophy and methodology. This obvi-
ously is easier in a workshop than in a paper. I hope that the format,
though maybe confusing, will give you a “feel” of both the workshop
and Freire’s “education as the practice of liberation.”
I am caught in a paradox. If I present the approach of Paulo Freire
here, I contradict his approach and my workshop. As a participant in
my Cleveland workshop pointed out, if I tell you why this is, I already
pattern your response.
So let us dialogue, as best we can on paper.
Why do you read this article? Is it the next page of the Gestalt Review,
which you read through with no particular focus? Is there something
particular that catches your eye: the names Paulo Freire or Peter
Philippson or the words liberation or education? Can you refine this
why? What are you on the lookout for? Do you seek assimilable novelty
(Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman, 1951) or an accumulation of ‘facts’ to
introject?


Peter Philippson is a founding member of Manchester Gestatlt Centre, and a Teach-
ing & Supervising Member of Gestalt Psychotherapy Training Institute, U.K.
I would particularly like to thank here the participants on my Cleveland workshop
of the same title and, in particular, the participants from Brazil and the Philippines, who
brought their own experience of Paulo Freire and his work.

251  1999 The Analytic Press

252 PETER PHILIPPSON


Is your intent to engage with this article actively as a “subject . . .

who acts” (Freire, 1996) or passively as an “object . . . who is acted
on” (Freire, 1996)? From where does my authority arise? Is it based on
my status as a conference presenter, writer, or trainer? Is it based on
editorial acceptance? Or is it based on your decision, in dialogue with
me, that there is something nourishing you can get from me?
Can you see the paradox? These questions are Freire’s questions as
well as mine. Thus, while asking you pertinent questions about your
relationship to me and to this article, I am also sneaking in informa-
tion about Freire. I am manipulating you.
You cannot fully trust me in my role as teacher. I cannot be value-
free. Either I present “facts”: Paulo Freire, who died in May last year
aged 75, was a Brazilian educationalist who revolutionized the teach-
ing of literacy in Brazil, Chile, and other countries and who from 1960
on profoundly affected the understanding of education for many
people worldwide. He envisioned education as either domination,
“banking” facts in order to get them back with interest, or as libera-
tion, evoking a dialogue in which the educatee’s awareness grows of
her/himself as a problem-solving being in the world. Have you the
reader grown from this? Have you found yourself slipping into a
familiar, comfortable configuration of recipient of information? Have
you found your ability to creatively engage with the world activated
or pacified?
So to complete my thought: either I do what I did above, or I try to
engage you as an active participant in our interaction. I cannot avoid
manipulating you by my style of relating. At least by making it overt
you can make an informed choice whether or not to accept the way I
encourage you to be. I would insist, however, that a ‘straight, factual’
presentation of Freire’s work would also be a manipulation, made even
more invisible, because our respective roles fit within a shared cultural
introject about the nature of learning. Freire claimed that this introject
is particularly problematic in a society characterized by forms of
domination.
Having said this, I now continue in a more ‘factual’ mode. I shall
provide more ‘information’ on Freire’s work and its connection to
Gestalt therapy. My hope is that I have sufficiently facilitated the
deconstruction of this mode of presentation and invited you to continue
engaging as an active participant with what I write.
For both Freire and Gestalt therapy, self is relational and emerges
from our action in the world, rather than as an “inner” reality. Growth
arises from dialogue and interaction.
Freire adds to this psychological perspective the political statement
that dialogue is impossible until those who are dominated are ready
CULTURAL ACTION FOR FREEDOM 253


to risk rejecting subjugation. Human beings have the capacity for prob-
lem solving, and becoming a “subject” in dialogical contact requires
that a person face the culture of domination as a problem to be solved.
Furthermore, the therapist or educator cannot be neutral in a culture
of domination. The client or educatee will expect (and wish for) the
therapist or educator not to act in a horizontal manner, treating them
as being of equal worth. In psychotherapy, this is called transference.
The therapist or educator needs to avoid taking on the role of domina-
tor from the beginning of the relationship. Dominating and acting pow-
erfully are different, although the difference is difficult to see in a culture
of domination. The therapist or educator can only avoid dominating
through an exercise of her/his own power, rejecting the transferential
role the educatee expects.
Freire’s distinguishing characteristic of human beings is that we,
unlike other animals, are problem-solving organisms. We are capable of
posing our position in the world as a problem to be solved rather than
acting on it as a given. By doing this, we are not immersed in reality
but can see reality as something we can shape by our “cultural action.”
This process is similar to what Perls (1957) called objectivation:

Here you tear sounds and tolls out of their context and make
them ready for a new organization. For example, an ape has tools
too. He takes a stick and gets a banana down. But he throws the
stick away and the stick doesn’t exist anymore; it recedes in the
background. But once we isolate this stick and make this stick a
tool, always handy when we need it, then it becomes an object,
not just a “means whereby,” as before [p. 65].

It is in our interaction with the world and in our dialogue with

other people mediated by the world that we make meaning, as we
“speak our word” in the world.
Through this emphasis on creative dialogic/dialectic action in the
world, achieving both meaning and transformation, Freire is absolutely
in line with both the theory and practice of Gestalt therapy. To quote
Freire (1996):

If it is in speaking the word that people, by naming the world,

transform it, dialogue imposes itself as the way by which they
achieve significance as human beings. Dialogue is thus an
existential necessity. And since dialogue is the encounter in which
the united reflection and action of the dialoguers are addressed
to the world which is to be transformed and humanized, this
dialogue cannot be reduced to the act of one person’s “depositing”
254 PETER PHILIPPSON


ideas in another, nor can it become a simple exchange of ideas to

be “consumed” by the discussants. . . . It is an act of creation; it
must not serve as a crafty instrument of domination of one person
by another [pp. 69–70].

Compare this statement to Gestalt therapy theory:

Often, it must be said, the therapist tries to impose his standard

of health on the patient, and when he cannot, he exclaims: “Be
self-regulating, damn you! I am telling you what self-regulation
is!” [Perls et al., 1951 p. 59].

Speech is good contact when it draws energy from and makes a

structure of the three grammatical persons, I, Thou, and It; the
speaker, the one spoken to, and the matter spoken about [Perls et
al., 1951 p. 101].

Thus, I am not making good contact with you now unless there is
something in “the matter spoken” which is energizing our communi-
cation and that we are both willing to put our energy and interest into
our mutual theme (in this case something about Paulo Freire). If I were
to write this only because I want my name in print or you were to read
this because it is the next page or out of politeness, we would not be in
good contact.
Both Gestalt therapy and Freire’s liberating education are support
for people to challenge limits in their lives, whether self-imposed or
imposed by others. They are therefore both supports for a risky under-
taking. Living freely is more anxiety-provoking than finding a famil-
iar niche, whether it is one of domination or of being dominated. The
method is termed in Gestalt therapy “awareness,” and in Freire’s peda-
gogy “conscientization.” In either case, it means more than passively
taking in what the world provides. Awareness/conscientization is a
creative act, an act of culture-making. I bring myself to the world and
engage it based on both what is in the world and on my own interests
and needs. I “speak a true word” (Freire, 1996) in this world and in
dialogue with other people. In speaking it, I “transform the world”
(Freire, 1996).
This emphasis on dialogue follows from the importance that both
Freire and Gestalt therapy place on the relational nature of self. For
Freire (1996), “I cannot exist without a non-I. In turn, the not-I depends
on that existence. The world which brings consciousness into existence
becomes the world of that consciousness” (p. 63). For Perls (1957), “The
self is that part of the field which is opposed to the otherness” (p. 55).
What Freire (1996) adds is the political dimension:
CULTURAL ACTION FOR FREEDOM 255


Dialogue cannot occur between those who want to name the world
and those who do not wish this naming—between those who deny
others the right to speak their word and those whose right to speak
has been denied them. Those who have been denied their primor-
dial right to speak their word must first reclaim this right and
prevent the continuation of this dehumanizing aggression [p. 69].

That is, in order to dialogue, I must risk stopping being subjugated

and confront the power of the other to subjugate me. Conversely, in
order to be a dialogic educator or therapist, I must have no wish to
subjugate my students or clients, but more than that: they must be
opposed to being subjugated and willing to oppose me being the domi-
nator. I cannot give up my domination on my own; it must be taken
from me. If I hold back from expressing my own power in order to
empower the client or student, paradoxically, I am proclaiming myself
as the powerful one in the encounter: the one with the power to em-
power or disempower, the benevolent dictator. If I act from my own
power, I can invite my client or student to engage with me from his/
her power.
One of the controversies in the workshop reflects this point. I began
by asking the participants to divide into small groups to share their
interests in attending: why were they at the workshop? But how could
they answer, since many of them did not know anything about the
work of Paulo Freire and were expecting me to give them that infor-
mation? I eventually clarified, as I did here, that I was aiming to
encourage a specific relationship between myself and the participants.
Some participants saw this as manipulation of them, stating that I
should have made my intentions clear from the outset. My response
was that I intended using some of Freire’s own methodology in my
presentation, yet there is a deeper philosophical point here. Accord-
ing to both Freire and Perls, there is no neutral stance. For Freire (1996),

We simply cannot go to the labourers—urban or peasant—in the

“banking” style [see above], to give them “knowledge” or to
impose upon them the model of the “good man” contained in a
program whose content we have ourselves organized. Many
political and educational plans have failed because their authors
designed them according to their own personal views of reality,
never once taking into account (except as mere objects of their
actions) the men-in a-situation to whom their program was osten-
sibly directed [p. 75]. For Perls (1969), “People have to grow by
frustration—by skillful frustration. Otherwise they have no incen-
tive to develop their own means and ways of coping with the world
[p. 77].
256 PETER PHILIPPSON


Thus in both Freire’s and Perls’s approaches there is a need to frus-

trate the initial assumption that the expert is going to give the answers.
In seminars I attended with Freire in the 1970s, he refused to say any-
thing until the discussion had started and then only when he felt it was
useful. He later commented that he knew little about the interests of
the British participants and wanted to let the discussion find a level
that fit for us before speaking himself. But would it not have been more
egalitarian to have explained this earlier? Once again we discussed this
in the workshop. My assumption, which was shared by a number of
workshop participants, was precisely the opposite. If I had started the
workshop by saying that I wanted them to start the discussion and I
would join in later, the focus would have been on the group explaining
things to me so as to allow me to join in. There is a similarity here to the
thinking of Bion’s (1961) Tavistock model of the T-group, where the
leader waits for a process to begin and then relates to that process. The
psychoanalytic approach of exploring the transference by therapeutic
neutrality is yet another example of this technique.
Another aspect related to the theme of power implicit in Freire’s
perspective is an approach to shame. A psychotherapist can act toward
a client in a way that leads to the client suppressing her/himself in
order to comply. The client may experience this as shaming (see for
example Lee and Wheeler, 1996). Often, it seems that in the context of
psychotherapeutic practice, shame can be equated to vulnerability. If
my starting point is that my clients are more vulnerable than I, I will
be pulling back from a full-blooded encounter with them. A client with
a background of compliance with important others or who has devel-
oped an ability to pick up how the other person sees a situation will
read two invitations here. First, it would seem that the client “should”
fit into my projection of vulnerability; second that s/he “should” see
me as stronger and easily capable of hurting her/him. I believe that
many of the expressions of shame by clients are induced by the expec-
tations of shame-sensitive therapists. This process can be invisible and
at times reversed if it is assumed that the different experience of more
robustly dialogic therapists is because they do not notice that they are
shaming the client.
The perspectives of Paulo Freire and of the people from Brazil and
the Philippines who attended the workshop are important, since the
experiences they bring are of domination, hardship, and violence
beyond anything most of our clients have experienced, and of their
strength and robustness in these experiences. Freirean educators relate
to the oppressed through politics, philosophy, and awareness rather
than through trauma. For Freire (1996),
CULTURAL ACTION FOR FREEDOM 257


The oppressed, who have been shaped by the death-affirming

climate of oppression, must find through their struggle the way
to life-affirming humanization. . . . In order to regain their human-
ity they must cease to be things and fight as men and women.
This is a radical requirement. They cannot enter the struggle as
objects in order later to become human beings [p. 50].

The danger of adopting any other approach with those who have been
dominated is that it is a form of noblesse oblige, configuring the other
as the object of our altruism.
In Gestalt therapy terms, the dominated need to reown their capac-
ity for aggression. Their assumption will usually be that, if they do
this, it will be achieved by making the other powerless, since in their
experience this is how power has always been used. It is therefore
important for me as therapist to stay centered in my own power and
capacity for aggression, so that we can meet each other in a different
way. Robert Resnick describes the dominator/dominated mode as a
“one-power system” and the horizontal mode as a “two-power sys-
tem.” This was part of the power that Fritz Perls brought to therapy:
he was a therapist you could fight with and who would show his
appreciation of the fight.

Summary
Both Freire and Gestalt therapy face the issue that the former calls de-
humanization and Gestalt calls loss of ego function. Both approaches
are based on dialogue and phenomenology; they resist providing
answers to the educatee/client’s difficulties; they challenge models that
encourage acceptance of one’s place in society; and they are based on
the assumption that the world is a risky place, and that true engage-
ment takes courage.
Freire takes this approach out of the consulting room and into the
larger world of both political action and literacy training. This is true
to the political and educational concerns of the founders of Gestalt
therapy, especially Paul Goodman, and which have continued to be
important to present-day Gestaltists, for example, Lichtenberg (1990).

References
Bion, W. (1961), Experiences in Groups. London: Tavistock.
Freire, P. (1996), Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin Books.
Lee, R. G. & Wheeler, G., ed. (1996), The Voice of Shame. San Francisco: Jossey-
Bass.
258 PETER PHILIPPSON


Lichtenberg, P. (1990),Community and Confluence, Undoing the Clinch of Oppres-

sion. Cleveland: Gestalt Institute of Cleveland Press.
Perls, F. S. (1957) Finding self through Gestalt therapy. Gestalt J., 1:54–73, 1978..
 (1969), Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. Moab: Real People Press.
Perls, F., Hefferline, R. & Goodman, P. (1951) Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and
Growth in the Human Personality. New York: Gestalt Journal Press,1994.

Peter Philippson
Manchester Gestalt Centre
7 Norman Road
Manchester, M14 5LF
Because of limited space, we were able to select only seven of the papers sub-
mitted for this special issue of Gestalt Review. We are including in this section,
however, the abstracts of nine additional papers so that our readers may
review them and write to the authors directly for the complete papers.

The Ethical Use of Touch

in Psychotherapy


P A U L I N E R O S E C L A N C E, Ph.D., ABPP

Abstract
In this workshop, I dealt with the issue of touch in psychotherapy and
covered theoretical issues, Gestalt theories regarding context and field,
recent empirical research, and practical guidelines. The format consisted
of didactic and experiential ways of learning for the participants.
Touch is a fundamental, multilayered, and powerful form of commu-
nication. Touch can be judiciously applied during the course of therapy
to the benefit of patients. I presented material from a book I co-edited on
touch in psychotherapy in which therapists discuss their decisions to
apply or withhold touch. The following contextual variables are critical:
a client’s ego strength, needs, body language, history regarding touch,
length of time in therapy, timing, and therapeutic alliance. Overall, the
therapists used clinical judgement in their decisions, rather than a rule
to touch or not to touch. In general, therapists realize that touch, if used,
must occur in an ethical context that eliminates abuses and maximizes
benefits.
In Gestalt theory, the importance of the body in psychotherapy has
been essential and touch has been utilized by Gestalt therapists as a thera-
peutic modality. However, as recent concerns about abuses of touch in
psychotherapy have caused some therapists to be hesitant ever to use
touch, participants were invited to share their experiences with the ab-
sence or use of touch in the therapy process. Participants reported many
positive and some negative experiences giving or receiving touch both
as a client and therapist. Overall, participants agreed that touch can be
an important part of ongoing psychotherapy.

Georgia State University

Department of Psychology
Atlanta, GA 30303

259  1999 The Analytic Press

 Gestalt and Somatics:
The New Integration


C Y N T H I A C O O K, M I C H A E L C L E M M E N S, Ph.D.,
G A I L F E I N S T E I N, CSW, R U E L L A F R A N K, Ph.D.,
SUSAN GREGORY

Abstract

As envisioned by its founders, Gestalt therapy is the original holistic

therapy. Teaching us that the neurotic interruption of our excitement
involves our muscles as well as our minds, they insist that a “combined
unitary approach” is necessary to restoring wholeness. This approach
requires that we work experientially with breath and awareness, ex-
citement and retroflection. At the same time that this Gestalt vision was
being developed, pioneers in somatic therapies were developing the tech-
nologies that would allow us to flesh out the skeleton of our theory and
create a truly embodied practice. In fact, Laura Perls studied with Else
Gindler, considered the grandmother of somatic work, in Berlin in the
1930s. Since then we have witnessed an explosion of somatic therapies
and theories, making this an exciting time of integration for body-based
Gestalt therapists. It is now appropriate that we restore the place of Ge-
stalt in the somatic tradition and give this developed area of Gestalt
practice the recognition it deserves.
This panel presentation from the AAGT Gestalt and Somatics Inter-
est Group presented an overview of the current practice of somatically
oriented Gestalt therapy. Moderated by interest group chair Cynthia
Cook, panelists Michael Clemmens, Gail Feinstein, Ruella Frank, and
Susan Gregory addressed the history and development of somatic work
and addressed issues ranging from the use of touch in therapy to the
requirements of training and ethical concerns. Together we explored the
theory and practice of this aspect of Gestalt practice, defining the ad-
vantages and challenges that arise at this creative edge.

Gestalt and Somatics Interest Group

Cynthia Cook, Chair
80 East 11th Street, #516
New York, NY 10003

260  1999 The Analytic Press

GESTALT AND SOMATICS 261


Panelists:
Michael Clemmens, PhD
401 Shady Avenue, Suite 104A
Pittsburgh, PA 15206

Gail Feinstein, CSW, LMT

80 East 11 Street, #517
New York, NY 10003

Ruella Frank, PhD

RD#3, Box 475A
Red Hook, NY 12571

Susan Gregory
304 West 75 Street, #7C
New York, NY 10023
 What’s Behind the Empty Chair?
A Visual Presentation of Gestalt Therapy
Theory and Concepts


L I V E S T R U P, M.A.

Abstract

This slide presentation was a creative integration of Gestalt therapy’s

complex and holistic theory. It counteracted some distorted and outdated
beliefs about Gestalt therapy and placed it within its rightful context of
philosophy, theory, and methodology. Through photographs and graph-
ics, such concepts as figure formation and destruction, brain function in
the organization of phenomenology, and holism were illustrated. A brief
history of Gestalt therapy was presented. Seven lenses that organize
Gestalt therapy were presented: field theory, phenomenology, organis-
mic self-regulation, contact functions and interruptions, existentialism,
paradoxical theory of change, and the dialogic method. A video of this
presentation will be ready for release in January 2000.

Gestalt Associates Training—Los Angeles

1460 7th Street, Suite 300
Santa Monica, CA 90401

262  1999 The Analytic Press

 A Somatic and Developmental
Approach to Gestalt Therapy


R U E L L A F R A N K, Ph.D.

Abstract

This workshop presented a practical/clinical way to observe and attend

to body processes within the Gestalt session from a developmental per-
spective. The connection between infant movement patterns and emer-
gent psychological functioning throughout development was
examined.
Infants gain awareness of their bodies through movement, and every
action begins with an awareness of their body in relation to the environ-
ment. Through movement awareness infants adjust creatively and
continually within the relational field. Pathology results when these
continuous processes of creative adjusting lack spontaneity, and infants,
for a myriad reasons, grow inhibited in their capacity to experience and
express themselves. Chronic and pathological adjustments are reflected
in the body of the infant and child disrupting and constricting emerging
patterns of breathing, posture, gesture, and gait.
Early movement patterns do not disappear in the adult, but become
background to later, more mature functions. Through the continuous
formation of movement pattern, individuals (infants or adults) experi-
ence themselves and communicate within their world.
With demonstration, dyad and group experimentation, participants
explored how these earliest organizing processes are not only manifest,
but accessible within the moment-to-moment processes of the psycho-
therapy session. Throughout the workshop, participants were shown
how to use movement as the focal point of psychological inquiry and
the locus of therapeutic change.

124 West 93 Street, #2C

New York, New York 10024

263  1999 The Analytic Press

 A Bird May Love a Fish, But Where
Would They Live? Couple’s Therapy


R O B E R T W. R E S N I C K, Ph.D.
R I T A F. R E S N I C K, Ph.D.

Abstract

For the Resnicks, relationships and marriage are difficult, rhythmical,

and not for the faint of heart. They are, however, a very special part of
most peoples’ lives and as such, they are deserving of our respect, care-
ful tending, and evolutionary change, when necessary.
This workshop began with the Resnicks giving a theoretical over-
view of their model of relationships and couple’s therapy, which has
been evolving over the past 30 years. Among other issues, this model
addresses the ultimate and complex human dilemma: How to be con-
nected to another and maintain a self. . . . The paradoxical reality is that
true intimacy requires equally true separateness—both of them within
the context of movement and balance. “Two-ness” is a prerequisite for
connection. The anachronistic nature of current models of relationships
and marriage was emphasized.
A videotaped demonstration followed showing real therapists work-
ing with real people dealing with real issues. It illustrated a way of en-
couraging a couple to find their degree of compatibility by being who
each of them is—not by being who they or others believe they should
be.
All clinical work was related to the theoretical presentation—hope-
fully making both more meaningful. Discussion and comparison of the
Resnicks’ approach with other approaches to couple’s therapy—other
Gestalt Therapy approaches, classical and modern psychoanalytic,
cognitive behavioral, systemic, postmodern, etc.—were encouraged.
The Resnicks invited participants to bring their biases, their open-
mindedness to consider and importantly, their sense of humor.

Gestalt Associates Training Los Angeles

1460 7th St. Suite 300
Santa Monica, California 90401 USA

264  1999 The Analytic Press

 Theater and Therapy: Toward a Field
Theoretical Understanding of the Dream


A R T H U R R O B E R T S, M.A.
J A N E T S O N E N B E R G, M.F.A.

Abstract
The literature of Gestalt therapy abounds with examples of clinical
dreamwork, but there has been no attempt as yet to give dreams a full
theoretical treatment within the unfolding discourse on field theory. Tra-
ditional Cartesian distinctions between such concepts as “subject” and
“object” and “self” and “other” have undergone radical reexamination
under the lens of Gestalt theory, yet one of the most classically impor-
tant of these dichotomies—that between “inner” and “outer”—remains
essentially mysterious. Does the dream come from “within”? Does it
come from “without”? How are we to understand such spontaneous
products of the imagination within a relational, field theoretical ap-
proach?
Throughout its history, psychotherapy has looked to theater for
insight into some of its perplexing questions. Within Gestalt therapy in
particular, both Fritz Perls and Paul Goodman claimed theatrical influ-
ences (owing to Max Rienhardt and The Living Theater, respectively).
In this workshop, we presented qualitative findings from an experimental
acting laboratory established at MIT in which a troupe of actors was
brought together to explore the use of dreams in enhancing their imagi-
native relationship to a playwright’s text. Out of this year-long experi-
ment emerged several unexpected insights that support our clinical
understanding of the dream as a field-event. We allowed time for expe-
riential awareness exercises, which grew out of the ensemble’s techniques
and gave a brief introduction to the historical influence of theater on psycho-
therapeutic thought—including Freud’s reading of Aristotle and Sophocles,
Perls’ exposure to the work of Max Riendhardt in Berlin, and Goodman’s
association with Judith Malina, Julian Beck and The Living Theater.
Arthur Roberts Janet Sonenberg
11 Cady St. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Providence, RI 02903 77 Massachusetts Ave., Building 14N
Cambridge, MA 02139
265  1999 The Analytic Press
 Female Sexual Dysfunctions
and Gestalt Therapy


∨
C E Y L A N T U G R U L, Ph.D.

Abstract

The aim of the presentation was to understand women with sexual dys-
functions from the point of view of Gestalt therapy and to point out
some of the experiments that could be helpful while working with them.
The presentation began with both DSM-IV classification of sexual dys-
functions and the Gestalt diagnosis for different dysfunctions (in terms
of the cycle of Gestalt formation and boundary disturbances). The aim
of Gestalt therapy of sexual dysfunctions is to integrate the client’s
sexual experience into a whole by the recovery and reownership of the
disowned aspects of the self, particularly the bodily aspects of self. It
was emphasized that being aware of the background characteristics
(such as ethnic, culture, religion, etc.) of the clients/couples was very
important for the therapists, because these characteristics play crucial
roles in interrupting healthy sexual contact. Some experiments (for
example, “fantasied journey in the vagina,” “the dialogue between
vagina and penis,” etc.) that were found to be very effective in working
with the ways of interruptions to sexual contact as well as the contact
with the partner in general, were illustrated using case examples.

Ug∨ ur Mumcu cad. Ug∨ ur Mumcu sok. 58/1

Gazi Osman Pasa, Ankara, Turkey

266  1999 The Analytic Press

 Feminist Relational Theories and Gestalt
Therapy: A Lively Dialogue


D E B O R A H U L L M A N, B.A.
M A R Y A N N K R A U S, Psy.D.

Abstract

The presenters opened the workshop by telling their stories about dis-
covering feminist relational ideas and about what brought them to Ge-
stalt. Participants followed by introducing themselves with similar tales.
Three strands of feminist relational thinking were introduced: the
Stone Center model, Carol Gilligan’s research on moral and voice devel-
opment; and educational studies done on women’s ways of knowing.
After reviewing these ideas, the presenters led the conversation toward
what relational thinking and Gestalt theory have in common. The field
theory of Gestalt therapy was contrasted with the individualist para-
digm of Western culture.
An individualistic, autonomous ideal of psychological health was sug-
gested by expressions like “Do your own thing” (as in the Gestalt prayer),
“Pull yourself up by your own boot-straps.” Phrases were offered to
heighten awareness of an alternative field or relational way of thinking,
such as “All for one and one for all” and “It takes a village to raise a
child.”
Small-group discussions fed into the larger group dialogue. One par-
ticipant remarked that extreme individualism is a cultural phenomenon.
Another pointed out that the culturally embedded psychological ideal
of autonomy is importantly flawed for men as well as for women. One
person proposed a new category for the DSM called “hyper-indepen-
dent personality disorder.”
Kraus illustrated field theory, suggesting that development is always
and necessarily development of the whole field, and we listen each other
into speech. Ullman summed up by affirming the shared ground of these
two viewpoints, suggesting Gestalt therapists would do well to be
familiar with ideas about the relationality of women.

165 Route 6A
Orleans, MA 02653

267  1999 The Analytic Press

 Adding Women’s Voices:
Feminism and Gestalt Therapy
AAGT Women’s Issues in Gestalt Therapy
Interest Group


R U T H W O L F E R T (C O N T A C T),
M ’ L O U C A R I N G, Ph.D., C Y N T H I A C O O K,
G A I L F E I N S T E I N, M.S.W., I R I S F O D O R, Ph.D.,
Z E L D A F R I E D M A N, M.S.W.,
A L I C E G E R T S M A N, M.S.W.
S U S A N J U R K O W S K I, M.S.W.,
M A R I A K I R C H N E R, Ph.D. Candidate

Abstract

Our Women’s Issues in Gestalt Therapy presentation was a collabora-

tive work in progress, an integration of Gestalt therapy and feminism.
Most of us have been involved in both the women’s movement and
Gestalt therapy since the 70s and 80s. The women’s movement has vali-
dated and expanded our experience as women and formed our feminist
consciousness. Gestalt therapy has confirmed and supported us in re-
claiming our natural aggression and in exploring the full range of our
experience. Until recently, however, women’s experience and perspec-
tives have not received much serious attention in Gestalt therapy theory.
This workshop has added our women’s voices to the development of
Gestalt therapy. By setting a slow welcoming pace, attentively listening
and supporting everyone in speaking, by honoring and validating each
experience, we created an atmosphere that allowed each woman to
deeply sense and authentically share her embodied experiencing. Each
woman presenter chose a quotation from a Gestalt therapy text that was
personally evocative and in some way highlighted the gender bias. She
then read her quote as a woman’s voice from the shared silence, chang-
ing male pronouns to female. Our readings evoked many powerful
responses. The most compelling revealed the extent of our alienation
from our bodies, while our various attitudes toward aggression also

268  1999 The Analytic Press

ADDING WOMEN’S VOICES 269


emerged as an important theme. As we approached the end of the work-

shop time, many of us spoke of our longing for authentic dialogue in an
atmosphere of cooperation and inclusion.
This workshop was an integration of two meaningful strands of our
lives. We showed ourselves as valuing aggression, cooperation and yield-
ing, and of honoring, above all, the willingness to be open—to hear and
support each other in both our expressions of difference and concord.
An article by the presenters about this workshop is available in
Gestalt!, an online journal, at http://www.g-g.org/gestalt!/3(1)/
women.html

Ruth Wolfert (contact) Iris Fodor

200 East 32nd Street 110 Bleecker Street
New York, NY 10016 New York, NY 10012
RuWol@aol.com ief1@is.nyu.com

M’Lou Caring Zelda Friedman

853 Broadway #1511 33-54 164th Street
New York, NY 10011 Flushing, New York 11358
MlouC@aol.com

Cynthia Cook Alice Gertsman

80 East 11th Street 3724 Spencer St. #309
New York, NY 10003 Torrance, CA 90503
Cynthea3@aol.com AliG37@aol.com

Gail Feinstein Susan Jurkowski

80 East 11th Street 2 Flower Hill Road
New York, NY 10003 Port Washington, NY 11050
UrsaLuna@aol.com

Maria Kirchner
8 Saw Mill Road
Wassen, New Jersey 07059
Monkey96@aol.com