Fritz Perls Key figures in counselling: Clarkson
Contents
End is 93%
Chapter 1 The life of Fritz Perls
Born 1890, domineering dad. Dad wanted to join non-Jewish
community but German aryan didn’t accept them, so open to new ideas without a
home. Dad not interested in children, mum doted, always cleaning up after him,
which became his expectation. Fritz was
a wild child from 10. Interest in theatre, worked with Reinheard. Perls harsh
confrontative style may well have been an influence from his father.
Worked as a medic in WW1 trenches. WW1 seen as pointless suffering
for the sake of a few rich, develops left wing views.
Karen Horney as therapist trains as psychoanalyst. Hangs out with Bauhaus expressionist dancers,
philosophers (opposites define each other and resting mid point ).
Influenced by gestalt psychology, Koehler, and kofka.
Existentially Tillich and Buber.
Gestalt being a whole. The whole is constructed from the
thing, its context and the relation between the two, e.g. snowflake with other
snowflakes or on a dark background.
There is a natural desire to both complete the incomplete
and to make meaning out of the incomplete.
Gestalt psychology and psychotherapy are two separate fields.
The psychology was theoretical and not intended to be implemented , whilst
there are relations and the therapy draws from the psychology it doesn’t emerge
in full.
Perls works as Goldstein’s assistant.
The influence of existentialism and phenomenology
Influenced by Lara: personal meaning needs to be created no
universal meaning, authenticity, existential isolation\being with others. The
terror of freedom, and avoiding it by a sense of obligation to institution or
by blaming others.
Authenticity=living without deception or game playing, that
we are free and responsible for our own life. Anxiety as an aspect of living authentically
with the terror of freedom.
Humans have a desire to make meaning in a world that doesn’t
have meaning.
We create meaning in the word, there are a ranger of
interpretations,. So phenomenology stresses both the subjective aspect of what
is objectively described. What is the
significance of what is described?
Psychoanalysis
1930 trained as psychoanalyst
Sees adult behaviour as made sense of by childhood events.
Homeostatic balance=Freud constancy principle.
Fritz/Laura/Goodman=founders of gestalt psychotherapy.
Fritz analysed by Reich. Reich; body armour, life’s energy
can be repressed psychologically and physically.
Escape Germany 1933=>Holland=>south Africa
Successful in south Africa, prepares important paper on oral
resistance, babies and feeding, drawing from Laura’s observation with her
children. Parallels intake of food and engagement with the world;
Perls hope for engagement with Freud, but the latter barely
spoke to him, presented paper to other analysts, which was coldly received,
Reich became uncommunicative. South Africa trainers no longer recognised, Perls
rejected as psycho analyst.
Smuts
SA prime minister=holism, making complete, relation of
organism and environment.
Ego hunger aggression came out of original oral resistance
paper blended smuts, Reich organismic, gestalt psychology, field theory,
phenomenology, and existentialist
Sullivan influence as existence as process on Perls view as
self as process.
Buber
Aim to do I thou performance with an audience=>influenced
public demonstration
Moreno
Psychodrama, we have roles we play, teacher, parent, boss,
lover etc. We play one role others play the others. From time to time client switches roles, to
explore problem from other sides. Individual may have fixed, flexible or conflictual
roles.
Essalen
Residency for 5 years 1964, popularised gestalt
Chapter 2 Major contributions to theory
Importance of holism, that the whole theory is more than the
sum of its parts.
6 Clusters
1.
Holism
2.
Theory of self
3.
Field theory
4.
Psychological disturbance
5.
Contact
6.
Cycles of experience
Cluster 1 Holism
Gestalt=a whole which cannot be broken without destroying
its nature. A triangle is lost without one of its sides. A whole person is made up of lesser wholes.
Seeing human not as centre of universe but within a complex
eco systems of other animals, flows of capital, ecology etc.
No mind body split both descriptions of the same thig. Sees
the whole organism in harmony and integration.
People are split up today, and we don’t want to analyse the bits
further rather we want to join them up again.
Value both left brain and right brain, rational deliberate
and spontaneous. Believes we have over valued left brain
Humans exist within the context of their environment of
objects and events. You survive by contact and assimilation, which can be
literal, metaphoric, physical or emotional.
Causal and analytic vs holistic and complex. If you don’t
study the whole of human you lose the very thing you were trying to understand.
Belief in innate drive to self actualisation and wholeness, however we deny
our being by should and ought’s, and police it with shame
Man transcends himself only through his true nature not
through artificial ambition and goals.
The idea is to engage with yourself via self awareness, as
opposed to forcing a socialised self image.
Urge to complete
We understand in terms of wholes, and if we see the
incomplete we try to complete it. We can only forget things we complete.
Cluster 2 Field Theory
So figures appear out of the dim background and are related
to our need. If we need to post a letter we will see letter boxes, when the
need recedes so does the object. The background perception determines the
object, e.g. with the black and white background seeing either people of vases.
You can see one or the other but not both. Likewise if you sad and see a
background of sad things this will show sad figures within it.
Perls holism and field theory, you can only understand a
persons behaviours within the interdependence of all the fields that make the
whole, the cultural, the historical and the social. All these fields are inter-related so change
one part, you have affects on all others.
Things can be missing from the field (incomplete?) and can
be as significant as that which is focussed on. Humans are meaning creating,
meaning needing, meaning hungry, they need to order their chaos. Everyone
assigns their unique meaning, a corn field has a different meaning to a farmer, lover, pilot, rambler etc. So I perceive based on my history, context and current needs.
The field is split into those things that can meet his
needs: figure, and those things that cannot: ground.
Polarities have a middle point: past, present, future,
beginning, middle, end , convex, flat, concave.
You need polarities to make figures, lively figures of
interest.
Awareness:
For Perls this means being in touch with your whole
perceptual field. Awareness is experiential and involves sensation, psyche, and
emotion. You can only be aware through
your senses! Perls distinguishes having an experience and reflecting on it! Perls
sees there is the aware and unaware, mirroring Freud’s conscious and
unconscious.
Phenomenology
There are multiple interpretations to phenomena.
1.
Bracket
2.
Describe
3.
Equalise
Phenomenology, gets the pieces of someone else’s field, the
figure and ground, thus we start to describe the surface of things as a prelude
to describing its essence.
So gestalt phenomenology describes the field in terms of what
is said and process.
Cluster 3 Cycles of experience
Sees gestalt theory and reflecting nature and its biological
functioning and processes. Initial basis on Heraclitus, everything is in flux.
Focus on becoming and process.
There is a cyclical nature of self regulation. Humans have
needs which if not fulfilled will lead them to die, if they are not interfered
with they have a natural cycle that will
satisfy these needs: homeostasis.
Needs: can be a lack that needs satisfying or an excess that
needs discharging. The need maybe internal thirst for water, or maybe external
a need for silence. A person organises his experiences around his need until it
is met. When the need is met, the person is in a state of withdrawal, quiet or
equilibrium until a new need arises.
Of course an environment might not satisfy self regulation,
there could be a conflict of needs, where the dominant one will be
satisfied. Perls did see a need to self
regulate as we are part of a social field but sees there excessive societal
desire regulation\suppression.
Cycle of contact
First formulation
1.
Organism at rest
2.
Disturbing factor, internal or external
3.
Creation of image\reality=>figure background
phenomenon
4.
Answer to situation
5.
Decrease in tension
6.
Return to organismic balance
Second formulation
1.
Fore contact
a.
Need experienced
2.
Contacting
a.
Excitement and mobilisation of self and
resources to meet the need
3.
Final contact
a.
Individual becomes fully engaged with the action
they have decided to satisfy their need
4.
Post Contact
a.
If the contact has been full and complete, then
the person experiences organismic satisfaction , digestion and assimilation
takes place. Growth takes places although outside awareness, the gestalt is
destroyed
5.
Withdrawal
a.
Person withdraws into a resting state, or state
of equilibrium, a fertile void.
Gestalt cycles can be long or short, applying to both biological\emotional need.
Homeostasis and disturbance of the cycle
An individual has a desire for homeostasis through
satisfying desires, but also has a desire to disturb homeostasis through having
desires!!
Existential void=in balance, possibilities, could go either
way, figure and ground are one.
And so the circle goes, homeostasis we have a desire we
satisfy that desire we return to equilibrium, we then seek excitement, novelty
and we satisfy that and we return to equilibrium, we alternate between seeking
equilibrium, then seeking disequilibrium.
Existential nothingness is that we are ultimately alone and
there is no meaning to life. Perls encouraged engagement with the existential
void to live authentically. This is a movement from the sterile void to the
creative void.
Cluster 4 Contact
Contact is the meeting between person and
person\environment. Me meets not me.
Contact happens between us. Contact
happens between the separate. Contact
acknowledges differences, not jelly like confluence, not distant isolation, it
is the bit in the middle. Contact
involves exchange things taken across the contact boundary. It is an adjustment between two entities, it
is a doing, a shouting, hugging, approaching, talking
Essential aspects of contact are:
1.
Maintenance of difference from the other
2.
Rejection of toxicity
3.
Overcoming of obstacles to contact
4.
Selection of and assimilation of novelty
Contact leads to growth and change. When contact is dynamic
when assimilation is thorough then this automatically leads to growth and
change. Contact leads to change but the outcome can never be predicted
Contact boundary
These are the five sense and proprioception, i.e. the
ability to perceive sensations within the body. Contact boundary as both the
place that separates the environment as is our point of contact with it. Contact
boundary as being dynamic so can increase or decrease, be more sensitive or
less. Experience happens at the contact
boundary.
The role of aggression and destructuring in contact
Aggression means initiating contact, not an unprovoked
attack. We approach the world to satisfy
our needs and to assimilate like food, we need to destructure , i.e. take apart
and put back together in a form that provides most value. True contact must be active and dynamic, you
cant passively accept novelty as it must be destructured to be assimilated.
Perls used the hunger instinct as a metaphor for contact.
Aggression and a tendency to destroy are natural, you should break down solids
into digestible parts and not to treat them like liquids.
The person who does not use aggression to make his
experiences his own will have introjects and project his aggression to others
seeing them as being aggressive, or disassociate and be aggressive to himself
by self torture or waging wars.
Cluster 5 Self as Process
Self is dynamic, it is the integrator, it is the artist of
life, it makes meaning, it forms figures and grounds. The self is the boundary with the
environment, there is no self without the other\environment. Phenomenologically I is defined by not I. The
self is not aware of itself abstractly but only through contacting other,
self\environment. Your sense of self
will vary on the basis of your engagement with the world. If you are highly
engaged you will have one sense of self, or if you are not very engaged then
another sense of self.
The active self
We need to be aware of our needs, and organise our selves
and environment to satisfy them and from their to choose and act.
When one becomes aware of ones own life events, you become
responsible for them, which gives you
the choice as to whether they are there or not, as you got to create them by
how you see the world and you also get the ability to respond to them, so you
are response-able.
If you don’t take responsibility for your existence then you
become alienated from it and see to praise and blame others for your existence
and credit\discredit others for what we do. So whilst you are not responsible for what
happens to you, you are responsible for the meaning you make of it, and how you
react to it.
There’s an inbuilt denial of responsibility in every day
language, it makes me sad, she made me angry. Avoiding responsibility makes you
passive and angry at circumstances and others, but this doesn’t get you
anywhere.
Concepts of self support and self sufficiency
An infant has environmental support, and is spontaneously
supported by a parent when a need arises. Then they become more independent and
give themselves self support. If an adult lacks self support they might
manipulate the other into giving them support.
Self support doesn’t mean isolation but a mutual interdependency with
others. Within adult needs are childish ones, to play, to be spontaneous, to be
bodily.
Responsibility and self sufficiency make Perlsian thought
seem very individualistic which was challenged by Polster.
When the need for connectedness is figure then the
individuation is background.
Actualisation
Moving from environmental dependency, to inadequate self
support, to manipulation of others to get needs met, to authentic self support.
Neurotic person having little external power to draw on,
clings to past success, habits, status quo and a fixed sense of self.
Healthy individual needs no security, reaches out to novelty
and the unknown with a feeling of the ability to actualise itself in each
situation that should arise.
Good quote page 64
Present passage out of the past to the future
As you concentrate on the present your past constellates
into that moment to provide possible futures that you could provoke, so the
figure that comes from the ground is that experience that is a precursor to futural
figure, so the book emerges from the ground as the thing to be read in the face
of the futural degree to be earned.
Goldstein thought we should pay attention to how we use
language as it shows how we pattern our experience and therefore how we
interpret the world.
Take responsibility for your experience by using I, use a
verb not a noun to show process not thing.
Cluster 6: Psychological disturbance
Five parts
1.
Description of psychological disturbance
2.
Causes of disturbance, fixed gestalt,
repetition, unfinished business
3.
Maintenance of fixed gestalt
4.
5 level model of neurosis
5.
Exploration of anxiety and excitement.
Perls description of psychological disturbance
Psychologically healthy people are self regulating whilst
being interdependent with others.
They accept responsibility for the choices they make in
life, including the meaning they give to those choices. They experience their
ability to actualize themselves within the (sometimes difficult) circumstances
of the environment. They are self-affirming and act in congruence with their
own inner experience and set of values. They actively relate to their fellow
human beings and their surroundings. They are potentially aware of and in touch
with all the phenomena of themselves - their sensations, feelings, and thoughts
- and their environment. They can thus recognize their needs and are
continuously making creative adjustments at the contact boundary between
themselves and the world, responding to, acting upon and withdrawing from the
environment in order to meet their own needs, without either being swallowed up
by society or impinging too heavily upon it!! Easy then.
In neurosis, influence by Reich, there is tension between
the body armour and the natural organismic impulses
A disturbed individual sees society as large and important,
and themselves as small and unimportant.
If his needs and society are different he cant decide which is the more
important. This leads to not making a
clear decision and then neither getting satisfaction nor withdrawal.
When a client is neurotic they cant make good
contact\withdrawal from the world, so cant assimilate novelty, so cant grow. So
Perls would change the word neurosis to growth disorder.
Unfinished business, fixed gestalt and repetition compulsion
Unfinished gestalts
want to be completed, so the ground will be interpreted in
terms of it, to put it to one side takes energy.
Fixing of a gestalt
So there is a need and an incomplete gestalt, which becomes
chronic, and hope is given up that it can be completed, i.e. love from mother,
then the gestalt is fixed, so the need is managed in the body with the
musculature as the need comes up then the chest my strengthen, might tighten,
when the need comes up then there may be the belief there’s something wrong
with me, that I don’t get support, and anger at other people that they don’t
see and respond to this. It thus becomes
easier to deal with the substitute thoughts and feelings than the original need
and frustration\rejection of its satisfaction.
When gestalts are fixed, then the original desire is denied,
distorted or displaced
I don’t need support, there something wrong with me to need
support, I feel better when I help others.
Repetition compulsion
When a gestalt is fixed then you continue to make the same
responses as when it was first fixed. The client is attempting to meet the
original need. You repeat when you need
to complete something. The distorted
cycle is completed but there is no satisfaction, so there must be repetition.
Each time a client comes close to unfixing, loosening a
fixed gestalt he can feel the acute
anxiety he originally did when he gave up on his needs.
Interruptions to contact
A fixed gestalt is maintained at the contact boundary by
displacement, denial etc and takes energy, it is happening in the present all
the time the original need is present, and is the same that was used when the
original need first surfaced.
There are four boundary disturbances
1.
Introjection
a.
I take in ideas and experiences from the world
without making them mine. Dad says its good to work so I believe this too. They
are not part of us but are still part of the environment\other. We need to
assimilate, ideas, values so that we take the things that work for us and discard
the things that don’t.
b.
People introject in overwhelming\depriving
environments where their needs run contrary to the group.
c.
You cant grow on introjects as they aren’t part
of you. Introjects are like having your house filled with other peoples things
so there’s no space for yours.
2.
Projection
a.
Things I cant accept in myself I project onto
the behaviour of other people\organisations\events. I have a feeling that
doesn’t feel like it belongs to me. So
the process is to feel an emotion, desire to act, but then deny this as this
isn’t part of your self image but then this feeling must come from somewhere
and it is then projected onto someone else. So sometimes flipping the question, if you
find other people rejecting, you may want to ask how you reject others.
3.
Retroflection
a.
I do to myself what I would like to do, have
wanted to do, to another. Comes from
being punished for expressing your emotions. What is learnt is to hold back the
punishable responses, so if I was angry with the world and I was punished for expressing
that anger, then if I feel angry, I try to suppress that response and can be
angry with myself if I fail. So there is a need to be angry, you cant express
it, you try to stop it, then your need to be angry gets satisfaction internally
as you are angry at yourself for not stopping it. Likewise sometimes you do to yourself, e.g.
comfort yourself things that you would like other people to do.
4.
Confluence
a.
I merge my needs with those of another and
cannot distinguish them from each other. So two parts of a field flow together
so that you cant distinguish them. This can happen at the end of successful
contact, when after the choir rehearsal you don’t feel any boundary between you
and the choir. People with problems with
confluence do not know where they end and the other begins. Highly confluent people cant tolerate
difference. Confluent parents expect children to follow in their footsteps,
confluent partners may assume their partners are the same as them.
5.
Desensitisation
a.
We numb ourselves to our sensation to keep them
out of awareness. We anaesthetise
ourselves to our pain and this means we don’t find the meaning in it for us, so
we keep on having it. Desensitisation is
healthy for tooth pain where you know
what it is, what you are going to do about it.
6.
Egotism
a.
Is the slowing down of spontaneity to ensure
there is no danger, risk or surprise. So egotism is healthy for long term
projects but if it is neurotic prevents contact.
Of these six interruptions they do not act in isolation, so whilst
we may have our preferences we will see more than one interruption.
5 level model of neurosis
Perls developed this but depends on a fixed view of self,
which is contrary to his self as process earlier thoughts.
Layer 1: Cliché layer
Meaningless tokens of engagement with the other, driven by
introjected social norms
Engagement bears no relation to feeling
Level 2: Role Layer
WE play exaggerated roles in comparison to how we feel, the
victim, the boss,
Level 3: Impasse layer
Experience of the conflict between the part that wants to
avoid suffering and the part that wants to complete unfinished business. People prefer to avoid feeling this as its
uncomfortable to take responsibility for your stuckness, for the fact that you
are both free and have limitations.
Level 4: Implosive layer
Paralysis of opposing forces. WE tense ourselves as we fear
if we explode we would no longer be loved.
If an individual stays with the stuck-ness of the impasse layer, by the
tension of the implosive layer then they will eventually explode and feel the
joy, and anger and orgasm and laughter.
Level 5: explosive layer
4 types of explosion, joy, anger, orgasm, grief
Anxiety
Anxiety is seen as the authentic feeling you have when you
realise you will die, that there is no fundamental meaning in the world and
they have responsibility for creating meaning in the world.
Perls originally suggested that anxiety is interrupted excitement,
the energy to use and grow in and with the world . Anxiety is the constriction
of breathing, where deep breathing is wanted as there is energy and excitement
for engagement but it is constricted, so to change anxiety to excitement you
need to ask what excitement am I denying myself in the world, and breathe
deeply
Chapter 3 Major contributions to practice
Perls brought the holistic conception of the human being
fully alive in therapy through a unique and unprecedented blend of awareness,
active experimentation, visualization, fantasy, enactment, attention to
language and all aspects of non-verbal behaviour, bodywork, intuition and
thinking.
Therapy and the process of change
Definitions of therapy
There are many and varied ones. Gestalt move from interpretation
to contact, from transference to phenomenon.
Diagnosis leads to I it relations, rather than a unique
person and an I thou relationship.
Gestalt does use diagnosis but of the process and to work
out how contact is blocked. They may use
diagnosis but of a behaviour not of a person.
Success in therapy is defined by the client having greater
vitality, purpose and meaning.
The willed change process is generally short lived. Self control of this sort creates internal
conflict within us. The controlling part
restricting the more spontaneous part.
We avoid life’s challenges by hiding behind habit and
roles. So to neither coerce or avoid.
Change happens when you become more of what you are, as you
assimilate, and therefor grow.
Gestalt therapy: how does the client make contact with the
world, how is it interrupted, when is there successful\unsuccessful contact
Gestalt uses a phenomenological approach. We tend to take the obvious for granted and
look for the complicated instead. Ask
how and what question, not why. The former stays with what is.
Gestalt deals with the past in terms of the unfinished
business that shows in the present.
Active experimentation
=safe emergency=a situation which provokes unfinished
business but the fixed gestalt response is not the more appropriate one.
Precondition
Client engages with something they are interested in and
pays attention to it, with full awareness.
Therapist suggests an experiment which helps client explore
the filed
Client amplifies or inhibits standard behaviour
Client will feel anxiety stuck between excitement and fear.
The impasse/
In the safe emergency the repressed, thought, emotion,
behaviour can come into awareness
Which can then be accepted as part of them
Stuck can be when excitement and fear cancel each other out,
excitement for some new engagement\satisfaction, fear that the fixed gestalt
will repeat.
Uses creative approaches in therapy:
Fantasy/imagination engage differently with an event rather
than just talking about it, also create supportive resources for yourself, e.g.
SafePlace.
Psychodrama, Enactment and the Resolution of Unfinished
Business
Client plays all the roles in a psychodrama , use an empty
chair when occupying another role.
Polarities
No one is intrinsically good or bad, everyone can be
anything. However we disown and deny parts we don’t like, and use up energy in
creating this inner conflict. Its
wasted energy as the disowned part sabotages the suppressing part.
Opposites are complementary and together they explain the
other, they are on a dialectical continuum.
If one quality is in the foreground the other must be background.
Use empty chair to investigate top dog\underdog. Underdog
has some control, but its sneaky, passive aggressive.
One aim around working with polarities is to see them as
complementary and not as conflictual.
2 chair work creates contact between different parts.
Frustration
Perls thought healthy adult are self-supporting, unhealthy
you are manipulative. It is an inability to tolerate frustration that sees the
inability to self support. For instance
give me answers to my problems, help me out of my stuck-ness. This is quite a
thing, you come to therapy for some help, you are told to help yourself, not to
be spoon fed, so the therapist needs to show how to find answers.
Attention to verbal language
The way we use language shows or overall attitude to
life. You can avoid responsibility for
feelings, he made me feel. You can avoid responsibility for thought, people say
that.. When you are
responsible you can do something about it.
A way people disown their beliefs is to ask a question, that
either enables them to get the belief of another, or allows them to avoid
stating their belief. Likewise asking
questions gets them to avoid solving their own problems through either stating
their opinion, or getting the other to solve it.
So change questions to statements.
Creative enhancement of body language
Split between mind and body being central to neurosis.
Shuttle your attention between verbal and non verbal.
There is an intellectual, emotional and somatic response
people have to the world, and Perls aimed to integrate his responses across the
three integrated parts.
Movement and dance
Perls highly influenced by theatre and dance. When someone
scared of an animal, then act it, how would it move.
Resistance and the impasse
Resistance is on a continuum with assistance
Resistance is useful so you don’t become confluent with your
environment, helps you digest at your own pace, so you don’t introject.
Resistance is somatic, intellectual and emotional.
Gestalt experiments can raise awareness of unaware
resistance. Experiments make you
aware of your conflicts. So an approach
is to get to know the resistance, own it, see it as part of you, see how it
operates, and what it is trying to do, what its purpose and meaning is.
Working with the impasse
This is when an individual feels stuck. Growth and
resistance are having a stand off. Contradictory polarities are having a stand
off. In this position a fixed gestalt is
endlessly repeated. Generally we avoid taking responsibility for this due to
the level of existential anxiety that could be produced. The existential impasse is the position where
there is no environmental support and the client doesn’t believe they can cope
on their own. All clients energy is turned inwards in the impasse rather than
outwards satisfying their needs.
Perls got clients to amplify, personify, inhabit the stuck-ness
so that it becomes so powerful it bursts from implosion to explosion.
Dreams the royal road to integration
Dreams as the manifestation of the disowned and projected
parts of the personality. Perls got
client to enact each person, object in the dream as he believed all of the
dream was disowned or projected parts of the person.
Nightmares: act the parts we most fear as these are the most
alienated parts of us. There can be
tremendous vitality in the feared parts.
We see ourselves as victim in the face of the feared part, however to
become whole again we need to reclaim the energy that we have split off,
projected into the feared part.
Dreams are seen as existential messages. Repeated dreams have an important message,
dreams are about your overall way of being, your life script.
Forgotten dreams, enact it, put it in the chair and address
it.
Chapter 4 Criticisms and rebuttals
Criticisms of Perls distinct from criticisms of gestalt, Gestaltists
criticisms of Perls producing new ways of doing gestalt. Perls work is different from gestalt therapy,
his ideas may have started it but others have taken it over
Perls criticises that the reduction of present exchanges to
transference.
Kovel
1.
Gestalt ignores the past
a.
But he works with unfinished situations
2.
Gestalt has no group theory
a.
True in the 60s but not now
Dublin
1.
Perls is anti intellectual, lose your mind and
come to your senses. Perls challenging overly academic psychoanalytic approach
of the time, but he’s written two books and to have a holistic approach to clients
you need body, mind, emotions..
2.
Perls see isolated hedonism as mature, i.e.
become independent from your environment and self reliant,in your approach to
life. So this is Perlism not gestalt, it differs from the origins of gestalt in
Buber, criticised by Laura. Fritz emphasised more confrontation, Laura support.
His gestalt therapy also includes the importance of inter dependence
Yalom
1.
Many therapists have symptom prescription which
gives a sense of responsibility to the symptom
Here endeth my interest in writing about this chapter
Chapter 5 The influence of Fritz Perls
Beyond Perls
Zinker and Clarkson did their own models of contact.
Kepner=therapy a process on 3 levels, inter-personal,
intra-personal and system.
Yontef: gestalt as dialogic, relationship as the medicum for
contact
To try to force an I thou relationship, paradoxically
creates an I it relationship.
Polster: talking about ok, value in developing the clients
story in the present about the past.
Criticism of Perls and field theory being too figure
orientated and missing the structure of the ground: Wheeler 91
Gestalt
initiated therapist client dialogic meeting, so relational depth, congruence, empathy,
prior to that it was a relationship of transference.
Gestalt=>starts
phenomonelogical practice, mindful practice in therapy, relationship as healing.
Move from the archaelogy of freud, to the here and now.
Freud as
deterministic behavior=innate drives, we all have repressed desires due to the
anti-social nature of the passions, gestalt as freedom, choice,
responsibility=>existential
Freud as conservative, problem is within the individual,
holism as radical as institutions need to change
Perls=>homeostasis , boredom then self actualising=>prefaces PCT, anti dark
forces of Thanatos and Eros of freud. Freud human health =dominate the self
drives by the most socialised part.
Gestalt studied normal people not people with pathology. The
exercises in gestalt therapy prefaced self help manuals. Therapy used by the functioning , non
pathological client .
Freud=determined individual helped by expert
Gestalt=free individual finds himself with equal
Engaging with a whole, other parts recede into the
background, engaging with a whole many different and contradictory parts may at
different times show.
