As part of my psychology studies, I became interested in Gestalt therapy. I came across this book with great reviews, initially skimmed through a pirated copy, and ended up purchasing it.
Gestalt therapy should not be confused with Gestalt psychology. While both share some similarities, Gestalt therapy focuses on personal experience and self-awareness, whereas Gestalt psychology primarily deals with perception and cognitive processes.
The book is structured into three main chapters: Talk, Dreamwork Seminar, and Intensive Workshop. In this overview, I’ll cover the key points from each section. It has over 300 pages, is dense but valuable. I’ll be highlighting the most significant concepts throughout.
Only consciousness changes our reality and not thinking. So one has to be conscious of one’s reality and he is a theater director directing the actor/patient to play all the parts. Whoever opposes the actor must be confronted. First start by explaining the dream, next set the stage for the dream by acting as a stage director.
ChatGPT summary
- The Here and Now: Perls emphasizes staying present, urging clients on the hot seat to focus on their immediate thoughts and feelings to break unproductive thought patterns.
- The Empty Chair Technique: This well-known Gestalt exercise involves clients speaking to an empty chair, symbolizing another person or part of themselves, to address unresolved issues. It is used to identify projections.
- Awareness Continuum: Perls introduces a process of continuously focusing on the present moment to enhance self-awareness and clarity.
- Responsibility and Choice: Clients are encouraged to recognize their choices in responding to situations, promoting personal empowerment and control over their lives.
- Use of Language: Perls highlights how language can reflect avoidance of responsibility and urges the use of direct, responsible language to increase awareness.
- Holistic Approach: Perls views individuals as integrated wholes, where mind, body, and emotions are interconnected, helping clients see how thoughts and emotions manifest physically.
- Paradoxical Theory of Change: This theory posits that genuine change occurs when individuals fully accept themselves as they are, fostering self-acceptance.
Talk (theory)
Introduction
Gestalt Therapy is not about using a particular technique – while techniques can be useful, they can potentially become a “dangerous substitute activity” that prevents growth. Gestalt therapy isn’t an “instant cure” but a long process aimed at helping humans grow. Beyond role-playing, we must fill in the holes in the personality to become whole. Anxiety is one of the blockers for this growth.
Anxiety is the gap between the now and the then. If you are in the now, you can’t be anxious, because the excitement flows immediately into ongoing spontaneous activity. If you are in the now, you are creative, you are inventive. If you have your senses ready, if you have your eyes and ears open, like every small child, you find a solution.
A release to spontaneity, to the support of our total personality—yes, yes, yes. The pseudo-spontaneity of the turner-onners as they become hedonistic—just, let’s do something, let’s take LSD, let’s have instant joy, instant sensory-awareness—No.
The Prayer in Gestalt Therapy:
I do my thing, and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you and I am I,
And if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.
If not, it can’t be helped.
Part I
Two types of control: external (environment, orders, etc.) and internal (emotions, our own nature, etc.).
The organism always works as a whole. We have not a liver or a heart. We are liver and heart and brain and so on, and even this is wrong. We are not a summation of parts, but a coordination.
Existential approach: the question of being, rather than having (“I have a body” introduces a split, “I am a body” does not introduce a split). The organism can’t be even separated from the environment. Gestalt Therapy isn’t “aboutism” (go around and around and never touch the heart of the matter), and it also isn’t “shouldism” (moralism), rather, it is existentialism (do away with concepts and work on the awareness principle).
Organism/environment field: a person is always connected with and influenced by their surroundings. We are not separate from the world, we constantly interact with it. Field contact is when we become aware of something in our environment and engage with it, like noticing a need or emotion and doing something about it. For example, if you’re thirsty and see a glass of water, reaching for it and drinking is a simple form of contact. Through these moments of connection, we meet our needs and grow.
Mitwelt—the common world which you have and the other person has. You speak a certain language, you have certain attitudes, certain behavior, and the two worlds somewhere overlap. And in this overlapping area, communication is possible.
Once a person meets another person, there’s no “you” or “I”, there’s just “we”. Both of them change or converge towards each other. Unless, a person has a character – a rigid system of behavior.
In our society, we demand a person to have a character, and especially a good character, because then you are predictable, and you can be pigeonholed, and so on.
Every time you want to change yourself, or you want to change the environment, the basis always is dissatisfaction.
The concept of ego boundary (where ego starts and finishes): an invisible line between what feels like “us” and what feels “not us”. Inside, there’s connection; outside, there’s unfamiliarity.
The phenomena of ego boundary:
- Identification (inside the ego boundary) – We see things as part of ourselves, like our body, family, or job.
- Alienation (outside the ego boundary) – We push things or people out of our boundary when we feel disconnected or don’t like them.
I believe there is no chance of ever having without a boundary—there is always, “I am on the right side of the fence, and you are on the wrong side”
So when the other contacts come up, when this person behaves in a way that creates disgust in us, then again we don’t say, “This of you is disgusting, though this other part is lovable”. We say, “You are disgusting—get out of my life”.
What makes us interested in the world? We’re interested in the world because there are things we need (e.g. food), and this is an incentive for negotiating the ego boundary.
The world, and especially every organism, maintains itself, and the only law which is constant is the forming of gestalts—wholes, completeness.
[…]
Take an example from chemistry. You know that water has a certain property. It consists of H2O. So if you disturb the gestalt of water, split it up into two H’s and one O, it’s not water any more. It is oxygen and hydrogen, and if you are thirsty you can breathe as much hydrogen and as much oxygen as you want, it won’t quench your thirst.
The gestalt is always so formed that only one figure, one item, can become foreground—that we can think, basically, of only one thing at a time, and as soon as two opposites or two different figures want to take charge of this organism, we get confused, we get split and fragmented.
Objectivity in science: People agreeing on observations. Einstein showed that subjectivity matters too, as it depends on the observer’s perspective. Awareness is personal; we can’t know what others are aware of.
Self-regulation and ambidexterity: Self-regulation is about balancing awareness and skills, like being ambidextrous. The “topdog” (perfectionist) and “underdog” (bully) are parts of us that conflict. The goal is to bring both the “topdog” and “underdog” into awareness, allowing the person to understand the roles each plays and the underlying needs and fears driving them. By acknowledging and expressing both sides, the person can move towards integration and reduce the internal conflict (can be addressed e.g. through the empty chair technique)
Real change happens when we stop trying to be what we think we should be (self-image) and start being who we truly are (self-actualization). Most people live for their image, creating a void where their true self should be because they are too busy projecting a false image.
Control and adaptation: True behavior isn’t controlled externally or internally but adapts to the situation, like adjusting your driving speed based on conditions. The body knows more than we consciously do.
Awareness per se, by and of itself, can be curative. Because with full awareness you become aware of this organismic self-regulation, you can let the organism take over without interfering, without interrupting; we can rely on the wisdom of the organism.
If you become aware each time that you are entering a state of confusion, this is the therapeutic thing. And again, nature takes over. If you understand this, and stay with confusion, confusion will sort itself out by itself. If you try to sort it out, compute how to do it, if you ask me for a prescription how to do it, you only add more confusion.
Part II
Learning is a discovery. Learning concepts allows one to explain them, but that’s it. Understanding is not identical to that. You can tell someone “the stove is hot” 100 times, but they have to learn it themselves to really understand. A complete person is one who always keeps learning and understanding.
Neurosis should be called growth disorder. No plants stop themselves from growing, but in humans, neurosis does. I guess unlike plants, people have to sacrifice their growth sometimes (taking a care of a child, or helping others out). But I guess one can consider this sacrification growth itself 🙂 Won’t get deeper into the argument of where the line is drawn.
Maturing is the transcendence from environmental support to self-support. […] The aim of therapy is to make the patient not depend upon others, but to make the patient discover from the very first moment that they can do many things, much more than they think they can do.
“One way to prevent growth is to live in cliches, patterned behavior, playing the same roles over and over”. Though there can be some truth in it, I don’t know if I fully agree with this statement. I think in some cases, living in cliches can be good for emotional growth.
Most other therapies try to adjust the person to society. This was maybe not too bad in previous years, when society was relatively stable […] I believe we are living in an insane society and that you only have the choice either to participate in this collective psychosis or to take risks and become healthy and perhaps also crucified.
Usually, the anxiety is not so deeply existential. It is just concerned with the role we want to play, it’s just stage fright. “Will my role come off?” “Will I be called a good boy?” “Will I get my approval?” “Will I get applause, or will I get rotten eggs?” So that’s not an existential choice, just a choice of inconvenience. But to realize that it’s just an inconvenience, that it’s not a catastrophe, but just an unpleasantness, is part of coming into your own, part of waking up.
We are individuals who want to grow and be ourselves. But we also live in a society, like progressive America, that might expect different things from us. This creates a conflict. Our parents, nurses, and teachers, who represent society, often interfere with our natural growth instead of helping it.
The child either grows up and learns how to overcome frustration or it is spoiled.
Frustration drives us to use our abilities and learn self-reliance. But I also think balance is crucial; too much frustration can be harmful.
If adults don’t challenge a child enough, the child may manipulate others instead of using their own strengths, creating dependencies. When a child learns to manipulate (e.g., pretending to be helpless), they form a fixed character, reducing their true potential by becoming predictable.
If you don’t have your loving at your disposal, and project the love, then you want to be loved, you do all kinds of things to make yourself lovable. If you disown yourself, you always become the target, you become dependent. What a dependency if you want everybody to love you.
When we think, we mostly talk to others in fantasy. We plan for the roles we want to play. […] Sometimes, we might communicate when we talk, but most times we hypnotize. We hypnotize each other; we hypnotize ourselves that we are right. […] Now if you are not sure of the role you want to play, and you are called away from your private stage to the public stage, then like every good actor, you experience stage fright.
Can definitely relate to the following, e.g. every time I did(/do?) public speaking 🙂
If unsure of your role, moving to a public stage causes stage fright. Excitement builds, you hesitate, restrict breathing, and your heart pumps more. Once on stage, the excitement enhances your performance. […] It is the repetition of this activity which then becomes a habit, the same action that grows easier and easier—a character, a fixed role. So you understand now, I hope, that playing a role, and manipulating the environment, are identical.
A lot of our energy goes into manipulating the world instead of using this energy for growing.
Every time you refuse to answer a question, you help the other person to develop his own resources. Learning is nothing but discovery that something is possible. To teach means to show a person that something is possible.
A therapist often feels inadequate because the patient demands more help, leading to endless therapy. In Gestalt Therapy, we let the patient project their needs onto the therapist, helping them discover their own missing potential and revealing everyone’s gaps in personality.
A person feels the world’s eyes on them, becoming a mirror-person who relies on others for their self-image. They give up their own vision, projecting criticism and feeling constantly judged. Self-consciousness is the mildest form of paranoia.
Missing parts (holes) of a person are visible in their projections to the therapist. The therapist helps the person discover these missing parts and then provides opportunities for growth. By skillfully frustrating the patient, the therapist forces them to develop their own potential, realizing they can fulfill their own needs.
The person has to discover this by seeing for himself, by listening for himself, by uncovering what is there, by grasping for himself.
Avoidance is the key symptom of these holes. We become phobic and flee, whether by changing therapists or partners. Staying with what we avoid is tough, often requiring someone else to point it out, as we are usually unaware. When nearing an impasse, confusion and desperation set in. The neurotic is someone who fails to see the obvious.
Awareness of being stuck helps one recover and see that the problem is just a nightmare, not reality. Insanity is mistaking fantasy for reality. In an impasse, one can’t be convinced that their expectations are fantasies.
The crazy person says, “I am Abraham Lincoln,” the neurotic says, “I wish I were Abraham Lincoln,” and the healthy person says, “I am I, and you are you”.
Awakening to an impasse requires fully experiencing it, not escaping it. Liberation isn’t about breaking free, but about becoming deeply aware of how we’re truly stuck – this is liberation by looking at the nature of the thoughts.
Part III
Memory and Pride were fighting. Memory said, ‘It was like this’ and Pride said, ‘It couldn’t have been like this’—and Memory gives in. – Nietzsche
Gestalts are complete (an event that happened is assimilated and has become a part of us), or incomplete (we carry around an unfinished situation). Anything unexpressed that wants to be expressed can make us feel uncomfortable.
The author criticizes most of psychoanalysis as it relies on trauma – i.e. false memories.
Instead of seeing the world in terms of cause and effect, we should view it as a continuous, ever-changing process. Gestalt Therapy focuses on “how” things happen, not “why“. Asking “why” leads to endless explanations, while “how” reveals a deeper understanding of the process and structure. Why gives rationalization/explanation, how gives deeper process/structure insights. For example, instead of “why not”, we could ask, “what is your objection” to understand how they would rationalize/defend/proceed.
If we change the structure, the function changes. If we change the function, the structure changes.
Three classes of verbiage production:
– chickenshit – this is “good morning,” “how are you,” and so on;
– bullshit—this is “because,” rationalization, excuses;
– elephantshit—this is when you talk about philosophy, existential Gestalt Therapy, etc.—what I am doing now.
These are the two legs upon which Gestalt Therapy walks:
– Now covers all that exists. The past is no more, the future is not yet. Now includes the balance of being here, is experiencing, involvement, phenomenon, awareness.
– How covers everything that is structure, behavior, all that is actually going on—the ongoing process.
All the rest is irrelevant computing, apprehending, and so on.
Everything is grounded in awareness. Communication with awareness – active speaking and active listening.
The integration of talking and listening is a really a rare thing. […] Most people don’t listen and give an honest response, but just put the other person off with a question. Instead of listening and answering, immediately comes a counter-attack, a question or something that diverts, deflects, dodges.
So I would like to reinforce what I just said, and I would like you to pair up, and to talk to each other for five minutes about your actual present awareness of yourself now and your awareness of the other. Always underline the how—how do you behave now, how do you sit, how do you talk, all the details of what goes on now. How does he sit, how does he look…
We live on two levels: public (outer zone: our doing which is observable, verifiable) and thinking (inner zone: rehearsing, in which phase we prepare for the future). This is what causes tension, anxiety. The zone between the awareness of the self and the awareness of the world is the DMZ – the zone that prevents people from growing. Freud called this zone a “complex”.
In Gestalt Therapy, guilt is seen as projected resentment. If one feels resentment (bitter), one needs to be able to express it, no matter how tricky expressing might be.
Express your resentment. Kind of present it right into his or her face. Try to realize at the same time that you don’t dare, really, to express your anger, nor would you be generous enough to let go, to be forgiving. […] Now go back to the resentments you expressed toward the person. Remember exactly what you resented. Scratch out the word resent and say appreciate.
There is always the other side. We can’t grow without relations to others.
Fantasy can be creative, but only if we have it in the here and the now:
If we want to make a person whole, we have first to understand what is merely fantasy and irrationality, and we have to discover where one is in touch, and with what. […] And very often if we work, and we empty out this middle zone of fantasy, this maya, then there is the experience of satori, of waking up. Suddenly the world is there. You wake up from a trance like you wake up from a dream. You’re all there again. And the aim in therapy, the growth aim, is to lose more and more of your “mind” and come more to your senses. To be more and more in touch, to be in touch with yourself and in touch with the world.
The technique for that, in Gestalt, is the continuum of awareness – all gestalts demand completion and we shouldn’t carry uncompleted gestalts.
Be aware from second to second what’s going on.
Unlike Freud who focused on repressions, Perls emphasizes phobic attitudes, avoidance.
However, as soon as this awareness becomes unpleasant, most people will interrupt it. […] Most of us would rather avoid unpleasant situations and we mobilize all the armor, masks, and so on, a procedure which is usually known as the “repression”. So, I try to find out from the patient what he avoids. […] The enemy of development is this pain phobia—the unwillingness to do a tiny bit of suffering.
The awareness continuum is broken as soon as one becomes phobic. The therapist integrates attention and awareness.
So what I do as therapist is to work as a catalyst both ways: provide situations in which a person can experience this being stuck—the unpleasantness—and I frustrate his avoidances still further, until he is willing to mobilize his own resources. […] A good therapist doesn’t listen to the content of the bullshit the patient produces, but to the sound, to the music, to the hesitations. Verbal communication is usually a lie. The real communication is beyond words.
Talks about identifying several character traits, the Jewish mother (rationalizing) or bear trappers.
The bear-trappers suck you in and give you the come-on, and when you’re sucked in, down comes the hatchet and you stand there with a bloody nose, head, or whatever. And if you are fool enough to ram your head against the wall until you begin to bleed and be exasperated, then the bear-trapper enjoys himself and enjoys the control he has over you
Gestalt Therapy is about being in touch with the obvious.
If you don’t make the mistake of mixing up sentences and reality, and if you use your eyes and ears, then you see that everyone expresses themselves in one way or another. […] [Once a therapist] gets to the obvious, to the outermost surface, feed this back, so as to bring this into the patient’s awareness. […] there is so much more to be fed back—something you might not be aware of, and here the attention and awareness of the therapist might be useful.
Part IV
This was an interesting quote since it’s actually about what I’m doing as well with these blog posts 🙂
I don’t know what the theory will be next because I’m always developing and simplifying what I’m doing more and more.
His current theory is the Five Layers of Neurosis:
- Cliché Layer: Superficial interactions like saying “good morning”
- Freud Layer: Playing roles (e.g., being important or a bully). Psychoanalysts often focus here. Moving from contradictions (thesis/antithesis) to true existence. Most people are not fully honest.
- Anti-Existence: Impasse or feeling stuck due to avoidance, or suffering of frustration. We choose immaturity over the pain of growing up.
- Implosive: Facing previously avoided emotions. Parts of the self are turned inward to avoid awareness.
- Explosive: Releasing repressed emotions, leading to catharsis.
Our life energy goes only into those parts of our personality with which we identify. In our time, many people identify mostly with their computer. They think.
A theory or concept (abstraction) is just one way to look at a situation. In Gestalt Therapy, we start with what’s actually happening and then see which concepts or situations fit. We connect the main experience (the figure) with the bigger picture (the ground) to form a complete understanding, called the gestalt. We do this by relating the figure (experience) to the foreground (content, situation). Meaning is the relationship of the foreground figure to its background.
If there is no balance between sensing and doing, then you are out of gear.
An interesting experiment demonstrating the here and now:
If you’re confused or bored or somehow stuck, try the following experiment: Shuttle between here and there. I want you all to do this now. Close your eyes and go away in your imagination, from here to any place you like…
Now the next step is to come back to the here experience, the here and now… And now compare the two situations. Most likely the there situation was preferable to the here situation… And now close your eyes again. Go away again, wherever you’d like to go. And notice any change…
Now again come back to the here and now, and again compare the two situations. Has any change taken place? And now go away again—continue to do this on your own until you really feel comfortable in the present situation, until you come to your senses, and you begin to see and hear and be here in this world; until you really begin to exist.
A few people ran the experiment and described their experience… to which Fritz concludes:
So, whenever you get bored or tense, always withdraw – especially the therapists among you. […] Withdraw to a situation from which you get support, and then come back with that regained strength to reality. [This cope-withdraw rhythm is so essential for life.]
Disruptions in excitement metabolism decrease vitality. When excitements stagnate, they cause anxiety—bottled-up excitement. “Angoustia” (Latin for narrowness) shows this: chest tightens, heart races. If excitement isn’t released physically, we numb our senses, leading to desensitization – a hole.
Responsibility [the ability to respond, to have thoughts, reactions, emotions in a certain situation] means simply to be willing to say “I am I”. […] In regard to self-consciousness, we are not willing to take the responsibility that we are critical, so we project criticism onto others. […] One of the most important responsibilities is to take responsibility for our projections, re-identify with these projections, and become what we project.
While other psychotherapies analyze, Gestalt integrates, since it is very easy to mix up understanding and explanatoriness. The more thinking goes into computation/manipulation, the less energy there is for the total self.
It is important to own our emotions, actions, and thoughts, while letting go of others’ expectations. If we be ourselves honestly, if we be our bodies rather than use them, true connection happens naturally.
No wonder so many people, if they are out of the routine of their daily work, get their “Sunday neurosis” when they are really faced with their boredom and the emptiness of their lives.
Gestalt Therapy is an existential approach, which means we are not just occupied with dealing with symptoms or character structure, but with the total existence of a person. This existence, and the problems of existence, in my opinion are mostly very clearly indicated in dreams.
Freud: dreams are the royal road to the unconscious. Fritz: dreams are the royal road to integration since we can’t ever know what the unconscious is. We are most spontaneous when we dream – there is no layer of rationalizing, etc. But, because of our phobic attitude (avoidance), much material that is part of us is disowned/alienated. This material is available as projections in dreams, and it is on us to work on it.
It’s just unbelievable how much we project, and how blind and deaf we are to what is really going on. So, the re-owning of our senses and the understanding of projections will go hand in hand. The difference between reality and fantasy, between observation and imagination—this differentiation will take quite a bit of doing.
Fritz starts with a “simple experiment to produce magic, to transform ourselves-metamorphose”; he imagines a situation in which he expresses the feelings he goes through, and then asks the audience to try and follow by copying it.
Now I want each one of you to transform yourself into something a little bit more different. Say, transform yourself into a road…
Now transform yourself into a motorcar…
Now transform yourself into a six-month-old baby…
Now transform yourself into the mother of that baby…
Now transform yourself into that same baby again…
Now the same mother…
Now the same baby…
Now be two years of age…
Now transform yourself into your present age, the age you are…
Can everyone perform that miracle?
This identification can be used with dreams, but we must be careful of providing interpretations. Any interpretation is a therapeutic mistake. It is an interference of the therapist’s opinion on the client, the client has to do all the dirty work by themselves.
Examples might include:
- Rather than talking about the client’s critical parent, a Gestalt therapist might ask the client to imagine the parent is present, or that the therapist is the parent, and talk to that parent directly
- A Gestalt therapist might notice something about the non-verbal behavior or tone of voice of the client; then the therapist might have the client exaggerate the non-verbal behavior and pay attention to that experience
Gestalt Therapy doesn’t interpret dreams; it brings them back to life by asking clients to re-live them in the present:
- First, write the dream down and list all the details.
- Next, act out the dream as if it’s happening now, making it a part of yourself. Become each of the parts.
- We reassimilate and own projections by projecting ourselves completely into that other thing: “In Zen, you are not allowed to paint a single branch until you have become that branch.”
- Take each part of the dream and let them have dialogues (write a script).
- These parts represent different aspects of yourself, often conflicting (e.g. self-torture game, fighting).
- Through these encounters, a mutual understanding and integration of opposing forces occur, resolving internal conflicts and preparing your energies for external challenges.
Stop thinking, lose your mind and come to your senses.
All the different parts—any part in the dream is yourself, is a projection of yourself, and if there are inconsistent sides, contradictory sides, and you use them to fight each other, you have the eternal conflict game, the self-torture game. As the process of encounter goes on, there is a mutual learning until we come to an understanding, and an appreciation of differences, until we come to a oneness and integration of the two opposing forces. Then the civil war is finished, and your energies are ready for your struggles with the world.
When working on dreams, it’s best to do it with someone else so that they can point out the things we might avoid.
Understanding the dream means realizing when you are avoiding the obvious. The only danger is that this other person might come too quickly to the rescue and tell you what is going on in you, instead of giving yourself the chance of discovering yourself.
Don’t obsess over making everything perfect. Don’t stress about finishing every bite, i.e. integrating everything because there are infinite things to integrate. Instead, understand that our existence is about accepting.
Dreamwork Seminar & Intensive Workshop (practice)
These chapters contain transcripts where Fritz is the therapist and different people are clients. It is not possible to capture all of the important bits in an overview – it must be read for the full experience. (I found out that capturing dialogues like this in a book provides an easy way to really understand how a theory is performed in practice)
In some cases, I had to read some of these cases multiple times. The first time to understand the client’s issue, the second time how I would approach it, and the third time to observe Fritz’s approaches. It was funny to think while reading how I noticed what he noticed what the client didn’t notice and then brought it up for them… Anyway, the general pattern:
- Ask them to describe a dream (in the present tense)
- Make them roleplay (guide them to express different aspects of the dream or parts of the self)
- Observe and provide feedback (notice and comment on body language, tone, emotional shifts, read between the lines)
- Explore other relevant experiences (if there is not enough data from the dream, ask about significant life events or current issues)
- Share insights, and either:
- Deepen the exploration (ask them to continue describing and roleplaying, delving into emotions and conflicts)
- Wrap up (summarize insights, discuss session experiences, and plan for future sessions)
Case highlights
Client demonstrates their awareness that things are coming from themselves:
C: Well, what I’m doing is just playing. I mean I feel like I can make connections but they’re just happening. They don’t feel legitimate. They don’t feel like they’re drawn from me—myself.
F: Okeh, in other words maybe you’re not so completely dead. Maybe you are somewhat creative. So let’s—
C: Well, that’s what it is. It’s nothing but my own creation. All right.
Against creating the Fritz dependency:
I’m not in you and I’m not arrogant enough to be a psychoanalyst and say that I know what you experience, what you feel. But if you understand the idea of this purely personal Fritz, you can get yourself a chair, couch or whatever you have, and whenever you’re in trouble go and talk to this imaginary Fritz.
Fritz is very good at reading non-verbal cues and reading between the lines, this snippet from a dialogue was interesting in how he steers clients on the right track:
F: I don’t believe the hate. “I hate you”. I didn’t hear any hate in there. You’re talking literature again.
F: Change seats… What do you experience now?
[…]
F: Yah. I can tell exactly by the tone of voice, by the gestures.
There’s also a common pattern where he pushes clients to get deeper into a thing, staying in the present tense. From “I’m in a department store” to “I’m a department store, I’m big, I have a lot of things inside”. He watches body movements, and pushes them to be real, sharing things like “I don’t believe you”, or “Say it again” (through his sense of sound he can hear how others say things and tells them “again, again” until he assures himself they really mean it) or “This isn’t your voice”. Make them come up with their interpretation instead of him “polluting” by asking “What do you make out of this?”
There was another example where a couple sharing their expectations, Fritz intervenes that they’re living in the past/future and he jumps in with “as you state your expectations, describe how you feel in the now”.
In the following snippet, Fritz is asking the question “where did you get this pattern from” (this triggered thoughts in me that we all carry people around us within us)
M: No, I can only do it to myself.
F: You can only do it to yourself. What kind of person is this who is doing this?
M: A strong person… ah, strong and wise and sort of a controlling person.
F: Could you close your eyes and look at this person. Describe this person. Is it a he or a she you’re playing there?
M: It’s a she—it’s me.
F: Where did you get this pattern from? You see I just can’t believe that you are constitutionally so mean..
M: (quietly) I don’t know where I got it, I can’t see anyone..
F: What do you feel now? Did you put the wall between you and your memory?
M: Yeah.
F: Yah… So let’s go back to the dialogue between the wall and you..
[…]
M: You are—you are in front of me, wall, and behind you I am safe. And the wall says, Yes, and you will never be able to get through me. If you do, then you will be vulnerable and people can come in. And this wall keeps people out.
F: I keep people out..
M: I keep people out with this wall. I keep people out.
F: Now, you just told me something. You’re afraid that you might be vulnerable. Can you play a vulnerable person?
With his high level of attention to detail Fritz observes body language again. He keeps drilling. Dance with nervousness. Dance with curiosity.
F: Dance nervousness. Express all that you feel now in movements.
M: I feel sort of tight, in my…
F: Yah. (Fritz holds out his arm) Now tighten me, tighten it more – more – more. Implode me. So what do you feel now?
M: I feel more relaxed.
F: Ahah. Because you did to me what you usually do to yourself. This is the golden rule in Gestalt Therapy: “Do unto others what you do unto yourself”
[…]
F: What do you do together? You see, I can’t understand abstract language. I must have something real to work with.
Experiencing:
Now I would like you to close your eyes and enter your self. What do you experience right now? Begin to feel something?
Close your eyes again and enter your body. What do you experience?
Close your eyes. Enter your body. What do you experience physically?
Trembling, shakiness. Enter your shakiness.
F: What are your hands doing?
B: Well, my thumbnails are pulling at each other.
F: What are they doing to each other?
M: I’m trembling. Tensing.
F: Let this develop. Allow yourself to tremble and get your feelings… (her whole body begins to move a little) Yah. Let it happen. Can you dance it? Get up and dance it. Let your eyes open, just so that you stay in touch with your body, with what you want to express physically… Yah… (she walks, trembling and jerkily, almost staggering) Now dance
High attention to detail, drill:
F: Yah. Let’s have an encounter; there’s something going on there.
K: You’re nervous, and I’m—as usual I’m going to protect you, and—get your—your action down here, so you won’t do anything you shouldn’t do with your hands. You’re ashamed of their trembling, your left hand trembling—so—ah, I’ll close them.
F: Could you give me a number of sentences starting with “I am ashamed of …”?
F: Yah. Now, I went along with you to quite an extent, except that I don’t believe you in your tailored rules, that you have either to finish a term paper or go out with the boy. I think that’s a lie.
C: O.K… Of course. Because as a matter of fact, in the case that—that I’m generalizing this from, this is exactly what happened. I did go out to the beach with him, and term papers are written—let’s face it—at four o’clock in the morning, anyway. They’re no good if they’re not. And so it—it wasn’t either/or, it was both/and, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be this all the time.
Right at the start:
Fritz: Do you realize something is going on in your body?
Elaine: Yes.
F: What do you experience?
Kirk: I don’t have a dream to tell you.
Fritz: Okeh, talk to that non-existent dream.
Ellie: My name is Ellie… Well, I feel a fluttering in my chest, now, and I’d like to loosen up.
F: That’s a program.
E: What?
F: That is a program—when you say, “I’d like to loosen up.”
E: I’m trying, now.
F: “I’m trying.” This is also a program. You mix up what you want to be with what is.
On copying other people:
You always introject people who are in control.
E: My stomach is fluttering, and my heart is ticking, but I really don’t feel—I’m starting to relax now… I had a dream that I wanted to talk to you. I was on…
F: Did you hear the tears in your voice when you said “I was on”? Did you hear the tears? This is what I like to draw your attention to—the voice. All the things the voice tells you—every second.
E: Well, I was in my bed and, uh—
F: Please tell the dream in the present tense.
[Close your eyes, play the role…] Always make it an encounter. This is the most important thing, to change everything into an encounter, instead of gossiping about. Talk to her. If you don’t talk to someone, you are giving a performance.
Roleplay is limitless:
F: Now I want an encounter between Carol and sleep.
Example of Fritz asking the client to stop rationalizing:
F: That must be a Jewish mother dream. “It’s my fault again!” (laughter)
K: Shame on you, poor little me. You know.
F: Can you answer without thinking when I snap my finger, to my question? Without thinking. When did you lose your dream?
Saying what one feels vs saying what one expects others to hear:
D: I’m sleeping. Suddenly I hear somebody screaming.
F: Wait a moment. Say again “I’m sleeping”.
D: I’m sleeping.
F: Do you believe it?
D: No.
F: So act it out.
More on completing gestalts
If you have forgiven her, you have assimilated whatever you have projected in her. If you eat a steak today, what do you do with the steak? You make it your own, and this is the case with any unfinished situation, any incomplete gestalt, once you digest it and use it for nourishment.
[…]
You notice how much I use this empty chair, and how by identifying with your own power, you re-own it and chew it up and assimilate it, and make it your own again.
Listens closely to a random spontaneous flow and catches a phrase and then dives deeper to explore that particular avenue. E.g. identified a potential projection when a person said “You don’t matter” and “I felt rejected by you”
F: Change roles again.
M: Well, you—you’re such a fake…
F: How? Tell her how she is a fake.
Then he had them repeat these phrases aloud and direct them toward themself and others in role-play, revealing that both the critical and hurt parts were within them. By encouraging them to switch roles, observe their emotional responses, and voice both sides of the inner conflict, Fritz helped them recognize that the rejection they felt was not coming from others but from their own self-talk, transforming her projection into self-awareness.
Group interference
F: (to group) Please. There’s one thing that’s taboo in Gestalt Therapy—mind-fucking, interpretations. You just started to do this. I know in group therapy this is the main occupation. But we want experience. We want reality here. What do you experience now, with all this interference?
M: I didn’t like it too well.
F: But you didn’t speak up.
Make sure the shown feelings are genuine
F: Now try again to say it.
M: You mean yell it out.
F: I don’t care whether you yell it, as long as I have some feeling that you actually get the message across…
One dialogue with John was quite interesting. John came up very competitive/arrogant, and Fritz frustrated them to the point where they had to become themselves.
F: That’s right. I’m not fair. I’m working. You notice that anybody who brings even a little bit of good will along, how much then is happening. But with all the saboteurs and poisoners, and so on, I am not going to show any patience. If you want to control me, make a fool out of me—sabotage and destroy what we are trying to do here—I am not a part of that. If you want to play games, go to a psychoanalyst and lie there on his couch for years, decades, and centuries.
He then asks him to play Fritz. Roleplaying allows people to reveal their experiences, projections, and imaginations. When they play Fritz it is about how THEY perceive Fritz, not how Fritz really is.
Fritz is egoless 🙂
J: I don’t want to bend myself to your will. I think you’re a pompous old shitty crappy bastard.
F: Ah! Thank you. The first cooperation. (laughter)
J: You had cooperation the first time I sat down here, you goddamn bastard. You just didn’t see it.
F: Can you do this again?
J: You’re goddamn right, I can… I got through because of me, not just because of you. You wanted to kick me off this stand, you pompous old bastard. I got through because I persisted, not because you did anything..
F: So you win. (laughter)
J: That’s a real put-down… I don’t like the audience laughing at me.
F: Say this to them.
J: I don’t like you laughing at me. I think you’re laughing at me. I think you’re joining in his hostility.
X: We’re laughing with you.
J: I hope so. I don’t believe it, but I hope so, because I wasn’t laughing, (laughs) but you were laughing at me.
F: You were not aware that you were just laughing at this moment?
J: Was I laughing?
X: Yeah, you’re enjoying it too, aren’t you?
J: I guess so. I guess I am. Well I know I’m competitive I, know the theory’s right.
F: Could you go on a little bit with your mudslinging. I like that.
J: You seem more human at this moment. It’s harder to sling mud at you now that you seem human, than when you wouldn’t let me stay up on your stand.
Now he’s frustrating further to have him switch between topdog/underdog in order to reach integration. He wants to, but he doesn’t want, but he wants to…
F: (sarcastically) How cooperative can you get? (laughter)
J: You want me to sling a little mud at you, huh? O.K., I think you’re a goddamned—I think you’re competitive, too! You want to be God…
[…]
F: So, now, can you play that role? Play a pompous ass, omnipotent. Play that Fritz that you just spoke to.
J: God! That’s what I don’t want to be! That’s what I’m afraid I’ll be. If I really—am me. A goddamn pompous ass like you are—O.K., I’ll do that.
[…]
F: Now, can you play the same role as yourself? The same spirit.
J: God! That’s what I don’t wanna be. O.K.
Do you hear yourself? If we get the right polarities and change them to “listening” instead of “fighting”, integration begins.
F: Yah, but you don’t hear yourself
[…]
F: This is your polarity. You are both. And there’s nothing in between. Omnipotence and impotence. All or nothing—nothing in between. You have no center. So, play him again.
[…]
F: Okeh, now, be the topdog again. What are you? He just told you that you are a mind-fucker.
J: I’m getting confused—either—I can’t switch it so easily.
F: This means integration is starting. They both learn from each other.
[…]
F: What do you feel physically, now, and emotionally?
[…]
F: It’s always the same, it’s always a polarity—you have this polarity. We have other polarities—bully and cry baby and so on. And whatever you start with, there is always the opposite there to supplement.
Completing gestalts again. “Swing with it. Swing with your restlessness, whatever is there. Use your spite. Use your environment. Use all that you fight and disown.”
Q: Seeing that I did sabotage earlier, and this is my pattern, how can I become more aware of it so I can stop?
F: By sabotaging deliberately. By making up, “I am a great saboteur”. Now sabotage this… You never overcome anything by resisting it. You only can overcome anything by going deeper into it. If you are spiteful, be more spiteful. If you are performing, increase the performance. Whatever it is, if you go deeply enough into it, then it will disappear; it will be assimilated.
[…]
F: Yah. If you get the right polarities, and you change from fighting into listening to each other, then the integration will take place. It’s always the question of fighting vs. listening. This is rather difficult to understand because it’s a difficult polarity. If you have ears, the road to integration is open. To understand means to listen.
Shuttle between self-awareness and world-awareness:
(Self-awareness) “I now feel …”
(World-awareness) “You seem to …”
…“X feels confident… That makes me feel confident”
That is integration. We are one.
An exercise to get dream insights. Dreams reveal parts of the hidden self. Even though we can’t really be a dream, acting it out allows us to express ourselves which would lead to insights
Fritz: Now, I want you all to talk to your dreams, and let the dreams talk back—not the content, but as if the dreams were a thing. “Dreams, you are frightening me,” “I don’t want to know about you,” or something, and let the dreams answer back,
(all talk to their dreams for several minutes)…
So, now I would like each one of you to play the role of their dreams, such as, “I only seldom come to you, and then only in little bits and pieces,” or however you experience your dreams. I want you to be that dream. Reverse the role, so that you are the dream, and talk to the whole group, as if you were the dream talking to yourself.
As I was reading the next few sections, I tried to imagine and experience what the person sharing experiences as closely as I can… I now better understand why Fritz always insisted on talking in first person, because he likely does the same.
When a person interrupts their experience with “I don’t like my voice”:
F: Yah. I noticed you changed from a writer to a judge, (laughter)… You see, once you judge, you can’t experience any more, because you are now much too busy finding reasons and explanation, defenses, and all that crap…
[…]
And as for myself, I can tell you one of the most important solutions of the unpleasantness. You know how unpleasant boredom is. I tackle the boredom, finally, and decide whenever I get bored, I start writing, and the boredom has changed into tremendous excitement of writing. Now this is true in every case. If your bladder’s full, it becomes unpleasant. If you hold back further, it becomes more and more painful. And then the pissing comes, and the pissing is pleasant. You feel relief, after. So each time, facing and working through, and really staying in touch with the unpleasantness is the only means of growing and consolidating one’s position.
Do you really experience, or experience for the sake of reporting?
F: Basically, I like what you experience. I am very much disturbed by the feeling of… you are doing a reportage.
Stay in the now, stay with the self:
F: There’s so much activity going on in the intermediate zone, like “I’m rehearsing,” “I am playing the fitting game,” “I am out to fool you.” This awareness of the activity of what one is doing, is something I would like you to pay special attention to. This might be the key reason why people who are otherwise very sensitive and often capable of seeing lots of things in other people, are incapable of getting to the now awareness, to reality, to themselves… Okeh.
Projected activities?
Muriel: (soft, rich voice) Now I’m aware of sitting very deeply into the chair. The chair is supporting me under my thighs, and behind my back… Uh
F: You see an activity projected. The chair is supporting you, as if the chair is doing something for you.
On discovery:
The world exists, but it doesn’t exist until you discover the world. It’s only a theory until you see it.
Everything is one
M: I don’t wanna say goodbye
[…]
F: […] Would you say goodbye to your mirror.
[…]
F: So who’s making the reflection in the mirror?
M: Hahaha… You got me… I have no answer for you. That’s gotta be so. You’re my reflection.
F: Say this to the group.
M: It’s gotta be so, you’re my reflection (very low) It’s gotta be so, you’re my reflection… (continues, with various intonations) It’s gotta be so, you’re my reflection. It’s gotta be so, you’re my reflection. It’s gotta be so, you’re my reflection…
F: So what do you actually experience?
Frustrates them about the merry-go-round impasse
Fritz: “I want;” get out of this seat. You want. I don’t want any wanters. There are two great lies: “I want” and “I try”.
[…]
F: This I find very often […] that they have no ego boundaries. They don’t have a self. They always live through other people and other people become themselves. You can’t distinguish what is me and what is you. “If you cry, then I cry. If you enjoy yourself, then I enjoy myself.” This is your problem.
C: And so how should I confront my problem? I’ve been—After you told me that, I stayed aware of it and—I do that, a lot of times. So now what?
F: I don’t know. You see, all the time, all the time you speak, you talk about your image, your concept of yourself. When for a moment (in the omitted dreamwork) you became yourself, got in touch with yourself, then you felt good and sexy… until again you had to…[…]
Contact is the appreciation of differences.
[…]
F: You’re lying. Nobody told you that. You’re inventing it. Ad hoc.
[…]
Dale: You project something on to a person, and then the only way to get it back is to take him in.
Fergus: Well I think the thing for you to do is to get fatter and fatter.
F: Right now, for instance, you are all willing to be swallowed by her. She plays hungry, stupid, “You have to nourish me”. And everybody comes in and wants to be sucked in by her. That’s one thing please don’t do whenever someone gets stuck, don’t come to the rescue…[…]
F: Here are all the typical symptoms of the impasse. The merry-go-round – everybody sees the obvious except the patient. They drive you crazy. They are stuck. They mobilize whatever gimmicks and things they have to get out of the impasse.
[…]
F: If you avoid your emptiness and fill it up with phony roles and dummy activities, you get nowhere. But if you really get in contact with the emptiness, something begins to happen—the desert begins to bloom. That’s the difference between the sterile void and the fertile void. Okeh.
The cope-withdraw rhythm and discovery:
M: I feel safer with my eyes open, right now… As soon as I close them, I get that swirl in my head.
F: Can you do this in intervals of five seconds? Keep your eyes open for five seconds, close them for five seconds and go back to the swirl, then go back to the world, go back to the swirl—see what happens then.[…]
F: Close your eyes… Your experience?
M: Trembling, hoarseness, clearing my throat, trembling behind my eyelids.
F: Open your eyes.
M: I don’t want to look at the people.
F: Close your eyes.
M: Stronger swirl.
F: Open your eyes.
M: I really don’t want to look at the people.
F: Close your eyes.
M: Even stronger swirl.
F: Open your eyes.
M: I don’t want to look at anybody.
F: Close your eyes.
M: My eyes are really trembling now, and I’m holding my hands, holding my head.
F: Can you try now to integrate this. Look at us and at the same time, pay attention to the swirl, bring your swirl with you. It might be very difficult, but try…[…]
F: This is a very good example of the integration of the inner world and outer world. When they came together, WOW! Then there’s no interference from the intermediate zone—no explanations, no interpretations, no judgments and all that. This is the decisive moment the difference between the old stale routine, always the same, in contrast to the discovery, which always means something new, adding something to your life, adding something to your knowledge, adding something to your growth. There is something in this world that wasn’t there before. This happens only by being in touch with the now.
Reversing roles:
F: Okeh. Let’s start the whole dream all over. This time you’re not dreaming it; your brother is dreaming it.
[…]
Notice where a dream is taking place, whether you are in a car, whether the dream is taking place in a motel, or nature, or in an apartment building. This always gives you immediately the impression of the existential background. Now you start your dream out, “Life is a carnival.” Now give us a speech about life as a carnival.
Accepting self:
F: You see how this is a continuation of our last session? You started out as the toughy, the brazen girl, and then the softness came out? Now you begin to accept that you have soft needs. […] Now have an encounter between your baby dependence and brazenness. Those are your two poles.
[…]
I’ll punish you for loving me. That’s what I’ll punish you for. I’ll make it hard for you to love me. I won’t let you know if I’m coming or going.
F: “How can you be so low as to love somebody like me?” Yah?
I do that.
Here and now:
F: Now you begin to pay attention.
S: Yeah.
F: Instead of wanting attention.
S: Yeah.
F: So, give us more of your attention.[…]
F: I have difficulty in following you, so I suggest: be your voice.
S: Be my voice. My voice sounds kind of hollow.
F: “I am—”
S: I am hollow.[…]
F: Now combine the two. “I neither permit you nor— forbid you to…”
[…]
F: “You do your thing, and I do my thing”. Take it from there.
S: Yeah. O.K. You do your thing, I’ll do my thing. Nancy, uh—you do your thing, you stay behind the transparent glass, it’s O.K.: I’ll do my thing.
F: What’s your thing?
S: My thing? Ohh! (laughter) Ahhh. (chagrined) Much the same as your thing, Nancy, (laughter) Much the same as your thing. God! I really feel alive![…does the neither permit nor forbid with several other people…]
S: This is a great experience. The chair isn’t hot at all. How do they do it?
F: Simply by really going into one projection. It doesn’t matter which projection you take, as long as you work it through.
S: Yeah. Really live it. Really do it.
F: This is what we want to achieve with this work on projection. Once it clicks, you are through the projection and it’s all over. First you look through a window, and suddenly you recognize that you are just looking in a mirror.
Fritz: Start with the sentence “Now I’m aware of…”
…
X: Now I’m aware of waiting for…
Fritz: How do you experience waiting?
X: A lot of tension.
Fritz: I’m aware of your smiling and your tension, and this is inconsistent… Saying that you’re frightened and smile at the same time, the frightened person does not smile.
Conclusion
This book was a great read. I tried experimenting with myself closing a few gestalts, by imagining Fritz. I also tried ChatGPT with the prompt “You are Fritz Perls, let’s have a dialogue”, but it’s always better to do it yourself, without ChatGPT.
These additional videos were also useful to get a better picture:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsZqJXf4vMI
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rsIgQr9Xag
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rog0Q3-vpyg
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvX5lf17wMo
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1I3a7rGC4I
Try it yourself out, and see what comes out 🙂
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