This lecture was given by Gianni Francesetti in Madrid on 22nd Sept 2023 at the European Association of Gestalt Therapy conference.
This article is a work in progress…. These are my notes and personal reflections on this lecture.
@ 10:30 On the topic of “Boring.“
Francesetti begins by explaining that he has tried to make his speech less “boring”. He then says, “Boring is not so bad, maybe.”
He will mention this phenomenon of boredom — which I find noteworthy due to personal experiences as someone who often gets bored myself and working with clients who feel chronic boredom as a practitioner — later on in this lecture.
Field perspectives in Gestalt therapy: there is a growing interest in the field perspectives in the current psychotherapy universe. This has much to do with current clinical issues. Frank Staemmler (2006) writes about the concept of ‘field’.
What does “Field” mean? Is it different for each person, or is the feel a “common” dimension?
@13:15 The speaker mentions that different people use the term “Field” differently, and even the same author may use different meanings of the word field, that a definition needs to be made. I tend to think that perhaps this is precisely what the term is about. The field is an all-encompassing concept, and all meanings of the word field are valid and useful to psychotherapeutic work.
@13:59 Is the field different for each person or is it a common dimension in a given situation?
The field as organism-environment contact/unity, and the key historical influencers to the concept of field theory in Gestalt psychotherapy.
@ 35:20 What are the clinical issues we are facing today?
Case study
Psychopathology, just like life, is a fractal.
References
Francesetti, G. (2023). Gestalt therapy. An engine of change. Lecture EAGT Conference on 22 Sept 2023. Madrid. retrieved from https://youtu.be/dSIGs2bbwGU?si=cQGEKwFSDBMZFTbo&t=506
Staemmler, F. (2006). A Babylonian Confusion?: On the Uses and Meanings of the Term ‘Field’. British Gestalt Journal, 15(2), 64.
This is the keynote speech by Bob resnick in 2019.
Gestalt Therapy And Homeorhesis: Evolution – With Movement, Discrimination And Grace – Bob Resnick – Keynote Speech – EAGT Conference 19-22 September 2019, Budapest
A thousand plastic flowers Don’t make a desert bloom A thousand empty faces Don’t fill an empty room.
Fritz Perls
I enjoy reading this book, written “ad verbatim”, as the title describes. The presentation style gives us an implicit sense of who Perls is and his first-person perspectives as a therapist.
“Gestalt therapy verbatim” is a unique book that gives readers a firsthand look at the ideas and techniques of Gestalt therapy through the words of its founder, Fritz Perls. The verbatim format, in which Perls’ words are recorded exactly as he spoke them during therapy sessions, lectures, and workshops, provides an authentic and engaging look at the development and practice of Gestalt therapy. It can be a valuable resource for those interested in learning about Gestalt therapy or for those who are already familiar with the approach and want to gain a deeper understanding of Perls’ thought and practice.
The book is segmented into two parts – first, an introductory section that describes Gestalt therapy and provides brief background information about its origins and development; and second, three case histories that show how Perls applied his approach during his encounter with the clients named in the case studies.
This is an aged enjoyable book. I have assembled some excerpts here.
Perls on “techniques”
One of the objections I have against anyone calling himself a Gestalt therapist is that he uses technique. A technique is a gimmick. […] We’ve got enough people running around collecting gimmicks, more gimmicks, and abusing them.
Perls adds that Gestalt therapy is not about providing instant cure, instant joy, instant gratification. That works in psychiatry, in addictions, and in today’s world, through the likes of pop-cultured therapy. Gestalt therapy offers all the opportunity for growth, and growth is an organic process. The client has to invest in themselves and grow.
Perls on Anxiety
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. (p. 23).
He differentiates this from hedonism, where one seek pseudo sensory stimulation. Let us perhaps reflect on how we can relate this concept with the problem of compulsive disorders like sex addiction.
Perls on what happens in the splitting of the self and pathology
You are already coming to the point where you begin to understand what happens in pathology. If some of our thoughts, feelings, are unacceptable to us, we want to disown them. “Me, wanting to kill you?” So we disown the killing thought and say, “That’s not me — that’s a compulsion.” Or we remove the killing, or we repress and become blind to that. There are many of these kinds of ways to remain intact, but always only at the cost of disowning many, many valuable parts of ourselves. The fact that we live only on such a small percentage of our potential is due to the fact that we’re not willing — or society or whatever you want to call it is not willing — to accept myself, yourself, as the organism which you are by birth, constitution, and so on. You do not allow yourself — or you are not allowed to be totally yourself. So your ego boundary shrinks more and more. Your power, your energy, becomes smaller and smaller. Your ability to cope with the world becomes less and less — and more and more rigid, more and more allowed only to cope as your character, as your preconceived pattern, prescribes it. (p.31)
Noteworthy is that this book was written in the 1960s, when the polyvagal theroey concept of introception was not yet discovered. In my practice I do guide the client to separate their ruminating thoughts (that is a bottom-up introception) from conscious thoughts.
Perls’ thoughts on trying to change oneself and others
[W]e realize that we cannot deliberately bring about changes in ourselves or in others. This is a very decisive point: Many people dedicate their lives to actualize a concept of what they should be like, rather than to actualize themselves. This difference between self-actualizing and self-image actualizing is very important. Most people only live for their image. Where some people have a self, most people have a void, because they are sobusy projecting themselves as this or that. This is again the curse of the ideal. The curse that you should not be what you are. (p.39)
When we reflect on attitudes on mental health today, which modality is most sought after? The modalities that promote self-image actualization, where there is a delusion that we can change ourselves, our thoughts and our relationships, or the ones that are based on the theory of authentic and organic self actualization?
Perls on Growth, the Impasse, and the aim of therapy
[H]ow do we prevent ourselves from maturing? What prevents us from ripening? […] We ask the question, what prevents — or how do you prevent yourself from growing — from going further ahead? […]
My formulation is that maturing is the transcendence from environmental support to self-support. Look upon the unborn baby. It gets all its support from the mother — oxygen, food, warmth, everything. As soon as the baby is born, it has already to do its own breathing. And then we find often the first symptom of what plays a very decisive part in Gestalt therapy. We find the impasse. Please note the word. The impasse is the crucial point in therapy — the crucial point in growth.
The impasse is called by the Russians “the sick point,” a point which the Russians never managed to lick and which other types of psychotherapy so far have not succeeded in licking. The impasse is the position where environmental support or obsolete inner support is not forthcoming and authentic self-support has not yet been achieved. The baby cannot breathe by itself. It doesn’t get the oxygen supply through the placenta anymore. We can’t say that the baby has a choice, because there is no deliberate attempt of thinking out what to do, but the baby either has to die or learn to breathe. There might be some environmental support forthcoming — being slapped, or oxygen might be supplied.The “blue baby” is the prototype of the impasse which we find in every neurosis. (P. 48)
The process of maturation is the transformation from environmental support to self-support, and 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 he can do many things, much more than he thinks he can do.
Perls on Character
The more character a person has, the less potential he has. That sounds paradoxical, but a character is a person that is predictable, that has only a number of fixed responses, or as T. S. Eliot said in The Cocktail Party, “You are nothing but a set of obsolete responses.” (P. 53)
Character is a fixed response that we develop in childhood to manipulate the environment, to get our needs met. The basic need is love from the child’s caregivers, and manipulation comes in the form of playing roles that keep the individual immature.
On changing every question to a statement
“One fool can ask more questions than a thousand wise men can answer.” All the answers are given. Most questions are simply inventions to torture ourselves and other people. The way to develop our own intelligence is by changing every question into a statement. If you change your question into a statement, the background out of which the question arose opens up, and the possibilities are found by the questioner himself.
[…]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.
“Why and because are dirty words in Gestalt therapy.” (p. 64)
when we ask why we get an explanation and we will fail to get an understanding.
Perls on Resentment
We see guilt as projected resentment. Whenever you feel guilty, find out what you resent, and the guilt will vanish and you will try to make the other person feel guilty. […]
If you have any difficulties in communication with somebody, look for your resentments. Resentments are among the worst possible unfinished situations — unfinished gestalts. If you resent, you can neither let go nor have it out. Resentment is an emotion of central importance. The resentment is the most important expression of an impasse — of being stuck. If you feel resentment, be able to express your resentment. A resentment unexpressed often is experienced as, or changes into, feelings of guilt. Whenever you feel guilty, find out what you are resenting and express it and make your demands explicit. This alone will help a lot. (p. 68)
Perls goes on to explain how resentment that is articulated, then switched to appreciation is healing.
Perls on Nothingness and the Fertile Void
The whole philosophy of nothingness is very fascinating. In our culture “nothingness” has a different meaning than it has in the Eastern religions. When we say “nothingness,” there is a void, an emptiness, something deathlike. When the Eastern person says “nothingness,” he calls it “no-thingness” — there are no things there. There is only process, happening. Nothingness doesn’t exist for us, in the strictest sense, because nothingness is based on awareness of nothingness, so there is the awareness of nothingness, so there is something there. And we find when we accept and enter this nothingness, the void, then the desert starts to bloom. The empty void becomes alive, is being filled. The sterile void becomes the fertile void. I am getting more and more right on the point of writing quite a bit about the philosophy of nothing. I feel this way, as if I am nothing, just function. “I’ve got plenty of nothing.” Nothing equals real. (pp. 77-78)
The concept of the Fertile Void is critical to the understanding of Gestalt therapy, a topic which is discussed in these pages:
All the so-called traumata which are supposed to be the root of the neurosis are an invention of the patient to save his self-esteem. None of these traumata has ever been proved to exist. I haven’t seen a single case of infantile trauma that wasn’t a falsification. They are all lies to be hung onto in order to justify one’s unwillingness to grow. To be mature means to take responsibility for your life, to be on your own. Psychoanalysis fosters the infantile state by considering that the past is responsible for the illness. The patient isn’t responsible — no, the trauma is responsible, or the Oedipus complex is responsible, and so on. I suggest that you read a beautiful little pocketbook called I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, by Hannah Green. There you see a typical example, how that girl invented this childhood trauma, to have her raison d’etre, her basis to fight the world, her justification for her craziness, her illness. We have got such an idea about the importance of this invented memory, where the whole illness is supposed to be based on this memory. No wonder that all the wild goose chases of the psychoanalyst to find out why I am now like this can never come to an end, can never prove a real opening up of the person himself. (P. 62)
Considering that trauma work is a critical part of therapy, could Perls’ words in the above passage put into question his credibility on the subject of trauma? Well, before the “Harry & Meghan” saga at the turn of this year, 2023, and before “woke-ism” lost its meaning, which is compassion, I might have considered Perls’ opinion here archaic. However, now I understand what he’s saying. Perls warns us in 1969 that we will want to redeem ourselves from our low self-esteem, and the easy way out of true healing from this shame is to lay blame or make excuses for ourselves. Laying blame is relinquishing responsibility, not what trauma work or psychotherapy is about.
The work with trauma, revealing and processing traumatic events in psychotherapy functions to bring to light childhood pain that the client was not previously able to access. In childhood, the individual adapts to suffering out of context. Adaption to suffering ultimately becomes a fixed pattern of being in the world. This pattern is the personality. When the pain of the past is revealed, it can be felt, sensed and shared. In therapy, the therapist witnesses the suffering that is shared. When this happens, there is enlightenment. The client can then fully grasp feelings they have dissociated from in childhood and infancy. Only then can these feelings be relegated to the past. Feelings relegated to the past will less likely interfere with the present and future without awareness.
The “woke” movement of popular culture today has used the psychotherapeutic process as a Trojan horse for its agenda. Instead of realising suffering and being compassionate to their child-self, the woke seek to redeem themselves of the shame (‘low self-esteem’) from having to suffer childhood helplessness by taking revenge. Revenge is a need for release, to lash out, to whine at the world, to complain and criticise, and it is cathartic. The act of revenge is infantile. The woke person plays the role of victim and perpetrator. In so doing, they fail to mature. They become toddlers in grow-up bodies that can cause destructive revenge. Revenge is violent, and the acts do not heal anyone. Revenge is the transfer of pain from the sufferer to their victims through violence. Violence is the transference of pain that is absent in the perpetrator to the victim. Pain is transferred until it is transformed (Weil, 1952, in this article).
Perls on Group therapy
Basically I am doing a kind of individual therapy in a group setting, but it’s not limited to this; very often a group happening happens to happen. Usually I only interfere if the group happening comes merely to mind-fucking. Most group therapy is nothing but mind-fucking. Ping-pong games, “who’s right?,” opinion exchanges, interpretations, all that crap. If people do this, I interfere. If they are giving their experience, if they are honest in their expression — wonderful. Often the group is very supportive, but if they are merely “helpful,” I cut them out. Helpers are con men, interfering. People have to grow by frustration — by skillful frustration. Otherwise, they have no incentive to develop their own means and ways of coping with the world. But sometimes very beautiful things do happen, and basically there are not too many conflicts, everybody who is in the group participates. Sometimes I have people who don’t say a single word through the whole five-week workshop and they go away and say that they have changed tremendously, that they did their own private therapy work or whatever you want to call it. So anything can happen. As long as you don’t structure it, as long as you work with your intuition, your eyes and ears, then something is bound to happen. (p. 93)
Reference
Perls, Frederick (Fritz). (1969/1992) Gestalt Therapy Verbatim (p. 93). The Gestalt Journal Press. Kindle Edition.
The founder of Gestalt therapy, Fritz Perls tells us in his own voice in this gem of a video. What gestalt therapy is. Listen to this, and we can make up our minds as to how relevant this modality of psychotherapy Gestalt therapy is, and has developed till today.
This is what Fritz tells us…
The idea of Gestalt therapy is to change paper people to real people. To make the hollow men of our time come to life and teach him to use his inborn potential. To be a leader without rebelliousness. Having a center without being lopsided.
The social milieu in which we find ourselves, regulated by “should-isms”, by Puritanism where you do your thing whether you like it or not; or by the other extreme, hedonism, “where we live for fun and enjoyment, being turned on anything goes as long as it is nice.”. We become phobic towards pain and suffering.
We avoid and run away from frustration or pain. The result is the lack of growth. [He is not talking about masochism].
The main idea about Gestalt is that Gestalt is about the whole; about being complete. This involves guiding the person to feel, sense and perceive the present (the now), even painful emotions, and allowing the self understand the now and be integrated in the experience.
We ask how. We don’t ask why. Asking ‘how’ helps us to understand. It is in understanding that we can change structure of our life script.
Therapeutic Autoethnography is founded on Autoethnography, an emergent field in qualitative research. Therapeutic Autoethnography engages the practitioner as a researcher in the field of the psychotherapy situation. It is a practice-based, practice-driven, practice-informed qualitative research method. It provides an in-depth understanding of what goes on in the diverse naturalistic setting of psychotherapy practice. In Therapeutic Autoethnography, the field being investigated is the therapy situation, which encompasses the individuals attending the session, the therapeutic alliance, and its environment. In the role of researcher, the therapist creates aesthetic accounts of their experiences in the field with their client(s). The writing process is deliberately reflexive and integral to the method. This act of creative writing is a heuristic process where new insights emerge for the researcher. This thesis demonstrates how Autoethnography can be applied as a practical methodology for psychotherapy case study research, especially for explicating the implicit nuances in therapy.
Keywords: Autoethnography, Therapeutic Autoethnography, psychotherapy research, case study research
Understanding Salomo Friedlaender’s Creative Indifference: A Psychotherapy Case-Study.
Abstract
Salomo Friedlaender’s Creative Indifference, or Schöpferische Indifferenz, first published in 1918, is a founding philosophy of Gestalt therapy that has invaluable implications in the process of psychopathology in the psychotherapeutic process. This article features a psychotherapy case study of a client who has been diagnosed with Major Depression and Atypical Anorexia Nervosa. The case story is written by the therapist using Therapeutic Autoethnography, a method of inquiry into the psychotherapeutic process. Writing this case study in an evocative aesthetic form, the understanding of Creative Indifference is fleshed out and enriched. Story and theory are interwoven reflexively to illuminate how aspects and meanings of Friedlaender’s philosophy of Creative Indifference, the centering in the here-and-now, the fertile void and zero point, apply to the real-life, naturalistic situation of psychotherapy practice. Though the case study details but a portion of the client’s work, one can grasp the atmosphere from which the client’s pathos is made visible. Creative Indifference facilitates this process of psychopathology in a powerful way, expanding our understanding of suffering beyond the traditional attitude of clinical diagnosis.
Keywords: autoethnography, psychotherapy case studies, psychotherapy process research, gestalt therapy, aesthetic inquiry
Excerpt from the Case Study: “Stuck”
The leather armchair seems massive as she slumps into it. Min looks almost childlike, dangling her chunky Dr. Martens covered feet. “I just feel hopeless and devastated,” she says. “It’s my birthday today, and I thought I bought myself a gift.” That “gift” , she explains is the “gift of therapy”. I would have mistaken her for another cosplay preteen, wearing a head of neon green dreadlocks, had she not revealed that today she turns 29.
“What do you do here in Vienna?”
“I work at a Konditorei.”
“Are you studying here as well?”
“Not any more. I actually moved to Vienna for study at a university. The exams were too hard and I got stuck.” Min explains that she’s been living in Vienna for three years, shares an apartment with 3 Russian-speaking housemates and has few friends here.
This is our first moments together and I find myself mesmerized by the girl looking back at me. The small body, the square shaped face, the big head that tilts to the left as she smiles reminds me of someone familiar. Very familiar.
I ask her if there is anything that she needs to know about therapy at this point.
“Uh. This is my very first time doing therapy, and I don’t know what I want.”
“How did you choose to contact me?”
“Oh… I saw in your profile that you are social, with group therapy and all… and that you were doing something cultural.”
[…]
“I had to think for myself,” she says, “but now, as an adult, I feel dependent.”
A psychotherapist’s lived experience in-session with an asylum seeker and translator: An autoethnographic case study
Abstract
Featured in this article is a psychotherapy case study recounted from the lived experience of the psychotherapist working with an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, with the help of a translator. The method applied is an aesthetic inquiry adapted from Autoethnography which engages the practitioner as the researcher who enters the ‘field’ of the therapy situation. The reflexive writing of the case story, which is integral to the method, sets off a heuristic process, integrating research and practice. Reading this case study, one may grasp the nuances and the atmosphere of an otherwise linguistically challenging therapeutic situation. The story and Gestalt therapy theory are weaved together, which makes palpable, intangible aspects of the therapeutic process.
Keywords: autoethnography, psychotherapy case studies, psychotherapy process research, gestalt therapy, aesthetic inquiry
“I want to be confident, but something in my past is stopping me,” Zaya translates.
I give Ali a nod to acknowledge what I am hearing. He smiles back at me. His jacket hangs on a clothes rack by the door. This is the start of our second session.
Ali’s opening sentence this morning feels like an invitation. Ali stands by a threshold between the future and the past. He points us in the direction of the past. I see him shudder. I shudder, though I do not know what it is I am seeing. I am interested, in earnest. I am also wary. I lean back.
***
I ask Ali what he meant by the past stopping him from being confident.
“Uncle.” Ali explains that uncle is the younger brother of his father. Ali was put in the care of uncle and his wife when he was 9 years old. Till he turned 18, Ali lived with the couple and their daughter, who’s a little younger than Ali. “I always hear uncle say, ‘you will come to nothing. Nothing’.”
“What would you say to him right now, if he is sitting here?” I ask.
Zaya translates.
Ali clenches a fist, then promptly holds it down with the other hand. “I have no words, nothing.”
“Yes.” I say. I give space to the young man’s rage. Zaya reaches gingerly for a filled paper cup and takes a sip. Ali and I follow suit.
I ask him how he got to be put in the care of uncle.
“After school I play football. The playground is near my house. One day, I was playing football, then the bomb of the Taliban exploded on our house.” Zaya translates this, ice cold. They were all home when it happened; Ali’s father Zabi, his mother, Fatemeh and his baby sister Khatere. Ali’s voice cracks as he mentions the name of his baby sister. He stares, glassy-eyed, blank.
The skin on the back of my neck tingles. I glance towards the radiator by the window, as if to check if it was turned on properly. No, the air in the room is not cold. I am being touched by phantoms who have now descended amongst us. I search my bag for paper, only to find a dog-eared stack of neon coloured post-its. I write, “Zabi”, “Fatemeh”, “Khatere”, on three little sheets, careful to get the spelling right. I lay the post-its on the coffee table. I feel tears well up in my eyes. The space between us is saturated.
***
“How… are… you?” Ali asks me in English, then giggles.
“Thank you, Ali,” I say. “I slept well, so this morning you have my fullest attention.”
Zaya translates.
“How about you, Zaya,” I ask.
I catch a slight blush in her cheeks, as she giggles, “very well.”
“Ali says that he doesn’t sleep well. For example last night he had a bad dream. A nightmare.” Zaya translates.
“There is the mafia,” Ali says, “who is raiding the castle. Me and my friends are hiding in it. The mafia shoots me. I’m almost dying and my friends save me. My father is there. Oh. But that is only for a short time. I fall out of the window and run away.”
We share a round of chuckling. I offer Ali and Zaya a suggestion to do a chair work. Zaya’s eyes lights up. I’m aware that she had read much about the Gestalt therapy method of working with dreams. “I’m not sure if you’d like to try this exercise.” I say to Ali, who is probably sensing Zaya’s interest.
“Yes. Yes,” is his reply.
“Well, if at any time either of you are feeling unwell doing this dreamwork, say stop.” I tell them.
“Yes. Yes,” he says.
Zaya translates, “What do I do?”
So we set the stage with empty chairs around us. I am thankful for having booked this larger room again this morning. Ali puts a chair for “the mafia” a distant right from his. He then says that the rows of chairs stacked up along the wall of the room are where his friends sit. He takes the last chair and places it close behind him slightly to his left; there Ali seats his father.
***
Conference Presentation
Reference
Chew-Helbig, N. (2022). A psychotherapist’s lived experience in-session with an asylum seeker and translator: An autoethnographic case study. European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling, 1-16.
Find this Journal here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13642537.2022.2156138
Writing evocative case studies: applying autoethnography as a research methodology for the psychotherapist.
Abstract
This is an introduction to the application of autoethnography, a qualitative research method, an aesthetic inquiry into the psychotherapy process. The method engages the practitioner as researcher-autoethnographer who enters a field, which is their client’s therapy process. The aim is to derive insights and deepen the understanding of process, theory and diagnostics from psychotherapy sessions in practice. The therapist creates a reflexive account of their experiences, recording this in their session notes, which are also the field notes and the data. As an autoethnographer, the therapist begins therefrom a process of creative writing. The writing process is reflexive, and aesthetic. Integral to the research method, the act of writing forms a hermeneutic circle where new insights into the phenomenon of therapy happen for the researcher. The writing is created as an art form, usually a story or poetry. The result of this method is a written, evocative, aesthetic representation of the therapy process, based on the phenomenological experience of the practitioner. Demonstrating this method, a single case study of an online Gestalt therapy session of a male client diagnosed with depression and borderline personality disorder is featured in this article. The outcome of this form of aesthetic inquiry is the embodiment of psychotherapy theory through the aesthetic sensibility of the therapist-researcher.
Keywords: autoethnography, psychotherapy case studies, psychotherapy process research, gestalt therapy, aesthetic inquiry
Excerpt
In Gestalt therapy practice, aesthetic sensibility to the atmosphere is instrumental to the therapist, in order that they can attune to the movement of the phenomenological field (Francesetti, 2015). This is where this research methodology aligns with Gestalt therapy practice. Theory of the phenomenological field is central to Gestalt therapy (Parlett, 1991; Staemmler, 2006; Francesetti, 2019; Philippson, 2009; Robine, 2006; Spagnuolo Lobb, 2013) as it is in psychology (Lewin, 1951). Attunement to the aesthetics of the phenomenological field allows therapists to move beyond the mono-personal, third-person attitude of diagnosing the client’s psychopathology using manuals like the DSM (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) and evaluating clients using psychometrics. It goes even beyond the bi-personal, relational attitude of inquiry into the therapeutic alliance (Greenberg, 1986; Clarkson, 2003; Jacobs & Hycner, 2009; BCPSG, 2010). Aesthetic attunement brings the psychotherapeutic process beyond therapist and client, into the atmospheric realm of the phenomenological field of the here-and-now.
Reference
Chew-Helbig, N. (2022a). Writing evocative case studies: applying autoethnography as a research methodology for the psychotherapist. The British Gestalt Journal, 31(1), 35-42.
Find this Journal here: https://www.britishgestaltjournal.com/shop/british-gestalt-journal-311 or request a copy from me.
The challenge with humanistic psychotherapy today is to realize the philosophical concepts and theory put into practice. How do we see an I-thou moment in a therapy session?
My personal conviction in this topic is borne by the fact that I have experienced change moments – as a client of psychotherapy. Over the years, I have also been able to tell if these change moments had a lasting effect, or if they were just cathartic or temporary because of suggestion and coercion. Perception of from the client’s point of view recorded over lifetime (a couple of years), may be essential aspect of psychotherapeutic process research.
The process of defining the healing I-Thou moments (Buber, 1936) in psychotherapy often gets lost in language. What some call the transcendental phenomenon (which I have in this paper related to an aspect of Clarkson’s framework), is also called “miracle moments” (Santos, 2003), “sacred moments” (Pargament, 2007), and “moments of meeting” (The Boston Change Process Study Group, 2010).
What is typically experienced in this moment is typically described like this: “Every therapist knows that there are some special moments in psychotherapy. I experience them as “sacred moments” when immediate realities fade into the background, when time seems to stand still, when it feels as if something larger than life is happening. In these moments, I believe, a meeting of souls is taking place. This was one of those times” (p. 6).
I had the benefit of attending a presentation at a Gestalt Associates Los Angeles (GATLA) Summer Residential in Lisbon this year which discussed this very topic of defining these moments of encounter. Entitled, I-thou moments in psychotherapy, the study is the result of meta-analyses of psychotherapeutic literature and interviews with therapists. Hence it was found that these I-thou moments:
are memorable, exists in psychotherapy and appears every now and then.
are recognizable, significant events.
is based on the quality of dialogue.
short lasting (in seconds).
is rare.
is mutually experienced. During these moments
perception gets narrowed.
there is an unusual level of understanding and acceptance of the other
there is experience of being on the edge of something spiritual.
These moments lead to long term change in the therapy and result in motivation for the client to further therapy work. It strengthens the alliance, and has no negative affects (unlike transference relationship). It is also a qualitatively viewed process, and is often arises from sharing of heavy topics and staying long enough at an oftentimes uncomfortable place. Playing the role “I am the therapist, you are the client” prevents these moments from happening. The challenge in studying these moments is the very fact that in trying to grasp the moment, that moment is lost (Pernicka, 2016).
References
Buber, M. (1936). Ich und Du. Berlin: Schocken.
Pargament, K. (2007). Spiritually integrated psychotherapy: Understanding and addressing the sacred. NY: Guilford Press.
Pernicka, M. (2016, July). I-Thou moments in Psychotherapy. Lisbon, Portugal.
Santos, A. M. (2003). Miracle Moments: The Nature of the Mind’s Power in Relationships and Psychotherapy. iUniverse.
The Boston Change Process Study Group. (2010). Change in psychotherapy. NY: W. W. Norton & Co. .
The phenomenological attitude of putting aside, or bracketing, theories and pre-conceived ideas in favor of understanding the client does not mean the absence of interpreting. It also does not mean that therapists should not have pre-knowledge and theoretical understandings. It is impossible for anyone, therapists included to not interpret. According to Heidegger, “from the very beginning our essence is to understand and to create comprehensibility.” To interpret and understand is to be human (Staemmler, 2009, p. 65). At the same time, it is through our pre-understandings that we can have any understanding at all.
For this understanding to be authentic, and not based on blind interpretations of theory, what counts is the attitude towards gaining this understanding. According to Gadamer (Gadamer, 1975/1960), the German word for “understanding” (Verstehen) is also used in the sense of a practical ability (e.g., er versteht nicht zu lesen, “he can’t read”). This is the understanding when one goes beyond simply acquiring scientific knowledge— when one gets well versed in something, like understanding a text, or, in the case of therapy, the client. In efforts to access this kind of understanding, Gadamer writes, one would have “the accomplished understanding (that) constitutes a state of new intellectual freedom” (p. 251). Gadamer likens all such understanding to be ultimately self-understanding (sich verstehen). What this means is that understanding in this attitude is a dynamic process of self-involvement. Gadamer explains how when reading words written by someone else for example, the reader projects his/her own meaning for the words as he/she encounters them. As one reads or listens further, one has expectations for what meaning is to come, new meaning then emerges and expectations are revised according to what meaning emerges further. This is the process of understanding the subject matter through self-reflection and reinvestigation of the subject.
Heidegger (1971), in his writings on what and how art is, says, “What art is should be inferable from the work. What the work of art is we can come to know only from the nature of art” (p. 18). Heidegger adds that in discovering a piece of art, we are lead to a circle of questionings. While we are tempted to avoid this circle, we cannot avoid it if we are to understand that “The artwork is, (…), a thing that is made, but it says something other than the mere thing itself is, allo agforeuei. The work makes public something other than itself; it manifests something other; it is an allegory. In the work of art something other is brought together with the thing that is made… The work is a symbol” (p. 19). Through this circle of learning and self-reflection, Heidegger developed the concept of the hermeneutic circle.
Gadamer quotes Heidegger in Being and Time, “(The hermeneutic circle) is not to be reduced to the level of a vicious circle, or even of a circle which is merely tolerated. In the circle is hidden a positive possibility of the most primordial kind of knowing, and we genuinely grasp this possibility only when we have understood that our first, last, and constant task in interpreting is never to allow our fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception to be presented to us by fancies and popular conceptions, but rather to make the scientific theme secure by working out these fore-structures in terms of the things themselves” (p. 269). Heidegger defines here the attitude towards authentic interpretive understanding. This attitude requires the interpreter to have an awareness of the self, and the prejudices (or fore-having, fore-sight and fore-conception). Gadamer states: “all correct interpretation must be on guard against arbitrary fancies and the limitations imposed by imperceptible habits of thought, and it must direct its gaze ‘on the things themselves’.” In the context of psychotherapy, the gaze should be directed on the client and what is happening in the alliance. “For the interpreter to let himself be guided by the things themselves is obviously not a matter of a single, ‘conscientious’ decision, but is ‘the first, last, and constant task’.” In other words, it has to be an attitude towards the understanding process. “For it is necessary to keep one’s gaze fixed on the thing throughout all the constant distractions that originate in the interpreter himself” (p. 269). Gadamer adds that the process of understanding texts— and we can translate this to the verbal and non-verbal communication of the client— involves projection on the part of the interpreter: “He projects a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the text.” This projection is necessary in order to make meaning of what emerges— “the initial meaning emerges only because he is reading the text with particular expectations in regard to a certain meaning”. It is the working through of this projection and constantly revising the understanding as new material emerges, “is understanding what is there” (p. 269). It is also worthwhile to note that Gadamer found it important “… to distinguish the true prejudices, by which we understand, from the false ones, by which we misunderstand.” However at the beginning of the Hermeneutic process it is difficult to tell one from the others (Staemmler, 2009, p. 86).
References
Gadamer, H. G. (1975/1960). Truth and method . (G. Barden, & J. Cumming, Trans.) NY: Seabury.
Heidegger, M. (1971). Poetry, language, thought . (A. Hofstadter, Trans.) Harper Perennial.
Staemmler, F.-M. (2009). The willingness to be uncertain: Preliminary thoughts about intepretation and understanding in Gestalt Therapy. In L. J. Hycner (Ed.), Relational approaches in Gestalt Therapy (pp. 65-110). NY: Gestalt Press.
