New Directions in Gestalt Group Therapy

Relational Ground, Authentic Self

Peter H. Cole, Daisy Anne Reese

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317364429
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie en psychologie

Gestalt therapists often work with groups. Group therapists from a variety of theoretical orientations frequently incorporate insights and methodology from gestalt therapy. New Directions in Gestalt Group Therapy: Relational Ground, Authentic Self was written with particular attention to both gestalt and group work specialists in providing a comprehensive reference for the practice of group therapy from a gestalt perspective. In includes an introduction to gestalt therapy terms and concepts written to make the gestalt approach understandable and accessible for mental health practitioners of all backgrounds. It is appropriate for students as well as seasoned psychotherapists.

Peter Cole and Daisy Reese are the co-directors of the Sierra Institute for Contemporary Gestalt Therapy located in Berkeley, California. They are the co-authors of Mastering the Financial Dimension of Your Psychotherapy Practice and True Self, True Wealth: A Pathway to Prosperity. They are a married couple, with five children and four grandchildren between them.

Chapter 1

An Overview of Contemporary Gestalt Therapy for Group Therapists

This chapter is written in Peter’s voice

Gestalt therapy can be understood as an integration of socially progressive psychoanalysis, gestalt psychology, Kurt Lewin’s field theory, the dialogical existentialism of the philosopher Martin Buber, and existential phenomenology. Gestalt carries a flavor of Zen Buddhism, with its emphasis on awareness and acceptance of “what is.” Gestalt therapy has a tradition of being politically progressive, anti-authoritarian, pro-gay rights, feminist, and positive about the creative, consensual expression of human sexuality in its many manifestations. Gestalt therapy appreciates the community while celebrating the individual.

Gestalt’s founders, Frederick and Laura Perls, were deeply involved in socially progressive psychoanalysis and gestalt psychology in pre-World War II Germany. They were culturally and politically active in this period, with involvements ranging from those with expressionist theater to socialist political movements (Bocian, 2010). As refugees from fascism, the Perls eventually came to New York, where they were involved in the bohemian culture of Greenwich Village. Social theorist Paul Goodman joined forces with them in New York. In 1951, Frederick Perls and Paul Goodman collaborated, along with Ralph Hefferline, in gestalt therapy’s first and most intellectually challenging book: Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality ([1951] 1994). In the 1950s, Frederick and Laura Perls began training therapists in gestalt therapy methodology in New York and beyond.

In the 1960s, Frederick Perls grew his hair and beard long, moved to the West Coast, and spent several years in residence at the Esalen Institute. He became widely known to those who trained with him simply as “Fritz.” During this period, Fritz contributed to the sixties counter-culture with his writings, films, and a popularized message of freedom, living in the “here and now,” and taking personal responsibility. Fritz achieved fame during the 1960s, but the popularized view of gestalt therapy that he disseminated during this period gave many casual observers an oversimplified view of gestalt therapy. It should be noted that, during the 1960s, when his popular image and sayings seemed to convey an oversimplified “pop psychology” version of gestalt therapy to the public, Fritz and his California-based training partner, Dr. Jim Simkin, nevertheless trained therapists carefully and rigorously (B. Resnick, personal communication, July 25, 2016). Meanwhile, Laura Perls continued to train therapists in New York during the 1960s, and distanced herself from the counter-culture persona that Fritz projected during that period. Since Frederick Perls’s death in 1971, gestalt therapy has gone through many changes and permutations.

For our purposes as gestalt group therapists, the contributors that have been most influential since Perls’s death are:

1.The “relational” school of gestalt therapy; that is, theorists who blend the work of intersubjective psychoanalysis and Martin Buber’s dialogical approach into gestalt therapy’s already rich integrative framework. Prominent in this current group of contributors are Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb (2014), Lynne Jacobs (1992), Gary Yontef (1993, 2009), and Gordon Wheeler (2013).

2.Philip Lichtenberg (2013), of the Gestalt Therapy Institute of Philadelphia, who emphasizes the unity of self and social.

3.The “Cleveland” school of gestaltists, who have integrated group therapy theory and systems theory with gestalt therapy. Prominent in this group are Isabel Fredericson, Joseph Handlon (1998), Elaine Kepner (1980), Ed Nevis (2013), Sonia Nevis (2003), Erv and Miriam Polster (1974), and Joseph Zinker (1998).

4.Erv Polster (1987), with his emphasis on personal narrative that is so crucial to our group work.

5.Bud Feder, whose books Beyond the Hot Seat: Gestalt Approaches to Group (1980) and Gestalt Group Therapy: A Practical Guide (2013) have laid invaluable foundations for our current work.

In this chapter I will present a map of gestalt therapy fundamentals with an emphasis on those aspects of the original theory and newer theoretical/methodological developments that will be useful for group therapists. This chapter is written for group therapists who have not previously been exposed to gestalt therapy theory and for gestalt therapists interested in how gestalt theory can serve as a theoretical foundation for group work. It is not comprehensive by any means. I have included some very brief clinical examples to help illustrate the ideas I am presenting. In some cases, I will use group therapy examples to illustrate the ideas, and in others I will use individual therapy examples.

Field Theory

The social psychologist Kurt Lewin developed the concept of field theory, which was inspired by Einstein’s physics, which revealed the unity of space, time, and gravity. Just as the gravitation of planets can only be understood in relation to the space/time field in which those planets are embedded, people can only be understood in the context of the social world in which we are embedded. Each person lives within a “life-space,” which is “the world as perceived by a person relating to it” (Gaffney & O’Neill, 2013, p. 442). Our life-space is that aspect of the field we directly experience. We are not simply influenced by the field, we are of the field.

Lewin’s field theory places the individual in a social and environmental context. It emphasizes the unity of the personal and the social. Field theory provides a unifying framework from which gestalt therapy conceptualizes our interdependence and interconnectedness. Psychologically, field theory informs individual and group therapy in a number of important ways. It informs us that the individual grows and develops in a context of environmental responsiveness. Conversely, emotional and moral growth will tend to be hindered in an unresponsive, mis-attuned, or abusive environment. Gestalt’s field theory orientation suggests that the individual and the society need not be in the kind of fundamental conflict that Sigmund Freud describes in his classic text of conservative psychology, Civilization and Its Discontents (1962), whereby society must thwart the individual’s destructive and selfish desires for the collective good. Field theory instead sees an individual who can thrive within the ecosystem of his or her social and physical world. In health, the individual’s satisfaction will tend to enhance the collective, not detract from it. Gestalt therapy’s vision of the field is one in which the individual finds her potential through environmental responsiveness, which then leads to self-support. Far from the conservative aspect of Freud’s view that the individual, if unimpeded, will act in her self-interest and against the good of society, the field theory view holds the more optimistic view that when the individual reaches her true potential, she will tend to enhance and enrich her society.

This vision of the field provides an ethical and aesthetic framework for gestalt group therapy (GGT). If the whole group represents a microcosm of the larger field, then each group member’s growth depends on the group’s responsiveness to the individual. Conversely, the group is enhanced when each group member gets in touch with his or her potential. Field and individual are of the same stuff—each depends on the other for its development. The whole group becomes an increasingly rich environment as its members grow, while each member’s growth is enhanced by the richness and complexity of the group as a living system.

Phenomenology

Gestalt therapy theory is a tapestry made up of many theoretical threads, all of which emphasize the humanistic values of respect for the client’s experience and a non-pathologizing, accepting approach to psychotherapy. Phenomenology, a concept that derives from the world of existential philosophy, is one of the threads that holds this tapestry together. Phenomenology (Husserl, in Welton, 1999; Spinelli, 2005) is a method that supports the therapist in suspending judgments about the lived experience of both client and therapist. The client’s embodied, conscious experience is deeply valued by the gestalt therapist, and the therapist’s judgments concerning causality, veracity, or meaning are “bracketed,” put aside or accounted for, such that the therapist’s attention is directed to being with the client in his or her subjective awareness rather than to explaining, changing, or interpreting the client’s experience.

The phenomenal field is the “meeting place” wherein the therapist and client make contact, both in their embodied, subjective awarenesses. In the group situation, there is a meeting of all respective group members in their subjectivities. This meeting of group members, each with their own phenomenology, lends a complexity and openness to GGT, which makes for a rich environment for therapist and group members. The therapist stays close to her own phenomenology, attending to her experience of, and responses to, the group. The therapist’s basic method is to stay in awareness of her embodied experience of the group. As such, the therapist is open to all that occurs in the group, and avoids interpreting the group’s experiences according to any pre-existing template, preferring to be open to the meanings that emerge spontaneously from staying close to the therapist’s own and the group members’ phenomenal experience.

Gestalt’s phenomenological method provides a leavening agent to group therapy’s many theories of group phases and group roles (Fairfield, 2004, 2009). Group therapy theorists have written volumes of detailed descriptions of the various phases of group development that may unfold, and various roles that group members might play out in the group (Agazarian, 2004; Beck, 1981). While valuing these theories, gestalt’s phenomenological method reminds us to hold these theories lightly.¹ The gestalt group therapist’s training is especially challenging in this regard, for the therapist must learn the leading theories of group phases and roles just as any competent group therapist must, and then hold those theories ever so lightly when engaged in group leadership. Informed (but not straitjacketed) by group therapy’s theories of group development, the gestalt group therapist bears in mind that the map is not the territory. The therapist is guided by respect for the here-and-now experience of the phenomenal field, mindful that staying with the lived experience of the group will likely yield a richer harvest than relying on preformed theoretical explanations.

The Construction of Our Perceptions

Gestalt therapy takes a constructivist approach to human perception: its view is that health is related to our capacity for constructing orderly, meaningful perceptions of the field. Further, since self is fully embedded in the field, the perceptions we construct always include ourselves and point us toward empowered action. This approach to health can be traced to the work of the German neurologist, Kurt Goldstein. In the 1920s, Frederick and Laura Perls (and also the founder of group analysis, S. H. Foulkes) worked in Goldstein’s lab in Frankfurt (Bocian, 2010). As the famous neurologist, Oliver Sacks (1995, p. 11), has written about Goldstein’s approach to healing:

The function of the physician … is to be as sensitive as possible to all the resonances and ramifications of illness in the individual and so help him to achieve a new organization, an equilibrium. … One must lead the sick patient through a period of chaos, gently until he can reestablish a new organization, construct[ing] his world anew.

Goldstein worked with World War I veterans who suffered from brain injuries, helping them through the chaos of neurological damage, working to gently reconstruct their worlds. He studied the human organism as a unified whole. His holism stood in contrast to the popular medical view of his era, which tended to study the parts (organs) as distinct and separate from the whole organism. Goldstein and other gestalt psychologists were greatly interested in issues of perception. They were particularly interested in how it is that people construct their perceptions of the world. With those suffering from brain injuries, Goldstein sought to restore their capacity to construct a coherent world of perception and action.

The gestalt psychologists discovered that perception was no passive affair, as had been previously thought (Wheeler, 2013). Old associationist models of perception (Wundt, 1897) gave way to the holistic gestalt view, in which the whole precedes its parts. One of the key understandings from the gestalt psychologists was that human perception is active problem solving and meaning making. The gestalt psychologists explained that when perceiving, for example, a white wooden fence in a field, we perceive first that it is a fence (an object that has human meaning), and then we might proceed to perceive the individual white wooden boards and nails that constitute the parts of the fence (Dreyfuss, 2007). People’s perceptions are actively constructed and follow certain laws of patterning, such that we actively create the perception of whole figures. The pattern of closure, for example, is demonstrat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Four Notes to Our Readers
• Introduction: Gestalt Group Therapy: A Robust Approach for the Challenges of 21st Century Psychotherapy
• Chapter 1 An Overview of Contemporary Gestalt Therapy for Group Therapists
• Chapter 2 Relational Development in Gestalt Group Therapy
• Chapter 3 In the Presence of the Sacred
• Chapter 4 In the Shadow of the Leader: Power, Reflection, and Dialogue in Gestalt Group Therapy
• Chapter 5 Creating and Sustaining a Relational Group Culture
• Chapter 6 Integrating the Scapegoat Leader
• Chapter 7 Working with the Group as a Whole
• Chapter 8 Traditional Gestalt Therapy Groups: Individual-level Work at the Foreground
• Chapter 9 A Sample Gestalt Group Therapy Session
• Chapter 10 Charles Alexander
• Chapter 11 Social Awareness as a Dimension of Relational Development in Gestalt Group Therapy
• Chapter 12 The Journey
• Afterword: Resistance and Survival with Gestalt Group Therapy
• Index