A Well-Lived Life

Essays in Gestalt Therapy

Sylvia F. Crocker

• Publisher: Gestalt Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135061524
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Sylvia Crocker's A Well-Lived Life is a work of a daring and creative thinker, offering a bold reconceptualization of Gestalt therapy that extends all the way from its philosophical foundation to the nuances of its clinical application. In prose that is clear as a bell, Crocker fully exposes the depth and power of Gestalt therapy's field theoretical model, deftly moving from individual to larger systems work and back again, and capturing the full range of human psychological phenomena as she goes.

From the acquisition and maintenance of simple behavioral habits, to the construction of personal narrative and myth, Crocker's Gestalt therapy model is equally at home and applicable. Her vision of Gestalt therapy is at the same time startingly unique and comfortably familiar. She is firmly rooted in Gestalt Therapy's 'phenomenological behaviorism, " but at the same time offers us a model for assessing and working with self functions which is remarkably creative, and represents an important new contribution to the field.

And throughout the text, interpolated between her provocative theoretical formulations, we encounter Crocker the clinician - moving straight ahead, getting right at the issue, making sense, and all the while, concretely instructive regarding the nature of the work. This is a book that will make a difference, challenging the way we think about the practice, the craft of psychotherapy.

Part One: An Approach to Human Change

Essay I.

The Unity of Theory and Method

in Gestalt Therapy

An Overview of Gestalt Therapy

The question most frequently put to Gestalt therapists is: “What is Gestalt therapy?” On the surface it might appear that there are as many answers to this question as there are Gestalt therapists, since how a given therapist does Gestalt therapy will always bear the stamp of that therapist’s own personality. Nevertheless, in whatever ways Gestalt therapy is carried on the therapist is guided by a basic point of view about human living which is grounded in a well-developed theoretical structure. A comprehensive answer to the question, “What is Gestalt therapy?” would be incomplete, and perhaps misleading, without an explication of that point of view and the fundamental tenets of Gestalt therapy’s theory. The first aim of this essay, therefore, is to state as clearly and as succinctly as possible the theoretical framework on which Gestalt therapy is based. Its second aim is intimately connected to the first: to show how the major methods used by Gestalt therapists come directly out of the theory. A corollary of this is that whatever methods a Gestalt therapist adopts from other therapeutic approaches will be tailored to Gestalt purposes by being rethought in terms of Gestalt theory.

Before giving a systematic answer to the question, “What is Gestalt therapy?”, I will begin with the short answer I give in relatively brief conversations. Gestalt therapy is a holistic and interpersonal approach to human change. I explain that the German word Gestalt means: (1) an organized whole, whose organization makes it more than the sum of its parts; and it also means (2) a pattern. Gestalt therapy draws on both of these meanings.

First, Gestalt therapists understand and work therapeutically with their clients as persons who live organismically in a number of inseparable and interpenetrating dimensions, i.e. who--often simultaneously--live bodily, cognitively, emotionally, purposively, aesthetically, spiritually, interpersonally, socially, and economically. Thus we make no real distinction between mind, body, feelings, values, and purposes. These are understood as interpenetrating aspects of the living of the human organism, which constantly and reciprocally influence each other. In the processes of Gestalt therapy the therapist frequently works with all of the dimensions of the client’s life, often shuttling back and forth between awareness of bodily sensations, emotional response, desires, and cognitive assumptions. In this way clients come to a clearer awareness of the many-layered responses which influence how they feel and behave. Awareness of and experimentation with these responses ultimately help our clients to have a greater range of choice about how they live their lives.

Pattern, the second meaning of Gestalt, is equally important to the work of the Gestalt therapist. Gestalt therapy is a field theory, always taking as the basic unit of its focus the field of the human organism-environment. No person can be understood in isolation from the environmental fields of which that person is a member; therefore we take into account the reciprocal influences between the individual and his family, social and economic groups, intimate relationships, and the relationship with the therapist. These complex sets of relationships in which the client lives, together with his own peculiar internal organization and temperament, determine and are, therefore, the keys to understanding the recurrent patterns of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral response which are typical for a given individual. As the client comes to see with increasing clarity how he typically responds to recurrent situations, and as he is able to discern the typical consequences of these responses, he is in a better position to make a conscious choice either to remain as he is, or to undertake a process of change.

How a person lives in the present is partly a function of his own changing internal organization, and partly a function of the fields of which he has been an element, both currently and over the course of his lifetime. Therefore, in order to bring about change, the therapist must help the person to reorganize his inner life so that complex responses and cognitions will become the ground of a more satisfying and fulfilling life, and the therapist must help to bring about change in the current fields in which the client lives. Most of the time the therapist works with the individual, indirectly altering the dynamics of the fields in which the client lives by helping him to behave differently. However, Gestalt therapists often directly influence the fields themselves by working with couples, families, small and large groups, and organizations.

The central fact of human life, as well as the lives of all organisms, is contact, understood as meetings of various kinds with others. All life, of whatever form, occurs in cycles of contact with others and withdrawal for rest, regeneration, and assimilation. The human organism as a living whole or Gestalt is always in an environmental context, with which we must necessarily have ongoing commerce throughout the course of our lives. The forms of contact are as complex and as multifaceted as the full range of human experience, since all experience is the result of various processes of contacting. Through the evolutionary process, all organisms are “wired” for effective and fulfilling contact with others in their environments. To put the point another way, all organisms have evolved along paths which have given them the powers necessary to grapple with their environments in ways which allow them to survive, and to achieve that mature state in which they can function in ways which are normal and natural for the kind of organism they are. Like every other organism, human beings have a natural capacity for self-regulation and adaptation to changing circumstances. We are born with the innate capacity to be aware of what we need for ourselves and to meet the demands the environment makes on us. We are also innately equipped with everything necessary to learn how to discover what the possibilities are for meeting those needs, demands, and for capitalizing on the opportunities that are available to us.

But this innate capacity requires a nurturing environment for its development, and unfortunately, that kind of environment is often missing. Yet, amazingly, human beings find ways to adapt to all but the most defeating circumstances. Those adaptive behaviors which permit a person to survive a hostile/insulting/neglectful situation become “second nature.” These behaviors are then carried into adult life as the typical patterns which the person uses, usually without awareness, in dealing with situations which are similar to--but significantly different from--those for which they were adapted in the first place. So, for example, a person whose needs were ignored or punished in childhood may, in adult life, refuse to ask for help; and even conceal and feel ashamed of ever needing help. Further, the person may not even recognize it when it is offered. This pattern obviously has a host of detrimental consequences for the quality of a person’s life.

In health, and in the absence of danger, the processes of contact (and withdrawal) go on relatively smoothly, while in dysfunction all of this can be skewed and distorted. There is thus the loss of a clear internal awareness of a person’s own needs and desires, and the frequent substitution of the needs and desires of others in place of his own. Poor contact can also come about from distorted and/or unrealistic perceptions of the environmental context. These skewd perceptions lead the person to fail to appreciate the demands and/or the opportunities of a situation where contact is to occur. The loss of either external or internal clarity and responsiveness leads to distortions in a person’s subsequent perceptions; confusions and conflicts about what he “ought” to do and what the possibilities for doing it are; and loss of the sense of what his own priorities are. Not only does this interfere with normal decision-making processes, but once a decision is made, the person often is unable or unwilling to act on that decision. The loss of internal clarity and self-responsiveness, together with inhospitable environmental conditions, leads a person to draw distorted and erroneous conclusions about the world, other people, and himself; these then have a limiting effect on his ability to function. This combination also leads to behavioral adaptations which have survival value, but which have a distorting or even crippling effect on the person’s everyday living. In various ways all of this distorts and skews the contact between the person and others, and internally between the person and himself. Thus the person’s life becomes, in a variety of injurious combinations, blinded, numbed, confused, and indecisive. Such a life is also often lacking in courage, resoluteness, openness, integrity, and in the kind of self-possession which makes healthy contact with others possible, and which is the hallmark of freedom.

It is these complex internal responses and external patterns of behavior which the individual employs in making contact with both internal and environmental others which are the central focus of the work of the Gestalt therapist. The aim of Gestalt therapy is, therefore, to help the person restore to himself--or to discover for the first time--his own natural ability to have successful and fulfilling contact with others, including aspects of himself. All of the methods of Gestalt therapy--and any which will be developed as extensions of this approach, or adapted from other approaches in the future--necessarily have this as their aim. They are based upon a clear understanding of the nature of human functioning and, derivatively, the nature of human dysfunctioning. These methods of Gestalt therapy are grounded in the basic theory of Gestalt therapy.

The Human Organism

Gestalt therapy’s theory is above all a theory of human nature. Its view of the human organism is grounded at once in concepts drawn from an understanding of living organisms and their processes of living, and in several philosophical traditions. Its philosophical ground will be explored in another essay. The biological elements will be examined here.

The Gestalt view of human nature is founded upon five concepts: (1) The point of departure for all theorizing in Gestalt therapy is the field concept of the organism-in-its-environment. (2) The second concept which is fundamental to Gestalt therapy’s theory is the theory of the organism. (3) Central to both of these concepts is the concept of contact, the interactive meeting of the organism with environmental and internal others. (4) The fourth basic concept is that, like all organisms, human beings are by nature whole-makers, synthesizers of a wide variety of bodily, perceptual, cognitive, behavioral, and existential wholes. All processes which aim at survival and growth require this capacity. (5) The fifth concept is that organismic behavior is not random but is purposive.

(1) Biological field theory holds that all organisms, including human beings, always exist in environmental contexts which include them as elements. A field is best thought of as a sphere of influence. Human beings live in many spheres of influence simultaneously: at any given moment a person is influenced not only by his actual concrete situation, but also by the wider culture, his family, friends, relationships involved in his work/school situation, and organizations to which he belongs. Both the organism and the environment constantly change, and the organism is continually faced with the need to cope with the novelty which this brings. The organism has changing internal conditions, which give rise to certain kinds of needs and desires, while the environment continually presents the organism with ever-new dangers, situations of all kinds to be dealt with, including opportunities for growth. Organismic life goes on in the interactions between the organism and the fields which include it.

(2) The theory of the organism holds that (a) an organism is an ordered whole, whose parts are as they are and behave as they do because of their complex and integral relationships to the whole, (b) An organism is also intrinsically self-regulating, having within itself the innate capacity to respond exquisitely to changes in its inner states, and to respond effectively to its needs and desires. Furthermore, it has the ability to respond selectively to dangers, nutrients, and possibilities for action in the environment. Moreover, (c) all organisms are growth seeking, having an internal urge toward maturity and the fulfillment of their nature. All organisms either know innately or learn from their caregivers how to respond to others in ways which allow them not only to survive but to fulfill themselves. Human beings are no exception to these truths about living organisms.

All organisms respond proprioceptively to internal states, and reactively to external situations; the higher organisms are able to respond with varying degrees of conscious awareness and thought, both to their internal states and to conditions in their environmental situations. Human beings respond with complex forms of cognition--including a sense of time which extends beyond the present both to the past and to the future--and with learned patterns of behavior. Human needs and desires are highly complex because human nature is complex, as are the ever-changing demands of the environment on individuals. Further, our ability to meet these needs and to fulfill our desires is highly complex. Yet the dark side of this fact is that this complexity itself gives rise to numberless opportunities for poor contact and great varieties of dysfunctional living.

Ideally, a person will receive the proper physical and interpersonal nourishment from others in his environment, and will have sufficient support from others to accomplish all of the developmental tasks necessary for living a full nourishing life. Under these conditions he will grow up being able to accurately perceive his own needs and desires, and to realistically appraise situations involving environmental others. He will be responsive to internal excitements and to issues and problems in his environment, and he will be able to discover and evaluate what can be done to deal effectively with all of these excitements, tasks, and problems. Finally, he will then be able to act effectively to meet the need, resolve the excitement, and/or solve the problem at hand. He will go about this with a realistic understanding of himself, other people and the world; he will have acquired the behavioral skills, discipline, and courage to carry out what he sees as the most effective course of action. Over the course of his lifetime he will develop a social consciousness about human rights and values; and he will become clear with himself about what is important for him personally, and thus will make choices which will give personal meaning to his life.

(3) Contact is the responsive meeting with the other. The organism of necessity responds to otherness, that is, it responds to that which is in some sense different from it. External contact is the responsive meeting between the organism and environmental others, including other persons, natural objects and forces, or institutions. Internal contact is the subjective contact of the organism with inner objects of awareness such as thoughts, feelings, purposes, conflicts, confusions, needs, and desires.

Making effective contact with others constitutes the central task of every individual and, collectively, of every species of organism. All organisms interact with their environments in order to survive, to grow, and to achieve their mature states in which they can fulfill their individual and species nature. Human beings are no different. We never live apart from some kind of environment, and we necessarily regulate, to some degree, the influence our environment exerts on us. We shut out certain influences while opening ourselves to others which we then transform in order to make them useful to us. All organisms, for example, need to take in food, which is selected from other possible intakes which are not food, some of which may even be poison; once taken in, the food must be transformed in such a way as to make it assimilable to the ongoing bodily life of the organism. Similarly, every human being must take in personal nourishment from other persons. All of this commerce takes places within cycles of contact and withdrawal which, in health, occur naturally and fluidly. Withdrawal permits the organism to rest and to assimilate the experiences of contact. In dysfunction these cycles become interrupted and distorted.

Environmental factors such as disease, famine, drought, ecological changes, war, pollution, poverty, and the like frequently make this task difficult, sometimes impossible, to carry out. Moreover, healthy human growth requires a caregiving environment which is nurturing, and this is frequently not the case; a great many individual human beings thus do not receive the proper physical and/or interpersonal and/or social nourishment they require for their own growth to maturity. Nor do they always have the kind of support, internally or from others, to acquire healthy habits of awareness of themselves and others, skill in decision-making, and the kind of self-possession and personal courage which would permit them to translate thought into action effectively. Instead of the free flowing and flexible contact with others which is typical of healthy organisms, in many persons we find functioning which is blocked and distorted. The effects of these blockages and distortions hamper and often cripple the contact the person has with himself and environmental others. Therefore, because human beings learn how to adapt to the inhospitable circumstances in which they find themselves, they must also struggle with the often adverse effects of internal influences which their survival adaptations have produced.

(4) Whole-Making is central to all contact processes. As the Gestalt psychologists have shown, perception always involves the spontaneous synthesis of perceptual wholes. Cognitively, human beings note similarities among objects and repeated patterns of events, thereby generating class and causal concepts or schemas. Moreover, human beings ineluctably make sense of their experiences--accurately or erroneously--by drawing conclusions about how the world works and what is possible/impossible, what is typical of other people, and what rights and place they themselves have in the world. These cognitive elements are spontaneously synthesized into an overall model of the world, which in turn guides perception, thought, and action. As a result, nearly every person’s model of the world includes inconsistencies and inaccuracies, many of which distort their contact with others. These are often the focus of therapy.

All learning, whether cognitive or behavioral, is the result of the whole-making capacity of organisms. Most organisms learn from their experience, however rudimentary. The higher organisms are capable of varieties of complex learning which are necessary for their on-going lives. Human beings not only learn behaviors which are necessary for daily life, but they are also able to learn highly skilled behaviors which permit them to achieve distant and/or highly technical goals; in addition, many of these skilled behaviors are employed for fun, relaxation, and rejuvenation. In all of these cases, a number of individual experiences are related to each other cognitively and motorically, and are synthesized together, thereby giving rise to patterns which can be rethought and/or redone. This is true not only of skilled behaviors, but of habits of all kinds, including those patterns of adaptive behaviors which organisms develop in response either to the exigencies of their environmental situation or to defects within themselves.

Assimilation is also a whole-making process. All of the experiences in the life of an organism are assimilated into the ongoing life of that organism. Whatever reality the past has exists only in the present living of a given organism, i.e. in the ways of its actual and possible functioning. And since the living of an organism is constantly changing, both internally and in its contact with the changing environment, assimilation is constant and on-going as the organism continuously reorganizes itself. This ever-changing system, which constitutes the actual existence of the organism at any given moment is, together with the structure of any given actual situation in which the organism is functioning, what Gordon Wheeler (1991) calls the “structured ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• FOREWORD by Deborah Ullman
• INTRODUCTION by Judith and George Brown
• AUTHOR'S PREFACE
• PROLOGUE
• PART ONE: AN APPROACH TO HUMAN CHANGE
• Essay I: “The Unity of Theory and Method in Gestalt Therapy”
• Essay II: “Processes of Contact--A Dynamic Model of the Self”
• Essay III: “Functional and Dysfunctional Processes of Contact”
• PART TWO: THE PHILOSOPHICAL GROUND
• Essay IV: “Opposing Paradigms [Aristotelian vs Platonic] in Gestalt Therapy and Psychoanalysis.”
• Essay V: “Foundations of the Concept of the Self”
• Essay VI: “All There Is, Is Now--A Gestalt Theory of Human Nature”
• PART THREE: HUMAN MATURITY AND FULFILLMENT
• Essay VII: “A Well-Lived Life--A Gestalt Perspective”
• Essay VIII: “Meetings of Persons--Reflections on Authentic Relationships”
• Essay IX: “The Spiritual Dimension of Gestalt Therapy”
• PART FOUR: BEYOND THE 20TH CENTURY
• Essay X: “The Strengths of Gestalt Therapy as a New Paradigm”
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index