Abstracts for Volumes 4 & 5

Aviram and Bar-Joseph – Vol.4 No.1

Aviram and Bar-Joseph – Vol.4 No.1
Received 15 April 1995

Abstract: This paper instigates a dialogue between two very different areas: sleep research and Gestalt therapy. It is hoped that this encounter will contribute a new and refreshing perspective on both. We will approach sleep, one of the main cycles of human life, from a phenomenological point of view in order to integrate the understanding and handling of insomnia with Gestalt therapy concepts. Insomnia is a very common sleep disorder, defined as 'A feeling of not having had enough sleep' (Gaillard, 1978). By examining insomnia in the light of Gestalt psychotherapy concepts, a new perspective is taken. Insomnia, which by its nature combines mind and body and is by definition a subjective feeling and experience, will benefit greatly from the Gestalt holistic and phenomenological approach.

Key words: sleep, sleep architecture, insomnia, withdrawal desensitization, retroflection, confluence, egotism, projection~ phenomenology

Robert G. Lee – Vol.4 No.1

Robert G. Lee – Vol.4 No.1
Received April 1995

Astract: The Gestalt model inherently incorporates an understanding of shame dynamics in its analysis of contact processes. Shame is a field variable, a ground condition modulating the contact boundary, a natural process of retroflection enlisted at times of perceived insufficient support. The shame-support polarity, when functioning optimally, allows the person to be at the edge and to venture beyond old organisations of the field – i.e. to grow. Conversely, with severe or persistent lack of support (e.g., severe or sustained abuse, neglect, or loss), shame becomes internalised and integrated into basic beliefs about the self' and the possibilities of contact with others. These fixed gestalts (Perls' introjects) which have been learned in a particular field then become blueprints with which to interpret experience and guide behaviour in general, restricting flexibility. Restoring flexibility means facing the shame that holds the fixed gestalts in place. This can only happen in the context of a relationship. One of the chief processes of therapy then becomes supporting awareness of shame in the present field, between therapist and client.

Key words: gestalt, Gestalt therapy, Field theory, shame, support, contact processes, self processes, shame bind, introject, figure and ground.

Melnick's and Nevis – Vol.4 No.1

Melnick's and Nevis – Vol.4 No.1
Received 8 May 1995

Abstract: This essay explores the concept of desire from a Gestalt perspective. Using the movie Casablanca as our inspiration, we look at desire from a variety of vantage points~ After first discussing the development of desire, it is placed in a cultural framework. Finally, it is viewed through two Gestalt lenses – the Gestalt therapy of the 1%Os and 7Os and of today. We have attempted to use examples of people who have struggled, particularly with unfulfilled, conflicted or altered desires, to arrive at satisfying resolutions and assimilation.

Key words: Desire, yearning, complex wants, Gestalt therapy, Casablanca

Resnick interviewed by Parlett – Vol.4 No.1

Resnick interviewed by Parlett – Vol.4 No.1
Received 28 February 1995

Editor's note: Robert W. Resnick Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, the senior trainer of the Gestalt Therapy Institute of Los Angeles, and a major figure in the world of Gestalt therapy. He has been described as 'the youngest of the Gestalt old timers', having trained for five years with Fritz Perls and James Simkin, who together 'personally certified' him and several others in 1969. Robert Resnick has been training psychotherapists internationally and giving Gestalt therapy lectures and training workshops in Europe for over twenty-five years . Currently, he is a co-chair of the Program Committee of the AAGT First Annual International Gestalt Therapy Conference to be held in New Orleans in October 1995, and is also on the editorial board of the new journal, Gestalt Review. His most recent publication 'Tempering Temper with Temperance', appears in the July 1993 issue of The Family Journal – Counselling and Therapy for Couples and Families. Robert Resnick writes that his 'clinical background includes driving a New York City taxi cab.'

Shraga Serok – Vol.4 No.1

Shraga Serok – Vol.4 No.1
Received 5 March 1995

Abstract: This article describes a pilot intervention programme designed to reduce high blood pressure by applying Gestalt methods. The programme took place at an out-patient clinic in an Israeli hospital. The dynamics of hypertension are discussed, as is the relationship between the stress, crisis, anxiety, and emergency reactions, and their effect on blood pressure. Gestalt therapy, in its holistic rationale, provides an appropriate framework for an intervention programme that integrates the physical, emotional, and intellectual components into an operational design. The pilot programme had four participants who attended ten sessions. During the sessions, participants took part in various activities, including exercises in breathing, bddy relaxation, awareness, and working on unfinished business. Guided fantasies enabled participants to project about their hypertension and to practise achieving optimal mastery over it. Measurements of participants' blood pressure were taken before and after each session. Results indicate a noticeable reduction in participants' blood pressure, which remained in effect after the programme was completed. These results indicate a need for further research in this area.

Key words: Gestalt therapy, hypertension, reduction of high blood pressure, stress, anxiety, emergency reaction.

Gill Caradoc-Davies – Vol.4 No.2

Gill Caradoc-Davies – Vol.4 No.2
Received 5 April 1995

Abstract: The concept Top-dog/Under-dog is referred to in textbooks, but is less frequently taught due to a perception that it lacks clinical usefulness. This article sets out to revitalize this concept, changing the language used, and re-integrating the term with its analytical Object-Relational roots. Understanding this leads on to a subtle but important change in clinical approach, which is discussed.

Key words: contact, introjection, integrative Gestalt, therapy, polarities.

Richard G. Erskine – Vol.4 No.2

Richard G. Erskine – Vol.4 No.2
Received November 1995

Abstract: Shame and self righteousness are intrapsychic dynamics that help the individual defend against a rupture in relationship. This article discusses how, from a life script perspective, shame is comprised of the script belief 'Something is wrong with me', formed as a result of messages and decisions, conclusions in response to impossible demands, and defensive hope and control. In addition, from a Gestalt therapy perspective, shame involves a diminished self-concept in confluence with criticism, a defensive transposition of sadness and fear, and disavowal and retroflection of anger. Furthermore, shame may be an archaic fixation or an introjection. The suggestion is made that self-righteousness is the denial of a need for relationship. A contact oriented relationship psychotherapy that emphasises methods of inquiry, attunement, and involvement is described.

Key words: self-righteousness, Gestalt therapy, inquiry, attunement, involvement, contact-inrelationship, relationship therapy, confluence, retroflection, juxtaposition

Fuhr and Gremmler-Fuhr – Vol.4 No.2

Fuhr and Gremmler-Fuhr – Vol.4 No.2
Received 30 April 1995

Abstract: Experiences of shame frequently arise in educational careers. To some extent shame is an unavoidable phenomenon in teaching/learning situations. Often shame processes are dysfunctional and burden us. In this article we explore shame processes in teaching/learning situations on the basis of a Gestalt concept of shame. Our intention is to enhance the awareness/consciousness of teachers of all kinds (including trainers, counsellors and psychotherapists) regarding shame reactions, shame avoidance and shame-inducing conditions and to hint at some practical possibilities of handling shame in a constructive way.

Keywords: adult education, contact, counselling, education, educational institutions, learning, psychotherapy, social orders, value systems, teaching.

Judith Hemming – Vol.4 No.2

Judith Hemming – Vol.4 No.2
Received July 1995

Editor's note: In addition to Maria Gilbert's review (see page 137), we also invited Robin Skynner to comment on Joseph Zinker's In Search of Good Form. He agreed to, provided that he could do so verbally, rather than in writing. In the eventuality, the all too-brief interview was not exclusively about Zinker's book but ranged further. We are delighted to have these comments on In Search of Good Form, and Dr. Skynner's wider reflections on Gestalt therapy. This is the first time that the BGJ has invited a distinguished psychotherapist outside the Gestalt community to give comment and feedback. We intend to do so again. Robin Skynner has been a pioneer in group and family techniques of treatment and is one of the Founders of both the Institute of Group Analysis and the Institute of Family Therapy in London. As well as being co-author with John Cleese of Families and How to Survive Them, he is the author of One Flesh, Separate Persons: Principles of Family and Marital Psychotherapy and Explorations with Families: Group Analysis and Family Therapy.

Lynne Jacobs – Vol.4 No.2

Lynne Jacobs – Vol.4 No.2
Received 3 September 1995

Editor's Note: Lynne Jacobs describes how entering and then participating in therapeutic dialogue as a patient is full of potentially shaming experiences. The patient may feel he/she is a 'second class person', easily wounded inadvertently by the therapist who (of course) also has her/his own shame triggers' The author reports briefly on three of her cases in which issues of shame were disruptive, though useful therapeutically in the end. She concludes that shame issues cannot – and should not be – avoided. She shows how therapist self-disclosure of countertransference assisted the patient's development. The most common trigger for the patient feeling shame is when he/she feels treated like an object as opposed to a subject. Dar Jacobs concludes by stressing the transformative power of resolving shame issues within the therapeutic relationship.

Key words: shame, therapeutic relationship, countertransference, dialogue, initial meeting

Maryse Mathys – Vol.4 No.2

Maryse Mathys – Vol.4 No.2
Received September ~995

Abstract: This paper examines the educational block of Anthony, the seven-year-old son of mixed-race parents. The author, a speech and language therapist working in the education system in Ivory Coast, explains the extent to which Anthony's father's shame in his cultural heritage hinders his son's search for identity in a bipolar world. The split in Anthony's field, echoed and reinforced by the roles and attitudes of his parents, blocks his growth and development. The therapist receives, demands and challenges the father's world and makes a difference.

Key words: French culture, African culture, bipolar world, field model, shame, speech and language therapy

Bertram Muller – Vol.4 No.2

Bertram Muller – Vol.4 No.2
Received 30 April 1995

Editor's Note: This article is a slightly revised version of the speech given by the author at the European Gestalt Congress in Paris, May 1992, which focussed on '50 Years of Gestalt Therapy'. Isadore From died in 1994, two years after this lecture was delivered. The lecture was also reproduced in Studies in Gestalt Therapy, No.2, 1993 and is reprinted here, with amendments, by agreement with the author and with the kind permission of Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb, Director of Istituto di Gestalt, Siracusa, Italy and Editor of Studies in Gestalt Therapy.

Gordon Wheeler – Vol.4 No.2

Gordon Wheeler – Vol.4 No.2
Received 3 September 1995

Editor's Note: In this paper, Gordon Wheeler differentiates between two paradigms of psychotherapy the 'individualist' one and the 'constructivist-field' approach which he associates particularly with the thinking of Paul Goodman. He argues that Freud operated within an individualist paradigm, conceiving of the 'self' as essentially separate, with human experience a function of 'personal' history and 'inner' mechanisms. The constructivist-field paradigm locates the self at the boundary, as part of relationship. Wheeler then goes on to argue that the individualist paradigm leads inherently to shame being treated as a personal problem – indeed, as shameful in itself; while the other paradigm, which should characterise Gestalt therapy, sees shame reactions resulting from 'a rupture in the field', and the task of therapy, and of giving support, is the 'transformation of the experience of shame into the experience of connection in the field'.

Key words: self, Gestalt therapy, Paul Goodman, shame, paradigm, field theory, Freud, individualism, support

Iris E. Fodor – Vol.5 No.1

Iris E. Fodor – Vol.5 No.1
Received 24 January ~996

Abstract: In the past thirty years, a cognitive revolution has occurred in psychology. Cognitive therapists in particular are working to develop a theory of therapy informed by cognitive science. Gestalt therapy, with its theory framed in the language and thinking of a different era, is left out of this contemporary discourse. While cognitive therapists work very differently from Gestalt therapists, namely with cognitions, Gestalt therapy has many central cognitive features that are not fully described. Further, the basic therapy itself facilitates cognitive framing and cognitive awareness. This paper, drawing on the research and writing of cognitive theorists and therapists, will describe the cognitive concepts of schema, construct and narrative as a first step in taking in the new thinking and integrating it with Gestalt theory.

Key words: Cognitive therapy, Gestalt therapy, integrative therapy, schema, constructivism, meaning making.

John Bernard Harris – Vol.5 No.1

John Bernard Harris – Vol.5 No.1
Received 7 December 1995

Abstract: Silences are common in therapy groups, but are seldom recognised as an important part of group process. When silence in groups is discussed, it is generally seen as a problem; yet it is the essential background to all group life. This article brings silence into the foreground and attempts to understand its central role in group dynamics.

Keywords: Gestalt therapy group, silence, group dynamics, phenomenology, communication, culture, gender, field theory, group contact cycle.

Elena Mazur – Vol.5 No.1

Elena Mazur – Vol.5 No.1
Received 15 October 1995

Editor's Note: In this paper, Elena Mazur seeks to restore the name of Blyuma Zeigarnik ~9OO1988) to the history of Gestalt therapy, and to show how the core concept of the Zeigarnik effect has been integrated into Gestalt therapy theory. Mazur describes early influences on Zeigarnik's work, notably the Gestalt psychologists in Berlin and especially Kurt Lewin, and goes on to outline Zeigarnik's contribution to the field of pathopsychology'. Seeking to verify an original hypothesis of Lewin's, Zeigarnik discovered experimentally that subjects will tend to return meaningfully to any unfinished activity and that recollection is enhanced by lack of closure. Mazur discusses the existential paradox of individuals seeking both avoidance and closure and shows how a Gestalt therapist might work with these tensions. The paper concludes by telling the story of how Zeigarnik completed some major unfinished business in her own life.

Key words: Zeigarnik effect, unfinished business, Kurt Lewin

Jean-Marie Robine – Vol.5 No.1

Jean-Marie Robine – Vol.5 No.1
Received 18 March 1996

Abstract: One could read this article as a way of describing what happens on the therapist's side of the therapeutic field. Some of the thoughts which were 'at work' during a period of time, some events of his personal life, some resonances from sessions with clients which stimulated the emerging consciousness of some personal unknown. Back and forth from life to therapy, from therapy to theoretical constructs…. One could also read it as a clinical process leading to a better understanding of some kinds of introjection. One should, however, read it as an illustration of the idea that meaning comes from the Gestalt formation as such, and not from its contents.

Key words: Process, introjection, retroflection, mourning, resonance, field theory, therapeutic relationship

Robine's title – Vol.5 No.1
'L'Insu Porte dans Ia Relation.' In French, the title creates an untranslatable double-play on words: read aloud, 'l'insu porte', the 'unknown carried over,' is homophonically equal to 'l'insupporte”, that which is not supported or not to be borne, in relationship with the additional overtones of the word 'support' in Gestalt. In a field perspective such as Robine's, 'supported' or 'unbearable' would of course be seen as a field condition or phenomenon, and not merely an individual or dyadic dynamic. This kind of whimsical/serious double or triple wordplay is extremely characteristic of this writer, who is surely the foremost explorer of the nuances of language in our field, both orally and on the page. – Transl.

Edward W.L. Smith – Vol.5 No.1

Edward W.L. Smith – Vol.5 No.1
Received 10 September 1995

Abstract: The present paper is based on an invited address presented at the Centennial Convention of the American Psychological Association. The question of the future of Gestalt therapy is approached by distinguishing three manifestations of what the author sees as the core of Gestalt – the concentration on personal process. At the most general level, this process is identifiable not only in Gestalt therapy, but in other systems as well (e.g. T'ai Ch'i, yoga, Zen etc.). Gestalt therapy is one particular form of this process, peculiar to a socio-political-historical context, namely, contemporary Western psychotherapy, but through the person of Fritz Perls and his close colleagues. These three levels – a process, a particular contextual form of that process and a specific personal interpretation of that process-in-context – are explicated and the fate of each estimated.

Key words. Gestalt, psychotherapy process, personal process, future, Perls, core.

Reinhard Fuhr – Vol.5 No.2

Reinhard Fuhr – Vol.5 No.2
Received 6 December 1995

Abstract: Personality development can be conceived in terms of strengthening one's self functions and of changing dysfunctional habits and patterns of life. Quite another view of personality development is to explore the deeper meanings and ultimate questions of life and to expand and transcend our egoic consciousness. I see the challenge for today's Gestalt therapy in this conflict between change, on the one hand, and transformation on the other hand, as a professional as well as a political matter. It would help to live this basic conflict creatively if we concentrated our energies (1) on further elaborating the philosophy and epistemology of Gestalt therapy; (2) its theoretical perspectives on human development, health and disease as well as process diagnostics; and (3) on investigating the training concepts for Gestalt therapists for their explicit and implicit learning theories.

Key words: epistemology, personality development, change, transformation, spirituality, self-transcendence, learning theory.

Gerund and Kampmann – Vol.5 No.2

Gerund and Kampmann – Vol.5 No.2
Received 13 December ~995

Editor's Note: In this intriguing paper, the authors mount a critique of the 'traditional medical model' still dominating Western medicine, and suggest the Gestalt approach as an alternative outlook on disease and suffering. They suggest there are different kinds of discourse subjective, somatic, material, social, and spiritual – all of which need to be considered in appreciating disease and suffering. They distinguish the immediate phenomenological experience of suffering from its integration into the 'biography' of the person, and show how therapy needs to acknowledge the whole field and to be dialogical.

Keywords. medical model, Gestalt approach, suffering, disease, etiology, pathogenesis, symptoms, diagnosis, contact processes.

Elinor Greenberg – Vol.5 No.2

Elinor Greenberg – Vol.5 No.2
Received 13 December 1995

Abstract: In this paper I discuss the difficulties narcissistic clients typically have in Gestalt therapy due to their low self-esteem, lack of an integrated and realistic self-image and inadequate self-supportive mechanisms. I use clinical examples to describe how to recognise these problems quickly and how to modify traditional Gestalt therapy so as to be more effective with these clients. Specifically, I propose that we will often get better therapeutic results if we carefully evaluate our client's current level of self-support and choose interventions in accord with that, instead of bringing to our client's attention whatever is the strongest figure for us. In practice, this often means avoiding certain types of insight-oriented interventions in the early stages of therapy and instead focusing on building trust and supporting the client's expression of his or her true feelings.

Key words: narcissism, false self, mirroring, the Aha!' experience, defensive grandiosity, narcissistic vulnerability.

Neil Harris – Vol.5 No.2

Neil Harris – Vol.5 No.2
Received 26 September 1996

Abstract: Attachment theory has been developed over the last fifty years as one way of understanding the foundations of our capacity and need to make and sustain relationships. It has made an important contribution, not only to the way that we view the development of the earliest relationships in our lives, but also to our understanding of the processes of separation and loss. The implications for psychotherapy in general are becoming clearer, and in this article specific attention is paid to ways in which it may be useful for Gestalt therapists to be mindful of key attachment concepts, how they may emerge in our work, and how they may be used therapeutically.

Key words: Attachment theory, Gestalt therapy, therapeutic relationship.

Gary Yontef – Vol.5 No.2

Gary Yontef – Vol.5 No.2
Received 13 December 1995

Abstract: This article is an edited version of a chapter entitled Experiential Supervision' which appears in the forthcoming John Wiley & Sons, Inc. title HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOThERAPY SUPERVISION by C. Edward Watkins, Editor. Copyright© 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. The article examines quality supervision as an application of the philosophy of Gestalt therapy (e.g. the principles of phenomenology, dialogue and field theory) and how the practice of Gestalt therapy supervision follows from Gestalt therapy principles. Supervision is discussed as creative adjustment and in terms of the Paradoxical Theory of Change and the Dialogic Relationship. Three functions or components of supervision (administrative, educative and consultative) are discussed in terms of the requirements of each function and variations according to the requirements of agency, community and the experience level of the supervisee. Gestalt therapy theory and supervision practices are discussed in reference to each component. Supervision and psychotherapy are compared and the methodology of Gestalt therapy supervision is discussed, including the experiential method, parallel process, the role of theory in supervision, the sequence of supervision and interferences with supervision.

Key words: Gestalt therapy, supervision, consultation, training, parallel process.