Lifestyle Choices

The Problem With Techniques

The ideas described in the section on Gestalt are not peculiar to it and are found in many of the more modern therapies. Although founded on an attempt to find more vitality, they can be misused, because as soon as any technique becomes inflexible it creates an act rather than a vital expression. Because the techniques are exciting, some people also use them to get a temporary “high” on human experience, rather than to learn to be more themselves. The important point is that any technique is only a tool of the trade, a “gimmick” to get through to the more alive part of a person. Tools can be used in many ways, and some tools work better in some people, and in some eras, than others. What is most important to you as a client is the skill with which the tool is handled and the integrity of the handler.

Gestalt

Fritz Perls (1893-1970) was originally a psychoanalyst in Berlin who later moved to America and challenged many psychoanalytic ideas.

As a reaction to the excesses of psychoanalysis, which examined the patient’s past, “making him deader and deader”, Perls stressed what has now become a catch phrase, the “here and now”, and the following ideas:

• It is only immediate experience that makes you feel fully alive, and the past is therefore useful only if it helps to free you in the present.

• To feel fully alive you need to be feeling, and hence too much thinking is counter-productive.

• The “what” and the “how” of a situation can bring more immediacy of experience than the “why”.
• Saying what you really mean in the most direct fashion is encouraged, even if this may be temporarily hurtful, since ultimately genuine contact is valued more than a phoney image of yourself.
• Personal responsibility is emphasized.
• Body language and tone of voice often convey more direct information than words.

Perls was interested in how the parts of a person (which on their own might be difficult to make sense of) could make a whole shape (Gestalt) which had a meaningful form.

A Gestalt therapist might, for instance, use a technique based on this idea with John. Noticing that John is cold and aloof, he comments on this and later, asks John how he feels about his own coldness. John says that he is not sure, but he thinks that somewhere it makes him angry. The therapist then invites John to stage a dialogue between these two aspects of himself. The demarcation between the two aspects can be emphasized by using two chairs facing each other. John is in one chair when he is speaking from the ‘cold’, and in the opposite chair when he is speaking from the ‘angry’.

Perhaps the dialogue goes something like this:

• Cold Part: “You should always keep your distance. Emotions are unnecessary. They cause pain. Emotions hurt people.”
• Angry Part: “I want to get out of this! I want to express myself. I have a right to express myself and I have a right to be angry. So go away!”
• Cold control: “Now calm down. You are getting over-excited. You were rude to me and you will regret that.”
• Angry Part: (now really angry) “Shut up! Just shut up! Just go away. I don’t need you. All that cold control. I’ve had enough! You won’t stop me! . . . “

The therapist might allow the dialogue to reach its conclusion. Perhaps with John, the anger would win and in winning, find that it did not have to be quite so angry when the control was no longer there. In other words he was only angry because he was controlled — the anger in his eyes and his cold control both made sense as reactions to each other. Another possibility would be for the therapist to ask John who the control side reminded him of. “My father”, he would say and realize that he was carrying around his father within him. The dialogue could then be continued between the “father” within him and the “boy” within him.

Transactional analysis, developed by the American psychiatrist Eric Berne (1910-1970) in the 1950s, is a far more approachable way of understanding some of the best of Freud, and applying it to relationships. The theory is that every person has within him three basic states of being, a Parent, an Adult and a Child. When you are in your Parent state, you are acting as your parent would act and perhaps responding with similar gestures, use of words and so forth. When you are in your Adult state, you are capable of objective and autonomous judgement and action. When you are in your Child state, you act as you would have when a child.

All three states exist together in each person and all are necessary, in proportion. The Child creates charm, creativity, intuition, spontaneity and fun, though it can also create dependence and whining manipulation. The Adult is essential for dealing effectively with the outside world, though out of balance it creates a boring, functional existence. The Parent is necessary in order to make automatic responses which saves time in repeated situations, though out of balance creates a doctrinaire approach.

The three states connect with the three personality states which relate to depression:

• Overbearing Parent with “Good behaviour” personality
• Overbearing Adult with “Controlled” personality
• Overbearing Child with “Dependent” personality.

A healthy person can move freely between all three states. Problems between people occur when modes of communication (”translations”) get muddled.

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