The fulness of existence

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33189, 31 March 1973, Page 10

The fulness of existence

Gestalt Therapy. By Frederick S. Peris, Ralph Hefferline and Paul Goodman. Souvenir Press. 466 pp. Reviewed by H.R.U. Written in 1951, this volume has. in the two decades since, proved itself to be a break-through in psychological and philosophical thinking which may in the end turn out to have had as much impact on the behaviour of a generation as did psychoanalysis in the twenties of this century. From it have sprung many of the various approaches to self awareness and sensitivity, for the feelings of others under the labels of sensitivity groups, encounter groups, confrontation groups, T groups, and so on. Dr Perl has published other works subsequently and his approach has developed on from this original, but within this first work are the seeds of his thinking until his death last year. The book promises self discovery by various described exercises to make the earnest reader aware of what has been going on within his own mind and body during the whole of his life, and in the present. The means are not by introspection but by focussing on various aspects of oneself in interaction with the environment. Emotions, both “normal” and disturbing are studied not so that they can be removed, but that they become worth-while energisers. The term “Gestalt” comes from a particular psychological theory to do with perception and the assembling of disparate visual fragments into a complete configuration. This further differentiates itself from the background, and the inter-play between figure and background and the different parts of the figure is a dynamic one. The Gestaltists illustrated this with ail sorts of intriguing diagrams, changing pictures and visual puzzles, whilst Dr Peris and his team applies this to a person’s complete life. In these terms such a symptom as anxiety is simply described as the experience of breathing difficulty during any blocked excitement caused by the environment. The neurotic person is interfering with his own breathing while attempting to create the illusion for himself and

others of being calm and collected and self controlled. An exercise in which “it” is replaced by “I” immediately brings home to the student that the thought “he tells me” means something quite different from “he says something to me and 1 listen to it.” One is involved in the situation rather than being a passive recipient. One looks not only at what is being experienced but also how it is being experienced and all the other non verbal communication that is taking place in the relationship. By doing this we are not only becoming aware, but becoming a creative integrator of all problems and situations. Where the classical psychoanalytic situation is one where the patient merely reports, he is now a functioning, thinking, revising, and readjusting part of the whole situation and a reintegration of neurotic structures often gives better information of reality than the “neurosis of normalcy.” Psychotherapy becomes a method not of correction but a means towards growth. The various splits that philosophers and psychologists have verbally caused as between body and mind, ’the self and the external world, infantile and mature, become unimportant and part of an occupational disease of psychotherapy as in the attempt to adjust to a standard of adult reality that is not worth adjusting to, with the Gestaltists allowing their subjects to see the “here and now” and appreciate it untramelled by distortion. “The case is that by and large” say the authors “we exist in a chronic emergency and that most of our forces of love and wit, anger and indignation are suppressed or dulled . . . Yet if we get into contact with this terrible actuality there exists in it also a creative possibility.” The disturbed or normal reader who works through the tasks in this book, follows the arguments and adds his own thinking to it will inevitably be a more sensitive person as a result. Whether he will by this be more easily able to mingle with his fellows without pain is a moot point, for a large section of humanity will remain insensitive to the feelings of those about them, and be in fact uninterested. Nevertheless, the movement to which Dr Peris gave the impetus of his wisdom and verbal facility is one that now percolates not only expert and lunatic fringe groups but also our literature, art and general way of life in numerous direct and disguised ways.