Gestalt Therapy as Spiritual Practice

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GESTALT / Transpersonal Gestalt

Gestalt Therapy as Spiritual Practiceby Paul Kapp

INTRODUCTION There are many Gestalt theorists who believe Gestalt Psychotherapy to be a kind of spiritual practice. Spirituality isalso known as the transpersonal, and psychotherapy is seen as interpersonal work. Claudio Naranjo believed thatGestalt is a transpersonal therapy. “The transpersonal in the interpersonal.” C. Naranjo 1978When Fritz Perls arrived at Esalen in 1964, he gave a workshop that proclaimed: ‘ “To expand the scope of awareness,to bring greater contact with the environment and to end the subject object split are the goals of Gestalt therapy.” andhe promised to relate this new psychology to both existentialism and Zen Buddhism.’ Jeffrey John Kripal 2007

THE TRANSPERSONAL There are those within the Gestalt community who say Gestalt is humanist and irreligious, while others say it istranspersonal in nature. Though Humanist psychotherapy is not mutually exclusive of transpersonal psychology, thesetwo views reflect differing poles in the community of Gestalt theorists. Fritz Perls was known to be anti religious, anddistanced himself even from Zen, saying “all religions were man made crudities.” Jeffrey John Kripal 2007Claudio Naranjo puts this into perspective:'That Gestalt therapy is commonly regarded as humanistic rather than transpersonal is a reflection of this lack ofconceptual precision, though a most understandable one if we consider that the spirituality of Gestalt therapy is, in asense, disguised. With this "in a sense" I refer to Perls' rejection of ordinary religiosity. C. Naranjo 1978Fritz became disillusioned with Zen. ‘One of Fritz’s most often quoted blurbs involves his memories of visiting Zenmonasteries in Japan. “This kind of meditation,” Fritz insisted, was “a form of constipation. It’s like sitting on the pot:one just sits there, neither shitting, nor getting off.” ’ Jeffrey John Kripal 2007He then took refuge again in existentialism, an early secular influence on Gestalt Therapy. In spite of this, Fritz hadintegrated a number of essential Zen Buddhist ideas and practices into Gestalt. Zen influence was joined by Taoist:“Fritz’s religion of no religion… also strongly resembled a kind of psychologised Taoism.” Jeffrey John Kripal 2007Some Zen parallels with Gestalt are, a confidence in the practice of being in the present as a healing agent, the Ahamoment and mini Satories as significant stages of growth, and the primacy of Awareness as our real nature. Perlsstated: “Awareness in and of itself can be curative.” Jeffrey John Kripal 2007

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ESALEN After setting up court at Esalen in 1964, Fritz attracted a large entourage. Among them were two men who he laterregarded as his heirs, Dick Price, and Claudio Naranjo. Price was at Esalen before Perls and‘Although initially suspicious of Perls when he arrived, Price decide to enter therapy with him, found the experiencehelpful, and soon embraced Gestalt as one of his main spiritual practices, along with Buddhist meditation and..psychadelics.’Jeffrey John Kripal 2007Price inherited Fritz’s mantle as leader of the West Coast Gestalt movement at Esalen when Fritz passed on and broughta gentler way to it.‘Those who knew Price best,..have all commented extensively on the incredible “space” or broad “field” that he seemedto inhabit while he worked with people. Price accessed a spiritual dimension of consciousness that was grounded in theexperience of the basic interconnectedness of all existence.’Jeffrey John Kripal 2007This reflects aspects of the Presence of awareness that I have as an ideal, openness, spaciousness, non-duality andinterconnectedness. Price used the phrase “Gestalt Practice”.

THE FERTILE VOID But there were spiritual influences before Fritz encountered Zen. Perls was inspired by the concept of creativeindifference, of an early 20th century German philosopher called Sigmund Friedlander. Perls integrated into Gestalt theconcept of the zero point, or centre of opposites, a psychological stance in which an individual is poised at rest in thespace between opposites of action. Perls said: “Zero is naught, is nothing. A point of indifference, a point from whereopposites are born. If you are caught by one of the opposing forces you are trapped. If you stay in the zero center, youare balanced and in perspective.” Eventually Perls recognised that this was “the Western equivalent of the teaching ofLao Tse,” that is, that it was a philosophical form of Taoism. ’ Jeffrey John Kripal 2007I see creative indifference as akin to Wu-wei, the Taoist concept/practice of non-doing, a view that others hold. Wu isthe Chinese word for empty or non and wei is action. Wu also means enlightenment, so the fertile void and the Aha! areidentical. But how can that be? If you accept the essence of awareness to be the fertile void, then it makes sense. Aha!‘The crux of the matter is what Zinker calls the “Presence” of the therapist. His view is that a therapist must be presentas a witness to the system, a concerned “being with”, rather than a “doing to”. His view, while almost spiritual in it’simplications, to our minds points to the Taoist concept of “wu-wei” or non-action. That is, the aim of the therapist’spresence is to evoke rather than to provoke in the old Perlsian style of Gestalt therapy’Karin Jordan 2008Creative indifference comes from the experience of the fertile void. A synonym for the fertile void is openness. "Thecultivation of here-and-now awareness in Gestalt therapy goes hand in hand with another issue underlined by traditionalpsychologies, Buddhism in particular. Let us call it openness: to be aware of what is given here and now in ourexperiential field. This involves a basic gesture of allowing – an indiscriminate acceptance of experience, which may besaid to involve in turn a relinquishment of standards and expectations. Inasmuch as openness cuts across mentalcontent, it lies, again, in the transpersonal realm. It is expressed in Gestalt therapy in a number of ways, other than theinjunction of being aware without self-manipulation.Naranjo sees three ways of expressing openness in Gestalt therapy: being aware without self-manipulation, beingcreatively indifferent, and accepting nothingness."Preface to Gestalt as a transpersonal approach C. Naranjo 1978I have learnt that awareness has primacy in Gestalt. Naranjo here expresses in a nutshell the importance of awarenessin it’s therapeutic context: “Precisely because the manipulative and inauthentic behavior characteristic of the neuroticmodes of being-in-the-world involve an attempt to avoid certain experiences, the attitude of the therapist is to invite anundoing of such avoidances, a "staying with it," however painful or confusing. In Perls' view, our awareness isconstricted because we have not accepted our suffering…”“Therefore, Gestalt therapy’s approach of focusing on the relational, intersubjective aspects of experience (the personal)makes human connection and relationship the basis for an embodied type of spiritual experience (beyond thepersonal).”Wolfert (2000)Naranjo describes the Gestalt principles of refraining from preconceptions, and openness of the self to what emerges, asrooted in and parallel to Taoist traditions. Through this attitude of openness, a flexibility is present that allows forcreativity and sacred experience to emerge. "This practice of open attention within Gestalt therapy is similar to manyforms of meditation."(Naranjo, 1970)."A Gestalt approach also challenges us to sit in openness with feelings of not knowing, lack of meaning, or emptiness.These feelings are often associated with the feeling of “a void.” Sitting in “a void” is a familiar aspect of Taoist and ZenBuddhist traditions"


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(Van Dusen, 1977).'This is often called a “fertile void” by Perls or place of “creative indifference” by Friedlaender in Gestalt psychology.'(Frambach, 2003).It is the center from which all phenomena arise. Wolfert (2000) tells us that it is through dwelling in the fertile void thatwe can have deeper contact and allow spiritual experience to enter."This fertile emptiness also has been compared to the psychological openness of grace in Christianity "(Van Dusen,1977).”Lynn Williams 2006Ruth Wolfert shows how the fertile void can be used in the stages of contact as a therapist explores a clients figureswith them. As each figure is investigated, it can dissolve into a deeper figure and so on until therapist and client aresitting in the fertile void, with possibilities for growth. ”Gestalt therapy has these spiritual underpinnings in its organizingprinciple of the process of contact. The stages of contact can be considered as a description of transcending ordinaryreality and entering into an experience of unity (Wolfert, 1989). In the contact continuum, we move in a series ofshifting figures and grounds to final-contact (PHG, pp. 179-207” R. Wolfert 2001I have not had much experience of this, but once I was in a clinic session and working with a client who was a Gestaltstudent, and quite mature and aware. At the beginning of our session I was a mixture of excitement and nervousness. Ihad rushed from 30 kilometers away through traffic to be at the clinic on time. After a moment of her taking care of mebecause of my nervousness, we settled into our session. I calmed myself by acknowledging how I felt and allowing myfeelings with an open attention. I felt very present. We quickly became attuned. She had something figural she wantedto work on. She had a block to doing an essay. There was quite a bit of similarity to my experience so I felt I had tocome clean a little and admit that I too had the same difficulty. I allowed her to bring what she wanted to the sessionand discuss it, but after we explored her experience in this matter a bit, I invited her to participate in an experiment.She talked about the block as an entity that was external to herself, as if it was alive and in opposition to her movingforward with her essay. She used the phrase “constricted awareness” which was a cue for me that she would be open toan awareness based experiment. I proposed to her we put the entity out on a chair beside her and then, in a departurefrom traditional Gestalt chair work, I suggested that we imagine that her and I and the entity were present togethersitting, surrounded by space. We developed this imaginary situation for a few minutes. I asked what it’s qualities were,like colour and so on. She described it as smoky, hazy, dark, frenetic. After a while I invited her to report on her senseof the entity. She said it had transformed. She said it was gradually losing it’s power. I did not make the suggestion thatshe would now be able to do her essay with no problems, but left an open space for her organismic wisdom to comeforth. I shared with her though, that when I had blocks to doing this kind of work, when my interest was aroused itdrew me into the work, and through to completion. We had a sense of meeting which felt very much like I-thou. I feltthat our eyes met in a gaze of mutual acceptance and respect. At one point, dialogue stalled and I left her in silence forabout 30 seconds. At the end of the session I asked her for feedback, and she said the one thing she had difficulty withwas that awkward moment of silence. This was useful to me as it made me aware of the potential for rupture with aclient who was not ready for a silent void. Though she handled it well, a client with less self-support may have gone intoregression or into their trauma. The experiment seemed to bear fruit for her. What I had tried to do was to bring aspacious, open awareness to her experience of the block and allow that to transform it. My intuition was that, partlybecause of her presence and also her reference to a “restricted awareness”, she would be open to the experiment, andshe was.

I-THOU Another profound influence on the formation of Gestalt Therapy was the thought of Martin Buber, a German Jewishphilosopher and mystic. The notions of I-thou, dialogue, realisation and inclusion were integrated into the foundations ofGestalt early on, probably by Lora Perls, Fritz’s partner and co-author of Ego, Hunger and Aggression.“Inclusion, according to Buber, means the ability to develop a dual sensation among those engaged in dialogue:experiencing oneself and simultaneously perceiving the ‘other’ in its singularity. The inclusion of a person causes one to‘know’ one’s fellow human being both physically and spiritually, in the Biblical sense of ‘knowing’ a lover. Buberillustrates this two-fold sensation of inclusion with an erotic metaphor: a man who caresses a woman who lets herselfbe caressed, unexpectedly senses the contact from both sides—through the palm of his hand, and through the woman’sskin. This two-fold event occurring between two human beings is the actualization of love, which is the expression ofresponsibility of the I for the Thou.”Kalman Yaron 1993 This I-Thou stance is not unique but makes relations with the ‘other’, predominately our fellow humans, the prime focusof his philosophy.The experience of dialogue and I-Thou is similar to Zen Dokusan, where teacher and student meet intimately and kniteyebrows in realisation. And of course the notion of the fertile void is classic Zen teaching. For Buber, the absoluteI-Thou, is God, but all else is between humans. “There is no self without other(humans)”. This differs, on the surface,with most eastern though which could be said as, There is no separate self, of individual and environment. In thisenvironment, human relations are implied, but as part of the totality of experience. From my predominately eastern


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perspective, I do not see such a distinction between the eastern understanding of self and a view of the self likeBuber’s. The above quote with the metaphor of lovers reminds me of one of Nisargadatta’s:“I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the verything I look at, and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I becomethe inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering otherfocal points of consciousness, love; you may give it any name you like.”Nisargadatta 1982But Buber was a theist and Zionist, and the absolute Thou, was for him the God of the old testament. Regardless of thedifferences between Buber’s I-Thou and eastern thought, I-Thou is definitely a transpersonal point of view, and showsone of Gestalt’s original “transpersonal in the interpersonal” influences. “..if the morality of Gestalt therapy is one of authenticity and nonmanipulation (of self or other), it’s awareness trainingmay be summed up in the statement that J.S. Slmkin proposed as a capsule definition of the approach: "I and thou,here and now." In other words, it is a practice of awareness in relationship…" C. Naranjo 1978

AWARENESS Perl’s spiritual outlook is shown by the central place he gave to awareness. Some would disagree with this, and onthe surface, awareness may not seem to have anything to do with spirituality.But,“The fact, however, is that awareness is transpersonal. Or, to use the earlier term, spiritual. The most articulatespiritual traditions make this very clear. Buddhahood (from the root bodh,"awake") is not a particular state or content ofthe mind, but mind as such, the container.” C. Naranjo 1978

And from Perls:‘..Fritz could get even more metaphysical. In his autobiography.. he is quite clear that “everything is awareness,” andthat even matter and molecules have some quantum of consciousness.’Jeffrey John Kripal 2007I too place awareness at the centre of my world view, though the word awareness has many connotations for me thatwould be unknown to, or not shared by all. I see Gestalt as the practice of interpersonal presence. Presence issynonymous with awareness for me, and that is one of the connotations of awareness that I have, that in essence, it ispure presence, and the practice of this presence as a therapist, I believe, is both therapeutic and spiritual. This presenceis I-thou in the fullest sense. When he says “everything is awareness”, to me Fritz implies awareness as ground ofbeing, and the ground of all phenomena. The subject-object split dissolves in pure presence. This is also known asnon-dual awareness. I have learnt that awareness has a primacy in the Gestalt understanding of dis-ease and it’streatment. Naranjo here expresses in a nutshell the importance of awareness in it’s therapeutic context: “Preciselybecause the manipulative and inauthentic behavior characteristic of the neurotic modes of being-in-the-world involve anattempt to avoid certain experiences, the attitude of the therapist is to invite an undoing of such avoidances, a "stayingwith it," however painful or confusing. In Perls' view, our awareness is constricted because we have not accepted oursuffering…” C. Naranjo 1978

THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHYThis brings me to another point about the transpersonal nature of Gestalt Therapy. Buber and Christian philosophersinfluenced by him were and are wary of non-duality, but Jesus, when asked “Who are you?” by Salome, answered: “Iam he who exists from the undivided”, a perfect expression of non-duality. St Thomas c70Modern researcher Andrew newburg equates “absolute unitary being” with God. Newburg 2001.Christian mystics called this experience, the Unio Mystica. So although some orthodox Catholic Christians don’t like thenotion of non-duality, perhaps because they fear it replaces God, Jesus’ Gnostic Christian teachings have a strikingresemblance to eastern non-dual teachings.Ruth Wolfert believes that ‘Gestalt has central elements of the “perennial philosophy,” Huxley’s term for the commonground of all spiritual philosophies… All these traditions are based on transcendence and unity. At certain moments, thetime-and-space of ordinary reality is transcended and the unity of the spiritual ground emerges. Gestalt therapy hasthese spiritual underpinnings in its organizing principle of the process of contact. The stages of contact can beconsidered as a description of transcending ordinary reality and entering into an experience of unity. In the contactcontinuum, we move in a series of shifting figures and grounds to final-contact (PHG, pp. 179-207). From thedeliberateness of the ego functions' identifications and alienations in contacting, we move with, "a sense of readiness...to final-contact where there is a relaxation of conscious considering, the dissolving of boundaries, and a unity of figureand ground in which splits of mind, body and external world are healed; and in the aftermath, growth occurs” (PHG, pp.5, 17-18, 193-97) (Wolfert, 1989).’The perennial philosophy is another term for non-dual awareness.


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PRESENCEAn aspect of the Presence of awareness is it’s void essence, like space, it is empty, and like space, is all pervading. ThisPresence is known as“unconditional Presence” by John Welwood 1996“Raw Presence” by Jim Valby 2007“Instant Presence” by Chogyal Namkhai Norbu 2009Chogyal Namkhai Norbu says that the essence of Instant Presence is infinite potentiality, a similar expressing to thefertile void. This presence of awareness does not have the same meaning as presence does in Gestalt. It does howeverencompass the Gestalt meaning.Gary Yontev describes Gestalts understanding of presence thus: "Presence. The Gestalt therapist expresses herself tothe patient. Regularly, judiciously, and with discrimination she expresses observations, preferences, feelings, personalexperience and thoughts. Thus, the therapist shares her perspective by modeling phenomenological reporting, whichaids the patient's learning about trust and use of immediate experience to raise awareness. If the therapist relies ontheory-derived interpretation, rather than personal presence, she leads the patient into relying on phenomena not in hisown immediate experience as the tool for raising awareness. In Gestalt therapy the therapist does not use presence tomanipulate the patient to conform to preestablished goals, but rather encourages patients to regulate themselvesautonomously." G. Yontev 1989Buddhist presence is the ground of being or greater field which encompasses all phenomena. It is empty in essence butit’s nature is radiant awareness and phenomena spontaneously arise within this field as it’s energy. This is meant asboth the true nature of the individual and the all pervading nature of everything. So being in a state of pure presence isbeing in tune with the Buddha nature. From this space, a therapist has all the qualities needed for an I-Thou meetingwith the other person. John Welwood speaks of an esoteric practice of self-liberation from the Dzogchen tradition andhow it can enhance therapy. “In pure presence, awareness is self illuminating, or aware of itself without objectification.Psychotherapy a dialogic process is essentially reflective, although when practiced by a therapist with a contemplativebackground, it can also include moments of nonreflective presence that facilitate a shift into a deeper dimension ofbeing.” J. Welwood 2000I see Gestalt as the practice of interpersonal presence. Presence is synonymous with awareness for me, and that is oneof the connotations of awareness that I have, that in essence, it is pure presence, and the practice of this presence as atherapist, I believe, is both therapeutic and spiritual. This presence is I-thou in the fullest sense. When he says“everything is awareness”, to me Fritz implies awareness as ground of being, and the ground of all phenomena. Thesubject-object split dissolves in pure presence. Presence is also known as non-dual awareness.

What this can look like in practice is, with the therapist’s presence, the figure in the client’s experience is exploredtogether respectfully. The client feels met and understood, their experience validated and accepted. The figure and it’scontext, it’s ground are illuminated and the client may be able to make meaning of their situation. To give an examplefrom my limited experience as therapist, I was being therapist for a young woman who had never done therapy before.She bravely volunteered to be a client at our training clinic. She presented as a cheerful and charming and attractiveyoung lady, who had quite a high degree of self honesty. She had come along on the invitation of a friend who is astudent at SGI. After greeting each other, I enquired if there was anything she wanted to work on in our session. Shesaid she had difficulty in social situations because she felt she did not have anything worthwhile to talk about. I invitedher to explore where that statement might have come from. I was more present than I ordinarily am as I had meditatedthat morning and had just done a session as therapist, which honed my presence. My attitude was one of acceptanceand responsiveness to the client. I was listening attentively but responding in an intuitive manner, not premeditated butyet drawing on all my experience of 4 years of training and so on. I think this helped allow her to come forth openly andto quickly come to the figure which for her was a sense of pain that was in large part grounded in the rejection andabandonment of her partner of 8 years, one year ago. She seemed to have doubts as to whether she would meetanyone soon for a new relationship. As we explored where the critical voice might have come from that told her she hadnothing worthwhile to say, she realized straight away it was her ex who said things like, her job as a childcare workermeant she had nothing interesting to say. He had been constantly critical of her. She had not been able to withstand thisand had been swallowing his critical words whole for years. I told her how I was feeling about what she was telling me.Now I realize I was intuitively practicing inclusion. I said I was angry. At first she didn’t understand where I was comingfrom. Then I told her I felt angry at her ex for the way he had spoken to her. She began crying. She had not realizedthat the way she had been treated was unacceptable to others. The figure of her self perception as having nothingworthwhile to bring to conversations had a context of many years of low level emotional abuse. This was the groundwhich through our exploration she was able to connect with her perception of unworthiness. She was able to questionher own belief and change her perception. No doubt it was only planting the seed, but I feel sure she would have begunto change her sense of herself about this mater and more generally. I enquired about her occupation as a childcareworker and she told me how much joy it gave her. As another example of inclusion I shared with her my work withpeople with disabilities and how much I enjoyed it. I told her I really enjoy the presence of children and how much Ivalued what she does, how important it is to their development to have adult carers who delight in, and value them. Oureyes met and we held a gaze for what seemed quite a while. That she was able to look straight back and hold her gaze


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meant to me that she trusted me and felt accepted beyond what she was used to. She confirmed this saying she feltunderstood for the first time in a long time. My trainer was right there in the room but my attention was almostexclusively on the client. Time seemed to stand still and our contact seemed beyond the ordinary. We could haveexplored further back to see if her introjects had an earlier history but she did not seem to want to go in a directionother than where we were and I continued to practice respecting what she was presenting to me and what she wantedto explore. It felt very much like I-Thou, my strongest sense of this in my training as a therapist. It felt like a very realand ordinary exchange and at the same time, to have a transcendent quality. The client reported very positively abouther first experience of therapy in feedback afterwards. I did not handle the session perfectly, but it seemed a verypowerful yet very human experience for both of us.

EAST & WEST SIMILARITIES The Gestalt Therapy of the Perls’ gained its name from the German Gestalt Psychology movement, a largelymaterialistic, scientific movement interested in the psychology of perception. The Buddha examined his experience anddeduced the structure of the mind as originating with sensation(contact of senses with the sense objects), leading toperception, leading to mental formations, leading to desire and suffering. My point is, the Buddha was primarilyconcerned with mental suffering and it’s causes and examined the psyche phenomenologically from first principlesstarting with sensation. This is what the Gestalt Psychologists were trying to do. The Buddha used the instrument ofmeditation for his experimentation. So even the empirical experiments of Gestalt Psychology have something incommon with eastern thought. The field theory of Lewin which greatly influenced Fritz & Lora Perls has much in commonwith eastern thought. The interconnectedness of all phenomena is an aspect of both Gestalt Field theory and manyeastern traditions. In Zen, an individual’s(great) body is not bound by the skin, but radiates with his awareness toembrace all possible phenomena, in all directions. Gestalt calls this the phenomenological field.

CONCLUSION16 years ago I managed to break free of the bonds of active addiction to substances. Some years ago I acquired theaspiration to work with addicts in recovery to share what I had learned in transcending the damage of addiction, and theconditioning that had led me into addiction. I sought a path to follow this and looked at Alcohol and other Drug studies,Counseling and Hakomi. What drew me to Gestalt was it’s closeness to Zen and other spiritual traditions and it’s fieldtheory, it’s values of living in the present with awareness. It held much excitement for me as a path to continue myspiritual practice and benefit others. I look forward to practicing Gestalt in a way that helps others to awaken, as I amalso awakening with them.

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