By Amely Becker
My first introduction to Gestalt therapy took place when I was invited to work on a dream I had. A friend offered me a sample session and the experience deeply impacted; working in the Gestalt way on this dream left me elated, inspired and with many insights. The discovery that all the parts of the dream can come alive by animating them, making them interact with each other, giving them a voice and letting them talk for themselves and to each other inspired a new understanding of the power of creative imagination; it involved a kind of psychodrama like a play on the stage of my mind. A few years later I was eager to properly study this approach and made it my profession.
Gestalt is a form of psychotherapy developed by Fritz Perls, Laura Perls and Paul Goodman in the 1940s; it is a holistic approach to psychological healing. It views individuals as complex beings, considering their thoughts, emotions, behaviors and physical sensations as interconnected aspects of their experience. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the whole person rather than focusing solely on specific symptoms, honoring that body, feelings and mind are interconnected and working in accordance with each other, either in harmony or disharmony. The aim is to help the mind work in congruence with the emotions and the body, which would produce cognitive complete ‘Gestalts’. The therapy places significant emphasis on the present moment, encouraging individuals to explore their immediate thoughts, feelings and sensations. By focusing on the “here and now” Gestalt therapy aims to enhance self-awareness and promote personal integration of these three fields of existence. It brings about connections with deeper stratums of consciousness and refreshes experience of them spontaneously. This nurtures personal growth, producing greater satisfaction and meaning. Remaining in the present awareness is referred to as ‘following one’s process’. Learning to observe one’s process in the present moment is the way to develop the capacity for awareness. In Gestalt therapy we call this approach phenomenological tracking. An experienced gestaltist can access the experience of his or her process in the awareness of it as being ‘always right’, as it is.
The term ‘Gestalt’ contains the essence of what its methodology represents. Gestalt literally translates from German as ‘whole form’ or ‘complete figure’. Its verb ‘gestalten’ can be translated as ‘to create’ or ‘creating’. Gestalt represents a complete form, it
implies a fully outlined figure or configuration of an object or a lived experience; nothing is missing. In the context of therapy, it refers to the whole or the complete picture of an individual’s experience. Through Gestalt therapy we hope to turn unaware interruptions to the stream of consciousness at the contact boundary of one’s experience into an ongoing awareness process, which allows us to live more consciously present.
I was born in Germany during the post war period and was exposed to heavy handed emotional and mental conditioning. I grew up surrounded by a family which had strong concepts about how life should be lived and the guidelines were set in cement. I felt forced to live by a certain outlook or be considered as unfit for acceptance into the social clan I was part of. I had deadened myself to fit in and did not get the opportunity to connect with my fundamental aliveness; in many ways I killed myself off. I felt the burden of this conditioning to the point that I had to leave my home country behind during my early twenties in order to save myself from an impending mental breakdown. After spending a few years in London, I found Gestalt Therapy. I learnt how life could be released from the chains of preconceived regulations and self judgements and the ground of living could be left open ended, not controlled by heavy pressures of societal and family expectations.
First of all I learnt that I was fundamentally ‘good’. I was not condemned to isolation, even if I did not try to fit in with what was the norm. Already during my Gestalt therapy training I found my self esteem and discovered a creative and dynamic aliveness that was completely revolutionizing my own sense of self value. Away from the rigidity of almost cruel expectations and repression, I learnt to play, to find a voice inside me that served as a much more suitable guidance than some authoritarian stipulation imposed on me.
I was learning how to release the conditioning of the voice of an intense super ego, telling me how to live my life. There was no longer an internalized authority to have to live up to. Instead during therapy I was asked: What do you want? How do you want to live your life? An internal space was revealed to me that for the first time allowed an inner dialogue with myself, regarding and respecting and encouraging me to discover the freedom to find a response and reply to these questions. Looking back I am amazed at how imprisoned and oppressed my mind had been in Germany, not having been given the freedom to develop a relationship with myself, but mostly having to refer to whatever others in authority expected of me. This was a very subtle conditioning, almost imperceptible. When later, I was in London and I claimed the space to feel myself on my own terms, I awoke emotionally and felt mentally liberated.
Initially on this journey towards psychological liberation I found myself replying for a long time: I don’t know. I don’t know what I want, I cannot imagine or perceive of myself on my own terms. That was scary. I had to face an inner landscape that was barren, a desert, full of doubt and intimidation, almost crippled as that desert was crowded with other people’s introjects. I did not know who I was and what I wanted.
Gestalt’s strength was to help to bring me right close to myself by just staying with whatever came up in the process of inquiry. And what became foreground was this empty gaping gap in my psyche, a dark hole hidden for a long time out of sight. Slowly I learnt to hear whisperings telling me something about myself. I learnt to take the encouragement from the Gestalt formula of finding out by holding myself in an aware space that was present and in the moment. It was ok, not to know. It was ok to feel a desolate emptiness that with some attentive nourishing would become a fertile ground for my own truth, needs, wishes and wants to sprout and evolve into an inner, colorful garden of creative potential and inspiration.
I learnt to let go of the notion of a fixed personality, a fixed ‘self’, a fixed gestalt that I had to live up to. I did not have to try to be someone for others, I could just be my own version and was encouraged to spend the time and space to help me grow into myself and learn how to follow my process. I discovered many wounds stemming from neglect, rejection and wholesale dismissal that made me feel that fundamentally that I did not exist. All these wounds needed healing. Facing them required courage and trust. Gestalt methodology was my holding ground and the frame that supported me in this process of learning how to be intimate with myself, instead of alienated.
“Change comes about when you become what you are, not when you try to become what you are not”. (Arnold Beisser 1970) Paradoxical Theory of Change asserts that focusing on finding what one is by nature will correct anything artificial by itself. The more one attempts to be who one is not, the more one remains the same. Conversely, when people identify with their current experience, the conditions of wholeness and growth support change. Change comes about as a result of full acceptance of what is, rather than striving to be different. Perls was known to often say: ‘Don’t push the river!’
As a result of working with Gestalt therapy, I was able to become creative in my approach to life and over many years practiced Gestalt therapy as a profession, helping others to liberate themselves from their self alienation and the defences that they developed. I discovered spontaneity to be the stepping board for experimentation, to use life, certain circumstances, in an experiential way to discover the potential of myself, dissolving stereotypes and becoming flexible in my approach to life. And how amazing it is that becoming my own agent, taking risks, developing, affirming my existence instead of feeling obliged to fit in with others’ expectations affirmed that I am a unique individual, not a stereotype. My own version is just as valuable as anyone else’s and the hierarchy of oppression is obsolete.
Gestalt as an orientation and a form of therapy has helped me develop and apply coping strategies. In reshaping my perceptions of life, it has given me vision, fertilized my imagination. It has woken me up to come alive and supported my becoming courageous and it has nourished trust in my process, affirming my ability to embrace my potential. It has accompanied me for 40 years as a way of life, an orientation, a discipline, and as a profession.
In the world of Samsara, they say what is required is to have a strong and functioning ego so that it is fit to be transcended in the spiritual field. A fractured ego is not a good base to embark on the spiritual path. My ego was certainly fractured, and it needed mending and healing and Gestalt therapy has done that for me. And that has helped me enormously on my journey with Dzogchen, Rinpoche and the Dzogchen Community.
Perls was fond of saying that you “must lose your mind to come to your senses”. Gestalt has taught me how to lose myself without getting lost, as Winnicott would put it.
Amely Becker was born in Germany. She met Chögyal Namkhai Norbu in London in 1979. She began her journey with Gestalt in 1984 and has recently retired from the profession of Gestalt Psychotherapist. Amely lives in Tenerife.
