by
Elena R. Kaliteyevskaya, Ph.D.
Elena Kaliteyevskaya is a clinical psychologist [Ph.D. 1986] and Gestalt therapist. She was certified by the Fritz Perls Institute for Gestalt therapy, Hamburg, Germany, in 1994. She completed the advanced program in theory, practice, and teaching of Gestalt therapy through the Institut Francais de Gestalt Therapie in 1996. Dr. Kaliteyevskaya is also a teacher of long-term education programs at the Moscow Gestalt Institute.
Abstract
The technique of paradoxical sociometry (PSM) elaborated by the author is based on work with polarities in a concrete group dynamic context and addresses two levels of therapeutic process: field level and system level. PSM is used in the situations where the hardened personality function of separate participants and the group as a whole lead to the decrease of energy in the group combined with the avoidance of clearing up intragroup relationships, emergence of manifold projections, and thrusting roles. PSM allows members to clear out the "figure" of the group as a whole and to release the energy bound with it. PSM is directed at shaking and splitting rigid self concepts, experienced in terms of roles and determined by external evaluations, and at the reintegration of self on the basis of members' autonomous ego that creates in the group a new value foundation for the dialogue "I-Thou".
Key words: group, polarities, Gestalt therapy, field, system, paradoxical sociometry
The technique of paradoxical sociometry (PSM) is based on work with polarities in a group dynamic context. PSM has been elaborated in 1986 in the context of therapy with adolescents and approved on the model of long-termed psychotherapeutic groups with neurotic patients. It was also actively used in therapeutic groups with students learning gestalt-therapy, included into the course "Theory and practice of gestalt-therapy: integrative approach".
PSM involves two levels of therapeutic process: field level (contact) and system level (interaction).
An indication for using PSM is the decrease of energy in the group together with the avoidance of clearing up the relationships in the group that entail plenty of projections and mutual thrusting of the "roles".
Procedure: All the participants are asked to choose, on the one hand, the most and, on the other, the least sympathetic members for them of the group. The choices are registered in the form of a sociogram with red and black arrows corresponding to members' choices. After this, the therapist asks every group member to say to the person "rejected" by him/her something that arises in sympathy to this person and, correspondingly, to say to the "elected" person something disliked in him/her. While saying this, a group member has at the same time to articulate and emphasize the sign (color) of the arrow symbolizing the choice at the sociogram, and to repeat both parts of the utterance several (5-7) times, thus explicating the polarization of the attitude.
For example: "I like that you are always tastefully dressed. I draw a BlACK arrow to you." Or: "I feel irritated that you behave as if everything were permitted to you. I draw a RED arrow to you." Of principal importance is the participants' awareness of their own feelings, both in the position of the evaluator and of the evaluated. After this procedure, the participants are asked to share their feelings.
With regard to process analysis and phenomenology, and with respect to the group as a whole, PSM as a projective technique allows for revealing of the cause of group resistance and the clearing out of the "figure" of the group as a hidden theme (group Id), the energy of which is absorbed and bound by the group personality function (for instance, it may be not done in the group to speak about competition or to display sexuality).
PSM also helps to find the aspects of "nonexistence" of both separate group members and some aspects of life of the group as a whole.
A feeling of artificiality, that sometimes comes after the therapist's paradoxical proposal, usually goes away after the beginning of the work. Different types of reaction to PSM are possible, but a substantial number of participants speak of an excitement mixed with confusion, embarrassment, or discovery. The technique allows to feel sharply that any "mirror" reflects primarily itself, revealing thus the projective nature of any external estimations.
We are, thus, facing parallel processes. First, there is the shift of the emphasis from the person being evaluated to the individual who is evaluating, and the evaluators are often the first who notice this ("This is not about you; this is about myself - about something happening to me here in the group." ... "I feel like a stranger here, unaccepted, and I withdraw, I am aware of this" ... "It is very important for me to feel attractive here as a woman, I am angry when others are noticed, not me. ") Second, in the process of polarity explication, the evaluated ones often start to feel more and more clearly that none of the poles have to do with them, that they are "not about me". Very important at this moment are the feelings associated with eventual unclaimedness, an experience of void and loss of one's usual support (evaluation). "But who am I?" Here, individual sessions may be started in order to wake up, first of all, the authenticity of those participants who became the objects of many projections. Their partners, the authors of the projections, actively join this work; all the group context of the situation is also used.
Hypertrophy of the role of feedback mechanisms, presumably connected with the high importance of external evaluations in the course of upbringing, may lead to achievement and maintenance of positive self-esteem, which becomes the main goal. This causes the isolation of personality function from other functions of the self, the distortion of relationships with reality and homeostatic fixation at oneself. PSM is aimed at shaking rigid self concepts experienced in terms of roles, at the disocciation of the self concept determined by external evaluations, and at the reintegration of the self on the basis of the autonomous ego. The group appears as therapeutic environment modelling the reality but able to present an alternative, another history, another drama and the possibility of new experience.
The described process of positive disintegration helps to transform the experience of "Me as the object of evaluations of A, B, C" to the experience "A is A, B is B, C is C, and I am I!" Group members thus acquire the view of human being, including oneself, as a unique self-valuable individuality rather than an object or a source of evaluations. A new value foundation for the group's life emerges, where the dialogue "I-Thou" becomes possible.
