Winter 1998
(ISSN 1091-1766)
Introduction
Home

You Can't Do That Anymore: Editorial by Len Bergantino & Philip Brownell | Stories About Knowing: A View from Family Therapy | Deconstructing Individualism: An Interview with Gordon Wheeler | Renewing Our Roots in Neuropsychology: A Gestalt Perspective on the Work of Joseph LeDoux | Dialogue and Paradox: In Training with Lynne Jacobs, the "Dialogue-Maven"

Title: A Well-Lived Life

• Author/Editor: Sylvia Fleming Crocker
• www.crockergestalt.com
  
• Pages: 400pp.
• Price: $32.50
• Pub. date: 1999pbk.
• ISBN: 0-88163-319-4
• Series: Gestalt Institute of Cleveland

As a Gestalt therapist I found David Pocock's article interesting in a number of ways. Because of Gestalt therapy's grounding in phenomenology, Gestalt psychology, and Kantian philosophy, most Gestalt therapists operate within an epistemological framework which holds that all knowing is phenomenological construction, and therefore that all interpretations should be viewed with humility and held with a willingness to revise and correct them in the light of ongoing experience. Paul Goodman, Gestalt therapy's greatest theorist, said that Aristotle, Kant and phenomenology had the greatest influence on his thinking; this influence profoundly affected the subsequent development of Gestalt as a therapeutic approach.

What is usually not realized by many contemporary thinkers is that all forms of constructivism are grounded in 18th century Kantian philosophy. Kant argued that we can know only the thoughts and percepts which we ourselves construct: while we live within the context of a reality which transcends our ability to know it as it is in itself, we can know directly ONLY those appearances of it which we construct. Even though we can never escape from our human ways of knowing, we feel compelled to hypothesize the existence of the "external world" for several important reasons: The world of our experience intrudes on us, often against our will; and it resists our attempts to bend it to our desires--"wishing will not make it so." Moreover, we need the hypothesis of the world which exists independently of our knowing in order to explain the fact that we share a world with other people, with whom we can communicate and with whom we can act cooperatively. We have discovered ways to compare our experiences linguistically and practically in ways which allow us to discriminate common or "public" facts from purely "private" ones. Included in these "public" facts are forms of orderliness upon which it is possible to find agreement through, for example, the scientific method.

Because Gestalt therapy assumes the existence of a shared world or experience, and because it is a field-theoretical approach, Gestalt therapists believe it is important to explore the ground out of which any given symptom has emerged. Part of this ground is the beliefs which the members of the system have constructed. But another part of the ground is the dynamic patterns of interaction among the members of that system, of which the members are often relatively unaware, and which in some significant measure transcends language. Because the family therapist comes into the system without the same history, and armed with a set of theoretical lenses which guide his observations and interventions, the circularity of the system's dysfunctional patterns can be interrupted and processes of change can be introduced. The fact that a therapist is guided by theory hardly indicates a kind of authoritarianism, as I shall show presently.

I was struck by Pocock's example of the constructivist family therapist who regarded the anorexia of a child as only a matter of linguistic constructs by the family; and by Pocock's comment in footnote # 4: "Although it may be argued, that a therapist who brings an assumption to a clinical encounter that anorexia is a problem in language only is, from a postmodern point of view, acting very powerfully indeed." It would be interesting to know what "acting very powerfully indeed" might mean in this context. It can hardly be denied that if a case of anorexia is untreated, the child may well die and thus disappear forever from the family's experience. That death and disappearance would surely transcend linguistic constructions, and no amount of linguistic gynmastics would bring the child back. Pocock's comment seems weak and overly diplomatic to me; I would think some expression of outraged incredulity would have been more appropriate to such a position. Anorexia should, in my opinion, be seen as having an enormously important relationship to the external world: children do not starve to death because of linguistic constructs. A therapist who regarded all family phenomena as merely matters of language and opinion would, I believe, be both ineffective and sometimes dangerously irresponsible.

It cannot be denied that belief systems are important. Gestalt therapists typically take seriously the belief systems clients have constructed, and through the use of the phenomenological method encourage clients to reveal to the therapist how they see themselves and what the meanings are of the situations in which they live. This method has the therapist reconstructing in her own mind what the client reveals to her, and repeatedly checking out her perceptions and interpretations with the client in order to be as certain as possible that her constructs closely reflect the client's experience. It is part of the Gestalt approach to join the client by coming to as accurate a grasp as is possible of what the client's experience of his world is and the meaning he gives it. From the very beginning of this approach Gestalt therapists have not only been open to the client's revelations, they have also used themselves as instruments in order to come closer, through observation of the therapist's own response to the client, to understanding what is happening with the client. Through the use of empathic reception of the client's revelation and self-observation the Gestalt therapist is able to form working hypotheses about the client, and to devise appropriate experimental interventions. These may include reports by the therapist of her experience of the client as he tells his story. Pocock's report of revealing to the client family his personal feeling of depression at one point in the family's narrative, reminded me of this. And while it seemed unusual to Pocock, I thought about how familiar such experiences are to Gestalt therapists.

On the other hand, the willingness to join the client in this way is held in tension with a set of theoretical understandings about what kinds of dynamic patterns of behavior and interaction are functional and which ones are dysfunctional. People who discuss theory often overlook the fact that knowing is always and invariably discriminating: it is the very nature of both observation and reflection that we pay more attention to some things than we do to others; this is because we see some facts as more important and significant, or as having greater weight than others in a given situation. Human knowing is radically different from indiscriminate and unorganized registering of any and all possible sensory stimuli or random thoughts; indeed, the two have nothing in common. I like to quote Socrates in this context, who asserted that "Unless we know where we are going, we will not know whether we are moving toward or away from the goal." ALL therapists operate with--at the very least--an implicit model of what is healthier and more desirable than other possibilities; otherwise they would have no reason to notice or to address one fact or combination of facts rather than others. It might be contended that the client family gives the therapist information about what, on the basis of their own story, they consider to be a problem. But this does not resolve the theoretical issue, since no responsible family therapist would work with a family to make a curious and intelligent child more docile, or to make a child more receptive to either physical or verbal attacks by the parents. It is simply not possible for anyone to do any practical thing without bringing to the task some ideas about what is to be done and what is to be avoided--even if we desperately desire to come to it without any preconceptions. The important thing, in my opinion, is to hold every theory with humility and a willingness to hold it up to frequent re- evaluation in the light of new experiences.

The most effective way which has been found to deal with those problems of knowing which arise from the egocentric predicament is to apply pragmatic criteria to all theories and methods. In science, the questions put to any proposed model are "does it help us to make sense of all of the facts?", "is it internally consistent?", and "does it provide fruitful predictions and clues for proceding further?" It is true that, since we can never compare our thoughts with an independent reality, we must construct models to help us understand the facts of experience; description without organizing models can never yield understanding. Yet it is also true that not all models of the world are equally valid when we apply these criteria to them. Criteria for evaluating clinical theories and methods are similar. These must help us to understand both human health and dysfunction, and they must shed some light on the range of conditions under which each is produced. Finally, the important question to ask of any therapeutic approach is, "Does it work? Do the people who seek your help feel helped by what you do with them?" Because we cannot NOT be guided in our endeavors by constructed models which are intended to help us understand what we are dealing with and to proceed fruitfully, it is foolish to dismiss as "authoritarian" any therapist who operates with a fully explicit understanding of problem areas in human systems, and what goals are to be aimed in therapy. The only person to whom the label "authoritarian" could be legitimately applied is someone who steadfastly insists that his theory is somehow immutably written in the ways of the universe, and that he is right no matter what his practical results might be. But to reject naive authoritarianism does not lend legitimacy to linguistic relativism--not all statements hold up in the light of shared experience. Language is not itself an independent reality--indeed, language gains its legitimacy only because it is somehow grounded in experience which can be shared with others.

Return to Pocock