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

Thankfully, it has not taken another twenty years for the next significant contribution to emerge. In 1999 Sylvia Fleming Crocker published her book, A Well-Lived Life, Essays in Gestalt Therapy. It is a systematic, philosophical treatise on Gestalt therapy, which anchors Gestalt theory in western philosophical tradition, providing balance to the eastern influences so common among Gestalt therapists. It makes more explicit the somewhat enigmatic statements of Paul Goodman. It straightens out some of the curly thinking in which therapists sometimes endulge themselves. It provides a comprehensive framework for the assimilation of other clinical orientations. It offers an exciting view of human nature and the experience of living, weaving narrative and cogent argument, case study and theoretical exegesis.

Although this book is a necessary addition for Gestalt therapists, it is not a beginning text. Crocker's writing style is both luxurious and demanding. As such, it's a miserable pleasure to read! She has collected a series of essays, each of which can stand alone as well as be read sequentially. The problem is that her thought is deep and insightful, which causes one to reflect. It is not a quick read. Indeed, as Judith and George Brown state at the beginning of their introduction, "To read this book is to be in touch with - and touched by - an original thinker, a serious scholar who has made an exhaustive study of philosophy, psychology and the theory and practice of Gestalt therapy."

A Well-Lived Life is divided into four main parts. Part one, an approach to human change, contains the first three essays. Essay one treats "the unity of theory and method in Gestalt theory." Essay two considers the "process of contact - a dynamic model of the self." Essay three looks at "functional and dysfunctional processes of contact." Part two, the philosophical ground, contains the next three essays. Essay four considers "opposing paradigms (Aristotelian vs. Platonic) in Gestalt therapy and Psychoanalysis." Essay five examines "foundations of the concept of the self." Essay six argues, "all there is, is now - A Gestalt theory of human nature." Part three, human maturity and fulfillment, contains the next three essays. Essay seven presents the namesake of the book, "A Well-Lived Life - a Gestalt Perspective." Essay eight talks about "meetings of persons - reflections on authentic relationships." Essay nine presents "the spiritual dimension of Gestalt therapy." In part four, Crocker sums up with essay ten, "the strengths of Gestalt therapy as a new paradigm," and she concludes with a personal epilogue, which describes how she came to write the book in the first place.

Considering the specific contributions of Crocker's work, several accomplishments in her book decidedly outweigh a few minor disappointments. Foremost, as has been stated, Sylvia Crocker provides the philosophical antecedents to Gestalt theory. She contrasts Aristotle and Plato, but she is also at home with Kant, Kierkegarrd, Heidegger, and Sartre. She clarifies the Aristotelian convictions of Paul Goodman, providing an explanation of his thought as stated in Perls, Hefferline and Goodman. She also constructs a cogent contrast between the presuppositions of psychoanalysis and those of Gestalt therapy, providing renewed support for the experiment as a major distinctive of Gestalt therapy, just at a time when many had forgotten it in favor of merely talking with clients around issues of dialogue and phenomenology. These contributions far outweigh her brief treatment of Buber's dialogicial relationship, in which she misses the value of I-It interactions, and the poor editing of the book, which was not her responsibility.

A Well-Lived Life is the kind of book that relinquishes deep treasure through patient study. People could benefit from establishing reading groups dedicated to the discussion of Crocker's philosophical understanding and theoretical capacity. Oral storetellers speak of something called "reserve power," which they create by doing thorough background research about the characters and contexts of their narratives, and this is what Sylvia Crocker provides - reserve power regarding one's understanding of the theory and practice of Gestalt therapy.

For those who have known Sylvia Fleming Crocker for years as a member of the Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy's email discussion group, and then as part of the online community of Gstalt-L, this book will come as no surprise. For them it's as if a great gift has come along - everything's been packed into one suitcase, and there's a handle now to take it along when one leaves the flickering light of the the computer monitor. Wonderful!

No global ovservation of A Well-Lived Life could be complete without commenting on the way Sylvia Crocker can write. Frequently, the reader turns a page and runs into exquisite expression. The hilighter becomes a constant companion, because the book is full of quotable statements. For instance, in speaking of the whole-making function of the self, she states:

The human organism systematically assimilates, or somehow accomodates, all of its experiences and integrates all of these into itself in some manner as it constantly reorganizes itself as a whole. How it has reorganized itself at any given time is the structured ground which pervasively effects how the person functions as an action system in the present concrete circumstances of life. (p. 65)

In an expression incorporating several of the previously mentioned contributions, she writes:

Plato's vision looks away from nature to those universals which are imperfectly exemplified there, while Aristotle's vision looks into nature to find the organizing principles which govern its processes. For Plato, knowledge comes primarily from rational thought, while Aristotle's approach to knowledge begins with experience, which is processed by rational thought and is then applied back to experience. Aristotle was not only an empiricist, he was, perhaps, the first field theorist. By this I mean that Aristotle tried to understand the reciprocal influences among concrete individuals in field situations. It is to Aristotle, through the influence of Goodman and the existentialists, that Gestalt therapy owes its holism, its process-orientation, its phenomenological method, the centrality of personal responsiveness and responsibility, and the primacy it gives to the uniqueness of the actually existing individual. (p. 111)

In contrasting Gestalt therapy with psychoanalysis, supporting the value of experiment, she states:

Like Plato, psychoanalysis emphasizes the curative power of knowledge in bringing about healthy change - hence the traditional heavy emphasis upon interpretation of the client's experience by a wise person (i.e., the analyist)...Gestalt therapy asserts that growthful change involves much more than cognition - in agreement with Aristotle's dictum: "Thought alone moves nothing." In contrast to psychoanalysis (and most other psychotherapies), Gestalt therapy is not a talking cure. Rather, it is an approach to human change which emphasizes (1) aware contact with self and others, including persons in the wider field in which the person lives, (2) experimentation, and (3) action. (p. 150)

Last, in speaking of her concept of a well-lived life she writes:

A well-lived life is one which is resolved to remain open to novel possibilities and callings. A life lived in the truth is lived in a tension between letting-be-what-is for this time and in this place, and a resolve to remain open to the dawning of new possibilities. This is a position which is fundamental to the point of view of Gestalt therapy. Growing is a kind of self-transcendence in which a person "crawls over" what he has been because he is constantly grappling with and assimilating the novelty which reveals itself to him as his life goes on. (p. 254)

To completely describe each essay and provide a thorough sysnopsis is beyond the scope of this review. One ought to just get the book itself and read it. One suggestion is to keep it alongside another favorite text and to read them in parallel, for Sylvia Crocker’s statements often interpret the statements of others.

Finally, readers ought to utter a small word of gratitude. It is quite evident that Sylvia Crocker reflects in her writing her own journey in Gestalt therapy, including the influences she's assimilated in Erving and Miriam's Polster's accent on contact. However, she has not pushed off Frtiz Perls's accent on awareness in order to support her own position. To do so would have been to place the reader in the midst of a false dichotomy in which they would have had to choose either the Polsters or Perls. Part of the admirable balance of A Well-Lived Life is that the reader can relaxe and drink long at this nourishing source, taking in a refreshingly balanced treatment that includes rather than excludes.

The book is distributed through the Analytic Press.