I-Thou relationships are a special kind of contact, a meeting of two Others. Of course, all living involves contact between an organism and another, or some part of an organism with other parts. In most instances the meeting or contact serves a practical purpose. Most living process, in other words, are goal seeking, by which the organism attempts to solve problems of survival, maintenance and/or growth. The objects or conditions we aim at in these cases point beyond themselves to other goals, thus serving as means to those other ends, which in turn become means to further ends: we eat to stop being hungry and to have energy for other pursuits; we seek a college degree in order to be able to do certain kinds of work, and we desire that for a multitude of other desired goals; and so on. Our relationship to these goals is one of interest and attachment, and we use our capacity for problem solving and acting on their behalf. These are relationships of I-It, where practicality is the leading characteristic.
I-Thou relationships, on the other hand, are different, being essentially "contemplative" rather than practical. Here we meet an Other in such a manner that nothing beyond the meeting is desired or sought: the experience is one of something/someone which/who is seen and felt as an end-in-itself. The experience involves an appreciation of and a respect for the reality of the Other, grasped in its uniqueness and its mysteriousness. Here I am open and willing to receive the self-revelation of the Other as it stands-out-in-the-open-toward-me, showing itself just as-it-is. In this I welcome, and thus encourage, the Other to show me his/its own unique Truth. The experience is not expressible in descriptive language: it is fundamentally ineffable, since it is the experience of the Other in its uniqueness and its unfathomable mysteriousness: the Other is apprehended as a reality which we can never fully to know, predict, or control. The attitude which characterizes the person who experiences I-Thou is one of disinterested--yet caring and curious--fascination.
Through the processes of Gestalt therapy and in the relationship with the therapist, the client reveals his/her own "unique personal Truth." As the client tells his story and interacts with the therapist what begins to emerge is how the client has internally organized the significant experiences of his life and the meaning he has given them. This complex Truth emerges in bits and pieces which client and therapist reconstruct as time goes on. The client talks about important, remembered experiences which have affected him in significant ways; as this goes on over time it becomes clear what is unfinished, what sense he has made of these experiences, what his beliefs are about himself, other people, what is possible and/or impossible for him in the world he lives in, and so on. Through the therapeutic processes the client also makes explicit to himself and to the therapist how he has felt in the past when certain things have happened to him, as well as how he feels now as he revisits them in the present, and how it is for him to have these experiences in the presence of the therapist. Over the span of time in which the therapy goes on, and as the person gradually reveals how his inner life is organized--historically, cognitively, and emotionally--what also emerges is the person's basic tastes and preferences, what he likes and dislikes, what he hopes for and what he fears, what goals begin to seem to him to be worth pursuing and at what cost. And as the person gradually becomes aware of what he, in the present, "really" wants and doesn't want, likes and doesn't like, he begins to evaluate the world he lives in and his contacts with it in new ways. As this happens he begins to do new things, to stretch out into his world and into the future in new ways, and he begins to become the person he discovers he wants to be. And while this vision may alter with new experiences, the person has an increased sense of actually choosing the life he wants to live, for himself and with others.
What happens in the processes of Gestalt therapy which helps this to occur, and what role does the therapist's interaction with the client as a Thou play in therapeutic change?
Here I will speak primarily about my own internal processes as I work as a Gestalt therapist with my clients. I believe that my experience of the dialectical between I-Thou and I-Thou moments as I engage with a client is not very dissimilar to that of many other Gestalt therapists.
Let me begin by saying that I rarely think in theoretical terms when I work with a client, although my understanding of Gestalt theory and my experience with Gestalt methods informs the personal ground I bring with me to the meeting with the client. Further, even though both the client and I come to the meeting for the practical purpose of finding ways for the client to live a more choiceful life and for me to make a living, we must look away from these practical factors if we are to accomplish anything valuable through the therapeutic process. As a therapist I am genuinely interested in what the client is saying and doing in my presence as he tells his story. But this "interest" is really a kind of "disinterest" since I am concerned with receiving whatever the client reveals about himself and how he lives with himself and in his world. I follow and accompany him on his "therapeutic journey", and I facilitate the processes by which he goes more deeply into himself and through which he focuses upon and explores important aspects of the significant events of his life, many of which may have been overlooked and/or forgotten. I take in what the client reveals to me primarily because I am fascinated with what he tells me and because I care about him as a person. Most of the time when I am working with a client I am detached, in the sense that in those moments I have no interest other than to be-there for and with the client, and to discover what-is in the client's present living. I do not listen in order to find points of therapeutic intervention which could lead to change, although what the client says and does suggests interventions. The theoretical ground which I bring to the meeting with the client does, however, affect how I "take-in" and understand what the client reveals. Therefore, certain elements of the story and the client's verbal and nonverbal behavior stand out in relief for me, and frequently pique my curiosity in ways which lead me to ask the client to explore, amplify, and/or experiment with a situation or with his posture or breathing or bodily movement. At this point I have shifted into an I-It mode in order to satisfy my curiosity about what might have prompted, for example, the client's nonverbal behavior as he told his story, or to have the client supply what seems to me to be important details of the story which the client has omitted, or to have the client go inside himself to discover what he is experiencing emotionally as he revisits the situation in question or exposes himself to me in the process, and so on.
Theoretical fragments sometime pass through my mind in a fleeting fashion: I wonder," Is he projecting?" "How does this unexamined conclusion from earlier experience influence his behavior now?" "He's holding in a lot of anger. What does this apparent retroflection do to him, personally and in dealing with others?" This leads me to the use of a number of familiar Gestalt methods such as role-playing and various forms of awareness work. As I attend to the client and how he tells his story, I am sensitive to issues such as "what came next. . .and then what happened?" "Who, in particular, was involved?" "How did you feel when that happened?. . . and how do you feel now?" "What stopped you from doing that?" The point of these interventions is to help the client revisit key elements in his concrete experience, often to gain a fresh perspective, sometimes to rethink the conclusions about himself and others which he has drawn, or to have a fantasied dialogue in order to get closure of some old unfinished business. These kinds of interventions also make clear the model of self and the world the client lives by; and it thus becomes available for examination and possible change.
As the client explores and experiments with elements of his story and/or his present reactions to these, I shift back into my I-Thou mode of disinterested fascination with what the client tells me and thereby reveals of himself. I, in turn, reveal to the client not only my genuine interest in him and in how he lives, I also demonstrate my profound respect for him by checking out any imaginings I may have about his experience. It becomes increasingly clear to the client through the ways in which I interact with him that in my eyes he is the ultimate judge of what is true for him and of what is desirable to him
To summarize, it is because of the theoretical and experiential ground which I bring to the therapeutic situation that I listen, see, and think as I do to what the client reveals. But my leading attitude is one of disinterested and fascinated caring. The dialectical movement goes from my fascination with the client and the story he tells (I-Thou); then to a rapid consideration of what to say or do in response to the client so that he will tell his story in richer detail, or will experiment with certain aspects of the story and/or his present responses as he tells the story (I-It); then back to curious fascination as the client goes deeper and/or explores his own reactions (I-Thou); and thus the process continues dialectically throughout the therapeutic session. Another way to express this movement is to see it as moving from disintered fascination with the client and his story, to momentary practical interest in how to respond so as to help the client tell the story in richer detail and explore his responses more effectively, then back to disinterested fascination, and so on.
The overall framework is, as mentioned earlier, for the sake of change. But most of the actual contact between client and therapist is one in which the therapist is genuinely interested in the client as a unique person who has much to reveal. And while this latter attitude predominates in the contact between therapist and client, there are brief moments in which the therapist considers what to do next to help the client reveal more and more of what-is, to permit the client's own unique personal Truth to stand-out-in-the-open and begin to have its natural effects. Yet, paradoxically, that wider context is never entirely forgotten and, indeed, has an overarching influence upon the entire process; as a therapist and as a person, I care about my clients and I respect their desire for change. My fascination with how-ever and what-ever they reveal of themselves to me ultimately springs from that caring and that respect. Therefore, for me, the I-It always serves the I-Thou meeting.
