When Gstalt-L began, in 1996, the big issue was what had occurred at the first AAGT conference when Richard Kitzler demonstrated his work and Jeffery Schaler watched. Actually, a great deal of energy was spent on debating various issues coming from a piece Schaler wrote about Kitzler's work, and published online, called "Bad Therapy." At Gstalt-L Dr. Schaler engaged Robert Feldhaus and others in a running debate on ethics and practice. One of the finest moments from those discussions, which took about three months, was this statement from Robert Feldhaus (edited to present Dr. Feldhaus's statements without his quoting of others on the list).

Gstalt-L, An email discussion group devoted to Gestalt therapy and the community of its practitioners (www.g-gej.org/gstalt-l). Gstalt-J, An email discussion group devoted to research on Gestalt therapy, theory and practice (www.g-gej.org/gstalt-j). Supported by the Gestalt Research Consortium (GRC) (www.g-gej.org/grc). Gestalt Bookmarks, a place to begin researching the field of contemporary Gestalt therapy on the world wide web
(www.g-gej.org/gestaltbookmarks).

Consult Behavioraledu.com for continuing educational credits available by studying articles on Gestalt therapy appearing in this journal. See their catalogue for courses on:

• The Basics of Contemporary Gestalt Therapy
• Spirituality in Gestalt Therapy
• Gestalt Therapy in the Response to Trauma and Anxiety
• Field Theory in Gestalt Therapy
• Dialogue in Gestalt Therapy

The Somatics Interest Group is composed of AAGT members with special interests in attending to body process as an integral part of doing Gestalt therapy. We welcome therapists who specialize in this work as well as those who are curious and want to learn more about it. The Somatics Interest Group will evolve according to the needs and interests of its members.

Co-Chairs Gina Fitzmartin and Susan Gregory hope to facilitate communication between Interest Group members throughout the year. Here are some of our ideas:

1. If the group wishes it, we plan to establish a contact list of members, including addresses, e-mail information and a listing of specialties.
2. We will distribute a list of resources - books, journals, etc. - and will update it regularly with input from Interest Group members.
3. We will seek to facilitate ongoing discussion about our interests and excitements, either through a round-robin newsletter in which specific topics are taken up and then added to by group members as the newsletter circulates, or through an on-line discussion group, or through local meetings where groups of members demonstrate and experiment together, reporting on their experiences to the Interest Group as a whole.
4. We will coordinate any collective projects which may emerge from group activity, including planning an Interest Group workshop or writing a joint paper which expresses the conversations we undertake.
5. We will assist in organizing any other projects members want to undertake.

The form of the Somatics Interest Group will emerge according to what its members want and have energy to accomplish. We hope to become a resource for the Gestalt therapy community as a whole, encouraging ongoing engagement with somatic experience as an integral part of Gestalt therapy. We invite your participation.

Vol. 5; no. 3 Spirituality and Gestalt Therapy. Special Editor, Brian O'Neill

Special Issue, Vol. 6; no. 1 A Gestalt Perspective on Terrorism. (Photos, narrative, and discussion on the events of September 11, 2001)

It's hard to argue with terms such as good character and emotional stability! Your definition given here is a good benchmark with which I wholly agree. To recognize the equality of others' worth, and their status as a non-thing, i.e. a person, a mysterious presence that is not to be exploited, is surely the essence of ethics, professional or otherwise.

However, I think people are largely unconscious of the way they exploit others, and my understanding of this is based on psychodynamic models of childhood and psychological defense, as well as Gestalt principles. I think I know what you mean when you say people know what they are about. I think we do know, on one level, but we do definitely have the capacity to hide from ourselves when certain parts of ourselves are too uncomfortable to deal with. So, like you, I do not agree with the idea of a reifiable "unconscious mind," but see it more in terms of process, the act of hiding from oneself. Only when a person becomes aware of the things they have been hiding from themselves can they realistically be asked to take responsibility for what they are doing. Until then, they will experience the effects of their disowned activities, but remain in an irresponsible attitude towards them. In my experience, only a non-judgmental attitude on my part enables another person, if they so choose, to drop their defenses in my presence and acknowledge that they, indeed, do know what they are about. I think we human beings are often very afraid of being judged as bad by others, and I think this fear is one of the primary operating factors that hold self-hiding and dishonesty and human discord in place. Have you ever observed this?

When you say the unconscious is a ruse necessary in an oppressive childhood, do you mean that children do indeed repress severe traumata? I'm not quite clear.

I'd be interested in knowing even more of your thoughts about what good therapy is, and what non-exploitative human interaction is. What thinkers are your intellectual influences? What are your premises? Can you give fleshed-out examples of the phenomena you mention? I ask for those things because those are the kinds of things that nourish and stimulate me, and create a basis for me to understand another human being. It's what I'm offering you in these posts.

In my opinion, an "unhealthy" person is one who, among other things, is locked into his/her projections. A lot of disowned qualities (good and bad) of that person's self are unrecognized by the person, and are seen by the person as existing outside of one, especially in other persons who are emotionally important to him/her, either positively or negatively. The projected qualities are perceived as literally, unambiguously outside of the perceiver, other than the perceiver, just as clearly as seeing a piece of furniture outside of one. In Jungian terms, a shadow projection. An example at the macro level (Republicans may have a hard time with this example): What did George Bush accuse Saddam Hussein of being? How did Bush perceive Hussein? As a power-hungry dictator, cruel and insensitive to the needs of his own people, motivated solely by greed and power. I wonder if anyone ever experienced George Bush in the same way? In my view, these are Bush's unconscious attributes, projected onto Saddam. Important!: the idea that Bush was projecting his own attributes does not exclude the possibility that Saddam also had those attributes! In this case, I believe we had a mutual shadow projection. It might be easier for Americans to see that Saddam's perception of Bush--a power-hungry, cruel, expansionist dictator--was Saddam's projection. Other examples, perhaps clearer: the rabidly anti-homosexual minister is most often a closet gay, having furtive, guilt-ridden homosexual encounters, or at least powerful "temptations" or same-sex fantasies; the bomb-throwing leftist, enraged at fascism, is often a dictator at home to his own wife and children. The sexually abusive father accuses (and really perceives) his pre-oedipal daughter of being seductive and hungry for sex (!), when obviously (to outsiders) it is he who is being seductive and hungry for sex. The paranoid person (the projector par excellence) sees others as hostile to him, never dreaming that it is really he who is hostile to others. He sees himself as an innocent little lamb. In other words, to the extent we project, we attempt to deal with what are really our own attributes, in substitute fashion, "out there" in other people. The principle seems to be that those attributes in other people that really grab us and gall us, are--mortifyingly enough--the very ones that we possess, but have disowned. Projections get in the way of peaceful, reality-based relations with other people, since we are seeing them through the lens of our projections, instead of having compassion for them as being just as much in the bittersweet human predicament as we are. Certain kinds of pathology are associated with splitting, i.e. others and the self are seen as being either all-good or all-bad, and often projecting all the bad onto others. This is neat and simple, but not realistic. An adult with a view like this becomes alienated from others. (Incidentally, positive projection also operates: those qualities we are attracted to in other people are our own, undeveloped, unacknowledged positive qualities.)

As a person becomes healthier, s/he learns to withdraw the projections. This takes moral effort, and the willingness to endure the embarrassment of realizing that what I have accused others of, is also in myself. When one acknowledges this, one is immediately put into a more reality-based (and conciliatory) relation with others; one also regains access to parts of oneself that were hitherto alienated, thus increasing the strength of the self. The professional victim, for example, learns to acknowledge that s/he is also abusive to others. The rigid anti-gay learns to accept his own homosexual component. The callous person, who projects all his sensitivity onto others whom he attempts to exploit, learns to acknowledge his own vulnerability. Rather than see evil happening only in the enemy's camp, he learns, perhaps with a certain sheepish grin, that he is as much of a rascal as anybody else. Do I tend to see others as opinionated? Then I should ask myself whether others may not also experience me as opinionated. Do I tend to see people of different religion than myself as evil, benighted, aggressive? Better take a look at my own shadow side, that is, the things others see about me that I cannot directly see. Example: Christians have a stereotype about Muslims as being violent and spreading their religion through war. But take the viewpoint of all the peoples whom Christianity has oppressed (e.g. Native Americans and Africans), and who is it now who spreads their religion through war? And vice-versa: Muslims tend to see their own religion as the pinnacle of monotheism, humane and refined. They tend to see Christians as boorish warmongers. Just as in the case of Bush and Saddam (who may be seen as modern epitomes of this Christian/Islamic conflict), there is a mutual shadow projection going on. I'm using macro examples, but the really crucial areas for therapy are in intimate relations, of course.

Salvation from this kind of thing comes only when someone can see they are projecting, and begin to take responsibility for their projected qualities. This takes encouragement, some intellectual understanding of the nature of projection, a non-judgmental stance on the part of the helper, and the insight that withdrawing the projection will actually restore some sense of dignity, power, and freedom to the person doing the projecting. The key "motive" (only half-conscious) for projection is that it allows the projector to shed responsibility for the negative quality. It's not me that is hostile, it's that other guy, so I don't have to do the work of dealing with my anger, I can just sit back and accuse the other of being so gosh-darned hostile. When a projector (any of us) takes responsibility, and says, "Well, I guess it's true in some way that I am hostile (or whatever)," everybody around him can breathe a sigh of relief. Unconsciousness has now been replaced by a modicum of consciousness, and therefore, hopefully, responsibility. Imagine Saddam saying, "I realize that I am aggressive as much as Bush, and I take responsibility for that." Imagine an abusive male father and husband saying, "I recognize that, although I accuse the rest of you of being lazy and insensitive, I am also lazy and insensitive. And I can take responsibility for that, and for the hurt it has caused you." Now this doesn't have to be guilt-inducing. It's more in the spirit of, I'll join the human race, I'll acknowledge that I have faults just like the rest of you. I apologize for acting like I was above the human condition.

The well-known Gestalt technique of the empty chair is, among other things, directly aimed at helping a person re-own projections. For example, a person who complains that his mother is too critical is asked to speak to his mother in the empty chair. Then--and this is the crucial moment, and the one clients "resist" the most--the client is asked to sit in the empty chair and be the critical mother, to act out the body language, the tone of voice, the words of the critical mother. The client often says at that point, "I can't do that! That's just what I don't want to be!" This is because the person doesn't want to acknowledge his or her own criticalness, that was probably originally formed by the critical mother, but is now an unconscious part of the client. If the person can perform the experiment and be critical as the mother, the therapist may then ask if any of this critical energy is recognizable as being in the client as well. The client is also guided to see that his own internal critical mother--part of his own energy--is within him, that he, in the present, criticizes himself just as harshly as his mother ever did. This critical mother part of him very likely is expressed towards other as well, especially under stress, and in his intimate relations. (All you have to do is ask the client's intimates whether they ever experience him as critical.) This helps the client to take responsibility for his own criticalness, both towards himself and towards others.

To me, it is the hallmark of integrity, both personally and professionally, to own one's projections, and to be open in principle to owning all of them. This makes a person whole. Importantly for therapist/client relationships, it makes a therapist safer for a client to open up to. If I as a therapist have re-owned a lot of my projections, I will be less likely to project onto my clients (counter-transference) and make them bear the brunt of my own self-alienation. I will have compassion for the human condition, and acknowledge myself as a human being with strengths and weaknesses, just like my clients. I will be less likely to cast them as my own critical mother or abusive father or my weak child, since I will take conscious responsibility for these attributes of my own. My less socially acceptable side is conscious to me, and will not be unconsciously projected onto others. For example, the part of me that feels weak, sick, and helpless is conscious, and I will not project this onto clients, by inviting them to play the role of helpless patient while I get to glory in illusory feelings of godlike power and "health" at their expense.

If everybody is equally "evil," then what right do I or society have to impose my opinions on others, via a police force, for example? This theory of projection doesn't really aim at abolishing the police force, but it certainly does aim at reforming it. There are many abuses in law enforcement that stem directly from the kind of projection I am talking about. An important principle is that disempowered groups tend to become scapegoats, and projection screens, for those in power. The white LA cop who agrees with the beating of Rodney King, and sees black people as dangerously violent, is not in touch with the fact that he is violent also. Very importantly in family relations, the father who sees his child as greedy or selfish, is actually being greedy or selfish himself. The less powerful class (blacks, children) receives the projection, because they don't have what Skinner called counter-controls to defend themselves. It applies to peer groups as well: the injury lawyer who burns with indignation at the physicians he sues for malpractice, doesn't see that he is also guilty of professional exploitation of his own clients. The same thing he sees in the physicians who play God, is true of him. Really this phenomenon is so universal, and so obvious after the fact, that it seems amazing that everybody doesn't see it. In practice, we do see it, but only in other people! It's easy to see that our opponents are projecting, but very difficult to see that we are also projecting onto them. But of course there is primary and secondary gain in not seeing our own projections. Seeing our projections is humbling, it involves taking responsibility for our own stuff and the ways we harm others, it involves work and effort, it involves a lancing of our inflated egos. But the payoff is in the increased ability to be close to others, the increased ability to express oneself freely, the sense of wholeness and being in touch with the 360 degree sphere of the self instead of a narrow sector, the increased peace of mind and self-acceptance, and the relief of not being such an unconscious source of pain to others.

If the police, the government, and the licensing boards could all individually work on their projections, we would have a more just system. We, as a society, would recognize true crimes, those that actually abuse a human person, and feel no guilt about punishing them. It's just that we would tend less and less to punish our own crimes in the person of others, especially disempowered groups such as racial minorities, women, children, gay people, etc.

This theory of projection is based especially on thinkers like Jung, Perls, and Alice Miller. In cognitive theory, I'm sure you must deal with this phenomenon, since it is such a central pattern in mental health and illness. Do you think of it as a cognitive error, a misattribution pure and simple, to be corrected by rational thought? I'm curious.

It's important to use terms like "grandiosity" within a certain theoretical framework, and not to mistake technical meanings for common ones, or a term's meaning in one theory for its meaning in another. In self psychology and object relations theory. "grandiosity" refers to a sense of being very powerful, perfect, free, the center of attention, in a word, godlike. This is the way the infant feels when s/he is still "one with" the mother, can apparently control her behavior with his/her cries, and experiences the "oceanic feeling" of oneness with the universe (Freudian conceptions). Importantly, self-psychology sees the need for grandiosity as legitimate, just as it sees the need for mirroring as legitimate. According to Margaret Mahler, an extremely influential (though early) pioneer in early childhood (pre-oedipal) development, the moment when a child learns to walk is indeed an extremely heady experience, grandiose in the sense just given. One has only to try to imagine what it's like, after your whole existence of just being able to crawl and be close to the ground, when you can locomote in the upright position, and swiftly! Whole new worlds of exploration and autonomy are opened up. Walking at first is a feeling of being off-balance and yet balanced at the same time, as you learn to shift your weight from foot to foot. Relative to the crawling mode, the first time you walk feels like you're flying, and the child can be observed to want attention from the parents when first achieving this. Self-psychology says that it's crucial for the child's legitimate feelings of grandiosiy to be mirrored by the parents. The child needs to feel that the parents see him emotionally, that they understand or acknowledge that he is indeed feeling so good and powerful, that they admire him, that their attention is on him. Kohutian theory would say that children who do not get enough of this mirroring, this admiration, this attention, are precisely the ones who are at risk for narcissistic personality later in life. That's because narcissism (a word that has a hard time shedding its negative connotations) is seen as a legitimate healthy need, and the parent's mirroring gets internalized along the way, so the older child can provide his own mirroring, his own sense of self-appreciation. A narcissist doesn't really like himself or appreciate himself for the human being s/he is, can't mirror him/herself, can't soothe him/herself, because such behaviors weren't modeled for her/him as a child. Lack of adequate mirroring leads to deficits in the ability of the child to mirror himself, and therefore to the fragile, brittle sense of self-esteem seen in narcissistic personalities, where the sense of self-esteem is based overmuch on achievement and not enough on one's own identity as a fully feeling, loveable person who sometimes fails, and the self-esteem is subject to sudden implosions when the narcissist feels slighted or not paid attention to. The key to the Kohutian viewpoint is the legitimacy of the narcissistic needs for mirroring, the absolute necessity that they be met in early childhood, and the internalization of the mirroring functions in a healthy development.

In reference to what you said about the child needing to feel pride in his/her accomplishments: I believe an important component of healthy self-regard is knowing that you are competent, or as Bandura would say, self-efficacy. However, if the ability to accomplish or achieve is the core of self-regard, then the person is subject to harsh self-judgments and loss of self-esteem when s/he fails at a task. The basis of healthy self-esteem is that one's natural self, with all its emotions, with its successes and failures, is acceptable and loveable. If the child does not feel his parents love him for himself, apart from accomplishments, he will develop what object relations theorists call the "false self," the self that is fabricated in order to get the approval of his parents, based on the ability to achieve good grades, a good job, a good mate, etc.

Thanks for eliciting all this from me. I would be interested to know how all this bounces off your own cognitive frameworks. Cognitive is a big ballpark. Are you more influenced by Beck, Bandura, Ellis, George Kelly, or...?

Obviously, theories are theories, not facts, and no one theory, mine or yours, captures all of the truth of the human situation. Theories proceed from premises which are themselves not provable but only intuitively plausible. If you grant the premise (e.g. only behavior is observable and studiable) you are led to the conclusion (behaviorism as a body of thought). Even science's basic premise (only what is publicly observable and replicable is valid knowledge) doesn't meet its own criterion, since that premise is not itself a publicly observable and replicable piece of information! You have to grant the validity of that premise on some other grounds than that a scientific study proved it. I think in practice, the pragmatic criterion (it works) is the operative one, as well as intuitive plausibility, which is a subjective factor, and differs from person to person.

I have internalized the standpoints adopted here because they fit with my experience of myself, my clients, and my intimates, because they are internally consistent, because they are based on the observations and reflections of clinicians I reason to respect, and other reasons. I am especially interested in unexpected common ground between otherwise divergent theories, because that common ground seems to me to have a sort of independent confirmation. For example, a Bandurian model, in most respects totally unlike the ones I have explore here, make much of modeling and the internalization of modeled behaviors and attitudes. This is somewhat like the Kohutian idea of a child experiencing good empathy from a parental figure and learning to do this for him/herself. Internalization is a construct found in most psychological theories, even the most diverse, and therefore is worth my attention. I suppose all psychological theories are based on the seed idea that a person's perception is individual, based on conditioning, and, to some extent, creative of the world s/he lives in. Therefore, a person's construal of the world can be changed if it is not working.

I am open to all theories, since I suspect that there is truth in every one, even though every one also distorts or ignores other areas. You can't concentrate on one thing without ignoring others (uh-oh, a Gestalt premise!). The premises of cognitive theories are also plausible to me, although I experience them as being (surprise!) too mental a model of the human being, with too little respect for the spontaneity and natural self-balancing of the emotions. It's true that thoughts condition feelings, as cognitivists are quick to emphasize, but it's also true that feelings have their own wisdom that needs to be respected, and not overly shaped by the rational functions. To me, these are complementary truths, and I certainly use some cognitively-derived interventions (e.g. reframing) in my work. I believe the human organism as a whole, including the rational functions, the body, the emotions, and everything else, form a pre-existent unity, and _can be trusted_. In my opinion, that's the most important premise that differentiates humanistic thought from most other kinds of psychological theories. I do not trust the disembodied rational mind to direct the rest of the organism, as cognitivists seem to. This is perhaps one place where our premises diverge. I respect cognitive theories, for example Beck's work with depression, and even Ellis' "I refuse to be miserable ever again!" kind of approach. Ellis emphasizes that the interpretation of any event is always in my control, so I can always interpret what happens to me in a way that I don't have to feel sad. Maybe Ellis represents a kind of extreme of cognitivism. But taken to Ellis' extreme, I see some possible damage to the organism in trying to dominate my feeling nature to that extent. Can I not cry and, yes, be miserable if I experience a tragedy? Is it not healthy and good to go with the flow of the feelings at least a little more than Ellis would have us do? What happens to all the emotional energy dammed up behind re-interpretations of events?

Cognitive theories try to be more empirically based than all this psychodynamic and humanistic flowery talk that I indulge in! This is a strength. And there's no doubt that "neurotics" need a healthy dose of understanding, as cognitivists would lead them to understand, that they don't need to wallow in depression or self-pity, and can take control over their feelings and perceptions more than they do. I simply prefer a model of the healthy human being that is fully embodied and fully emotional, fully honest and in contact with the deep, biological springs of human existence. Plato saw reason as the charioteer, with the emotions as unruly horses needing discipline and taming. Some truth in that? Undoubtedly. But I think the overall message of modern science is that our capacity for rationality spontaneously springs from our biology (e.g. brain structure and function) as much as our emotions do, and that whatever a human being is, s/he is a whole, a unity, and an inseparable part of the rest of nature. Therefore, I cannot fully espouse a theory that puts any one part of the human being in the governing position. It's the overall whole of a human being that can be trusted, not the compartmentalized intellect, or the blind passions taken by themselves. Gestalt has contributed a theory and a technique for recovering that experience of wholeness, and for that I value it very much indeed.