Psychotherapy – so what!

Terrorism is but one of many figures in a difficult field and people today define themselves as a part of a world where drug dependence, homelessness, starvation, depression and youth suicide are common place. What has psychotherapy contributed to alleviating any of these personal and social ills?

Psychotherapies collectively and individually will offer experiential and empirical evidence to demonstrate their effectiveness in relation to each other and a placebo. Like Parlett however, I feel the need to question the place and value of psychotherapy in this difficult field. He cites the work by Hillman and Ventura : We Have Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World is Getting Worst.

In essence the argument is that psychotherapy may be making these problems worse by encouraging people into individual, private journeys and not operating collectively as part of a wider field. He sees the need to widen the focus of therapy to socio-political issues and to explore and invent new forms of therapy which match these social ills (Parlett, 1997).

he initial work of Perls, Hefferline and Goodman seeks to creatively integrate splits found in basic dichotomies of psychological theory, such as Body and Mind; Self and External World; Personal and Social; and Conscious and Unconscious (PHG pg 240-242). Such splits can be seen as universally prevalent yet others may dissolve and become part of the prejudices of psychotherapy itself. Such a split becomes embedded in our use of language, our behaviour and our sense of self definition.

Using this lens to examine Gestalt therapy itself, I see such a split. It is evident in the literature, in email discussions, at conferences and in my discussions with Gestalt therapists - the use of the term spiritual, or worse still, religion.

Spirituality – so what

Now why should that matter. Spirituality and religion are clearly little if anything to do with Gestalt therapy. Amorphous concepts made of myth and superstition and best used as a meth-amphetamine to stimulate the masses and bring large loads of cash to TV evangelists. Perhaps spirituality can be tolerated as a term, as long as it fits my general field of reference and self definition, however religion has clearly become at best out-moded and at worse the cause of such atrocities as the September 11th bombings.

This is in fact a reasonable argument. If we are to criticise psychotherapy and write books about how there has been 100 years of psychotherapy and the world is still getting worse, surely the same criticism can be applied to religion. What has religious or spiritual practices, and their organisations, done to help heal the world of its ills?

Abnormal Anthropology

Perhaps though, if we listen to our founders, we can step back and bring into awareness this important split which has dissolved into theory and practice, as well as community and culture. A split which was not attended to clearly by the early Gestalt writers and which has been given some attention by later writers but which does not shine out as a clear figure demanding attention. This process was originally called abnormal anthropology and the original split attended to by PHG was that of the physical and cultural.

So let’s play for a moment with a new dichotomy: Psychotherapy and Spirituality. Or it can be psychology and religion. Or people and God. Or material and spiritual consciousness. We are playing with words for a while to see what becomes clear.

I have been aware of the impact of such terms, positive and negative, when speaking with other Gestalt therapists. When I presented at the first AAGT conference in New Orleans and discussed spirituality as part of the presentation, I was surprised that while some people were keen to discuss this others politely and not so politely told me I was bringing inappropriate material into psychotherapy.

At the conference in Cleveland Des Kennedy gave me a copy of his paper entitled Gestalt in the World of the Spirit where he offers that Gestalt therapy is not only a therapy but a way of life which is marvellously congenial to a personal spirituality.

At the AAGT conference in New York I sat in a process group where we shared what we felt would exclude us from the rest. One person offered that they were a Christian. They received strong negative reactions initially from other Gestalt therapists, which we were eventually able to talk about and hear each other. The biggest issue was around that of personal and social meaning to the terms we were using. Terms and language which could spark and outrage and irritate and sooth and bring a meeting.

Repression of the Spiritual

Richard Hycner calls this tendency to separate psychological and spiritual realities, the “Repression of the Spiritual.” He argues that we have historically developed a view of ourselves as rational beings, separate and distinct from the ontological or spiritual ground of our existence.

From Hycner’s perspective, the current social plagues which our societies are struggling with are signs of not only psychosocial disorder but a spiritual disorder. If we are to find meaningful solutions to these troubles of the world, we must seek answers which include this deeper spiritual ground of our being.

Poetry and Prose

In her chapter on the spiritual dimension of Gestalt therapy, Sylvia Crocker writes how many therapists in the past few years say they experience something deeply spiritual in the processes of Gestalt therapy. However most have difficulty defining what they mean by the term. I could argue the same applies to the terms psychotherapy and psychology.

The original meaning of the term psychology was the study of the soul, of breath, of life. This has been converted in the last few hundred years to become Mind and for some only Behaviour.

In defining psychology as the study of creative adjustments, Perls, Hefferline and Goodman offer a seemingly neutral term devoid of the Body/Mind/Soul split. (PHG page 230)

However this term is not so neutral as it first seems, as they define the subject matter of this psychology a few pages back as that of a social-animal-physical field (PHG, pg 228). What of the soul?

More appropriate might be “what is the soul?”. When they talk of the method of psychology, Perls, Hefferline and Goodman then make a curious statement and one which demands more attention. They state that this method is to proceed from the objects of experience to the acts to the powers – “from the nature of the visible to the actuality of sight to the power of seeing as part of the organic soul”.

Crocker states that the Greek notion of soul deeply influenced Goodman’s thought and thus Gestalt therapy (pg163); yet, this really has to be looked for when reading the text. Such terms have dissolved into the theory of Gestalt therapy and now emerge as unanswered riddles which have become a tension in the field of Gestalt therapy.

There is within the Gestalt therapy literature and experience a split between psychotherapy and spirituality which echo in our societies and cultures. To speak of psychotherapy and spirituality, of psychology and religion, brings forth the emotional reactions as experienced in the process group I was a part of in New York. Like a fractal this split is evident at so many levels of the field. Early trauma at the hands of religious organisations evidently plays a large part in this rupture and this is supported by a scientific world view which is laden with a non-spiritual bias.

Gestalt therapy has been part of a culture which has repressed the spiritual while seeking it at the same time. Some texts offer a mixture of spiritual perspective and their relation to Gestalt therapy while so many other texts offer no mention of spirituality whatsoever. It is the brave Gestalt therapy text that would mention God or religion.

In keeping with our cultural rejection of Christianity and the uptake of other religious and psycho-spiritual practices such as Buddhism, there are a number of writers who will talk about Gestalt therapy and Zen, or the significance of the work of Martin Buber. Yet to mention Gestalt therapy and Islam or Christianity seems somehow inappropriate still. I wonder how many Gestalt therapists would also class themselves as religious, as Sufis, as Christians. And if so, how does this spiritual practice integrate with their understanding of psychotherapy.

Other psychotherapies such as Psychosynthesis (Assagioli, 1965) have integrated and defined religion as well as spirituality as part of therapy. Roberto Assagioli talks of two types of religion: the religion of the experience of the spiritual dimension and the religion of the organisation of this experience into a social structure. He is interested in the first and not the second. I think they both are worthy of understanding as part of the wider field and people’s definition of self.

Our theory tells us that in such a state of tension in the field offers the potential for new growth and a new sense of self. With greater awareness of these terms and experiences I would hope that Gestalt therapy can reach a stage wherein the field is big and bold and brassy enough to contain such terms as God and religion and spirituality. To contain the experiences expressed so well in poetry by Wordworth: