Personal experience is understood in terms of figure and ground relationships. The immediate situation is constructed from the individual's awareness of self, awareness of the environment, and awareness of the relationship between the two. The awareness of relationship involved in a particular situation constitutes a gestalt, a meaningful pattern or configuration. But note this: Gestalts have the property of "wanting" completion. Experiences that have been successfully resolved fade into the background. Those that have not continue to absorb energy and attention, even when they are out of awareness. We sometimes call that "unfinished business," and it can distort our present experience as well as our anticipation of the future.

It therefore follows that the relationship between environment and ourselves is crucial. We effect the environmental context through our interaction with it. Health, therefore, must be defined in terms of the integrity of both sides, plus the fluidity of the interaction between the two. This standard of health can also be applied to organizations - from families to communities - as well as individuals. For groups of people to function efficiently, they must do the hard work of building consensus around significant figures. They may then move to action and make contact with the environment. If the move is with awareness and patience, then both organismic and environmental integrity can be maintained. If there is movement to action before establishing strong, joint figures, the contact with the environment is fragmented and oppositional, instead of focused and supported. This dilemma is exemplified by the current struggle in many places of the world to build healthy, sustainable communities.

The idea that healthy functioning is the quality of interaction between organism and environment implies awareness of life processes. Up until now, Gestalt therapists have considered "environment" to be other people or human institutions. It is imperative, however, that an individual or group direct his or her (or their) attention beyond human institutions, to the interrelationship among all things in the world. This implies a compelling curiosity which can lead to the excitement of discovery which is one of the most important goals of Gestalt Therapy.

Here's where my curiosity has gone.There may be something like innately unfinished gestalts, i.e. unfinished by evolutionary design. For example, the figure SNAKE can take on a Gestalt, let's call it "Snakeskin-in-the-philodendron," which is energized by an ad hoc mind/brain circuit called "John's-idiosyncratic-notion-of-houshold-decore." Awareness is an essential part of this. It involves short-term and long-term memory, values, personal history, learning, and education. It's pretty complicated; yet it's easy to watch the process, and it's fairly methodical. However, the Gestalt "Snakeskin-in-the- grass" is really different. It's energized by primordial neuropathways of snake aversion that say one thing: DANGER. Even though I might claim that I knew immediately that it was a shed skin of a harmless snake ( and nothing to be frightened of, right?), if you had me hooked up to bells and whistles they would all go off. There is a different kind of ground here, a different kind of context. And it's ancient, built-in and universal. Not idiosyncratic. And it has a value that says , we can't wait for this awareness stuff. We're outta here.

Throughout human history certain kinds of snakes have been a major cause of sickness and death. And those creatures that possessed a quick and otherwise competent response to those kinds of snakes had more kids than those who didn't -thus an evolved aversion to snakes that is breathtakingly fast (awareness arises from memory after the fact). If this is an evolved response, in the Darwinian sense, the result of real neuronal connections, then we should expect to see something similar in those who came before. Chimpanzees, with whom we share a common ancestry (98 % some say - a relationship which is 5 million years old) are particularly apprehensive in the presence of snakes - even if they have never seen one before. This aversion seems to grow stronger as the chimp gets older. The same increase in fear response is demonstrated in humans. Recall that I admitted that I had to be mindful and a bit courageous just to free that skin from the grass. I was much bolder as a child in the swamps of southern Florida.

The point here is that very powerful Gestalten can be formed totally out of awareness, and they are designed to never be annihilated. For that we should be grateful. When we discover such powerful fears in us, we have the opportunity to make the choice to push through. And when we do, it's a great feeling - if we survive.

We likely have many ancient gestalts for the simple reason that those that did not have them were not our ancestors. And many of them have to do with landscapes - probably what most people imagine when they hear the word "environment." I suppose that's because it is within landscapes that we choose habitat. Studies, much of them done at the University of Washington, indicate that there is a general preference for savanna-like environments - something we would find in East Africa (that should be no surprise). So does that mean the dreams of the Inuit in a seemingly featurless landscape are filled with puzzling images of high grass, acacia trees, and crouching lions? Maybe, but what is also true is that experience and familiarity influence preference. In other words the ground and the figure have changed, and this is in awareness. So the Inuit is likely to respond to someone's telling him that deep-down he would really like to live in a place he's never even heard of, by saying ,"Bugger off. I like it here. This is my home." In a sample population from the eastern United States, 8 to11 year olds expressed a substantial preference for the savanna environment; but they couldn't tell you why. The judgments were made very fast, emotionally, and inaccessible to introspection. By the age of 15, however, a preference for the indigenous hardwood forest environment overtook the savanna preference. And they could tell you why.

You might think of these as hard wired Gestalten that lie dormant in the mind/brain until certain cues energize them. Then they pass rapidly through something like a Cycle of Experience going from sensation to withdrawal and never needing to rise into awareness. It's not that they can't. A little bit of education and a concerted act of will and one can occasionally get a glimpse of the human animal in action.

One of my favorite examples is our response to twilight and eventual nightfall. The color of the sky and lengthening of shadows are very powerful clues that the change from day to night (or vice versa) is imminent. Evidence that night is approaching causes us to prepare for impending darkness. We move to shelter, light fires or lamps, and huddle together. You don't need to think about this for it to happen. But it's not difficult to attend to once you're coached. That's why post prandial evening sessions are so productive when doing groups. As humans we bring a sense of aesthetic appreciation to sunrise and sunset, but underneath these are cues of life and death importance. No wonder that we have evolved to not have to think about them. Furthermore, they are as old as the solar system itself. The ground out of which Gestalten can be formed is ancient, indeed.

NOTES

The information about the universal reponse to snakes is from E.O. Wilson's Concilience, The Unity of Knowledge, published by Knopf. Wilson goes further and makes a distinction between snake and its natural history on the one hand and the mythology of Serpent on the other. Wilson proposes that it is Biology that unites the two by examing both the snakes behavior and physiology and the evolved human mind/brain that creates Serpent.

Human response to landscapes was taken from two chapters in The Adapted Mind, Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture , edited by Barkow, Cosmides, and Tooby and published by The Oxford Press. The chapters are entitled "Evolved Responses to Landscapes," by Orians and Heerwagen and "Environmental Preferences in Knowledge-Seeking, Knowledge-Using Organisms," by Stephen Kaplan.

Call for Papers for Gestalt!:

We are always looking for good writing, interesting developments to share with the Global Gestalt community, and ways of sharing the wealth of Gestalt therapy with a wider audience. If you have an idea for an article, a piece of news, or if you have a bug in your bonnet and need to unload with a letter to the editor, please contact Philip Brownell, Sr. Editor, to discuss it (phil@g-gej.org).

Authors will find useful information at the Masthead for the journal, located at http://www.g-g.org/gej/masthead.