Fritz

by Martin Shepard

  10. Esalen, Continued . . .

  As ill-tempered as Fritz appeared to many outsiders during his first two years at Esalen, he was deeply appreciative of the reception he was accorded—so much so that he invested $10,000 toward a building fund (to be matched and, later, greatly exceeded by the Institute) for the house he was shortly to live in. His investment was to constitute his “rent,” with the building reverting to Esalen after his death.

  “This is such a lovely place,” he told Irma Lee Shepherd, another Gestaltist, protégée, and friend, when she took his Professional Workshop in 1964. “You can walk around emotionally naked and no one would do anything but respect you.”

  Or, as he confided to Ed “Barbarossa” Taylor, Esalen’s baker, a chess partner, a fellow listener to music, and one of the few men “I completely trust”: “How beautiful that people can live together and love each other and hate each other and still be together.”

  The recognition Fritz received here was certainly different from what he had known in New York, Los Angeles, or Miami. Although he had the usual chip on his shoulder at the beginning of his stay, none of the gentle Esalen folk were about to knock it off. What happened, in response, was that the chip diminished in size as the years passed.

  If Fritz was grumpy during his first period at Esalen, the next year and a half—from 1966 through much of 1967—found him much mellower. What with his new home (“. . . as you can see,” he told Jim Simkin, “I have the most beautiful house imaginable”), his improved health, his burgeoning schedule, and a sense of community, the brazen rudeness disappeared to a large extent. Not only did he conduct groups at Esalen for staff and seminarians alike, but he began to attract more professionals in the periodic trips he made to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the other cities on his circuit. The enormous distances he traveled to spread his Gestalt formulations were now paying off, for he was no longer simply Fritz Perls, but Fritz Perls from Esalen.

  He would take his yearly cultural jaunts to Europe to take in museums, concerts, and especially opera. When he went abroad in 1968, he came back and gave Ed Taylor a list of fifty operas in a row he saw, “which must,” said Ed, “be a world’s record of some kind.” Life was so satisfying, with Big Sur as its base, that Fritz on many occasions claimed the community as his family and vowed he would live out the rest of his life there.

  His decision to build a house on the grounds thrilled him immensely. It was to be the first true home he had since his palace in South Africa. He was particularly delighted by its modernistic structure, its unrivaled view, and the prospect of sitting in an oversized sunken bathtub listening to the Pacific Ocean splash and crash against mountain cliffs. Fritz would carry the architect’s blueprints with him on his travels and joyfully show them to old friends.

  He was impatient to see the building completed, for it was a tangible representation of the roots he felt growing into that fertile soil. In the summer of 1966, he finally moved in, inviting Abe Levitsky, his latest in a series of protégé/assistants, to join him.

  “We enjoyed each other in a lot of ways,” recalled Abe, a big, smiling, bearded man whose face reminded me of the face of the French sailor that adorns the Zig-Zag cigarette-paper package. “There were many aspects of music that I knew about that he didn’t, so it was fun to introduce him to some things. Other music we enjoyed together, such as German Lieder. I would frequently go down to Carmel or Los Angeles and find something that I liked, and, with great glee, I would bring it back and we would listen to it together. They would be very moving scenes, because we would be overlooking this gorgeous expanse of the Pacific and listening to Bach and Brahms. At that time I had a great fondness for the Brahms Liebeslieder waltzes, and there were times that Fritz and I would waltz to them together.”

  Fritz’s clinical skills were attracting more and more people to him, as was his refreshing candor; his willingness to allow all his creature attitudes to be on display without apology. Feeling more zestful and alive now, he boldly let both “base” and “higher” motivations show. As he wrote in Garbage Pail:

  “Right now quite a few people are crowding into this book, sneering at my leching, despising me for my lack of control, being shocked by my language, admiring me for my courage, confused by the multitude of contradictory features, desperate because they cannot pigeonhole me. I feel tempted to get into a dialogue, but . . .”

  Fritz took a certain pride in his excesses, a delight in his ability to shock and to do the unexpected. These engendered the stories—told and retold, true and exaggerated—that made Fritz a legend in his time.

  Fritz, for instance, would contribute to his reputation for arrogance in a short film classic in which he appeared with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The meeting between the guru of the East and the guru of the West was arranged while Fritz was at Esalen in the hope of illuminating a common path to emotional harmony. Instead, their discussion consisted of Fritz doing a great deal of one-upmanship and undercutting of the Maharishi’s philosophy as he chain-smoked constantly while the Maharishi nervously tore the petals from a rose.

  On another occasion, Diane Reifler remembers sitting on the side porch at Esalen with Fritz and two others. A woman wandered up to this foursome “who was pushy, cutesy, and unattuned to others’ feelings about her behavior. She wanted to talk to Fritz about doing some publicity for him, like she was doing with this one and that one. Fritz abruptly stopped her onslaught with, ‘Go away. I’m not talking with you ever!’

  “I have seen him do this with other pests—protect himself and his privacy.”

  As Fritz felt secure about his wisdom, maturation, and stature, he began to allow the small person within him to emerge. And so there are stories of Fritz the Child.

  One weekend he went to visit Bob Hall, a young psychiatrist and another of his former assistants. Several photographs of an Indian guru hung upon the walls of the house. This angered Fritz. He felt that the Indian mystique was an avoidance of recognizing your own power. And he couldn’t take that sort of adulation for a Master.

  On Sunday morning, the phone rang in Ann Halprin’s house.

  “Would you come and get me right away.”

  Ann and her husband, Larry, drove over to Bob’s house and transported Fritz back to theirs.

  “They didn’t have breakfast ready for him and they weren’t paying enough attention to him. They loved the guru more than they loved him, because, obviously, there were all those pictures all over the walls. And they were meditating for three and a half hours instead of fixing his breakfast. It was no way to show your proper respect.”

  Fritz might tolerate the adulation of another Master, as long as the child in him had his breakfast prepared.

  Diane Berghoff Reifler, a sinking and voluptuous actress who towered over Fritz, came to know him as he entered his second phase at Esalen. Fritz was impressed not only by her ripeness as a woman but by her presence—her unique ability to stay in a moment-to-moment flow. Diane, who went on to train with him, was to become one of the most competent and creative Gestalt therapists I have ever watched. Some of her fondest recollections of Fritz had to do with his willingness, now, to lay aside his austere mask and share, undefensively, the child within: “I remember the first time he walked into my house. He was going to hold a workshop there. I had it built in a canyon with lots of trees and glass and twenty-foot-high ceilings where you could see the trees and reflections all around. He walked in and said, ‘A house to breathe in.’ And he danced around and we both started to dance. He was a delight.

  “When he would say something far out and brilliant, he wanted people to say, ‘Wow. That is really far out and brilliant.’ He really needed that. I can picture his saying that and starting to dance and me walking into the other room and doing the dishes. That would just let his balloon out. Because he didn’t just say these things for himself, but because Teddy Lyon, his secretary, heard him and I heard him. It wa
s really important to him that he get heard and get all the attention.

  “I loved the little kid in him. He was staying at my house once and he was going to do a Los Angeles television show. He had on a suit and he asked, ‘Is this okay? What should I wear?’

  “What was amazing to me about his not wanting to be around kids was that he was such a big kid. He was The Big Kid and didn’t want to have any siblings around. He was really like a needy kid who didn’t get fed. He wanted all the attention. I gave it to him because I was thrilled with him. When we were good together, he gave me all the attention and I gave it back. And he loved that.

  “Fritz and I were actually intimate on two occasions. I think he wanted me to be his woman—I know he did. But I wasn’t ready for that. I loved him, but not like that. I remember when I said good-bye to him one time. I had put him to bed and put the blanket over him and sang him a lullaby and he was a little boy. He was really delightful. He really enjoyed it, playing like he was two or three and I was the Mommy.”

  Aside from Fritz the Child, there was often an adolescent on the make. Ilana and Frank Rubenfeld were young students of Fritz’s whom he would frequently visit whenever he came to New York.

  “We’d go to the movies together,” recalls Ilana. “He was crazy for movies, a madman for movies. He’d call us up at ten o’clock at night and say, ‘Let’s go to a double feature.’ Laura, Fritz, Frank, and I would go piling in a cab and go to a double feature until two in the morning. And the thing that just used to drive me batty is that in the movie house he’d make sure to sit next to me. Laura and Frank would sit next to us or behind us. And he’d try to smooch.

  “He’d take his hand and grab mine and I’d say, ‘Please, Fritz.’ I’d take his hand and put it back on his lap again, not only because I didn’t want him up there, but Laura’s right behind me. Except that he’d do it again. For two hours, this would go back and forth, back and forth, like a teenager in a dark movie trying to see what he could get. Slowly the hand would creep behind. Then my hand would take his off, and it would never stop him. He’d do it twenty times.”

  Well known for his theatrics, Fritz told a story about being at a party in Ein Hod, Israel. Several people had performed. He was envious and decided to outperform them all by pretending he was dying. The act came off very well. There was great worry and concern “until I took a bow and got them very angry.”

  Few things pleased Fritz as much as being noticed. Jane Levenberg, a social worker who sponsored workshops for Fritz, would often take him to the opera when he left Esalen to visit Chicago.

  “His usual attire was his Nehru shirt. I remember one Wednesday night, which is notoriously doctor’s night at the opera here. He would stand in the lobby and preen like a peacock. And he was not an unnoticeable man. Anyone who would pass would turn to look at him. And he adored it. The more he got looked at, the more people I introduced him to, the better he liked it.”

  Fritz was a great show-off, for he always hungered for recognition. Many of his attempts to show up others were simultaneously intended to show off himself. He constantly attempted to expose others as misguided at best or frauds at worst. These others were not restricted to those of renown, nor potential rivals for center stage.

  Abe Levitsky met Fritz for the first time when he appeared on a program run by The American Psychological Association in Chicago.

  “He was on a panel with Albert Ellis, Renee Nell, and some other psychologist. What interested and intrigued me at that time was the directness and vigor of his attack on Ellis He made no bones about saying to Al, ‘You’re just making propaganda for yourself.’ At other times he elaborately slept through other people’s presentations, obviously not very moved or in agreement with what was going on. Pretending to be asleep.”

  Many people, like Diane Reifler, could enjoy his grandstanding. When the two of them were doing therapy with an uninvolved or unresponsive person, they might spice up the interaction and dramatize their own performances by hamming it up or making faces at one another. More conservative types, such as Jim Simkin, found such showboating antics distinctly unappealing.

  “I was impressed,” said Jim, “with his genius. I was impressed with his theoretical system. But I was appalled by his own personal life and his own personal values.

  “He used to get up at meetings and make an ass of himself. In group therapy, we sometimes speak of the one person who takes over the group—a type of prima donna who is apparently insensitive to the needs of others. Fritz was often that person. I’d feel ashamed that somebody I liked or identified with acted that way. I wanted to crawl away and hide, like I didn’t know that person. It was exhibitionistic, wanting center stage, not allowing for people who didn’t have as much on the ball or are not as aggressive. And ruthless in that respect. I didn’t like that about Fritz.”

  What Simkin considered Fritz’s “making an ass of himself,” Fritz considered exposing the asininity of others. Thus, for Fritz, his elaborate act of falling asleep on panel discussions was his way of making a statement about the boring pedantry of the participants. It was a form of street theater. The fact that it focused attention upon him added, naturally, to its desirability.

  Once, in the middle of a seminar Abraham Maslow was conducting at Esalen, Fritz began to crawl on his belly and engage in other zany acts. He was obviously bored by the proceedings and hoped to inject some life and spontaneity into the program. Maslow, however, was unable to deal with Fritz in the way a less serious person, such as Paul Frey, might. Instead, the meeting was disrupted. Afterward, a somber Maslow is reported to have said, “That man is crazy.”

  Fritz, during this time, achieved great renown as a sexual being. Here, too, the show-off element was in evidence. Much of the leching of his seventies stemmed from his desire to perpetuate his much-enjoyed fame as a lusty and desirable man. Fritz wrote of his “reputation as being both a dirty old man and a guru. Unfortunately, the first is on the wane and the second ascending.

  “Once we had a party in the ‘big house’ at Esalen. A beautiful girl was lying seductively on a couch. I sat next to her and said something like this: ‘Beware of me. I am a dirty old man.’ ‘And I,’ she replied, ‘am a dirty young girl.’ We had a short and delightful affair after that.”

  Bernie Gunther, commenting on the Esalen years, had this to say: “He used to love to kiss. He would just walk up to girls. I was amazed at the incredible kind of nerve he had. Very few women would stand up and say, ‘I don’t want to kiss you.’ And a lot really enjoyed it. Many young gals thought that Fritz was a great kisser.”

  “I don’t know when I first met Fritz,” said Alan Watts. “I can’t quite remember. But suddenly I ran into this vastly patriarchal character with a big beard. And he was a very affectionate man. He wasn’t standoffish. He was warm. He would embrace you; he would touch you.

  “Fritz amused me enormously. Because he was a wise man, obviously. I mean he knew how to live. He knew how to live in the present. And he was, like myself, a lecherous man. He would sit around in those hot baths at Esalen and keep his eyes on the girls.

  “Once he saw a particularly beautiful girl sitting in the baths at Esalen. He looked at her for a long time, and then went over to her and said, ‘You vant to suck my prick.’ And, by God, she did. He was a terror!”

  Then there is the well-documented story of how Fritz, just prior to starting In and Out the Garbage Pail, spent a weekend in bed sandwiched, nostalgically, between two lovely young women.

  Fritz’s sexuality often stemmed from his sensitivity toward and affection for others and was part of a natural flow. He wrote:

  “My hands are strong and warm. A dirty old man’s hands are cold and clammy. I have affection and love—too much of it. And if I comfort a girl in grief or distress and the sobbing subsides and she presses closer and the stroking gets out of rhythm and slides over the hips and breasts . . . where does the gr
ief end and a perfume begin to turn your nostrils from dripping to smelling?”

  “Most men,” claimed Wilson Van Dusen, “if they taper off at sixty, celebrate that they lasted so long. But Fritz wished to be fully active all the way.”

  “When Bill Schutz came here,” said Esalen’s Michael Murphy, “he was sleeping with all the girls. That was a little too much for Fritz and was related to his starting a whole campaign against Bill, Bernie Gunther, and the ‘turner-oners.’

  “There was a macho element in Fritz. He’d preen and parade and challenge. But I think the bottom line was just an intensity to live. He was just a terribly alive guy.

  “He had a rational, humanistic, bohemian scheme in which sex, I think, is way overrated, where it becomes a substitute for the ecstatic experiences that come more naturally. It becomes what he said it shouldn’t become, a fantasy: a thing you live FOR. An impossible dream, this seeking perfect sex all the time.

  “There was a particular kind of woman he loved. When they came to work at Esalen, I could just spot them. He usually liked big women, physically. He liked them with a lot of ‘stuff’—zoftick—soft. He didn’t like anyone who would challenge him. He nicknamed the waitresses ‘The Floating Maidens.’ They were the strong silent types. He liked a certain amount of mind, too, bright, but a good listener.”

  Through his heavy sexual involvements, Fritz was able to achieve some comfort, warmth, and love. Playing the part of a Superpotent sexual being to the hilt, Fritz could experience tit-in-mouth without openly acknowledging his more profound need for nourishment. Yet, he was keenly sensitive to this desire in others and often functioned, sexually, in a therapeutic way. Testimonials regarding Fritz’s sensitivity and sexual prowess are common. Consider this one from Diane Reifler, the auburn-haired actress-turned-therapist with a lot of “stuff.”