Just as Fritz learned from many people, he taught in a variety of ways.
He taught by perpetually analyzing people’s roles and reactions—from the beaches of Provincetown, to the parties in New York, to Marjorie Van Dusen’s living room in California.
He taught by proselytizing Gestalt: by trying to persuade Wilson Van Dusen to write a book for him; by attempting to get son, Steve, daughter-in-law, Rae, lover Marty Fromm, and rival Will Schutz to become Gestalt therapists; and by proclaiming a “three-month cure of neurosis” at Cowichan.
Yet, for all his hard sell, he encouraged people to find the answer within. There are no Perlsians, as there are Freudians. Although a very vivid personality, he abhorred the cult of personality. If you asked him too many questions, he’d ask you to write a dialogue with your own “Fritz.” And he’d warn you against healers, including himself.
“Beware of any helpers. Helpers are con men who promise something for nothing. They spoil you and keep you dependent and immature.”
For Julian Beck, Judith Malina, and many, many others experimenting with different life and work styles, Fritz taught by “giving our experimentation a certain kind of license, a certain kind of leave, a certain kind of ground for playing that was very solid ground.” He did this simply by appearing as an eminent man, a psychoanalyst who appreciated innovation and novel statements, thus allowing others to truly find their own way.
His remarkable gift for phrasemaking also helped him as a teacher, for he could pungently remind us of certain universal truths. Among those that have hit home for me were the following:
On trying to get one-up on life:
“Actually, we have it all wrong when we say we look forward to the future. The future is a void and we walk, so to say, blindly with our backs toward it. At best, we see what we left behind.”
On anxiety:
“Discomfort is always a symptom of dishonesty. If you don’t express yourself honestly, you feel uncomfortable. The very moment you express yourself adequately, the discomfort goes.”
On perfectionism:
“Friend, don’t be a perfectionist. Perfectionism is a curse, and a strain. For you tremble lest you miss the bull’s-eye. You are perfect if you let be.
“Friend, don’t be afraid of mistakes. Mistakes are not sins. Mistakes are ways of doing something different, perhaps, creatively new.
“Friend, don’t be sorry for your mistakes. Be proud of them. You had the courage to give something of yourself.
On questions:
“You know the proverb, ‘One fool can ask more questions than a thousand wise men can answer.’ All the answers are given. Most questions are simply inventions to torture ourselves and other people. The way to develop your own intelligence is by changing every question into a statement. If you change your question into a statement, the background out of which the question arose opens up and the possibilities are found by the questioner himself.”
Fritz taught by using his considerable intellect to demolish the glib explanations of the academic intellectuals. In the early 1940s, he wrote in Ego, Hunger and Aggression:
“Intellectualism is a mental hypertrophy and by no means identical with intelligence, a fact which many people dislike admitting. It is an attitude designed to avoid being deeply moved.”
Later, he would more pungently state that “Intellect is the whore of intelligence,” or describe “the three classes of verbiage production as chickenshit . . . bullshit . . . and elephantshit.”
Through his training groups, clinical work, and publications, his teachings were finally recognized by his peers. In the last two years of his life, the Outcast, along with Jim Simkin, were asked to talk on Gestalt Therapy before The American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting in Boston. Jim has heard Fritz describe this recognition, in glowing terms, as one of the biggest thrills in his life.
Ilana Rubenfeld was, to Fritz Perls, what Viva was for Andy Warhol. She was Fritz’s Superstar—a participant in a workshop he gave at Esalen in the summer of 1967 that was recorded on videotape and later transferred to film.
The sequence with Ilana, edited into a short movie, showed Fritz and his Gestalt Therapy at their very best. Ilana performed the “patient’s” role perfectly, profiting from the parts of her dream that she acted out. Fritz demonstrated his uncanny knack of directing her to role-play just those elements that would help her grow and discover a fuller psychological self. And both of them had an interaction that was alternately wise, respectful, humorous, serious, tender, moving, and very, very real.
Fritz frequently showed this film at workshops and demonstrations that he conducted during the last years of his life. It invariably brought the house down and interested many a young psychotherapist in learning Gestalt technique. Ilana went on to become not only a friend of Fritz but a most competent Gestalt therapist in her own right. Concerning other Gestaltists who have trained with Fritz, she had this to say: “It’s interesting for me to see people who met him. I can tell when they met him—at what stage of his life he was at—because they latch on to a certain period of his life and they work like that. I feel lucky that I met him in the last four years because those four years were like a melting pot of many, many things. People of twenty years ago will say that he wasn’t doing Gestalt in the last few years. Or that he was doing a different Gestalt. He was a different Gestalt. That was Gestalt.
“One workshop, he was into contact/withdrawal. Everyone went up to the hot seat for contact/withdrawal. ‘Okay. Close your eyes. Let yourself withdraw . . . Open your eyes again and let yourself come back to the present.’ At another workshop, he was into body movement. So, everybody exaggerated their body movement. It all depended on what thing he was experimenting with, what he was excited about, what was in the foreground for him. That was what was so beautiful about him. I never knew what he was going to do. I could go to one workshop after another with him. Yet, when you watched this man work, you saw that he worked with every person from where they were. That was the beauty of it. Other people pick up techniques and forget the essence. And the essence is to be aware of where the person is while you work with them.”
Indeed, the most accurate statement that one can make about Fritz as a clinician is that his style continuously changed as he became fascinated by and integrated new techniques, which one must do if one lives in the Now. Fritz, echoing Marcus Aurelius, often said, “You never step into the same stream twice.”
Most people interested in psychology came to know Fritz, as Ilana did, during his last four years, after he had achieved his fame and influence. In this final phase as a therapist, Fritz managed to find that halfway point between psychotherapy and theater. He had often talked about wanting to write, direct, and produce a play. Just as he told Ilana, an ex-conductor-turned-therapist, “You don’t need an orchestra to be a conductor. You can make your own music,” so did Fritz create his own theater. Fritz’s brand of Gestalt Therapy could be seen as a drama where he, as director, would have the individual he worked with play all sorts of roles and parts, often building up to emotion-packed climaxes. It was, if nothing else, good theater. And, more often than not, good therapy, too.
His style of working at that time utilized two empty chairs. One was the hot seat, which you approached and sat in when you wished to work with him. The other chair was there to help you switch roles, the person on the hot seat moved over to it whenever he or she enacted different parts. Fritz sat alongside the hot seat. Had he lived longer, it is likely that there would have been a change in that style of work, too. For change was Fritz’s style.
In his work with others, Fritz focused on three things. These were owning projections, the awareness continuum, and emotional involvement and interaction.
Rashomon was one of his favorite films because it expressed, with great artistry, his knowledge of how much men project—how they see only what they wish to see, wh
at is denied in themselves, or what their needs are. As Hari Dass Baba, an Indian sage, wrote, “If a pickpocket meets a saint, he sees only his pockets.”
Fritz had a theory that he invariably wished others to try on for size, namely, that whatever we believe about or see in another person or the world at large is invariably a projection. Thus, a statement such as “Nancy is a gossip” was to be rephrased as “I am a gossip.” A complaint that “my shoulder is tense” might lead to a request that you be your shoulder, say “I am tense,” and see if you might not explore the causes of and take responsibility for your tenseness. When one is playacting the people, things, or events they complain about, they have the possibility of having an “Aha!” experience, in which there is the recognition. “This is me!” This is what is referred to as owning projections.
To be a whole person meant, to Fritz, that you had to reown all these fragmented, split off, denied parts of your personality. He was particularly fond of working toward this end by using dream material. With dreams, it was harder for the person working with him to deny his or her projections. If a timid woman complains that her husband is a bully and if he happens to be one, she is not as likely to recognize a similar power within herself as she might by playing the Nazi that she dreamed about last night. Since the dreamer has clearly authored her own dream, Reality is not there to distract her from emotional truths.
In Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, he put it this way:
“I believe that every part of the dream is a part of yourself—not just the person, but every item, every mood, anything that comes across. My favorite example is this: A patient dreams he is leaving my office and goes to Central Park. And he goes across the bridle path, into the Park. So I ask him, ‘Now play the bridle path.’ He answers indignantly, ‘What? And let everybody shit and crap on me?’ You see, he really got the identification. I let the patient play all these parts, because only by really playing can you get the full identification, and the identification is the counteraction to the alienation. Alienation means, ‘That’s not me, that’s something else, something strange, something not belonging to me.’”
Fritz was also acutely aware of how people project their power onto the therapist, how they see him as wise, all-knowing, and competent to solve their problems. Unlike the classical psychoanalyst who is content to sit in silence and allow his patients this illusion, Fritz did all in his power to discourage it, for he knew that self-confidence grew only out of self-directed actions. Again, he used his projection technique.
In this instance, Max, a participant in one of Fritz’s groups, began to work on a dream. Before he got to it, however, Fritz had him identify with the tenseness in his body. After some minutes of this, Max asked: “Could I go ahead with the dream?”
“Ask Fritz,” Fritz responded. “Put Fritz in that empty chair and ask him.”
Max (talking to an empty chair): “Fritz, could I go ahead with the dream? . . .” (He switches to the empty chair and answers back as Fritz): “You decide for yourself.”
After doing some useful work on his dream, in which Max is asked to continue to direct the inquiry by playacting the therapist, Fritz closed with these remarks:
“Well, you see this is what I’m concerned with. I, this Fritz can’t go home with you. You can’t have me as a permanent therapist. But you can get your own personalized Fritz and take this along with you. And he knows much more than I do because he’s your creation. I can only guess or theorize or interpret what you’re experiencing. I can see the scratch, but I cannot feel the itch. I’m not in you and I’m not arrogant enough to be a psychoanalyst and say that I know what you experience, what you feel. But if you understand the idea of this purely personal Fritz, you can get yourself a chair, couch, or whatever you have, and, whenever you’re in trouble, go and talk to this imaginary Fritz.”
A fuller example of his work with projections may be seen in this excerpt (which, like the others in this chapter, are taken from a Dream Work Seminar he gave at the Esalen Institute and are recorded in the book Gestalt Therapy Verbatim.) Meg is a woman who reports a nightmare in which there are a number of rattlesnakes—one on a platform she is sitting on and another near a dog that lies below. As in all his work with dreams, Fritz asks her to recall the dream not as a past event, but as something that is occurring in the Here and Now, so that she might experience it anew, with all its attendant fears, in present time.
F: So, up here is one rattlesnake and down below is another rattlesnake and the dog.
M: And the dog is sort of sniffing at the rattlesnake. He’s—ah—getting very close to the rattlesnake, sort of playing with it, and I wanna stop—stop him from doing that.
F: Tell him.
M: Dog, stop!
F: Louder.
M: Stop!
F: Louder.
M (shouts): STOP!
F: Louder.
M (screams): STOP!
F: Does the dog stop?
M: He’s looking at me. Now he’s gone back to the snake. Now—now, the snake’s sort of coiling up around the dog, and the dog’s lying down, and—and the snake’s coiling around the dog, and the dog looks very happy.
F: Ah! Now have an encounter between the dog and the rattlesnake.
M: You want me to play them?
F: Both. Sure. This is your dream. Every part is a part of yourself.
M: I’m the dog. (Hesitantly) Huh. Hello, rattlesnake. It sort of feels good with you wrapped around me.
F: Look at the audience. Say this to somebody in the audience.
M (laughs gently): Hello, snake. It feels good to have you wrapped around me.
F: Close your eyes. Enter your body. What do you experience physically?
M: I’m trembling. Tensing.
F: Let this develop. Allow yourself to tremble and get your feelings . . . (Her whole body begins to move a little.) Yah. Let it happen. Can you dance it? Get up and dance it. Let your eyes open, just so that you stay in touch with your body, with what you want to express physically . . . Yah . . . (She walks, trembling and jerkily, almost staggering.) Now dance, rattlesnake . . . (She moves slowly and sinuously graceful.) . . . How does it feel to be a rattlesnake now? . . .
M: It’s—sort of—slowly—quite—quite aware, of anything getting too close.
F: Hm?
M: Quite aware of not letting anything get too close, ready to strike.
F: Say this to us. “If you come too close, I—”
M: If you come too close, I will strike back!
F: Say this with your whole body.
M: If you come too close, I will strike back!
F: How are your legs? I experience you as being somewhat wobbly.
M: Yeah.
F: That you don’t really take a stand.
M: Yes. I feel I’m . . . kind of, in between being very strong and—if I let go, they’re going to turn to rubber.
F: Okeh, let them turn to rubber. (Her knees bend and wobble.) Again . . . Now try out how strong they are. Try out—hit the floor. Do anything. (She stamps several times with one foot.) Yah, now the other. (Stamps other foot.) Now let them turn to rubber again. (She lets knees bend again.) More difficult now, isn’t it?
M: Yeah.
F: Now say again the sentence, “If you come too close—” . . . (She makes an effort.) . . . (Laughter)
M: If—if you . . .
F: Okeh, change. Say “Come close.” (Laughter)
M: Come close.
F: How do you feel now?
M: Warm.
F: You feel somewhat more real?
M: Yeah.
F: Okeh . . . So what we did is we took away some of the fear of being in touch. So, from now on, she’ll be a bit more in touch.
You see how you can use everything in a dream. If you are pursued by an ogre in a dream, and you become the ogre, the nigh
tmare disappears. You reown the energy that is invested in the demon. Then the power of the ogre is no longer outside, alienated, but inside where you can use it.
This excerpt with Meg also illustrates the awareness continuum aspect of Fritz’s work. On at least seven occasions, Fritz directs her attention to what is going on either inside or outside of her.
“Look at the audience. . . . Enter your body. What do you experience physically? Allow yourself to tremble and get your feelings. . . . Now dance, rattlesnake. . . . How does it feel to be a rattlesnake now? . . . How are your legs? I experience you as being somewhat wobbly. . . . Okeh, let them turn to rubber . . . How do you feel now?”
Such directed attention is not meant to serve any end nor intended to produce any insight. It is, instead, an end in itself, for it produces a fuller awareness of the present moment. At times, in his groups, Fritz would suggest endless go-arounds, where participants would fill in the blanks to statements such as “Now I am aware of ____,” “Now I see ____,” or “Now I feel ____.”
There is much in this that is akin to training in Zen meditation and similar, as well, to the experience of the Eternal Present that some people first arrive at through the use of psychedelic drugs. In either state, one is not only fully aware of the moment, but aware, as well, that it changes and flows from moment to moment as surely as the water in a brook. This is a unique experience for people who have trouble living in the Now or who foolishly seek to hang on to one moment, pinning it, like a butterfly, instead of letting go and flowing to the next event.
The third quality that Fritz brought to his work with others was emotional involvement and interaction.
In the spring of 1968, Fritz came to New York to lead a workshop for professionals. At one point, he put down a well-known psychologist by making a motion with his hands to indicate that she was chattering without making any sense. Being treated so disdainfully in front of her peers apparently got to her, although she said nothing at the time. John Brinley, another therapist who participated in that session, recalls it in this way: “She was furious. She was going to get back at him and she did. At the end of the session, she sat next to him, was teasing him, and, inadvertently at some point, began to pull his beard rather roughly. So, he lashed out and really smacked her. Left and right. Everybody was completely paralyzed. Finally, someone screamed ‘Stop,’ and jumped in. But it seemed an eternity.”
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