Notes on Gestalt Practice

Dick Price, the co-founder of Esalen Institute, never published anything about Gestalt during his lifetime. However, it is possible to reconstruct many of his ideas. This is an adaptation of Dick’s views about Gestalt Practice. It is based upon Dick’s own words, with only minor modifications to complete the first-person narrative form. 

...except from:
Manual of Gestalt Practice in the Tradition of Dick Price 

Copyright © 2009, 2020 by John Francis Callahan for The Gestalt Legacy Project. All rights reserved. For private use only. This material may be reproduced for personal, non-commercial purposes if all copyright notations are retained without alteration. Not to be reproduced for profitable use or distribution. Do not publish or sell in any form, by itself or as part of another work, without express written permission.

Notes on Gestalt Practice

My interest in Gestalt came about as a direct result of Fritz Perls’ presence at Esalen Institute. Michael Murphy and I started Esalen about two years before Fritz arrived. At first, Fritz came up from L.A., where he was working with Jim Simkin, merely to do a Gestalt program at Esalen. That was Christmas of 1963. But eventually he made Esalen his home, and we even helped him build a house on the property.

My initial reaction to Fritz was not very good. As it turned out, Fritz had just experienced a heart attack before he first came to Esalen, and apparently he thought he was going to die at any moment. Whether or not that was the reason, socially, he wasn’t the most pleasant person to interact with, even when relatively healthy. So it took a couple of years - actually two years from the date of that first program - for me to start working with him. I started working with Fritz regularly in early 1966. The first time we worked together was probably between Christmas of 1965 and New Year’s of 1966. And I immediately became very impressed by what Fritz was doing, and how different he was in a Gestalt group than my experience of him in regular conversation.

What impressed me about his work in groups was that he was insightful. He was present. He was compassionate - all the things I didn’t consider him as being when I would see him in the Esalen Lodge or around the property. I was very impressed that this man, a psychiatrist, was doing such good work compared to what I had experienced, and compared to what happens today with people who call themselves psychiatrists. As it turned out, Fritz was not qualified by the state of California to practice psychiatry. But, like all programs at Esalen, there is nothing done that is called “psychiatry.” A person could be a psychiatrist, but they are not supposed to do psychiatry when they work at Esalen - they do experiential education, instead. So what Fritz did at Esalen essentially defined a new category of practice. But it really isn’t accurate to say that this practice is new, because, according to Fritz, Gestalt is as old as the world. It is a type of healing that is closer to so-called primitive societies, a process similar to a category of shamanistic healing and ritual. These approaches are more humane. They come into contact with people as real people, not as objects that need to be “fixed” in some way.

In any event, I started working with Fritz in early 1966. Then I had my second mental break, which was largely the effect of not being able to finish the first one that I experienced thirteen years previously. So in the spring of 1969 I had another experience of a similar kind, most of which I was able to work through in Big Sur, but not at Esalen. I was actually staying with friends who had their own property, and who would protect the space for me to experience just what I was experiencing. After I got finished with that, which was in the summer of 1969, Fritz was already preparing to re-locate himself. He left Esalen after six years, and re-established himself at the Gestalt Institute of Canada at Adelaide College on Vancouver Island. I went up there and spent two of his last three teaching months with him. At the end of 1969 I left Canada and came back to Esalen. Later, Fritz left Canada and went on a tour of Europe for the winter. He got sick in Europe, and then sicker still when he got back to the U.S. He never made it to Canada. He died in Chicago in March of 1970. In the months I spent with him in Canada there was a training institute that had been established for him. I went up there less to train with Fritz than to fully integrate my experience of the previous year. And that’s when Fritz said to me, “Dick it’s time for you to go out and teach, and do your own groups.” So I started teaching Gestalt practice when I got back to Esalen in 1970.

Gestalt, as I practice it, is fundamentally the same as what I learned from Fritz, except that I have made some changes. Fritz made a strong point of not wanting disciples. As he put it, “I do not want to train a lot of little Fritzes.” So what I got from Fritz, I put into my own wine bottle, so to speak. There are basic similarities in what I do, and there are a lot of differences, too. I’m Dick. I’m not Fritz. I have a lot of appreciation for Fritz. But Fritz’s actual instruction was to, “Take what I have and do your own thing with it.” He was very good that way, rather than having a standardized school. I don’t think a standardized school of Gestalt really exists. There have been attempts at Gestalt Institutes. But I don’t think Gestalt is something to be standardized, and I don’t really care all that much about the Gestalt Institutes. I have never been particularly interested in them. I had my relationship to a master, and as far as I can see there’s no reason for me to go to a Gestalt school, even if such a thing were possible. I don’t think it is possible, in the sense of standardizing a product, to teach a particular idea about what Gestalt is.

Gestalt is a German word that means configuration. Of course, nothing is ever perfectly defined. I asked a German fellow in one of my groups what the word meant, and he defined it as figure. It’s like saying that there’s a bridge over there, and you see the shadow of a man passing over it, but you don’t see him clearly. When you see the figure, you are seeing a Gestalt. It’s an impression of the whole. But it doesn’t necessarily have to have a lot of clarity or detail. You don’t have to see the man’s eyes, or the way he buttons his shirt. You just see the figure - the configuration - in the sense of the verb to configure.

Fritz and Laura Perls came from Berlin. At the time, Laura, especially, was in contact with the various Gestalt psychologists who eventually left Germany - most of them Jews. Many of them, like Kofka, Kohler, and Wertheimer, ended up teaching at the New School for Social Research in New York during the early 1930’s. They were doing experimental work, mostly with perceptual wholes. For example, you might see a single image in different configurations. In one particular perceptual experience, you might see a configuration that would look to you like two faces kissing. In another instance, you might see the configuration as a vase. Gestalt psychologists were working, mostly experimentally, in relation to these intriguing problems of perception. However, in what became Gestalt Therapy, and then Gestalt practice, we are interested in Gestalts and wholes, but not just as perceptual figures. In Gestalt practice, the whole would include a perceptual element, a feeling element, and a sensational element. The total Gestalt, rather than merely a perceptual figure, might include an emotional figure, as in, “Now I’m feeling sadness,” or a sensual figure, “Now I’m feeling a pain in my forehead.” There is the ability of the perceiver to choose, and to come into relationship with a field of experience in a way that can lead to greater and greater satisfaction. One simple example is to say, “Oh, now I’m hungry.” With this awareness there is the discovery of, “Now I have the ability to choose.” I can open the icebox and eat something, and then I’m no longer hungry. So we are always looking at this ability to form Gestalts, and then at letting go of Gestalts, in relationship to organic self-regulation. Fritz didn’t use that expression very much, but Reich did. It is important to realize that Reich’s socio-political interest was greater than Fritz’s. And that perspective is also important to Gestalt practice. So that’s essentially what Gestalt is about - regulation both in an individual sense, and in a larger sense of social fields.

In order for me to describe how I do Gestalt practice, I actually have to talk about what I don’t do, because Gestalt is not a “doing.” What Fritz called therapist and patient, that dyad, I refer to as reflector and initiator. The initiator is really the person who formerly was in the “patient” role. My function is simply to be available in a particular way to reflect and clarify whatever comes up in that person’s process. I never define how a person should be. I’m available in a particular way, like a mirror - which is a good analogy. So the person remains responsible for his or her own experience. This is very unlike the standard psychiatric approach - where you are put, if not in a jail cell, then certainly in a diagnostic pigeon hole of symptoms.

The central form that my work takes is the “open seat” group. In order to describe what happens, let’s say that there is a group of fifteen people sitting in a circle. There are some basic awareness exercises that I give to the group. This is what I call “basic practice,” which is attention to the body, to breath, to movement, to kinesthetic sensations, to sensations in the body - feeling states, emotion, thought, and images. And what’s important is a mode of present centered contact that is brought to the experience, without judgment. So what’s important and basic in the practice isn’t about change. I’m not here to change anyone. What’s important is contact. I function as an auxiliary to encourage and facilitate contact - that is, contact with one’s own experience, not defined by anyone else from outside.

After the “basic practice” exercises, the opportunity is there for people to join me on the “open seat” - or not. The choice remains open. The authority to make the choice remains with what we call the initiator. It’s quite different from psychiatry. The word “initiator” designates an active role, while the word “patient” is someone who, at least to me, is acted upon - and the therapist is the one who acts. Process is different. Process is active. So my Gestalt isn’t “therapy.” This is a “practice.” This isn’t something that a therapist does to a patient. It’s what two people, in complementary roles, do together.

If someone moves up, onto the open seat next to me, what happens next is just whatever happens. I respond however I respond - but in a way to reflect and clarify. So the person might start out in some particular way. For example, often people start talking about a certain situation in their life. In this practice there’s a style of work, and there’s a style of language. The style of work is different from talking about the past, or speculating about the future. It is designed to make everything real and present. So there may be a situation in your childhood - say you’re thirteen years old and you’re talking to your grandfather. Rather than telling me about it, you bring that into the present in imagination, and talk about that as if it were happening right now. So a continual instruction is simply to make experience real and present. That can also be true for a future situation, a future imagining. Imagine you are in San Francisco or in New Orleans. Where are you? What are you doing? Can you imagine being in a stadium watching an event, or in an auditorium listening to music? What is your experience? What is your experience of other people around you? My function as a reflector is to facilitate the initiator’s imagination in a way that is present, rather than speculative in past or future tense. So a big part of Gestalt language is using the present tense. This is also true in dream work. Rather than talking about a dream or attempting to analyze, you enter the dream imagery, and become the various parts - no matter how unworldly. You can become an animal - you can become a house - but everything is present centered, and handled by entering and experiencing, rather than talking about it from a distance.

The purpose of the practice is not to force change. However, most people who participate in the process do seem to accomplish something, because they want to change somehow, in order to resolve something. There’s something for them to get out of the way. But this practice is really a practice of contacting what is, and letting change be something that happens, rather than something that is made to happen, or even has to happen. A person might come up with a certain idea of how they want to change. They enter their experience, and the change that happens, and that they find satisfying, is quite different from what they would have imagined. So to be open to what is, rather than having to define what has to be, is very important to the practice. It’s important for the person to have that attitude, and also for the person who is in the reflective relationship.

Let’s say you come up to work with me. I’m not defining how you have to be, although I might have some ideas as I see you work. But again, the authority remains with the initiator. I’m not going to push you in a direction, even if I might say to myself, “I know this is what’s going to be ‘good’ for you.” If I said that out loud, then the authority would come back to me. But my only authority is in being able to define the structure of Gestalt practice, itself. You remain the authority for your own experience; you remain the authority for the choices that you make.

Part of my intention is to reflect in such a way as to assist people to intensify or deepen their awareness. My function is to be present for people almost like a mirror. In other words, there is much you can do yourself, so I am present for you as a mirror. Here’s an illustration I can give of the relationship. -- If a guy wants to shave, he can actually do it without a mirror. Yet, having a mirror is going to help him in the process of shaving. It’s not that he couldn’t do it by himself. But the mirror helps. That’s a pretty good analogy of what I do as the mirror.

One of my primary functions is what I call “helping you to hold the avoided figure.” You might find yourself getting angry, for example, or resentful, or sad - things you might define as something that you shouldn’t be. I would just say, “Hey, hold on a minute. Contact that sense of anger or sadness or irritation, or whatever it is.” And I leave it to your own experience. You can choose not to follow my direction. But if you do, what you find, most times, is that with contact comes a certain type of self-regulation. In other words, if you feel sad you can allow crying, and by allowing crying you may no longer feel sad. That is a change that is allowed to happen. So what’s primary here is not the goal of, “Don’t be sad.” It’s simply, “Contact your sadness.” Of course, you may stay sad - there are no guarantees.

For me, there are three main elements of Gestalt. The Three Jewels of Gestalt Practice are: Awareness, Choice and Trust. The trust element is found in your power of self-regulation, given the exercise of your ability to contact experience, and your ability to choose. The more you discover that trust, the less you need another person, even like me - and much less so, certainly, will you need the average therapist.

What is primary is not any specific goal of striving to achieve a particular state. There are few people who come into a group without wanting some change or some resolution. So that’s always going to be there. I’m not trying to make something bad out of that. But the practice, as a practice, is one of contact, and not change. This takes a certain reorientation. So in a session someone might want to resolve something. There’s some other way that they want it to be. But what you might notice is that the more they want to change, the more they try to keep things in the ‘why’ framework, rather than the ‘how’ framework - the more they tie themselves up and effectively remain the same. So it’s almost a paradox; it’s almost like Aikido. There’s a certain kind of Taoist principle operating, so that simply by allowing, change happens naturally. With allowing and with contact, rather than by forcing, change happens. There really is a positive philosophy of non-forcing or non-doing involved here, and an openness to what happens - rather than having a firm definition of how you should be, even if that’s something like, “I shouldn’t be sad,” or “I shouldn’t be angry.”

One of the goals or values of the Gestalt attitude is moving from environmental support to self-support. It is implicit in the values of the self-help movement - values like clarity, simplicity and honesty. You can think of these in terms of individual self-support. But you can also think of them in terms of group self-support, where there isn’t an outside dependence, outside of something that is an organic whole. You’re not seeking “expert advice.” A good example is what might be done in a cooperative housing community. You might ask for residents to contribute five or ten hours of work a week, so that people can effectively support themselves. By doing it that way, you are able to strengthen the household and charge much less than you would have to otherwise. Normally, you might have to call a plumber. But you’re better off if someone in the cooperative house knows about plumbing, and then you don’t have to bother with an outside plumber who charges so much. It’s the same as not having a shift of cooks and waiters to serve you a meal. You can do it yourself. However, self-support doesn’t deny a certain degree of functional environmental support. As Fritz would put it, “You learn to wipe your own ass,” either as an individual, or as a creative, self-supportive group of people.

So self-support is a value in Gestalt. Awareness is also a value. Awareness is a good thing in itself. Fully living life is a value. There is inherent vitality in living life. Fritz was a patient of Wilhelm Reich for ten months. So some of the Reichian values, like vitality and aliveness, are implicit in Gestalt values. The values in the larger culture are what Reich referred to as the Emotional Plague, in the sense that the implicit norm in the social system is, “Life can’t be trusted.” Gestalt practice says, “Trust in Life! Trust in Self Support!” Trust in life, awareness, initiative and choice! What about honesty? Certainly there is self-honesty. The values of encounter are openness and honesty. The values in Gestalt are openness and honesty both in service of the organism, and in being able to choose. But there are times when being honest isn’t functional.

Generally, you have to be able to trust. So trust is a primary value. As I said, awareness, choice and trust are all Gestalt values. With trust comes openness and honesty - trust in yourself and learning to trust the other. I have to be able to trust myself enough, and you enough, to know that when I’m working you’re not going to turn me in for some offense, or call a psychiatrist or a cop on me. On the other hand, I may have some good reason not to be open and honest with some people. And again, it comes back to choice, but in the interest of life and vitality. And as relationships become more and more established, we do learn to trust.

I can say that now I am never really disappointed with any Gestalt session. At one time, this might not have been true, because I can see how much might happen when someone willingly contacts or enters the process of Gestalt play. This contactful type of session is likely to be a lot more satisfying. A person who really contacts their experience feeds back with a degree of clarity. This person then is someone who willingly plays the Gestalt game - for example, by entering into a dream image, instead of saying, “This is ridiculous; how can I become a cow? I’m not really a cow,” or, “I’m not my mother.” So someone who enters the Gestalt form with a sense of vitality and play is going to be a lot more satisfying to me, especially when I can see a person entering into, say, sadness - going into grief work, and coming out the other side with a degree of clarity and openness and sense of aliveness. That’s satisfying for the person, and it’s satisfying for me. But learning not to be disappointed is a kind of equanimity that I have learned over the years.

As I write this, it has been almost sixteen years, now, that I have been doing Gestalt work as a reflector. Of course, I still do it both as an initiator and a reflector. I’ve been doing it as a reflector since 1970, and as an initiator since 1966. That’s nineteen years altogether. Nineteen years as what I call an initiator, and sixteen years as what I call a reflector. What I have learned to do during this period of time is to make reflecting into an awareness practice. So part of my ideal as reflector is to make Gestalt a practice of awareness for myself while I'm reflecting. Actually, that’s true for both parts of the dyad. Both partners, it must be remembered, are doing the practice together, rather than one person doing something to the other. And in the practice there is an equality - the Buddhists call it the wisdom of equality - in the sense that equal attention is given to whatever emerges. So it doesn’t really matter whether the work is what ordinarily would be a really interesting and vital session, compared to one that is not so interesting and not so vital. I can bring the same clarity of consciousness to either one. Whatever has been presented to me is an object of my awareness, just like a pain in my arm or a really good feeling in my heart. One is not so pleasant. One is very pleasant. I can bring attention equally to either object. I do that with people, too. Every session for me is equally an opportunity for my own practice. And in this way, I am no longer left disappointed by a session. Whoever shows up is providing me with an opportunity for practice. I can be equally grateful for the most “disappointing” session, and the most “alive” session.

Of course, to be honest about it, I’m not quite at the point, yet, where I find all session equally satisfying. But I’m working on it! There’s less of a difference now. And I am able to maintain nourishment for myself by following the basic practice that I give to other people. That practice consists of being aware and centered in my own breath, taking responsibility for my own experience, and being available in a particular way that doesn’t push and doesn’t need to have anything happen from outside. And yes, there is pleasure and satisfaction in sessions where that ‘certain something’ does happen. But I wouldn’t use the word ‘disappointment’ now, when it doesn’t. There’s relative satisfaction. Any session is satisfying. It’s just that some sessions are more satisfying than others! It might be nice for all sessions to be equally satisfying, but I certainly don’t expect that. And by not expecting that, I save myself from disappointment. All sessions are experiments. People find out what works for them. Gestalt is a style that is fine for some people, and not so fine for others.

In comparison to Fritz, my approach is quite different, in part because Fritz had a background in theater and acting. I don’t. And I don’t have a whole lot of interest in theater. So I would say that Fritz was more entertaining. And he wouldn’t stay with a person in process as long as I would. There was less permission with Fritz. Permission is given either explicitly or implicitly. There was less implied permission to go deeply into emotion with Fritz. So I’m more available at what I would call a deeper lever than Fritz. And I’m probably not as entertaining.

Funtionally, there are two categories of Gestaltists. One group does what I call, “Acid Gestalt.” They tell you how you should be, and they frustrate. My problems with Acid Gestalt are coercion and judgment. Fritz used what he called skillful frustration. If someone had a pattern of behavior that was frustrating both to others and also to the person using it, Fritz would attempt to block that. But Fritz had the skill to be able to use frustration in a different way than a lot of other people. I’ve witnessed some Gestaltists who automatically use frustration as a style, rather than simply being present for experience.

Not everyone who does this work frustrates skillfully. If I frustrate you skillfully, then you are almost forced to find another way, beyond your usual neurotic habits. This works well with some people, both as initiators and reflectors. So there are the Acid Gestaltists, who tend to be confrontational and sarcastic. Jim Simkin is a good example of that, I think. Then there’s what I call, “Soft Gestaltists,” the Aikido Gestlatists. They are simply present with whatever happens, without having to add their own judgments, or frustrate. My own attitude is that you frustrate yourself enough. I don’t have to frustrate you. All I need to do is be present to reflect your self-frustrations back, and then let you have a choice of whether you want to continue to do that, or to find another way. And I don’t have to be your judge.

One of Fritz’s favorite films was Roshomon, which is the story of robbery and rape, told from four different perspectives - the alleged rapist, the woman, the husband, and a beggar who’s looking on from the bushes. In the same way, there are different perspectives on how to do Gestalt. So there are people who, for me, are Gestaltist, but they might not even know it. They probably have no connection to Fritz. And Fritz, himself, was also a composite of Karen Horney, Charlotte Selver and Wilhelm Reich - yet he was very definitely Fritz. There’s a kind of osmosis by which, somehow, all of these projects connect or don’t connect. And so, for me, the most important single element is one’s own personal approach, one’s own style, whatever theoretical label is used.

What I'm teaching as Gestalt practice probably doesn't look anything like the kind of Gestalt that other people are teaching. In many ways it doesn’t look anything like what Fritz did, either. I sometimes imagine that if some of the people who consider themselves Fritz’s students saw what I do, they would be appalled that I actually call it Gestalt. But if you think I’m not doing Gestalt, then neither was Fritz! The important thing is to be able to recognize the practice for what it is, and then enter it. Seen from that perspective, what I do looks very similar to what Fritz did. Actually, Fritz’s problem was that it was very rare for him to have someone who fully entered into the practice. In fact, one of the first things that Fritz told me was that he felt lucky if he had one or two people in a group who were really interested in what he had to teach them. And that’s one of the reasons he was so acid, because he felt that what he did was so obvious, yet people would not pick up on it, and so he felt that the main thing people were into doing was frustrating him. But when there are a few people who can almost taste what is there for them, then that is, in itself, rewarding enough.

It would probably be fair to say that my wife, Christine, and I - the two of us - have been the primary teachers of Gestalt practice at Esalen Institute for these many years since Fritz left. And although we have developed a Soft Gestalt approach, I would say that Fritz used it first. At least Fritz did when Fritz was in that mode. I chose to pick up on the soft approach from him, and evolved that - rather than the other form, which was also Fritz. So far as I know, nobody else developed the same kind of style that we have. Richard Olney and Cherie Coy do something they call Self-Acceptance Training. It sounds like it may be very similar, although I have never watched them work.

I don’t actually use the phrase “Soft Gestalt” very often for this work. We call it Gestalt practice, as an alternative to Gestalt Therapy. That change happened, immediately, when I started doing Gestalt workshops in early 1970. At first we dropped the ‘therapy’ part, and we would just say Gestalt workshops. In fact, the word therapy is pretty much edited out of the Esalen catalog, although it occasionally sneaks back in. For me, therapy has the connotation that, if I’m a therapist then I’m someone who does something to you, from a position of superior authority, which is just the kind of mind-set we want to get rid of. Instead, what is happening when you work with me is that I’m present, and we’re present together, in a mutual practice. In a way, we’re doing this together. And the authority for your experience remains with you, whereas the authority for my experience remains with me.

Besides Fritz, my other major teacher, in the early days, was Alan Watts. Alan wasn’t anyone you’d want to work with, personally. That was not what Alan did. But just in terms of a particular type of mind-set, he was very important to me in the 1950s. Reich is another person who has been very influential for me. I actually met his daughter, Eva Reich, here at Esalen. And there is also Rashneesh, who was very influential for me, at least in his writings. For one thing, in Gestalt we talk about the issue of movement from “environmental support to self support.” Fritz would almost overemphasize this, because he was so committed not to be dependent on anyone else, and his theory reflects, to some degree, his own personal pathology. One thing that I liked about Rashneesh was that he moved from dependence to independence, and then to the recognition of the need for interdependence. That’s more the position I want to emphasize. Don’t make a dichotomy out of environmental self-support. Instead, move to a “relative self-support” that creatively and correctly uses environmental support, which is necessary for one’s own growth and development.

In contrast, some people seem to say that you are almost totally responsible for everything that happens to you. This is the EST-ian position. There is a certain awkwardness in this position. It’s quite different, for me, to be responsible in the sense that Fritz used the term - “response-ability” - in other words, to be able to respond to one’s situation. The other sense gets to be almost an absurd position. Will Schutz went off on this EST position. For example, if I am being napalmed in Vietnam, presumable I am creating that - I am choosing that. To me this isn’t the meaning of responsibility. It goes over to a kind of blame position. It misses the point. Schutz really went off on the position in which we are even responsible for creating a birth defect. In Gestalt, responsibility is a position of acceptance. And this is what it means for me now - a sense in which issues of blame don’t really enter in the same way. I think that the EST sense has been picked up on a lot, and made a little absurd.

In Gestalt we talk about desired directions. And one of those directions is the movement from environmental support to self-support - with a recognition of interdependence. In other words, it is not a position of absolute self-support, in the sense that I don’t need anyone else, but the recognition of need within certain boundaries. And part of self-support is knowledge of when, and when not, to use environmental support, so as not to make a rigid dichotomy between the two. The general direction of Gestalt is to move, more and more, from environmental support toward a position of self-support. So the more I allow you the opportunity to utilize your own capacities, the better off you are.

For this reason, the way I see it, there really aren’t any pitfalls or dangers in the use of Gestalt practice. I don’t see any potential problems in the softer Gestalt approaches. Because, for me, Gestalt practice, instead of being a therapy, is simply an alternative way for people to be present with one another, in a way that is likely to be quite a bit more nourishing than many of the ways that people tend to be together. In other words, the practice is to be available for another’s experience, just as that experience is, without trying to define it to be a particular way. I think that you could look at Gestalt as simply a way to be present with yourself in the world, and a way to be present with another person or a group of people.

I encourage people to do Gestalt with one another, on their own. There are many people who have been to a Gestalt Practicum at Esalen. We don’t call them “trainings.” Instead, what happens is this - a more experienced person sits-in with a group of people who choose one another to work with, and they give each other some feedback. The people who have been in these Practicums have their own Practicums, and meet on their own, or are able to pick up with one another in the community. You can just say, “Hey, I’ve got this dream I want to work on...or...this issue going on in my life. Will you sit with me?” People can even do Gestalt sitting at the bar! Ordinarily, in a situation like that, a person might say something like, “My wife left me for so and so.” In Gestalt practice, you could use a bottle of beer on the bar, and say, “O.K. There’s your wife. Talk to your wife.” ...And then do a dialogue. You can approach it in this way, rather than as a great-big serious discipline. You look at it as a form of play. In order to do Gestalt with one another, I think all that is required of people is a little experience and the willingness to play.

How much training or skill you really need to be a good reflector is an open question. We have massage at Esalen, as well as other things that require more training, like Rolfing. I consider Gestalt more like massage. You can give a massage that feels good with very little training and very little experience. Some people just have a great aptitude to do massage. On the other hand, some people can train forever, and they never really become good masseuses or masseurs. There is value in training. But Gestalt is an approach that you can do at almost any level. You can do it almost as a game. Workshops are not so much “training.” Along with a particular type of aptitude, the more experience you have doing work is more important than any kind of training. Effectively, Fritz didn’t train in the usual sense - by supervising carefully. You just hung out with him. For me, learning Gestalt is like this - you hang out with a master of Gestalt and pick it up, and then, like Fritz did with me, you say, “Dick (or whoever), it’s time to go out and teach.” I’d never say that Fritz carefully trained me, with this unit and that unit of knowledge, like in college. The model is much more like the way you would learn something like weaving, or any folk skill, or sculpture, or art. Gestalt practice is relational - in relationship to your own particular aptitudes and interests. Of course, I have to say that it has made a big difference for me to be able to do Gestalt a lot!

For me, most training in this particular area is mis-training - as in social work, in psychiatry, and certainly in psychology. I have an undergraduate degree in psychology from Stanford, and did graduate work at Harvard in clinical psychology. It was mis-training. It was an attempt to put people in cognitive boxes, with a lot of denial of the stuff of life - which is basically sensation and feeling.

With respect to this question of training or non-training, I want to say something more about the kind of aptitude a person needs in order to be a reflector. First or all, I think there’s a certain personality style that naturally finds our particular approach more comfortable from the point of view of the initiator - the person working. This is quite different from what I think used to be the case with process work in the past, with what I call the “hunger for encounter.” That was the attitude of, “Let’s make something happen!” In other words, the pattern some people fell into was, “What’s the next exciting event I can move to?” Much of the popularity of the encounter movement - and also, I think, the reason for its early demise - was a product of an approach like, “O.K., turn me on, excite me.” - “Let’s go for a weekend and really turn on.” One valid criticism of Esalen is, rather than becoming something of real ongoing value, it has become something that is just an exciting hit, like going to see an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. For a good reflector there’s more of the quality - a certain willingness - to come off that particular excitement-seeking mode, and allow excitement to become something that either happens or doesn’t happen - not something that has to happen. I think you need a certain type of patience as a reflector - to recognize and appreciate that particular frame of mind.

So who would make a good reflector? And who wouldn’t? That’s a little hard to say, because, for me, primarily what Gestalt practice is about isn’t therapy, and it isn’t even about personal change. It offers a model for a person to be with himself or herself, and a pattern for two people to be present with one another. It is certainly true that some people seem to simply fall into it. My sense is that anyone who enters their own work well, can also quite easily shift and take the reflector role, as well as the initiator role. When you understand it in your self, and when it has intrinsic value for your self, then you can come from either position. You can look at it as a joint practice, as something done together rather than something that’s done by an authority. It takes acceptance - a lot of acceptance, and a lack of the fear of process. In contrast, I can think of some things that really don’t work for a reflector - like a lack of detachment, or an investment in where the other person goes and what they should explore.

The basic attitude of a good reflector is the mind-set of being non-judgmental. Being non-judgmental is really a state of mind. Let me give you an example.... You can contact the sense of your fingers touching your face. You can just contact that. You also can judge it - like saying, “I shouldn’t be touching my face,” or, “I should be rubbing it harder.” But can you just be present with that experience? Can you just be present with what you are doing or what your experience is, without putting it into categories that define a judgment? In some ways that can be hard to do.

There is a distinction between criticism and judgment. You can use the word ‘criticism’ in the sense of being able to discriminate. It is important to be able to discriminate. And to be present with non-judgment doesn’t make an appropriate judgment wrong. Some evaluations, some judgments, are right - they’re functional. You can sort things out through your own experience, and then you can come to a discrimination, where your judgment is totally appropriate. You determine when that judgment is appropriate from your own experience.

There are probably some appropriate judgments in every relationship, but you can also come to relationship from a non-judgmental context. Let’s use an example from work. You may have worked on self-criticism and criticism of others. If you discover that part of your critical-ness is a product of an earlier relationship, hopefully you can resolve that relationship, and then your criticisms won’t have what I call “overcharge.” For example, person X might do something that makes you angry, and it might appropriately make you angry. But how angry is it appropriate for you to get? If you have all sorts of un-discharged anger held in back of that, then when something makes you a little angry, it might be the cause for you to explode in anger. Or you might get extremely critical, instead of appropriately critical.

There are some things that are appropriate to be more critical of than others. So, hopefully, coming into contact with you own process, you arrive at a better position of discrimination, where you won’t be overcharged. This doesn’t mean that you can’t criticize. But it does mean that you criticize in a way that’s more and more appropriate to self-regulation or the health of the whole. That’s my standard for criticism - appropriate to regulation of the whole. For example - consider something that is bad for the environment. It’s not a good thing for an industry to dump toxic waste into an open dump. So there I do have a judgment in an area that I will definitely express. However, hopefully, in the process of expressing that judgment I don’t include some un-worked-on rage towards my father or my grandfather or my mother.

So you can put yourself into the Gestalt frame of mind, which is a step back from judgment. Then you can come out of that, into judgment, which is to make a “you should” statement. But then it is important to recognize that you are in a different frame of mind. For instance, let’s say you’ve been beating up on your girlfriend. In the Gestalt frame, I can come into a reflective position and give you a chance to look at that. I can come into a position where I simply reflect, simply mirror. And I can come out of that into another position, and go over into judgment - and this would be Dick-in-judgment, saying, “You shouldn’t be beating up on your girlfriend.” But I can also come back to this other position. There is a value in being able to very clearly go to either of these frameworks. Of course, this gets more difficult, the more you get into extreme suffering. There are some issues when it’s hard to just be in the reflective position, with things like the Jews in Germany and the death camps. But there’s still the possibility to work with the worst atrocity. Ideally, you can come into this framework - even though it gets harder and harder depending upon the issues.

For me, issues of coercion and violence are very hard to be with in that simple reflective position. I’d like to be able to think that I could work with some of the worst atrocities, in the reflective position. I may or may not be able to do that, if the worst situation were to present itself. Nonetheless, I can also be Dick over here in the non-reflective position. I have that option. And occasionally in a session I might say something like, “Hey, this is where I’m coming from. I’m having a hard time staying in my reflective position. So let me shift over here, and now I’m talking as non-reflective Dick.” But I’d say that being able to sit in a non-judgmental Gestalt framework, as much as possible, is one of the most important qualities I would look for in any good reflector.

Looking back over these twenty-four years at Esalen, the one experience that has been the most satisfying is my relationship to my lovely wife, both as a friend and as a fellow practitioner. I met Christine here at Esalen in 1971 when she came to one of my workshops, and we were married in 1974. As for what I think is most of value to our practice - it is what I do and what Chris does, namely, it is the open way we do Gestalt practice. What I have seen with some Gestaltists is that, rather than to allow emotion, they try to suppress emotion on the authority of some concept like “that’s too dangerous” or “that’s bad for you,” instead of simply being with what’s emerging, and allowing that to happen. In other words, I see that kind of approach, from whatever theoretical framework, as an attempt by some external authority to define what is good for you, instead of being with and trusting process, which is what Chris and I try to do. Other than that, as far as my role in teaching Gestalt at Esalen over the years, I’ve passed it mostly on to Chris, who I expect to do all the teaching sooner or later. Now we have a yearly month-long workshop.

For the time being, as long as I still teach the practice, there is an expression that I try to remember that goes, “Stinking of Zen.” It’s used for the kind of person who is so involved in Buddhist practice that their cushion has to be just right, and they have to meditate exactly 45 minutes a night, and not a minute less. In the same way, it’s possible to “Stink of Gestalt.” So it’s important for me to be both in and out of it, and not make a crusade out of it. The truth is, Gestalt is not a cure. It’s a practice, and that makes a big difference. A lot of these techniques are presented as though to say, “This is the answer.” And I don’t feel like Gestalt is the answer. This is a way. It’s one way. And it will either be a way that appeals to you, that touches you, that feels familiar to you - or it won’t! 

 ...Trust Process...