BRITISH GESTALT JOURNAL

Volume 22, No. 2, November 2013 ISSN 0961–771X

CONTENTS

Christine Stevens Editorial 3

Miriam Taylor On safe ground: using sensorimotor approaches in trauma 5
Vivian Broughton Trauma constellations with a Gestalt perspective 14
Barbara Morgan What is constellation work? Another perspective: a response to 25
Broughton
Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb From the need for aggression to the need for rootedness: a Gestalt 32
postmodern clinical and social perspective on conflict
Philip Lichtenberg Gestalt therapy and 21st Century Socialism 40
Kate Merrick Beyond words: the function and value of silence in therapy 46

Letter to the editor

Bud Feder Skype-diving into supervision 54

Book reviews
Maggie Maronitis Personality pathology: a matrix of wisdom for the contemporary 55
therapist? A review of Personality Pathology: Developmental
Perspectives by Gilles Delisle
Rodney Hill and Jamie Burnie Introducing Gestalt counselling and coaching. A review of An 59
Introduction to Gestalt by Charlotte Sills, Phil Lapworth and Billy
Desmond
Nicky Burton Living Gestalt. A review of Gestalt at Work: Integrating Life, Theory 62
and Practice. Collected Papers of Seán Gaffney, Volumes 1 and 2
edited by Anne Maclean

Opinion
Georgios Giaglis The psychotherapist as a hacker 64

Notices 66
British Gestalt Journal
2013, Vol. 22, No. 2, 3–4
Editorial
Half of the articles in this issue of the BGJ are concerned
with approaches to working with trauma. This is a
current topic of considerable interest in psychotherapy
with a number of approaches being developed and
widely discussed. There are many reasons for this
interest, but it has become particularly pertinent at a
time of recurring economic recessions and austerity
measures. While expenditure on services is being cut
back, the prevalence of mental health issues is growing.
Suicides, for example, are three times higher among the
unemployed. With resources at a premium, there are
hard questions being asked about what treatments work
best. The articles we publish in this issue raise questions
for Gestalt practitioners as to whether the theory which
informs their practice is robust enough, or does it need
to be augmented. Might there be gaps in Gestalt train-
ing programmes and are there additional techniques
which therapists could adopt for the benefit of clients
presenting with trauma symptoms? Or does Gestalt
theory encompass these ideas and any differences seen
as a matter of semantics? These articles are attempts by
Gestalt writers to digest some of what is being devel-
oped in the wider psychotherapy world for working
with trauma and to demonstrate how they are incorp-
orating this into their work. Readers are invited to write
in with their thoughts as to their own experiences in
working in this area and to discuss their responses to
these papers.
Miriam Taylor finds aspects of sensorimotor therapy
fit well with a Gestalt practice and also argues that a
sensorimotor approach offers a special focus to working
with trauma which is more accurate and helpful than a
simple relational Gestalt process. She illustrates her
arguments with clinical vignettes giving detailed
glimpses of her work.
Vivian Broughton in her article explores Franz
Ruppert’s constellation work and discusses the con-
nections between this and a Gestalt approach. She
argues that trauma of one kind or another is at the
root of most psychotherapeutic work and distinguishes
between Ruppert’s approach and other constellations
work, seeing the former as more compatible with
Gestalt. She discusses various kinds of trauma in
detail and shows how this can be worked with using
Ruppert’s ideas, which focus on the intrapsychic experi-
ence of the client.
Barbara Morgan’s response to Vivian Broughton’s
article has expanded from its original letter form into an
# Copyright 2013 by Gestalt Publications Ltd.
article and presents a different perspective on constella-
tion work in relation to Gestalt. She takes issue with
Vivian on several points and writes about the develop-
ments in the work of Bert Hellinger, the original
proponent of Constellations. Most significantly she
points to the interpersonal nature of the work and
writes about and gives examples of working with the
interconnected field. Here are two senior and experi-
enced therapists writing cogently and persuasively from
quite different viewpoints on Constellations and
Gestalt, and readers are invited to chew over these
articles and write in with their own thoughts and
comments.
Following this, we have two articles by senior
members of the international Gestalt community;
Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb from Italy, and Philip
Lichtenberg from America. They are both writing
from their personal perspectives, integrating their
many years of Gestalt practice with their political
thinking and engagement with the wider field.
Margherita’s concern is to rethink the place of aggres-
sion in Gestalt theory, pointing out that while this was
appropriate in Perls’ context, the challenge today is to
support the relationship rather than to aggress the
contact. Philip refers to ‘inclusive aggression’ which
takes the position of the other into account. He draws
on his long lifetime’s experience to reflect on the
political changes he has seen and to suggest that
new socialist developments based on egalitarianism
and change from the bottom up reflect Gestalt prin-
ciples. Not all readers may share his optimism or
indeed his reading of political trends and it would be
good by way of contrast and upholding difference to
hear from readers who integrate their Gestalt thinking
and their political engagement differently.
We are often calling for new writers to come
forward and submit articles, so it is a delight to
welcome Kate Merrick’s debut as a writer and recently
qualified Gestalt therapist whose article on the place of
silence in therapy was adapted from her dissertation.
She writes from experience which is grounded in
theory and illustrates her discussion with case
examples. She presents working with silence in ther-
apy not as an interruption to contact, but attending to
it as foreground and as part of the phenomenology of
the encounter.
Bud Feder’s letter raises an interesting point. As this
editorial has been insisting, we would welcome corres-
4 Christine Stevens
pondence from readers in response to articles and
current issues. Brief letters are a lively way of contrib-
uting to the Journal, enhancing dialogue and ongoing
debate.
We publish several book reviews which are detailed
and informative, and we are very grateful to the
reviewers for their sustained efforts in producing
these. The opinion piece from Georgios Giaglis is an
unusual take on the role of the therapist.
As always we are grateful to our peer reviewers and to
all who help and support the production of this Journal.
Christine Stevens, PhD
Editor
British Gestalt Journal # Copyright 2013 by Gestalt Publications Ltd.
2013, Vol. 22, No. 2, 5–13

On safe ground: using sensorimotor approaches in trauma

Miriam Taylor

Received 6 November 2012

Abstract: Drawing on insights from neuroscience research, particularly in respect of

autonomic arousal, brain structures, and neural plasticity, this article considers the impact
of recent developments in the treatment of trauma, and ways of integrating new under-
standing with current Gestalt methodology. Sensorimotor trauma therapy offers some new
concepts through which safe and effective trauma treatment can be reconsidered. Through
the use of clinical examples, the article discusses the application of three sensorimotor
concepts, integrating them with Gestalt practice. There is also a brief description of the role of
defensive systems in trauma work from a sensorimotor perspective. Relational aspects of this
way of working are integrated into the text.
Key words: trauma, sensorimotor, resources, window of tolerance, ANS arousal, defensive
systems, figure formation, fixed gestalts, creative adjustment.

Introduction working with trauma. Much of this can be translated

Sensorimotor trauma therapy was developed as an
offspring of Hakomi therapy (Kurtz, 1990/2007)
which was in turn greatly influenced by Fritz Perls
and Wilhelm Reich. Although its theoretical base is
quite different from Gestalt therapy, drawing on trauma
research, there is much in common in terms of its
approach. Sensorimotor therapy brings together a
number of strands from neuroscience research and
weaves them into a coherent methodology for working
with trauma (Ogden, Minton and Pain, 2006). It
provides a number of interlinked theoretical, diagnostic
and methodological frameworks, four of which are
discussed in this article. Sensorimotor psychotherapy
emphasises the role of the body in the maintenance of
and recovery from trauma (see also van der Kolk, 1994).
A failure to integrate experience is implicit in trauma
work (Janet, in Ogden, Minton and Pain, 2006, p. 36).
While there are some challenges for Gestalt therapists, I
have found sensorimotor methods to be invaluable and
effective when integrated with my Gestalt practice. A
first impression may be that sensorimotor psycho-
therapy has little to offer Gestalt therapists because of
the numerous commonalities. Sensorimotor psycho-
therapy speaks the language of tracking, experiment,
contact and mindfulness. However, there is a clarity and
a precision about how and why these approaches
support trauma therapy that is not made explicit in
Gestalt literature. The sensorimotor therapist is more
selective about the figures to attend to, more repetitive
about applying techniques, and has a different intent in
into Gestalt terminology, but it is in the attention to the
minutiae of experience that the difference really lies.
Sensorimotor psychotherapy could be critiqued as
being too technical and formulaic, too I-It, but the
skills it offers require mastery in order to become fluid,
and to be ‘incorporated within relational spontaneity’
(Bromberg, 2011, p. 123). In the hands of an experi-
enced relational therapist it becomes a highly flexible,
responsive, and singular approach.
Neuroscientific research challenges us to find new
rules to explain the nature of change and the ways in
which we organise experience. It draws attention to the
functions of different areas of the brain in specific
situations, to the concept of neural plasticity and to
the complex neural and chemical reactions that serve to
ensure the equilibrium of the whole organism and
survival under threat. Fundamental to all contemporary
treatment approaches is the need for stabilisation in the
early stages of therapy with trauma clients. This meshes
with the first two stages of Kepner’s Healing Tasks
model – safety and self-functions (1995). Sensorimotor
trauma work emphasises stabilisation more than other
approaches, in order to restructure the ground from
which the figure of trauma emerges. It also offers a
methodology similar to that of Gestalt, in attending to
process, awareness, sensation, and mobilisation in the
here-and-now. But it differs crucially in providing an
alternative formulation of the client’s difficulties and
proposes that the therapist needs at times to be more
directive in choosing which figures to work with and
which to avoid at all costs. There is an emphasis on
6 Miriam Taylor
experimentation in sensorimotor trauma therapy
which tends to be guided by the therapist rather than
co-created in the classical Gestalt sense, the reason for
this being that there is often not enough time in
traumatically laden moments to build the experimental
ground, and action must be taken, as the clinical
examples below illustrate. Later, time is taken to
engage in a shared, reflective, phenomenologically-
based dialogue.
The paradoxical theory of change is to some extent
challenged by the sensorimotor approach. Beisser’s
theory (1970) is predicated on the availability of
choice, but there is ample evidence from neuroscience
that for trauma clients, choices are simply not available.
I agree with Philippson’s comments (2011, p. 89) that
the paradoxical theory of change relies on the capacity
for organismic self-regulation, and that this condition
cannot initially be met in the case of trauma. Primitive
survival-based defences and adjustments are at play,
driven by sub-cortical regions of the brain. The complex
interplay of neural networks and neurochemicals
creates predictable loops of reaction and behaviour,
fixed gestalts that can only loosen when alternative
pathways are established. It is in the early stages of
trauma therapy that it is particularly important to take
account of the limitations of the client’s functioning
and of a purely Gestalt approach. This is when it is
necessary to establish the ground from which the
paradoxical theory can later emerge. I include full
discussions of the paradoxical theory of change and
relational implications in trauma work in my forth-
coming book.1
None of the theoretical concepts presented in this
article is a discrete entity; it is for the sake of clarity that I
attempt here to separate them out. The window of
tolerance is a key concept in sensorimotor trauma work
and the one which I single out as the most useful. It rests
on the concept of optimal autonomic arousal first
described by Siegel (1999), and can be related to the
cycle of experience. This is an invaluable diagnostic tool
from which specific ways of working emerge. The
concept of somatic resources focuses attention on
creative adjustments to trauma, and on developing
new and more adaptive ones. The orienting response
is another diagnostic tool which opens up new ways of
understanding how trauma manifests in clients’ bodies,
and of working creatively with them. Each concept is
illustrated by a clinical example, with a commentary.
The clients’ stories are composites of several individuals
to preserve confidentiality; what happened in the ses-
sion is more or less faithful to process as it happened,
and only the clients themselves might recognise it.
The window of tolerance
I sit with my client, Rose, at the start of a session. She
tells me about the events of her week in some detail. I
feel welcoming of her, quietly observing her whole
being, taking her in. She sits a little forward in the
chair, hands resting on her thighs, gesturing occasion-
ally. She talks a little fast, is breathy. I note her energy
which flares a little at first and gradually settles. I make
enquiries, follow up on some points, check my under-
standing, letting her know that I am with her.
Commentary: Rose has a long journey to the trauma
service in which I work, and I know that she struggles to
‘arrive’ in the session and is often anxious to get things off
her chest. After some months of working together Rose
continues to find her inner experience difficult to attend to
and she perceives her difficulties as originating in the
external field. There is truth in this; she was held hostage
in a locked room and raped. We have been working on
boundaries and she has taken the courageous and risky
step of leaving an abusive situation, so it is relevant that I
keep up to date with changing circumstances. I use this
time early in the session to assess her developing self-
functions. We have plenty of time; an hour and a half is
often more containing for trauma clients. I wait for a
figure to emerge.
Rose tells me about something she found troublesome
this week. She had given a lift to a man, a friend of her
father. As she speaks I notice her hands move in a
wringing, fluttery way. She makes a familiar gesture,
touching her head with her hand. Her breathing tightens
and she looks away. I tighten very slightly in my chest in
response, and remember to check my seat in my chair.
Commentary: Over many times, Rose and I have learnt
together to spot these specific changes and to pay attention
to them as indications of her escalating arousal. The
Gestalt cycle of experience can be seen as a model of
healthy arousal of the nervous system (Stauffer, 2010,
p. 54). The nervous system is prepared for action by the
sympathetic nervous system, and when action is complete
the parasympathetic branch rebalances the system.
Figure 1 illustrates how figure formation is linked to the
biological processes of the Autonomic Nervous System
(ANS). Important in understanding trauma, there
seems to be a threshold beyond which a return to a
regulated state is no longer automatic, in which figure
formation is interrupted and contact functions are com-
promised. During states of highly dysregulated arousal a
client is ‘estranged from present reality’ and therefore a
healthy cycle of contact is not achievable (Ogden, Minton
and Pain, 2006, p. 34).
I focus my attention closely on the process, mindful of
supporting Rose to calibrate her arousal. Importantly, the
emerging figure in my mind is not the story but her cycle of

Figure 1: The cycle of autonomic arousal
arousal. My thinking rests on the theoretical concept
known as the window of tolerance (Siegel, 1999, p. 253;
Ogden, Minton and Pain, 2006, p. 26) which corresponds
to the cycle of experience. Based on the survival function of
the ANS the concept proposes that this window of optimal
arousal lies between states of hyper- and hypoarousal.
Hyper- and hypoarousal of the ANS are experienced as
panic, overwhelm, or chaotic sensations and thoughts on
the one hand, and as numbing, disconnecting and shut-
ting down on the other. In states of overwhelm, both
branches of the ANS cease to operate; they are ‘maximally
active and temporarily stuck in that position’ (Stauffer,
Figure 2: The window of tolerance model
Sensorimotor approaches to trauma 7
2010, p. 56). Therefore a return to balance is not possible,
and extreme, paralysed distress can follow. Hyper- and
hypoarousal can occur concurrently (ibid., p. 51), and
switches between the two states can happen in a fraction of
a second. It is for this reason that the therapist needs at
such moments to be more directive and cannot build
relational or experimental ground.
Trauma survivors’ ability to access this window of
tolerance is compromised during hyper- or hypoaroused
episodes. For clients such as Rose, this space may barely
exist. She told me, ‘My tolerance levels are paper-thin’.
Studies have demonstrated that while trauma responses
8 Miriam Taylor
are driven by the limbic system in the brain, the cortex
becomes active when the individual returns to their
window of tolerance, and more integrated functioning
becomes possible (ibid., p. 29). Rose’s capacity to calibrate
her levels of arousal represents such specialised function.
Right now, I don’t know whether Rose can stay in her
window of tolerance, as she is at the edge of hyperarousal.
What she cannot tolerate she cannot assimilate and it
would be counter-therapeutic to let her go too far outside. I
want therefore to support Rose to stay present and ‘in the
therapy’. When hyperarousal is incipient it is necessary to
slow things down. I think it is crucially important in
clinical practice not to treat this science as a fact, but as a
model to inform interventions.
My energy has changed too in adjusting my attention
from open focus to a narrow aperture. I slow myself
down, my thinking helping to keep me grounded as I
gently ask Rose if she is willing to tell me what it was
about giving this old man the lift that upset her. She
pauses briefly and says quietly and hesitantly that it was
his aftershave. We make eye contact briefly and
exchange a small nod of understanding.
Commentary: Rose does not need to use words for me to
realise that she is in touch with a memory. I make a
mental note that we will at some stage in the future have
to de-couple the association she seems to be making
between aftershave and the trauma. Although there are
times now when she can approach traumatic memories
without going out of her window of tolerance, this
fragment of memory has a raw and intimate quality
which is new and I need to learn how close she can come
to it in this moment. My question is ‘Does this figure
have enough support?’
I want Rose to choose. I ask her to pay attention to her
inner experience and to let her body tell her whether it
would be helpful or unhelpful to work with this. Her
muscle tone in her upper body releases. Rose inhales
and exhales and says ‘I want to lie down’.
Commentary: Rose appears to know what she wants, but
her range of choices is not yet sufficiently developed. What
she says seems to be based more on her knowing what she
doesn’t want – to stay agitated and over-aroused. I have a
different idea of what could help. Gestalt practice would
present me with a wide range of choices at this point.
However, with the window of tolerance concept as a guide,
I am able to recognise that something physiological is
happening over which Rose has no control. This focuses my
choice of interventions quite specifically. There is now only
one thing that I am seeking to support, and that is Rose’s
return to a regulated state. It is sensorimotor psycho-
therapy that has given me the ways of conceptualising this
and the means of working with it. I have come to rely on
this thinking repeatedly in sessions, intentionally treading
over and again a new neural pathway; and this practice is
not yet embraced in Gestalt.
I say lightly and warmly, ‘Oooh, perhaps something
different would be better?’ Rose smiles and nods.
Commentary: I made a light comment in order to support
her to stay present and engaged with me, and again
inviting her to think and decide for herself. I want to try
to keep her thinking capacity, her cortex, engaged so she
can stay present. Rose can have an almost irresistible pull
towards collapsing in a state of extreme hypoarousal, and
it happens very fast indeed. That she has learnt to spot it
herself and let me know shows great progress, but the
situation is nevertheless urgent. I decide not to support the
apparent choice that Rose has made, but to go with a more
contactful option based on the window of tolerance which
I hope will hold more potential for Rose. I choose to
support her to resist this pull, to provide an alternative,
as in collapse she can be completely out of contact and
unresponsive for some time. I understand her collapse as a
re-enactment of the trauma, representing a survival-based
response to a life-threatening situation. It is usually very
hard work to bring Rose back from such a state, and if I’m
honest, I dread it; it’s a tough place for both of us. This is
why we have longer sessions. But I know we can do it
together so I have no need to panic.
I urge Rose, ‘Look at me’, but she can’t sustain the
contact. I suggest she presses her feet into the floor,
lengthens her spine a little, interventions which sensor-
imotor therapy teaches to bring a client into their
embodied experience. She says ‘I feel so heavy’. I ask
her to use her eyes to check around and see if anything
bad is happening right here, in this room – further
sensorimotor interventions. She doesn’t move her eyes,
which look blank to me, she feels less present. I notice
that my breathing is steady and that my eyes feel tight
as I attend to her. I find an anchor for myself in my
spine.
Commentary: I don’t know if Rose has registered and my
interventions don’t seem to have improved things
although she has not lain down. The heavy feeling Rose
reports is her pull towards collapse. Her lack of response to
my last intervention informs the next.
‘Do you think it would help to bring some movement
in?’ I ask Rose, who nods. I demonstrate a simple
exercise using my arms (Emerson, 2008. p. 21). Rose
knows this one and copies me, as I invite her to pay
attention to the sensations of the muscles, the touch of
her hand on her shoulder and the movement of her
clothes against her skin. I keep my movements in sync
with my breathing which I find helpful. Rose starts to
slow the movement down, and I encourage her to keep
going. She struggles with this, and is almost grinding to

a halt. We stop making this movement. I enquire
whether she is willing to get to her feet. With effort,
Rose stands, and we begin to move around the room
together as we have done a number of times before,
Rose following my movements. I invite her to pay close
attention to the soles of her feet and to the transfer of
weight from one foot to the other, very slowly and
gently. I give a running commentary first on my
experience and then describing her steps as she takes
them. After a few minutes walking and tracking in this
way Rose tells me that she can sit down now. I ask her
what’s telling her this and she says her limbs feel less
heavy. Her breathing is steady, her muscle tone some-
what clearer and as we sit she makes eye contact
with me.
Commentary: I first try to orient Rose to stay with various
aspects of her present situation. Her traumatically driven
experience is causing her to relive some aspect of past
experience and she cannot distinguish the here-and-now
from the there-and-then. What I am inviting, or at least
strengthening, is the self-function of dual awareness
(Rothschild, 2000, p. 129), whereby someone can stay
aware of the past from a present orientation. In this
instance, my strategy merely prevents a further decline
into collapse. When Rose did not show a response to my
invitation to look around her I took this as a signal that I
was losing her. When someone is becoming hypoaroused
as Rose was, you need to introduce more energy into the
process rather than to slow things down. It could be argued
that I am falling back on technique here but it is clear that
my presence alone is not enough to support the needed
recovery. My first intervention using movement does not
succeed either and in stopping the arm movements I sense
the strength of her pull downwards again. Therefore I
increase the energy by standing and walking together. I
don’t want to rush this as that might startle Rose’s system
and trigger further dysregulation. Lest Rose is on the verge
of collapse again I make a phenomenological enquiry
about her changing experience before we sit down.
I ask Rose how she is doing now. She says that her head
still feels a bit woolly and her hands are shaky but she is
feeling better. I tell her that it’s okay to let her hands
shake if they need to, and to allow it if she can. She looks
down at her hands. I allow my focus to open again,
feeling an expansion in my chest and a softening in my
eyes. I know where my spine is, how my body receives
the support of the chair once more. We sit quietly
together and begin to reflect on what has happened.
Commentary: The shakiness in Rose’s hands is a sign of a
parasympathetic response, a natural recovery process.
Therefore I offer support for this. The window of tolerance
concept has provided me with a new understanding of my
client’s process, a way of diagnosing in the here-and-now
Sensorimotor approaches to trauma 9
and has pointed me towards intervening in specific and
focussed ways. Its value is in part the knowledge and
relative confidence that it offers me, and in the ways in
which my client and I have formed an alliance and can co-
create the therapeutic dance around it. Fundamentally, I
believe there is an underlying ethical principle involved,
that of recognising the risks of re-traumatising my client
and knowing how to prevent that to the best of my ability.
The window of tolerance does not offer a fixed state, but a
space in which resources can be developed. Furthermore,
the model is presented as a one-person phenomenon, but I
recognise that I have a part in the process of my client’s
dysregulation, and in their subsequent recovery, and thus
see it as a model of available contact.
Somatic resources
At the Trauma Service I meet Nick for the first time. He
seems defensive, edgy; he’s got his eye on me. I know
that he’s just come back from Afghanistan and has been
drinking heavily. A doctor has mentioned PTSD to him.
I know also that he has chosen to come here rather than
seek help from the armed forces; I imagine this is safer
for him. I feel under fire with his questions about my
experience and how the sessions might go. I feel quite
tense, anxiety in my stomach, and also defensive. But as
I explain a bit about how trauma affects people and talk
him through the window of tolerance concept, Nick’s
pace slows, he seems less defensive. He tells me he can
recognise himself in what I describe.
Commentary: I sense that Nick needs answers before he
will engage, and I feel anxious that he might not. I don’t
want to push this guy because I imagine he can be easily
triggered into a trauma response. Actually, I like that he
has questions, because he’s doing what he knows best to
make himself safe, though I don’t like the way he asks
them. I choose to meet him where he can be met. By
thinking about something together we begin to make an
alliance. Psycho-education has an important role in
trauma work because ‘it teaches the patient about the
symptoms: how to recognize them, how to anticipate them,
what they mean, how to manage them’ (Fisher, 1999).
‘So I don’t need to talk about what happened?’ he asks.
‘No, I don’t need to hear the story, and I don’t believe it
will help you to tell it until we both know that you can
do so without you feeling too distressed. We need to
first find ways of making that possible so that we can
trust that you are steady enough to face it’, I tell him. He
begins to soften, his breath deepens and he settles back
in the chair. More questions follow; he seems disbeliev-
ing, but he is listening more attentively. I ask him, ‘Is it
helpful to be asking me questions?’ ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I want
to know if I can trust this’. I say ‘It seems like you don’t
10 Miriam Taylor
know how to feel safe at the moment’. Nick nods in
agreement while I continue. ‘You won’t really get it
until you do it. We can work on this a bit now, if you’re
interested.’
Commentary: My insistence that Nick does not tell his
story at this stage is a key point. It is my firm belief and
experience that to retell is to relive a trauma and I am
determined to avoid this with him as far as I am able.
Trauma clients are often quite phobic of their body
sensations because they remind them of their distress
(Ogden, Minton and Pain, p. 199). ‘Being in their
heads’ is protective. But I mean what I tell him; safety
isn’t a concept, it is a felt sense that I want to encourage
here. So I’m interested in exploring this before I lose him
with more words. Although I believe fundamentally that
safety is a relational function, it will take a long time for
the kind of trust that enables this to develop; in the
meantime I think we need to build our initial alliance
around the issue of safety. I sense that this is the right
moment because he has some curiosity. I guess curiosity is
my best ally in this moment.
I ask Nick to think of a place as safe as possible, real or
imagined. I make some conditions for it – he must be
able to feel fully himself there, no one will make any
demands or have any expectations of him, and that
nothing bad can happen there. Nick thinks of a
mountain in the Himalayas, where he has climbed
previously. I encourage him to take himself back
there, by recalling all his senses, his kinaesthetic and
inner experience. We really take our time over this,
lingering, savouring the experience to support his
growing felt sense. Nick’s breathing is slow and easy,
his energy is higher and he has released some muscles
in his face. His skin tone is more vibrant. I share my
observations: ‘Did you notice that too?’ – heightening
his attention and awareness further. I am aware that
my own body is soft and receptive, more settled than
at the start of the session.
Commentary: I think of the integrative capacity of our
bodies (Kepner, 1987/1999, p. 41), and many potential
layers of connection and meaning. To support this sense of
integration it is necessary to access as many modalities as
possible (Grigsby and Osuch, 2007, p. 50), and to linger in
the less familiar satisfaction and assimilation stages of the
cycle of experience (Rothschild, 2002, p. 95; Shapiro, 1995,
p. 122). This allows the figure to develop fully and to
subside uninterrupted. Sensorimotor psychotherapy places
great emphasis on lingering with, basking in, luxuriating
in positive experiences because it allows necessary integra-
tion to take place. Neurologically it likely supports the
growth of alternative neural networks and reduces the
influence of stress hormones. The longer someone can stay
in their window of tolerance, the more likely they can
access it in future. This can’t happen alone, for the more
this regulation takes place in the between of relationship
the more embedded it will become.
However, the safe place isn’t enough for Nick; he takes
a second helping of calmness. He tells me about the
first time he abseiled down a cliff as a cadet. He had
been sleepless with anxiety the night before.
Approaching the cliff top he felt very sick and his
legs were shaky. I ask him to slow down and try to
remember what helped him to let go. He replies that it
was the thought that the officer leading the exercise, a
man he looked up to, had done this many times
himself. ‘How did that make you feel; what went
with that thought?’ I ask him. ‘I had a feeling in my
stomach that I’d survive, so I just went over the edge.’
Nick recalls that as he felt the harness take his weight
and he made his way down the cliff face he began to
feel steadier and more trusting. He remembers the
exhilaration of reaching the bottom and I ask him to
tell me more about this. Again we linger with the
sensations that he is drawn to in the present. Nick
notices pulsing and feeling alive; his eyes are bright
and I can sense and share his satisfaction. I ask Nick
how this memory might help him now and he tells me
that he has a sense of overcoming. We linger with
these thoughts, feelings, and sensations. As he leaves
the session Nick says with a wry smile, ‘Yeah, I can do
this. See you next week.’
Commentary: These events seem to be linked in his
memory system. They have some features in common
and may be state dependent (Philippson, 2001, p. 65). The
concept of resources can probably be traced to the NLP
notion of anchors; Kepner refers to self-functions as re-
sources (1995, p. 59). Resources represent the disowned
functional polarity (Kepner, 1995, p. 97) to dysregulated
ANS arousal. They are the ‘glue’ of trauma treatment,
paradoxically by dissolving some of the fixity of the
trauma experience (Stratford and Brallier, 1979), loosen-
ing fixed gestalts. The deliberate use of resources serves to
re-structure the ground of trauma. Resources can take
myriad forms, from the natural world to the creative, from
the cognitive to evoked companions, and are commonly
used in contemporary trauma therapies (e.g. EMDR: see
Parnell, 2007, p. 79). Building a wide range of resources is
a major task of stabilisation in trauma work, developing
and strengthening the capacity for exercising choice; there
can never be too many resources. I propose that it is not so
much the range of resources that is the factor that
promotes change, although the variety adds interest and
keeps the client engaged. Clients tend naturally to revisit,
review and refine their resources and it is more likely to be
this repetition, supported relationally, that builds strong
neural connections. Conversely, attempting to move
towards processing of trauma, Kepner’s stage of undoing,

redoing and mourning, when there are too few resources in
place, is potentially very risky, and worryingly common
practice. The idea of the safe place is often the first port of
call for trauma therapists (Rothschild, 2002; Shapiro,
1995). These different modalities share a common em-
bodied approach to developing resources as described
above.
Unique to sensorimotor trauma psychotherapy, as far
as I am aware, is the concept of somatic resources.
‘Somatic resources comprise the category of abilities that
emerge from physical experience yet influence psycho-
logical health’ (Ogden, Minton and Pain, 2006, p. 207).
Myriad such resources are possible and can be grouped
into different categories, including boundaries (see also
Kepner, 1995, p. 71), containment, grounding, centring,
and movement. As the above examples suggest, once a
client can relate to their body in a way that can restore a
sense of mastery their body is less feared, and the highly
charged affective states of traumatic origin that it holds
become more tolerable. Resources can also be triggers to
positive affective and somatic states (Boon, Steele and van
der Hart, 2011, p. 170).
Seventeen-year-old Jimmy is a fighter and came for
therapy via a Youth Offending Team. He was brought
up in a violent household and even when mum escaped
with her children, his father tracked them down to their
safe house. His whole life is organised around fights. He
has his crew who protect him when he’s with them, but
when alone he is constantly alert for trouble. He admits
to being frightened. At home, Jimmy’s preoccupation is
weight training to maintain the strength he needs to
defend himself. We’ve done some work on breathing
and stabilisation and Jimmy has times of being able to
drop his guard with me. Now we study his awareness of
what happens just before he pulls the first punch, and
track backwards. Jimmy notices that he starts to salivate
more under threat, having taken what he calls his ‘fight
breath’.
Commentary: My thinking is that by stepping back and
studying his process, Jimmy can take a more reflective
stance in relation to activating situations. I imagine that
this will be more integrating because he will be able to
attend to a range of sensory, cognitive, and behavioural
modalities. By tracking backwards, my intention is to
help Jimmy spot the signs of escalating arousal more
quickly. He is usually so reactive that he needs to learn
to slow down so that he can assess situations more
accurately, and act appropriately. I want to support
Jimmy to expand his range of available choices through
increased awareness.
The following week Jimmy tells me about an incident.
He saw an old adversary from another gang in town and
approached him. It was then that he recognised his fight
Sensorimotor approaches to trauma 11
breath, and thought ‘He’s just a kid’. Jimmy shrugged
his shoulders and walked away.
The orienting response
Maria walks up the stairs dragging her coat behind her
on the steps. A very young child with her security
blanket comes to mind. She is disorientated although
she has been here several times before. I feel sad and
troubled by this client. Once in the room she glances
around, but doesn’t seem to be with me. ‘What’s up?’ I
ask her gently. She is distressed that she woke this
morning to find some ornaments in her flat destroyed;
she lives alone and doesn’t remember doing it. Yester-
day, she tells me, she had caught sight of her abuser
from a distance and she was later picked up by the
police. She had driven out of town without knowing
how she got there. Incidents such as these are quite
common for Maria and she finds them deeply, deeply
distressing.
Commentary: Maria is describing episodes of dissociative
fugue and amnesia (van der Kolk, McFarlane and
Weiseath, 1996/2007, p. 283; Ross, 1997, p. 99) in
response to a seriously triggering event. I can only
guess her history at this stage of our work, but the fact
that I am willing to ‘feel into’ her trauma forms a bridge
between us. She is far too traumatised to be able to tell
her story, and my only focus is to support Maria to be
safer in the present. Unfortunately, there are multiple
triggers for Maria even in the therapy setting which she
is constantly alert to.
The sound of an emergency siren outside startles Maria,
and she gets up to look out of the window. She always
needs to move when she is triggered by something. I
quietly go and stand by her and tell her that I am there.
She is very agitated and I observe her head and eyes
turned slightly to the right. I comment on this and
suggest that she looks to the left. Something small shifts
and she engages with me more directly for a moment,
saying ‘When I was a child my bedroom door was on the
right’.
Commentary: This vignette illustrates the somatic basis of
the orienting response. This is a creative adjustment
whereby ‘individuals unconsciously and reflexively
narrow the field of consciousness to reminders of the
trauma’ (Ogden, Minton and Pain, 2006, p. 65). I
understand Maria to be telling me about something
stored in implicit memory on a somatic level (Siegel,
1999, p. 28), and I am responding mostly to body-to-
body communication. Had I chosen to explore the figure of
the door, as my Gestalt training might have suggested, I
imagine that Maria’s dissociative difficulties would have
been compounded and there would have been no ther-
12 Miriam Taylor
apeutic value in this. The orienting response goes hand in
hand with hyper-vigilance, keeping the perception of
threat and the sense of danger in the foreground of the
trauma survivor’s experience.
The following session, Maria is on her feet again. Her
head is turned to the right and remembering her
comment last week I suggest that she looks to the left
again. She does so and then shuffles her feet round, so
that while looking in a new direction, her head is again
to her right. We repeat this little dance a couple of
times before I finally understand something. I wait
until Maria is seated again, so that she can’t move her
feet. She is looking at something on her right, and I
imagine that she is seeing the door again. I use different
words. ‘Turn your head to the left, Maria, and see if
you can hold it there for a moment.’ She does so and
says with a tone of surprise, ‘Oh, I feel calmer now,
more stable’. She’s engaged with me now, much more
present, and we linger with this better experience for
some time, to help her integrate it and process what she
has learnt.
Commentary: Maria is organising her whole body position
in reference to the memory of her bedroom door. This is a
somatic fixed gestalt, held in the relationship between her
head and her shoulders, which begins to loosen by this
intervention.
Defensive systems
The orienting response is related to the need to defend
against danger. Instinctive defensive systems related to
trauma can often be observed in therapy. I want to
return briefly to two clients discussed earlier. Maria’s
tendency to walk around in sessions occurs at times of
heightened arousal, while at such times Rose collapses.
Fight, flight, and freeze are commonly understood
reactions to threat. In addition, Nijenhuis, van der
Hart and Steele (2006, p. 60) propose ‘Submit’ and
‘Attach’ as survival based defences. A more user-
friendly mnemonic for this is Friend, Fight, Flight,
Freeze and Flop – the five ‘F’s’. 2 Maria’s reaction can
be related to the flight response, and Rose’s to submit.
In these responses can be seen the somatic re-enactment
of traumatic memory. Submission makes sense in cases
of extreme danger where anything else might escalate
the violence, like the mouse playing dead in the cat’s
jaws. Attach(ment) represents a common instinct on
the part of people under threat, such as screaming for
help. Sensorimotor trauma therapy views ‘fight’, ‘flight’
and ‘attach’ as active, mobilised responses, and ‘freeze’
and ‘submit’ as passive, immobilised response (Ogden,
Minton and Pain, 2006, p. 92). This is useful for
therapists who can support a hierarchical progression
from immobilised responses to more mobilised
responses. This does much to mitigate the experience
of helplessness and completes defensive actions (Levine,
1997, p. 110; Ogden, Minton and Pain, 2006, p. 87).
Notice that with Rose, in addressing her extreme hypo-
arousal I brought in movement, supporting a more
active engagement which she needs in multiple areas of
her life.
Conclusion
For relational Gestalt therapists, there is an inherent
paradox in sensorimotor work about needing to be
more directive at the start of therapy. The approach at
times of heightened arousal is far more therapist-led
than we are usually comfortable with, although this is
never my primary relational stance. Furthermore, the
sensorimotor approach calls into question the para-
doxical theory of change, or at least suggests that there
are limits to it with trauma clients. When working
from a Gestalt perspective, I assume that the client can
return to a state of organismic self-regulation and that
contact is possible. When the work takes a more
sensorimotor turn, I no longer make these assump-
tions. Sensorimotor trauma practice is not for the
most part different to Gestalt, it is in some respects
‘more than’. The sensorimotor strength is that it adds
something important in its well-defined and accessible
rationale for working in particular ways with trauma-
tised clients. The concepts considered in this article
are all deeply embodied, relating to somatic creative
adjustments to trauma. Sensorimotor trauma work
seeks to facilitate the emergence of choice, to support
the client’s self-directedness and helps prepare the
ground for the paradoxical theory of change.
As the above examples illustrate, the detailed observa-
tion of the client and the regulating capacity of a present
and embodied therapist make this work fundamentally
relational. I cannot emphasise enough the grounding
effect that sensorimotor concepts and methods have on
me. I propose that this in itself is enough to establish a
radically different field in trauma work, which Kepner
calls the Embodied Field (2003). The non-verbal com-
munication of an embodied, present and mindfully
attentive therapist can powerfully convey that the
therapist, for one, is not afraid of the work. Setting up
the work to use therapist-guided interventions to pre-
vent arousal escalating from the outset configures the
whole relational dynamics in a profoundly different
way. It immediately provides a container for the uncon-
tainable by setting the parameters within which the
work will take place. By such incremental steps, the
legacy of trauma can be transformed.
 Sensorimotor approaches to trauma 13

Notes Kurtz, R. (1990/2007). Body-Centered Psychotherapy: The Hakomi

Method. Mendocino, CA: Life Rhythm.
1. Taylor, M., Trauma Therapy and Clinical Practice: Neuroscience, Levine, P. (1997). Waking the Tiger. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic
Gestalt and the Body. Open University Press; publication Books.
expected Spring 2014. Nijenhuis, E., van der Hart, O. and Steele, K. (2006). The Haunted
2. My thanks to Kim Hosier for this idea. Self. New York: Norton.
Ogden, P., Minton, K. and Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the Body.
New York: Norton.
References Parnell, L. (2007). A Therapist’s Guide to EMDR. New York: Norton.
Philippson, P. (2001). Self in Relation. Highland, New York: Gestalt
Boon, S., Steele, K. and van der Hart, O. (2011). Coping With
Journal Press.
Trauma-Related Dissociation. New York: Norton.
Philippson, P. (2011). Mind and Matter: the implications of
Bromberg, P. (2011). The Shadow of the Tsunami. New York:
neuroscience research for Gestalt psychotherapy. In Bar-
Routledge.
Yoseph Levine, T. (ed.) Gestalt Therapy: Advances in Theory
Buchholz, C. (2008). Complexity of Self-Reflection. Saarbrucken:
and Practice, pp. 83–92. Hove: Routledge.
VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft and Co. KG.
Polster, E. (1995). A Population of Selves. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass.
Emerson, D. (2008). Yoga for Peace of Body and Mind – a Clinician’s
Ross, C. (1997). Dissociative Identity Disorder. New York: Wiley and
Manual. Boston, MA: The Trauma Center.
Sons.
Fisher, J. (1999). ‘Stabilisation in Trauma Treatment’. Unpublished
Rothschild, B. (2002). The Body Remembers. New York: Norton.
paper: www.janinafisher.com/resources Accessed 3 April 2012.
Siegel, D. (1999). The Developing Mind. New York: Guilford Press.
Grigsby, J. and Osuch, E. (2007). Neurodynamics, State, Agency and
Stauffer, K. (2010). Anatomy and Physiology for Psychotherapists.
Psychological Functioning. In Piers, C., Muller, J. P. and Brent,
New York: Norton.
J. (eds.) Self-Organizing Complexity in Psychological Systems.
van der Hart, O., Nijenhuis, E. R. S. and Steele, K. (2006). The
Maryland: Aronson, Lanhan.
Haunted Self. New York: Norton.
Kepner, J. (1987/1999). Body Process. Cambridge, MA: Gestalt
van der Kolk, B., McFarlane, A. and Weisaeth, L. (eds.) (1996/2007).
Institute of Cleveland Press.
Traumatic Stress. New York: Guilford Press.
Kepner, J. (1995). Healing Tasks. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.
Kepner, J. (2003). The Embodied Field. British Gestalt Journal, 12, 1,
pp. 6–14.

Miriam Taylor, Cert Ed, MSc, Dip. Metanoia, is a UKCP registered Gestalt psychotherapist. Her
background is in teaching adults and working with young people; she was for some years clinical co-
ordinator of a young peoples’ counselling service. She has a private psychotherapy and supervision
practice, and additionally works as a specialist therapist at a trauma service. She also teaches, and has
worked as a Primary Tutor in the Gestalt Department at Metanoia Institute where she is currently a
visiting trainer and examiner. Miriam is an exhibiting artist.
Address for correspondence: 46 Hunters Field, Stanford in the Vale, Faringdon, Oxon, SN7 8LX, UK.
Email: here-now@ntay.com
British Gestalt Journal # Copyright 2013 by Gestalt Publications Ltd.
2013, Vol. 22, No. 2, 14–24

Trauma constellations with a Gestalt perspective

Vivian Broughton

Received 9 January 2013

Abstract: In this article I focus on the theoretical developments of Professor Franz Ruppert on
the topics of trauma and attachment, and his adaptation of the constellations process
originally developed by the German philosopher and psychotherapist Bert Hellinger. My
Gestalt background encourages me to seek connections between Ruppert’s work and a
Gestalt approach. I will draw on other theories and comments on the topic to give context.
Key words: Gestalt, constellations, trauma, attachment, phenomenology, symbiosis, auton-
omy, symbiotic trauma, entanglement.

We have shed the classical psychoanalytic denial of the
reality of . . . trauma . . . . [N]ow we are free to create new
models [that can] help us direct our efforts to heal.
(Kepner, 1995, p. xiii)
Introduction
Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled,
denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human
suffering. (Levine, 2008, p. 3)
The last twenty-five years have seen a steadily increasing
focus on the role of trauma in psychotherapy from
different perspectives, reflected in a proliferation of
literature on, for example, shock and trauma
(Herman, 1992; Weingarten, 2003), Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the physiology of trauma
(Rothschild, 2000; Etherington, 2003; Levine, 1997,
2008; Ogden, Minton and Pain, 2006; Friedman,
Keane and Resick, 2007; Naparstek, 2005, 2006; van
der Kolk, McFarlane and Weisaeth, 1996), childhood
sexual abuse and domestic abuse (Wieland, 1997; Whit-
field, 1995; Cloitre, Cohen and Koenen, 2006), combat
trauma (Shay, 1994, 2002), the neurology of trauma
(Stein and Kendall, 2004), and the transgenerational
aspect of trauma (Laub and Auerhahn, 1989;
McGlothin, 2006; Danieli, 1998; Fromm, 2012),
amongst many others. Indeed, it seems at this time
that trauma is the developing topic of psycho-
therapeutic investigation. Added to this is the flow of
information coming from the neurosciences (Schore,
1994, 2012, 2012a; McGilchrist, 2010; Lewis, Amini and
Lannon, 2001; Siegel, 2010; and the epigenetic work on
the potential transgenerational effects of trauma on the
DNA (Murgatroyd et al., ‘Bioscience and Epigenetics’;1
Yehuda and Beirer in Ford, 2009).
The theoretical developments of Professor Franz
Ruppert2 bring together the topics of trauma, attach-
ment, and the transgenerational transmission of unre-
solved trauma through the child/parent bonding
process, in a way that I have not seen anywhere else,
and while many of his ideas are not in themselves new,
the whole that he presents, I think, is. That ‘whole’
includes an adaptation of the methodology of the
constellations process as an effective practice for resol-
ving the psychological fragmentation resulting from
trauma and its transgenerational entanglements: an
intrapsychic integrating constellation.
It is more than twenty years since the constellations
work of Bert Hellinger came to the attention of the
psychotherapy world, generating much controversy
and criticism. Since then there has been some separ-
ation of the methodology of constellation from the
persona of Hellinger, and various explorations of
other ways of using the methodology of the constella-
tion (Sparrer, 2007), Ruppert’s ‘constellation of the
intention’ being one.
As a Gestalt psychotherapist, my original connection
to constellations work back in the mid-1990s always
involved an innate and troubled discomfort with the
facilitation methods of Hellinger and others as being
‘un-Gestalt’, in my view often far too authoritative,
directive, and non-relational. Even though Hellinger’s
stated intention was phenomenological, in fact I did
not see his work as phenomenological in the Gestalt
sense at all. However, I continually found myself
intrigued by the phenomenon of the constellations
process, and in my first book, a textbook on working
with constellations, I put a considerable focus on this
problem, attempting to explore a more Gestalt form of
facilitation (Broughton, 2010). I was also uncomforta-

ble with the ‘theoretical underpinnings’ of family con-
stellations, the ‘Orders of Love’, as prescriptive and not
really a theory at all. This article follows one I wrote last
year on Gestalt for The Knowing Field, International
Constellations Journal, in which I made the connections
I make here in the other direction: to constellations
facilitators about Ruppert’s work and Gestalt
(Broughton, 2012).
I should add here that Ruppert’s work is by no means
accepted by the family constellations community, since
it challenges many of the central themes of family
constellations, and many people’s loyalty to Hellinger.
There is interest but most adherents to Ruppert’s work
have come from outside the family constellations com-
munity, primarily those whose major interest is the
topic of trauma. Also, I do not propose to address the
deeper philosophical and theoretical comparisons
between the work of systemic constellations and
Gestalt, ‘which can easily be seen to be structurally
and methodologically parallel’ (Wheeler, in Hausner,
2011, p. 290). Gordon Wheeler has made a much better
job of this than I could ever do in the afterword of
Stephan Hausner’s book on systemic constellations (op.
cit.).
My first contact with Ruppert in 2005 was through
his practical work with constellations, which seemed
much more in line with a Gestalt approach than I had
previously seen: non-interfering, phenomenological,
respectful, working at the edge of the here-and-now
reality without enforcing any hypotheses or biases,
descriptive rather than interpretative, leaving the mean-
ing-making with the client, and supporting improved
contact between client and the representatives in the
constellation.
Ruppert’s psychotherapeutic roots are in employ-
ment psychology, moving to psychotherapy in the
early 1990s, along with a developing interest in bond-
ing, and thence trauma. His particular allegiance in
practice is to the work of Carl Rogers and the notion of
the client as the central authority for the work, and the
therapist as the person who holds an interested, respect-
ful and inclusive role (Broughton, 2010a). He is not a
Gestalt practitioner.
Since 2005 I have become increasingly committed to
Ruppert’s theoretical and practical developments.3 My
commitment is to do with a conviction that trauma,
and particularly attachment trauma and transgenera-
tional entanglement with other family system traumas,
underlies all psychotherapeutic work, and has been
insufficiently recognised. This commitment has con-
tinually been tempered by a parallel interest in holding a
Gestalt orientation to Ruppert’s theories and practice.
This has led to many discussions and arguments
between Ruppert and myself that have enlivened this
process greatly for me.
Gestalt, trauma, constellations 15
A brief look at the history of the study
of trauma
The study of trauma since the early work of Janet,
Charcot, Freud, and others in the late nineteenth cen-
tury has had a very chequered history (Herman, 1992;
van der Kolk, 2007):
People have always been aware that exposure to over-
whelming terror can lead to troubling memories, arou-
sal and avoidance . . . . However, psychiatry . . . has
periodically suffered from marked amnesias, in which
well-established knowledge was abruptly forgotten, and
the psychological impact of overwhelming experiences
[were] ascribed to constitutional or intrapsychic factors
alone. Mirroring the intrusions, confusion, and disbelief
of victims whose lives are suddenly shattered by trau-
matic experiences, the psychiatric profession periodic-
ally has been fascinated by trauma, followed by stubborn
disbelief about the relevance of our patients’ stories. (van
der Kolk, 2007, p. 19, my italics)
The defining experience of trauma is terror, help-
lessness, and a fear for one’s survival, and the natural
instinct is to avoid this experience. Our strategies for
surviving the original trauma, strategies of avoidance
and dissociation, remain after the event, attempting to
ensure that we never go near such terrifying experi-
ences again. So it seems likely that those who studied
trauma have also operated from a collective avoid-
ance, what the German Professor of Child Psychiatry
at Hamburg University, Peter Riedesser, has described
as a ‘trauma-blindness’ in relation to the study of
trauma (Riedesser, 2004, in Ruppert, 2008).
An example of this avoidance of trauma is Freud’s
presentation, The Aetiology of Hysteria published in
1896, setting out what became known as his ‘seduc-
tion theory’, and his subsequent retraction of this
theory in the face of ‘an icy reception’ from his
colleagues (Masson, 1984), which Kepner refers to in
the quotation at the beginning of this article.
The paper was oriented around Freud’s patients’
accounts of childhood sexual abuse, as having been
traumatic and implicated in the development of
‘hysterical neurosis’, what we would now call neurosis
of trauma. Freud’s subsequent abandonment of this
thesis set in train a journey towards valuing the
internal world of fantasies and dreams over patients’
accounts of real trauma experiences, that eventually
formed the cornerstone of psychoanalysis. What also
got missed, perhaps because of the outrage at the
notion of such a prevalence of sexual abuse at the
time, was domestic violence and emotional neglect
(sexual abuse by its nature is of course violent, but
many children are violently or neglectfully abused, but
not sexually abused).
The unfortunate consequences of this included the
16 Vivian Broughton
discrediting of the reliability of, primarily, women’s
self-accounts (Herman, 1992), the reversal of the per-
petrator/victim role in relation to children where the
accused parent becomes the victim to the ‘accusing’
perpetrator-child, and a pervasive subculture in
psychotherapy generally of the client being trouble-
some, resistant, defensive, stubborn, blind, and manip-
ulative,4 and one of the periods of ‘marked amnesias’ of
the study of trauma mentioned by van der Kolk in the
quotation above.
It is interesting to speculate, if this line of enquiry had
been pursued, how it might have influenced Bowlby’s
work in the 1950s (Bowlby, 1958; Holmes, 1993). Might
there have been more attention given to infant devel-
opment and bonding before Bowlby, and to the attach-
ment process as potentially traumatic by Bowlby and
subsequent attachment theorists?
The study of war trauma developed after the Holo-
caust of WWII, but really only in relation to the
Holocaust, until the work of Jonathan Shay (Shay,
1994; 2002) and others working with the American
Vietnam and Korean veterans.5 And in the 1970s, ’80s
and ’90s, the slow, painful emergence of the prevalence
of childhood sexual, violent, and neglectful trauma, and
the domestic violence against women in the secret
privacy of the home, forced trauma back into the
limelight.
The study of trauma has been dogged by its own
survival strategies of dissociation, avoidance, and dis-
traction.6
Ruppert’s MGPT Theory7
Ruppert’s multi-generational theory of trauma involves
a definition of trauma as an overwhelming and life-
threatening experience, where one is completely help-
less, choiceless, and entirely at the mercy of the forces at
play (whether natural or relational). The strategies of
‘fight and flight’ having failed, the strategies of freezing
and psychological fragmentation follow:
The difference between stress and trauma can be
expressed thus: in a stressful situation one has the
option of either fighting or fleeing (‘fight or flight’),
while in a trauma situation there is only one possibility –
to become frozen and split inwardly (‘freeze and frag-
ment’). (Ruppert, 2008, p. 81)
The distinction is important because the physiologi-
cal and psychological reactions are exactly opposite to
each other:
The stress reaction leads to a mobilisation of the body’s
energy, while the trauma-emergency mechanism leads
to a demobilisation and disconnection of energy . . . .
The stress reaction opens the psychological channels,
whereas trauma closes them down. (ibid.)
The process is through a high stress situation, which, if
unresolved, becomes a trauma: ‘While it is true that all
traumatic events are stressful, all stressful events are not
traumatic’ (Levine, 2008, p. 7).
Trauma survival strategies therefore involve physio-
logic and psychic freezing and fragmentation, by means
of dissociation and the splitting off of the unbearable
and terrifying experience. Dissociation according to
Etherington:
. . . has not yet been fully explained but is thought to be a
mechanism that creates a split in conscious awareness
that allows the traumatised person to disconnect from
parts of their experience in order to reduce the impact
[of trauma] and thereby survive. (Etherington, 2003,
p. 27)
However, surprisingly, as Rothschild states ‘ . . . dis-
sociation . . . is not mentioned by either the DSM III or
DSM IV as a symptom of PTSD . . . although it is
acknowledged as a symptom of acute stress disorder’
(Rothschild, 2000).
Freud defined dissociation as a ‘splitting of con-
sciousness’, citing Janet’s work (Schore, 2012).
Types of trauma
Ruppert defines four types of trauma:
1. Existential trauma – a threat to one’s life, e.g. car
accident, attack, rape.
2. Trauma of loss – loss of a closely bonded person,
particularly a child or a parent for a young child;
death of a son or daughter in unexpected circum-
stances, such as accident or combat. Also, miscar-
riages, stillbirths, abortions and adoption.
3. Symbiotic trauma – trauma of the early attachment
process with the mother.
4. Trauma of the bonding system – where the whole
family over several generations is traumatised,
usually originating with an extreme act within the
family, e.g. murder, persecution, torture, violence,
incest, sexual violence. It has a massive impact on the
family, involving shame and guilt; the system closes
in on itself, establishing behaviours aimed at keeping
the issue secret, while re-enacting the original event
repeatedly over subsequent generations.
All the above revolve around hopelessness, helplessness,
and the experience of threat to one’s survival.8 The
fourth category deals with the threat involved in divul-
ging the secret, becoming the whistleblower. All trauma
experiences are experiences of ‘life-threat’.
The split self
Janet proposed that when people experience ‘vehement
emotions’ their minds may become incapable of match-
ing their frightening experiences with existing cognitive
schemes. As a result the memories of the experience
 Gestalt, trauma, constellations 17

cannot be integrated into personal awareness; instead,

they are split off from consciousness . . . [with a] failure
to integrate traumatic memories. (van der Kolk, 2007,
p. 52)

The splitting that occurs is unconscious and out of our

control. The primary split structure is into three com-
ponents: a healthy part, survival part, and traumatised
part. Each component has its own function that it
eternally tries to fulfil, and its own characteristics.
Below are the characteristics of the splits.
18 Vivian Broughton
Splitting and dissociation
We can make a distinction between ‘dissociation’ and
‘splitting’ by seeing dissociation as a temporary emer-
gency process, while splitting is more permanent and
more structural. Van der Hart et al. make the dis-
tinction between what they call ‘dissociation of the
personality’, what we would call splitting, and ‘disso-
ciation of consciousness’, what we call dissociation (van
der Hart and Nijenhuis, 2008).
Ruppert makes a further distinction between ‘split-
ting off ’ the intolerable experience during the trauma
moment, and the ‘splitting up’ of the personality as the
more structural result.
The survival strategies over the subsequent weeks,
months, even years after the trauma, become more
solidified and refined, eventually becoming the ‘per-
sonality’, or a ‘self ’ in itself. Apart from the more
serious forms of distractive strategies, such as addic-
tions, eating disorders, self-harming behaviours, obses-
sions and compulsions, serious psychological
disturbances (all of which can be seen to be forms of
dissociation and deflection away from the trauma
feelings), any activity, however seemingly innocent, if
it has this distractive function can be understood as a
survival strategy. As an example, many highly successful
business executives become successful precisely because
of their survival strategies.9
Symbiotic trauma
Feed and clothe a human infant but deprive him of
emotional contact and he will die. (Lewis et al., 2001,
p. 72)
Our first position in life, in the womb, is one of
symbiosis from which, given the right circumstances,
we develop our autonomy. Ruppert discusses our life-
long need for symbiosis ‘as a permanent challenge of
how we get along with other humans . . . and all life on
the planet’ (Ruppert, 2012), always in a figure/ground
tension with our need for autonomy.
Symbiotic trauma is the trauma of the parent/child
symbiosis, and is the gateway to a multigenerational
perspective. During our time in the womb we are not
separate from our mother; we eat what she eats, we
drink what she drinks; our whole nervous system is not
separate from her nervous system; our metabolism is
not separate from her metabolism, and our psyche is
not separate from hers.
The human baby is more vulnerable and helpless pre-
and post-partum than any other mammal, and these are
exactly the conditions under which traumatisation is
most likely to occur. We literally need our mother to
survive.
The needs of the newborn child are:
. nourishment;
. physical contact: warmth and metabolic regulation
through limbic resonance;10
. emotional contact: love and emotional regulation
through limbic resonance;
. safety and protection.
All these are interlinked and equally crucial to the
wellbeing and survival of the child; without one the
child will fear for his life, and may even actually die.
Ideally, they need to be with the mother, as a continua-
tion of the in utero-established connection.
The traumatised mother
The reasons why parents are unable to satisfy their
children’s symbiotic needs sufficiently lie in their own
trauma experiences. Because they are traumatised they
are unable to give their children the necessary emotional
strength, or support their autonomous development.
(Ruppert, 2012, p. 8)
. The main cause of symbiotic trauma11 is if the
mother herself has suffered trauma, and so is psy-
chologically split:
. In the symbiotic phase, the first imprint on the
child’s psyche will be the split psyche of the
mother: the child absorbs his mother’s split psyche
configuration. He cannot not connect with his
mother in this way just as, because her trauma is
unconscious, she cannot protect her child from her
own split psychological state.
. When we feel any emotion the gateway is opened for
other feelings that are pressing for expression. So
when the mother feels love for her baby, her split-off
trauma feelings of terror/grief/rage will be re-stimu-
lated and she will likely experience anxiety or panic.12
She then will dissociate and withdraw from the child.
Intimacy with her baby becomes a potential re-
traumatisation for the mother, stimulating her dis-
sociative survival strategies whenever she comes into
close contact with the child.
. When the mother withdraws or dissociates the baby
experiences the mother’s panic as his own, and
experiences her dissociation as abandonment. He
will likely experience despair, desolation, and a fear
for his survival – a trauma.
. Eventually the baby may become the source of
suppressed terror for the mother, and the mother
becomes the source of anxiety for the baby.
. The child cannot separate himself from the traumas
and split-off feelings of his mother and experiences
them as his own.
Symbiotic traumas and symbiotic entanglements
increase the risk of further traumatisation, and this
continues across the generations in all parent-child
relationships if these processes are not recognised and
interrupted. (Ruppert, 2012, p. 8)

The result is confusion for both child and mother,
and because unconscious and essentially unresolvable
without outside intervention, it leaves him helplessly
entangled with his mother and her traumas (symbiotic
entanglement). The child cannot distinguish between
his own feelings and those of his mother. All his later
close relationships are replicas of this early traumatic
entanglement; all later situations of intimacy re-stimu-
late these first experiences of intimacy, and all later
trauma situations re-trigger this original (primary)
trauma, causing further splitting and increasingly limit-
ing and dangerous ‘survival’ strategies. The child grows
into an adult with a confused traumatised split psyche
that then may be the cause of a symbiotic trauma for his
own child.
Traumatised fathers
The first contact for the child is always with the mother,
beginning in the womb, and so the situation is different
with the father. The earliest contact with the father is at
birth, and even then the mother/child bond is so crucial
for the survival of the child that any real connection
with the father must be secondary. If circumstances
require the father to take on the major parenting role,
perhaps because the mother is ill or dies, the child will
always experience a loss of connection with the mother
thereby causing a symbiotic trauma. The psychological
state of the father of course has a big impact on the
child, but usually after the original trauma.
As a final note, needless to say any situation that
results in the child losing contact with the mother, even
for a short time, such as incubation, adoption, or
putting the child with someone else because the
mother is ill or in danger is likely to be a symbiotic
trauma for the child.
Resolving trauma
A simplified description of the healing process is:
1. The disintegration of the reified split structure,
allowing for movement, connection and better con-
tact between the split parts; followed by
2. The integration of the split-off trauma components.
This occurs by the following:
1. Strengthening of the healthy structures. This is akin
to Kepner’s ‘healing tasks’ (Kepner, 1995).
2. Increased awareness of survival strategies.
3. Increased safely regulated contact with the trauma.
4. Increased integration of the split-off parts of the self.
The challenges of healing are:
1. That the healthy and survival components are essen-
tially in an impasse of conflict, the healthy self
desiring integration, which must involve making
the trauma experience conscious, while the survival
Gestalt, trauma, constellations 19
self ’s entire function is to keep the trauma out of
consciousness.
2. That the splits are unconscious and, in the case of
very early symbiotic trauma, pre-verbal and pre-
explicit memory.
3. That the experiences involved are truly terrifying,
and it is entirely natural to avoid them.
We can understand that the survival strategies, as
potentially destructive and life-limiting as they are,
provide a thin protection between us and the terrifying
forces of trauma, and will only dissolve when the person
feels safe enough.
Comments on Ruppert’s theory in
relation to Gestalt theory
Ruppert’s main contribution, in my view, is in bringing
together many ideas about trauma into a coherent
theoretical whole. His more specific contributions I
think are:
1. A clear definition of trauma as distinct from high
stress or ‘traumatic stress’ (van der Kolk et al., 1996).
Many writers on trauma assume an understanding
of what we mean by the word trauma without a clear
definition.13
2. Whereas theories of splitting discuss the splitting off
of the trauma experience (van der Kolk et al., 1996;
Schore, 2012; Ogden et al., 2006), Ruppert gives us
the three-part split model, redefining the defence/
resistant strategies into a self-part with its own
function, identity and characteristics.
3. The concretisation of the concept of symbiotic
trauma as a reaction to bonding with a traumatised
mother.
4. The concept of symbiotic entanglement with the
mother’s unresolved traumas, and thereby establish-
ing a clear multigenerational context and process.
5. The means of effectively and safely working with
trauma and the split psyche using the constellation,
as I will discuss below.
As a Gestalt therapist, I have struggled with the
concept of self-parts,14 but I find that clients find it
helpful. It is also true that in our attempts to under-
stand, such graphics and schemas do help.15 What I see
in the constellation is how it is in process, with the ‘self ’
that is ‘created at the boundary’ always mediated by
unresolved trauma, providing the ground against which
every new experience is set. In relationship we may
move through all ‘parts’ from moment to moment: the
healthy aspect desiring relationship, but when con-
fronted with increased intimacy the split-off trauma-
tised dimension may register as anxiety and suppressed
20 Vivian Broughton
panic, which immediately stimulates the protective
survival strategies.
The process is an avoidance of contact with the
trauma, and can be mapped on to the cycle of experi-
ence, with the survival strategies as the interruptions to
contact. However, I think understanding these ‘inter-
ruptions’ in terms of trauma gives a different feel: they
are indeed interruptions to contact, but contact at this
stage would potentially be a terrifying re-traumatisa-
tion, which must be avoided at all costs until the person
feels safe enough.
The survival strategy is of course a ‘creative adapta-
tion’ (Kepner, 1995; Wheeler in Hausner, 2011), but
this term, if applied to trauma, in my view diminishes
the seriousness of it. The word ‘creative’ has far too
much of a positive spin on it, as does ‘adaptation’, and I
think came into vogue as a way of attempting to give
hope and support to the client. However, I think it
actually serves to diminish and undermine the reality of
trauma. In a real trauma situation there is no question
of creativity or adaptation, there is only survival. The
term may serve in situations of ongoing high stress, but
not in my view of trauma.
The concept of attachment ‘misattunement’ being
traumatic has big implications. I have often worked
with people who would come under the categorisation
of ‘secure attachment’ who in the process of the con-
stellation come into contact with symbiotic trauma.
Symbiotic trauma is not just confined to those with the
more serious attachment designations, it is much more
prevalent than that.
Most current work with trauma16 is oriented towards
PTSD, which is limited to trauma that can be remem-
bered. Even in cases of severe childhood abuse, where
the memory has been obliterated, if it can be recalled
and discussed in therapy it is likely to be a secondary
trauma, available in the explicit memory, as opposed to
implicit, which is not generally recoverable. Kepner’s17
model deals with childhood abuse, and sees this as ‘a
developmental problem for the child’ (Kepner’s italics).
He focuses on the development of skills, functions,
experiences, and supports that have not been possible
due to the abuse. In contrast, I think Ruppert’s model
offers a ground from which to understand all traumatic
phenomena, including later abuse trauma.
As a final note I want to put forward briefly Ruppert’s
current thinking about the perpetrator/victim issue. For
him, while there is of course a real victim – trauma
creates a victim – the development of a ‘victim attitude’
uses the victimhood as a survival strategy, i.e. as a means
to avoid the real trauma. The perpetrator, by contrast,
perpetrates acts against another precisely as a means of
avoiding his or her trauma. His act of perpetration
makes the other feel the feelings that he cannot feel, and
so is his developed (often learned from the person who
perpetrated acts of trauma on him) form of survival. So
we can say that those that perpetrate acts against others
do so precisely because they are already traumatised.
This is not an excuse, but it is a rationale (see note 10).
The constellation
Most people if you ask them about their parents will
begin by telling you about them from the age that the
client was born. We conceive of our parents primarily as
parents, and often only when particularly asked will
think of them as children with parents of their own. Of
course we know the facts, but rarely think about what it
might have been like for them as children. How many
therapists ever enquire into their clients’ families
further back than that? The perception required to
work with transgenerational trauma is an ability to
think in terms of at least four generations, with an
interest in where people came from, how they got there,
and what happened to them on the way.18
If you ask people about their pre-verbal life, most will
tell you what they know, which is usually what they have
been told by others. Most therapeutic work does not
venture too far into these areas for two very good
reasons:
1. Our clients do not think that way, and neither does
the therapist, and so the therapy content stays within
the familiar ‘present life’ framework.
2. How does one usefully access such information and
relevant experiences?
The answer to this question is the experimental
process known as the constellation. Taken apart from
all the hype, excitement, and criticism of its beginnings,
the constellation is a very simple process that does seem
to allow access to our unconscious reservoirs of such
information. The phenomenon involved, where repre-
sentatives for people in a constellation seem to gain
access to experiences and, at times, information they
could not possibly have known beforehand, is in the
same vein as such things as transference, projection, and
projective identification. We accept all these, but we do
not really know yet how they work – we have tentative
explanations in all sorts of areas such as field thinking,
mirror neurones, limbic brain resonance and so on –
but it does work, as does transference.
As a Gestaltist, my approach to the constellation is
experimental and phenomenological, and in this way I
think it compatible with a Gestalt approach. I see it as a
collective intelligence phenomenon, oriented around
the client’s intention. I do not see it as something the
therapist manipulates, but as something the therapist
can trust, respect, and work with, as a source of insight
and understanding that is at times quite beyond what-
ever the therapist may think. I see it as relieving me of

having to have answers because answers emerge from
engagement with the process. As simple a process as it
is, even so, it is only as effective as the theoretical
framework and insights that underpin it. So the
theory outlined above and the process of the constella-
tion meet, and provide meaning. A therapist can look at
anything and will only see what their theoretical frame-
work allows. Field theory of course holds the possibility
of a transgenerational perspective, but only if the
therapist thinks in that way.
The form of constellation devised by Ruppert is an
intrapsychic process, where the initial set up is the client
herself, and a representative for her stated intention.
Already we have the potential for a split: two parts of the
self. The ‘intention’ and the client are free to attend to
their experience, move, speak, relate or not, and find
their own way. Other representatives, for example for
the mother, father, grandparents, younger parts of the
client, may be added as the constellation proceeds,
usually in response to what happens between the ori-
ginal two.
The focus for the constellation is always the subtle
nuances of relationship between the client and her
‘intention’. Other family members represented in the
constellation are only useful in order to illuminate our
understanding of the wider trauma system, and are
never the focus of the constellation. The therapist’s
attention stays with the client and her ‘intention’ and no
interventions are addressed to other representatives.
The most electrifying and frequent phenomenon is
that the experiences reported by the ‘intention’, which
are often detailed and may be enacted, shown or
spoken, are experiences that the client knows. The
‘intention’ tends to reflect back to the client her own,
often never fully realised, experience. It is as if the
‘intention’ gains access to a deeper part of the client
that is related to the presented intention.
Another frequent occurrence is that the ‘intention’
herself feels split in her body, which may be translated
experientially into two parts of the client embodied in
the representative for the intention. The ‘intention’
seems to hold the originally stated intention, and an
experience of whatever it is that prevents the stated
intention from being achieved.
So, for example, a client may state as her intention a
want to feel more in control of her life. One may think
then that the ‘intention’ is likely to feel out of control,
but actually the experiences reported tend to be much
more subtle, discriminating and particular than this,
and may not express anything related to control at all.
The ‘intention’ may reflect something quite different,
such as a yearning for the mother and an unexplained
profound sense of sadness. At this point the client may
offer information about her mother’s emotional una-
vailability. Perhaps the mother is included as a repre-
Gestalt, trauma, constellations 21
sentative, and shows that she just does not see the client,
or the ‘intention’, but moves in quite a different direc-
tion. At this stage the client may offer further informa-
tion, that her mother’s mother lost a baby when her
mother was three-years-old. We may include represen-
tatives for the grandmother and the baby to see what
happens. The movements that occur at this point are
quite spontaneous, nothing is engineered. What may
happen is that the ‘mother’ looks appealingly at her
mother, who is overcome with emotion and holds the
‘baby’. As this happens the ‘intention’ and the client
may see each other, perhaps for the first time, and come
together. The ‘intention’ may say that she doesn’t feel
the sadness anymore.
In a constellation such as this, one cannot avoid the
impact of a three-year-old child whose mother is so
absorbed with grief that she doesn’t even see her child,
the mother. The ‘intention’ has reflected the client’s
entanglement with the grandmother’s and the mother’s
sadness and loss, by the split and initial sense of intense
sadness. The client’s wish to have more control can be
understood as a natural desire to be whole and uncon-
fused with the systemic sadness. A useful way of putting
this, and one that I may suggest the client say to her
‘intention’, is ‘we have to find our own sadness, separate
from our mother’s’.
The relationship of this constellation to the real
situation of the client’s mother is irrelevant. It is the
client’s internal process of distinguishing and integrat-
ing what is hers that is important. This constellation
would be seen as a first step, creating some separation
from the mother’s trauma, on the way to the underlying
unresolved personal trauma involved in her infantile
attempts to attach to her dissociated mother. The
material of the constellation is the client’s internal
reflection of the external realities, and this inner reflec-
tion is what the constellation draws on.
This is not relational work in the intersubjective
sense, the internal relationship of the client with herself
being seen as more important. But the relationship
between therapist and client (and therapist and repre-
sentatives) is crucial even so. Trust is a formidable issue
in trauma, since traumatic events destroy trust and
confidence, and so the constellation cannot move one
step beyond the level of the client’s trust in the therapist.
At the same time the constellation also cannot move
one step beyond the therapist’s trust in the autonomy of
the client (even though the client may not feel trusting
of herself) and the constellation. There are tremendous
issues of power and authority in trauma work, the
trauma situation being one of complete powerlessness.
The therapist must never usurp power, even if the
client’s survival mode is to devolve power to others.19
22 Vivian Broughton
Advantages of the constellations
method
. It is an embodied experience;
. It is experimental;
. It enables the split-off aspects of the self to be
embodied separately, allowing for movement and
disintegration of the reified structure;
. It shows the nature of the relationship structure
between the split components;
. The ‘representative experiences’ give valuable infor-
mation about the needed processes for integration.
Conclusion
In my view, trauma is endemic not exotic. Given our
multigenerational history and the life-and-death reality
of attachment, we are all subject to and influenced by
trauma, we just prefer to look the other way. It is
extraordinary to me, although I understand why, that
it is only in the last fifteen or so years that we have really
begun to make trauma a central topic, after nearly 150
years of psychotherapy. Freud’s recantation was not an
isolated event; trauma avoidance has been a collective
phenomenon.20
As a Gestaltist I have always valued the more philo-
sophical and process-oriented approach of Gestalt, the
tendency to avoid specialisms in favour of an under-
lying existential and phenomenological stance towards
everything. And while this article may seem like a call
for some specialisation, it isn’t. It is an attempt to put
forward a perspective that I think fits well with a Gestalt
approach. Trauma, like shame, is shy, and unless we
consciously look at it, we will not see it. How is a client
to approach her pre-verbal and unconscious trauma if
the therapist does not have such concepts in her frame
of reference?
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank the two peer reviewers, whose
comments on my first draft helped me immeasurably.
Notes
1. http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/epigenetics/article/
11375/ Accessed 6 January 2013.
2. Professor of psychology at the Munich University of Applied
Sciences in Germany.
3. I have organised, edited and published the translation of three
of his books from German into English, with a fourth one
currently in translation.
4. I feel shocked sometimes when I think back on my training days
and how much this attitude pervaded it at the same time as we
were aspiring to respect, inclusion, and ‘unconditional positive
regard’.
5. There is so much more to say about this that is beyond the scope
of this article.
6. The book translated by Gordon Wheeler and Cynthia Oudejans
Harris (Heimannsberg and Schmidt, 1993) is centred around
how the Nazi past was obliterated from psychoanalytic training
in Germany in the years after the war.
7. Multi-Generational Psycho-Traumatology.
8. Even in ‘trauma of loss’, in a sense extreme grief is an experience
we are unsure we will be able to survive. Robert Stolorow has
written of this beautifully in his book Trauma and Human
Existence (2007).
9. There is intriguing evidence surfacing with regard to the
criminal justice designation of the psychopath (not a DSM IV
diagnostic category), to show that some top business executives
fulfill the psychopathy criteria of the Hare Psychopathy Check-
list. The distinction between criminal violent offenders and top
business executives (most commonly men) seems to be to do
with childhood influences, i.e. a violent offender is a person
who has the ‘psychopath gene’ plus an abusive childhood. The
main designation of the psychopath is an absence or severe
limitations of empathy, which is exactly what survival strategies
aim to do: control or obliterate difficult feelings. The so-called
‘psychopath gene’, known as MAO-A, is a gene that has been
consistently found in offenders diagnosed with psychopathy.
The Hare Checklist is commonly used as a means of diagnosis
for justice systems purposes, and has been researched in relation
to non-offenders, i.e. people in positions of authority in
business. However, one difficulty is that the psychopath is
usually highly intelligent and successfully manipulative, and
often charming and charismatic, and very capable of avoiding
or manipulating tests. A recent precedent in US law has been set
where a violent offender’s sentence was altered from death to
life imprisonment because it was proved that he had the MAO-
A gene and a highly abusive childhood.
10. It is now established knowledge within the field of neuroscience
that, quite apart from the emotional benefit of bonding, at the
beginning of life the child is unable to regulate his internal
metabolic processes and relies on the mother’s regulatory
processes through the resonance and regulation provided by
the limbic brain system. This means that without sufficient
connection with an adult (whose regulatory system is estab-
lished) the child literally will die (Lewis, Amini and Lannon,
2001; McGilchrist, 2010).
11. I also call this the primary trauma, since it is extremely common
and all later traumas have their roots in this trauma, in effect all
later traumas are also re-traumatisations of this original
trauma.
12. This may be a major cause of post-natal depression, where the
mother’s own symbiotic trauma and entanglement with her
mother is re-stimulated by her experience of becoming a
mother.
13. Even the DMS IV PTSD designation does not describe what
trauma actually is; it describes the necessary context and the
post-trauma symptomatology.
14. It is interesting to remember that it was a Gestalt practice,
perhaps not popular now, to work with the top-dog and under-
dog in two-chair work, a kind of split, and the Gestalt experi-
ment often is a dialogue between parts of the self.
15. How helpful the several different diagrams of the cycle of
experience are.
16. Levine’s Somatic Experiencing, Kepner’s Healing Tasks,
Rothschild’s body work, Ogden’s Sensorimotor approach,
Schore’s Affect Regulation Therapy, EMDR, EFT, etc.
17. This is the only work that I could discover within the Gestalt

literature that attempts to deal explicitly with trauma, apart
from an article in the BGJ on EMDR (Figgess, S., (2009).
Working with trauma. A journey towards integration: Gestalt
and EMDR. British Gestalt Journal, 18, 1, pp. 34–41).
18. My supervisor, who is professor of narrative therapy at Bristol
University, actually does work in this way, with stories.
19. This raises issues connected with our view of ourselves as
therapists . . . are we a ‘helper’? If so what does this do to the
power balance where one is a helper and the other helped?
20. I wonder to what extent a persistent allegiance to and adulation
of Freud has influenced our ‘trauma blindness’.
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Vivian Broughton is a Gestalt therapist, having graduated from Metanoia and GPTI in 1992. She has
been in private psychotherapy practice since 1989 as a therapist, group therapist, supervisor, and
consultant. Since 2000 she has worked with the constellations method in groups and privately, and has
made a particular study of working with constellations in the individual session. She organised one of
only two trainings on systemic constellations in the UK from 2000 to 2011, and has herself taught the
work of constellations since 2004. In 2009 she resigned from the UKCP and GPTI since her developing
way of working with clients was not supported by either organisation, and her commitment to her
work took precedence. She has edited several translated books on trauma constellations and other
constellations topics, has written and published her own book on working with constellations in the
private session (2010), and a book on the work of Franz Ruppert, due to be published in 2013. She
currently works with individuals with the constellations method in Bristol and London, runs
constellations groups, acts as a systemic supervisor, and organises and teaches on the only inter-
national training in trauma constellations in the world, which takes place in Denmark. She has also
worked by invitation in Norway, Turkey, Romania, Israel, Sweden, and the USA.
Address for correspondence: info@vivianbroughton.com
British Gestalt Journal # Copyright 2013 by Gestalt Publications Ltd.
2013, Vol. 22, No. 2, 25–31

What is constellation work? Another perspective: a response

to Vivian Broughton
Barbara Morgan

Received 23 June 2013

Editor’s note: This article is a response to Vivian Broughton’s article on Gestalt and trauma-
orientated constellation work published in this issue of the BGJ. It was originally submitted as
a letter to the Editor, but we decided due to the length and breadth of its scope to publish it as
an article in its own right.
The field of constellations work is large and growing, with a range of approaches. Barbara
Morgan, who holds a different perspective to Vivian Broughton, questions how compatible
Franz Ruppert’s work is with Gestalt theory and whether it can actually be referred to as
constellation work at all. She argues that Bert Hellinger’s constellation work, which has
developed over the years, is focused on the phenomenological inclusion of the wider energetic
field and to see it as an intrapsychic process is to miss the essence of what the work is about.
Key words: constellations, Ruppert, Hellinger, phenomenology, energetic fields, Gestalt.

Background In terms of the relationship between Ruppert’s work

In her article ‘Trauma constellations with a Gestalt
perspective’ (2013, BGJ, 22.2), Vivian Broughton
attempts to fit Franz Ruppert’s latest theory and
approach to his work with clients within the realms of
Gestalt and constellation work. She also argues that his
approach is both Rogerian and phenomenological.
In my response to this article, I will concentrate on
what is happening at the contact boundary. It isn’t the
actual work of Franz Ruppert I want to take issue with
here, but more the way it is being described by him, and
in this instance, Vivian Broughton, to the outside
world. There is much I could say on what has been
written about Ruppert’s work itself but this, for me, is a
different debate for another time and place. I have no
problem with what Ruppert and Broughton are doing
in their work. That’s up to them. My issue right now is
with the way they are describing it (and constellation
work in general) to the outside world.
In her article, Broughton seems to be attempting to
find a way for Ruppert’s latest style of working to fit
with various theoretical approaches. In doing this, she
appears to be going for a kind of ‘one size fits all’
approach. At the same time, particularly within the
constellations field, she is trying to find ways to
differentiate Ruppert’s style of constellation work
from the rest of the constellations community in
particular – somehow wanting both to ‘have her cake
and eat it’.
and Gestalt, I would refute strongly that it is phenom-
enological, dialogic, or indeed truly Gestalt. However,
my main aim with this response is to address the areas
where I feel most qualified to comment – that of the
constellations field which of course necessarily includes
the issue of phenomenology anyway. I specifically want
to comment and add a different perspective on
Broughton’s descriptions of: the persona of Bert Hel-
linger and the way he works; the role of the underlying
‘orders’ and what I perceive Hellinger’s original inten-
tion was in introducing them; and finally, to invite all
readers to widen their own lens on the possible defini-
tion of what constellation work actually is.
Introduction
I was interested in my initial reaction to this article and
it left me musing on something said many years ago by
Bert Hellinger whilst at a workshop in Athens. He said
that as soon as you seek to differentiate yourself from
others and put a boundary round something you create
an inside and an outside and thereby a ‘them’ and ‘us’,
and that, in some cases, marks the beginning of war. In
differentiating what Franz Ruppert and his followers are
doing from the rest of the constellation world, some-
how Broughton has created a division in the commu-
nity, whereby I felt propelled into an oppositional
stance and my more common dialogic approach
momentarily disappeared. For the first time since I
26 Barbara Morgan
began facilitating constellations in 1997 more than one
person recently asked me whether I worked in Franz
Ruppert’s way or the ‘traditional way’. I have incorp-
orated many different approaches to come to the point
of doing what I do. These approaches have been taken
from my wide experience of working with other facil-
itators and trainers within the constellations field, but
also to my original training and experience as a Gestalt
therapist. As with most of us I imagine, the work I offer
is an integration of all I have done. This was the first
time I had been asked a question which was compelling
me to put myself into a particular box. I resisted.
My main reason for this response, however, is a
concern that the psychotherapy profession as a whole
might develop a misconception about what constella-
tion work actually is and I feel a need to, as it were, ‘offer
another perspective’. Having worked within the field of
constellations since Bert Hellinger first came to the UK
in 1996, and particularly in my role as Editor for the
past nine years of the English language The Knowing
Field, International Constellations Journal (hereafter
TKF), I have become used to being part of a wide, all-
inclusive field, and even though some of the approaches
to the constellation work have fallen way outside of my
own parameters of what I personally might consider to
be ‘good practice’ I have managed to hold the field open
to include all. This in itself has at times created diffi-
culties with certain readers but, for me, forms an
important part of the overall philosophy of constella-
tion work as ‘systemic and inclusive’.
Bert Hellinger
Broughton is not alone in her criticisms of Bert Hellin-
ger and yet, what are these criticisms based on? Is this
not a fixed gestalt dating back to the Bert Hellinger of
the mid-1990s? How can Broughton as a Gestaltist
claim to operate phenomenologically and at the same
time fix Bert Hellinger and his ideas in this way, without
allowing any room for evolution?
She describes him as authoritative,1 directive, and
non-relational. On what is she basing this description?
He has moved a long way from his original way of
working back in the mid-1990s as witnessed by those
who attended his first seminar in London in 1996. Then,
what he was doing might have been described by some
as directive as he did intervene a lot in the constella-
tions, offered sentences, etc. But even back then, those
who knew him well were able to see beneath this
apparent demeanour a very intuitive man who was
surrendering himself to the wider field of the client
and working in an eminently phenomenological way:
On reading the transcripts, it will become obvious how
quickly Bert Hellinger pulls back when someone tries to
generalise uncritically. He also guards against his
thoughts and observations being poured into specific
theoretical moulds. ‘Too much theory interferes with
practice.’ I have followed his lead in this. He sees his
work as being phenomenological. For him, what needs
to be done emerges from really seeing what is happen-
ing. ‘I open myself to a situation in darkness, not
knowing what is going on. The question is: How do I
get to a truth concealed in darkness? I dive into a flowing
field. I become part of it and it reaches out beyond me.
Things move in the field, some into areas of light,
revealing something of whatever IS. I open myself to
that and wait for something to come to me.’ (Hellinger,
Weber and Beaumont, 1998, p. vii)
Despite the strong criticisms levelled at Hellinger, the
undeniable truth is that constellation work, founded by
him, has spread across the world and evolved into a rich
tapestry of different approaches. Witnessing him work
in various countries in the world over the past sixteen
years has given me a lot of insight into Bert Hellinger the
person and his unique approach. I personally have seen
his work evolving over the years. As he himself states
and demonstrates, his current way of working is com-
pletely without intention of any kind. He surrenders
himself to the wider field, sets something in motion and
waits to see what happens according to the represen-
tatives. How can this be seen as directive in any way? I
went to his training camp in November 2012 so my
observations are based on my direct experience of him
in recent months. There I saw him sitting on his chair
and letting the field take over. He barely spoke to the
client. Sometimes no words were uttered at all. One or
two people were set up as representatives, sometimes
the client himself stepped in and then the field took
over.
Far from being ‘non-relational’ I would argue that
Hellinger is deeply in relation to the client, tapping into
their whole family system. Even in the early days, his
followers recognised Hellinger at this deeper level:
Listening to Hellinger on tape for the first time one
evening after a psychotherapy training group I was
leading, I vacillated between outrage and fascination. I
thought, ‘How can a psychotherapist say such dogmatic
and moralistic things?’ But then the deeper meaning of
his words caught my attention. After the initial flashes of
outrage, I became fascinated and realised: ‘He’s not
moralizing, he’s describing. He’s describing the inside of
things I’ve so often seen my clients doing – and have
done myself. He’s describing how it really is.’ (Hellinger,
Weber and Beaumont, 1998, p. x)
Like Ruppert, Hellinger’s work has evolved over the
years and I would argue that Ruppert’s work has
narrowed from his earlier, deeply phenomenological
approach to one where there is a prerequisite for the
client to get to what their intention is before they can

work. Hellinger, on the other hand, asks nothing overtly
of the client. He taps into something much deeper
which is beyond words and maybe even beyond our
conscious understanding. What emerges from the ener-
getic field is full of surprises.
The ‘orders’
When constellation work was first formally introduced
in this country in 1996 with the visit of Bert Hellinger,
the term ‘constellation’ did not exist. There were vari-
ous names given for this radical new approach: Touch-
ing Love, Order of Love, Orders of Love. In those early
days, the ‘orders’ had great significance in the work.
Despite the fact that it has evolved over the years, many
people still use the original way of working with great
success.
I would argue that the orders were never intended by
Hellinger to be prescriptive, even though some people
working within the constellations field may make use of
them in that way. For me, they do indeed form a sound
theoretical base and make absolute sense in terms of
peaceful family relationships. After all, they can be
found everywhere in nature and indeed still exist
among some groups of people in certain cultures.
Whilst many people have rejected them completely or
not even learnt about them in their training, my own
feeling is they are part of the ground of constellation
work in much the same way as many of the original
contentions of Perls et al. remain as part of the ground
of Gestalt. At the same time, as Hellinger has said on
many occasions, in his phenomenological approach, if
anything happens to override the theory behind the
orders, he takes what is in front of him over those
orders, i.e. he works phenomenologically.
Some idea of his attitude regarding the orders can be
gained from his conversations with workshop partici-
pants:
BH: There are certain basic patterns that serve as a rough
guide. When I look at these patterns while I am working,
I lose touch with the reality as it shows this moment. So I
must not look at the patterns. Sometimes I think: Well,
according to this pattern, it would have to be such and
such. When I catch myself thinking this way, I hold back
instantly, for otherwise I am no longer in contact with
what goes on. Then I wait a while. Suddenly I realize it is
taking a completely different direction.2
Constellation work
No one knows how the word ‘constellation’ became
adopted by the English-speaking community to define
the work that was being done in this field. A couple of
years ago, there was a lot of discussion within the
constellations field as to how the word had come
Constellations: a response to Broughton 27
about and no one seemed to know. So I asked Bert
Hellinger directly if he knew. He said he had no idea.
When we look up at the stars in the sky we only see a
collection of white dots which form themselves into a
shape known as a constellation and yet we know they
are so much more than just simply a collection of white
dots. Likewise, the word ‘constellation’ as used within
our profession has come to mean so much more than
the simple ‘setting up of representatives’. To offer this as
the definition for the word ‘constellation’ is, in my view,
reductionist in the extreme and taking such a reduc-
tionist approach undervalues the vast amount of work
carried out across the world in the name of constellation
work (see Ruppert in TKF, 2012, issue 19, p. 19).
Broughton’s two definitions of Ruppert’s approach
as a ‘collective intelligence phenomenon oriented
around the client’s intention’ (2013, p. 20) or ‘an
intrapsychic integrating constellation’ (p. 14) are both
contradictions in terms as far as I’m concerned. You
cannot at the same time have a collective intelligence
phenomenon and then orient it towards an individual.
Neither can you have a constellation (which in my view
is essentially a systemic approach) reduced to an
intrapsychic process.
Despite offering this definition, the author is endor-
sing Gordon Wheeler’s theoretical comparisons
between Gestalt and Systemic Constellation Work in
Stephan Hausner’s book ‘which can easily be seen to be
structurally and methodologically parallel’ (Wheeler, in
Hausner, 2011, p. 290). To endorse Wheeler’s compar-
isons at the same time as rejecting the systemic compo-
nent of all constellation work is, for me, another
contradiction in terms.
Saying that constellation work has been the subject of
much controversy and criticism fails to say that it is also
a movement that has spread across the world and
touched the lives of many thousands of people and is
continuing to do so. It has also moved beyond the
boundaries of the psychotherapy world into many other
areas, reflecting the multi-dimensional interconnecting
systemic field of which we are all part. Whatever the
origins of the definition of constellation, what is indis-
putable is that since those early days, the work has
spread far and wide, across most continents in the
world. It has simultaneously spread across different
disciplines; so we now have: organisational constella-
tions, political constellations, structural constellations,
nature constellations, constellations as ceremony and
many others, ranging from the highly mechanistic to
non-specific, spiritual, and even ethereal.
I agree that the work is controversial. In my view, this
is because it strikes at the heart of our identity; it
challenges the stories we have built up about ourselves
and the way we were treated and often brings about
lasting change, not only for those actually doing a
28 Barbara Morgan
constellation but also for others who are not at the
workshop themselves – a phenomenon completely
rejected by Ruppert:
How could you in a constellation with a representative
for the traumatised parent, do anything to bring the
parent out of their traumatised state when the actual
person is not even present? [. . .] So to be fair to the client
it is important that the facilitator does not do anything
that supports such illusions. (Ruppert in TKF, 2010,
issue 16, p. 15)
Once you accept the phenomenon of energetic fields
which operate outside time and space, then you develop
a whole new way of seeing the world and all sorts of
previously unimaginable phenomena become possible.
This, for me, is where constellation work fits – in this
new paradigm about interconnecting fields. Many
people are at this cutting edge, writing about their
own discoveries and ideas. We have biologist Rupert
Sheldrake writing about morphic fields and morpho-
genetic resonance (1988/1995, 1999, 2004), Anngwyn
St. Just’s research into collective trauma (2006, 2008,
2012), Merleau-Ponty’s concept of Being (2002), Ervin
Laszlo’s Akashic Field (2007). With all these advances
and new ideas (and many more besides) who is to say
what is illusion and what reality and how does Ruppert
feel qualified to reject the findings of such people as
illusion? Sheldrake (1988/1995) suggests that fields can
not only leap between generations but also ‘sideways’
between one group or type of organism to another, even
if these organisms live on different continents. How can
Ruppert and Broughton support the idea of transge-
nerational trauma and the phenomenon of represen-
tative perception at the same time as rejecting the idea
of an interconnecting field? I contend that none of us
has the sole claim to an all-time definition of a con-
stellation or on what is illusion and what reality.
To say a client cannot heal her mother (Ruppert in
TKF, 2010, issue 16, p. 15) assumes an individual
perspective fixed in time and space, and this is a
definitive statement which allows no room for further
exploration. I would term the same process thus: when a
client does something in a constellation workshop it can
alter the energetic field of her family (which exists
outside time and space) and thereby affects others
who are within that energetic field but not physically
present. This puts an entirely different spin on it. Of
course, research in this area is still very young and none
of us can know for sure what this phenomenon may be.
And isn’t a true phenomenological stance that of some-
one who is comfortable resting in ‘not-knowing’ rather
than deciding what is reality and what illusion?
As Broughton rightly points out: ‘A therapist can
look at anything and will only see what their theoretical
framework allows . . . ‘ (2013, p. 21). Exactly. So if you
are working in a narrow, formulaic way, you will not see
any other possibilities in the field that a constellation
might present – from the group, the representatives or
the outside environment. I could give numerous
examples of how the interconnected field has been
operating and people outside a workshop have felt the
effects of what has happened inside. Here are just a few
from my own experience as a facilitator of workshops:
A woman gave up her child for adoption at the age of
sixteen. Just a few days after her constellation this person
made contact with her.
A couple had been together for eleven years without being
able to conceive a child. They conceived immediately after
a constellation workshop.
The father of a workshop participant had decided to have
a sex change operation which was to take place on the
same day as the constellation workshop. When the parti-
cipant got home, his father had changed his mind.
A woman did a constellation in which an excluded
grandfather was re-introduced. The next time she saw
her father, who knew nothing of the work she was doing, he
had found a photo of his father and asked if she and her
brothers would take him to find where his father was
buried. He finally made peace with the father he had not
seen in almost seventy years.
The author makes assumptions when she says the
constellation work is separating from the persona of
Bert Hellinger. With so many thousands of facilitators
working across the world, none of us can really know
what the trends are. We only hear from the more
outspoken ones and those that speak English. She
makes a further assumption when she writes: ‘I
should add here that Ruppert’s work is by no means
accepted by the family constellations community, since
it challenges many of the central themes of family
constellations, and many people’s loyalty to Hellinger’
(2013, p. 15).
Again, we cannot know the full extent of objections to
Franz Ruppert’s methodology. I would suggest that
those that do exist may have more to do with the
attack on the rest of the constellations community in
saying much of the original ways of working were
steeped in illusion. Also, the ‘splitting’ involved in
bringing together the rest of the population of con-
stellation facilitators who do not work in Franz
Ruppert’s way under the umbrella term of ‘traditional
facilitators’ may well have had an effect on some
facilitators. I would argue that this latest potential
split in the field is more to do with it being a mirror
of the work Ruppert is doing in dealing with splits in the
soul. My guess would be many are simply not that
interested as they are going about their own business,

working with constellations in the way that feels right
for them and not bothering themselves with what is
happening elsewhere in the world. However, we cannot
really know for sure because the range of facilitators is
so vast.
So-called ‘Trauma Constellations’ are limited by the
theoretical approach of Ruppert and leave no possi-
bility for inputs from the wider field. From the
beginning, Hellinger stated prior to many a constella-
tion: ‘I can only work here if there is a serious issue
[in the family system at hand]’. Without using the
term I would argue he was referring mainly to trauma
and therefore wouldn’t many ‘serious’ constellations
be trauma constellations anyway? To devise a name
like Trauma Constellations and then reduce the defi-
nition to an intrapsychic approach focusing on the
area of transgenerational trauma and attachment dis-
order is to undermine all the work that has been done
beyond this definition within the constellations field.
Many constellations are indeed connected to trau-
matic experiences but some are not. Those that are
may sometimes be more to do with collective or social
trauma, such as that researched and written about
extensively by Anngwyn St. Just, Rupert Sheldrake,
and others mentioned above. As has been the case
with what has been written about Bert Hellinger,
many assumptions have been made here in writing
about constellation work.
How Ruppert positions himself within this field is
somewhat puzzling, as he rides on the powerful meth-
odology and insights of constellation work whilst at the
same time claiming that he has invented an entirely new
way of working. The content of his own teachings seem
to be of less importance. Both Ruppert and Broughton
in her article to this journal, and elsewhere, are at pains
to explain how exactly their approach fits within con-
stellation work. They reject most of the basic facets of
the work and yet continue to use the term ‘constella-
tions’ to describe their approach.
My concern is that some Gestalt practitioners who are
less familiar with constellation work would confuse
Ruppert’s approach with constellation work in general,
as practised by many practitioners all over the world.
Again, we have no way of knowing for sure, but I would
imagine that a substantial number of constellation
practitioners would tell you that what is being set up
depends on the issue of the person working, i.e. as the
phenomena present themselves. Ruppert always starts
the same. I also imagine that most constellation practi-
tioners would agree that the constellation needs to be
non-directive and non-intentional. Furthermore, it
offers a systemic perspective on the client’s issue,
which by focusing on an intrapsychic process only is
taken away in Ruppert’s ‘constellation’.
Constellation work is never easy to describe, but I
Constellations: a response to Broughton 29
have the overall impression that ‘Ruppert’s constella-
tions’ happen according to some theoretical schema,
rather than following the phenomenological process of
identifying and using energy forces that operate in the
family (and other systems) fields as happens in all the
many different forms of constellations facilitated by
other practitioners. In this, I sense, some essential
‘constellating’ has been lost. A number of constellation
practitioners have questioned whether this way of
working can be rightfully called a constellation at all.
That remains an open question.
In any case, in recent months, Ruppert himself in an
open conversation with Max Dauskardt on Facebook
wrote that he did not think it possible to work phe-
nomenologically anyway.3 So he seems to be at odds
with what Vivian Broughton is saying about the way he
works.
Summary
The author states that her paper is not a call for
specialisation. I would argue it is exactly that. In my
opinion, Ruppert has had some ideas in the past which
were innovative and sound, but he has moved towards a
frame of reference which for me is too narrow to
warrant being named as constellation work and too
formulaic to fit within a Gestalt approach. In addition,
anything which has as its framework the need for a
client to find out what their intention is before being
able to work, does not fit with a Rogerian approach
either and is definitely not phenomenological. For
example, where Ruppert says: ‘I am only willing to
facilitate a constellation if a client has an intention for
their therapeutic work’ (Ruppert in TKF, 2012, p. 19,
my emphasis), this suggests, to me, that he does not
work phenomenologically.
Furthermore, Broughton’s use of such words as ‘all’,
‘always’, and ‘constantly’ in her article belie her claims
to be working phenomenologically. Such words are the
antithesis of phenomenology.
The wider perspective
On a more general note, I would be interested to hear
what others think about what’s happening within and
between the two communities of Gestalt and Constella-
tions. What is the current relationship between Gestalt
and constellation work? Are the two sitting comfortably
side by side as Gordon Wheeler contends? Are there
new desires within Gestalt fully to embrace constella-
tion work as part of the Gestalt approach? I would argue
from the opposite end. Maybe it is the job of the
constellations community to decide whether or not
they wish to embrace Gestalt as part of constellation
work. Many would probably say no to this idea and yet
30 Barbara Morgan
of all the psychotherapy traditions that exist, in my view
Gestalt is the one that fits most closely with constella-
tion work.
None of us can stop the flow of whatever will happen
with either field, but I would be saddened to see the
years of work put in by Bert Hellinger and all those
thousands that have developed their particular
approach in his wake, compromised, reduced or
adapted to fit what some believe the majority of
others working in parallel fields might want. For me,
constellation work has been and continues to be trans-
formative and one of the reasons for this is that it has
been allowed to evolve and spread into such a rich
tapestry of approaches, without losing any of its original
ground. Reducing it to a formulaic way of working,
calling it ‘an intrapsychic, integrating constellation’ is,
for me, a betrayal and a distortion of the work.
Looking forward
So, given that the Gestalt community did not embrace
constellation work previously, what are the possibilities
of that now? Are they more likely to embrace the
systemic, field-based approach of what Broughton
refers to as the ‘traditional’ facilitators, or will the so-
called ‘intrapsychic integrating constellation’ become
the acceptable norm within our particular psycho-
therapy group? For me, this would be a backward step
and a return to a ‘safe’ option whereby the potential
paradigm shift which I see beginning to happen and
which is related to the interconnected field, would be
once again shelved for another time. This may mean
that the world of Gestalt would also, once again, lose a
valuable opportunity.
Notes
1. I refrained from commenting on the author’s use of the word
‘authoritative’ as I wondered whether in fact she meant to use the
term ‘authoritarian’. ‘Authoritative would, in my view, be an
essential quality for any leader of a group, whereas ‘author-
itarian’ would fit more closely with the tone of the remainder of
her descriptions of Hellinger and his work.
2. See www.hellinger.com – newsletter March 2011. Full conversa-
tion below:
Basic patterns
Workshop Participant: Back to your critics once more. What really
irritates so many is that you have found orders in your many years
of work, and then you say, ‘I can’t do anything about it. That’s the
way they are.’ That raises objections and people say that these
orders can be changed.
BH: Exactly.
Participant: We change them.
BH: Yes, that’s what I say too.
Participant: How can Bert Hellinger say then: ‘This is how the order
is. This is how I understood it.’
BH: That’s how the order is in this situation. You clearly see the
effect. If people generalize, that’s their business. I do not general-
ize. I remain with the situation at hand.
But there are certain patterns that showed up clearly. Then I
say that out loud: This is a pattern. But when I do a constellation,
I suddenly do something completely different, even against this
pattern, because it shows up that something is different in this
situation. Then some say to me: One can’t rely on you. And that’s
true.
Participant: Okay, but these patterns do exist. Sometimes when an
exception begins, one gets an inkling: Aha, this will take this
direction. What are the basic patterns? There are quite a few. Are
there some classic patterns that you are specifically aware of?
BH: There are certain basic patterns that serve as a rough guide.
When I look at these patterns while I am working, I lose touch
with the reality as it shows this moment. So I must not look at the
patterns. Sometimes I think: Well, according to this pattern, it
would have to be such and such. When I catch myself thinking
this way, I hold back instantly, for otherwise I am no longer in
contact with what goes on. Then I wait a while. Suddenly I realize
it is taking a completely different direction.
3. Taken from an open exchange between Max Dauskardt and
Franz Ruppert on Facebook, September 25 2012:
Dauskardt: Traditional constellations deal with them phenom-
enologically, whereas you do not or at least appear to do not.
Please help to clarify this point.
Ruppert: Yes, I see ‘phenomenology’ as an attempt to seem as if
you do not have hypotheses and theories, when you observe the
representative’s behaviour. But that is impossible because per-
ception always is influenced by mental concepts. So you see what
you expect or what you want to see, no matter if this is conscious
or unconscious for you. So it is important to make one’s implicit
concepts explicit and make it open for discussion. Otherwise you
might be blind against your presumptions or you make the client
feel that your perception is superior to his. This can easily lead to
the attempt to feel like a master or guru and to forbid critique
and discussion about your ‘insights’.
References
Broughton, V. (2013). Trauma constellations with a Gestalt per-
spective. British Gestalt Journal, 22, 2, pp. 14–24.
Hausner, S. (2011). Even if it Costs me my Life: Systemic Constella-
tions and Serious Illness. New York: Gestalt Press, Routledge,
Taylor & Francis.
Hellinger, B., Weber, G. and Beaumont, H. (1998). Love’s Hidden
Symmetry. What makes Love work in Relationships. Phoenix,
Arizona: Zeig, Tucker & Co.
Laszlo, I. (2007). Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of
Everything. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945/2002). Phenomenology of Perception.
London: Routledge.
Ruppert, F. in The Knowing Field, International Constellations
Journal (issues 16, 19, 20), June 2010, January 2012, June 2012.
Edited by Barbara Morgan.
Sheldrake, R. (1995). The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance &
The Habits of Nature. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press.
(Originally published 1988 Times Books, New York.)
Sheldrake, R. (1999). Dogs that know when their Owners are Coming
Home. California: Three Rivers Press.
Sheldrake, R. (2004), The Sense of Being Stared At. London: Arrow
Books, Random House Group.
St. Just, A. (2006). Relative Balance in an Unstable World: A Search
for New Models for Trauma Education & Recovery. Heidelberg:
Carl Auer Systeme-Verlag.
 Constellations: a response to Broughton 31

St. Just, A. (2008). A Question of Balance: A Systemic Approach to St. Just, A. (2012). Time, Space and Fractals: A Systemic Perspective
Understanding and Resolving Trauma. Heidelberg: Carl Auer on Individual, Social and Global Trauma. n.l.: CreateSpace
Systeme Verlag. (independent publishing platform).

Barbara Morgan is a UKCP registered Gestalt psychotherapist and Family Constellations practitioner,
supervisor and trainer. She came across the constellation work when Bert Hellinger first visited the UK
in 1996 and she was just completing her Gestalt training. Studying initially with Hunter Beaumont, in
2000 she attended the first annual intensive in Southern Germany and has attended each year since
that time. This has given her access to many different trainers and she has gained a wide repertoire of
experience. She has regularly offered individual constellations, residential and non-residential work-
shops, and has been running an apprenticeship scheme since 2000. She has been offering trainings in
Romania for the past three years and is running a two-year training in the south west of the UK. Her
role as Editor of the The Knowing Field, International Constellations Journal, gives her access to the
latest developments in the work worldwide.
Address for correspondence: theknowingfield@gmail.com
British Gestalt Journal # Copyright 2013 by Gestalt Publications Ltd.
2013, Vol. 22, No. 2, 32–39

From the need for aggression to the need for rootedness: a

Gestalt postmodern clinical and social perspective on conflict
Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb

Received 9 December 2012

Abstract: This article revises the basic concept of aggression in Gestalt therapy, considering
the development of society from Fritz Perls’ time to nowadays. The anthropological turn of
Perls is outlined (aggression, conflict, and intentionality of contact are the concepts that he
linked), and the proposed evolution of the concept of aggression is in line with this original
epistemological perspective. The need for rootedness is considered as the contemporary
equivalent of the social need for aggression, a requirement that Perls identified in the 1950s.
Treatment for this new form of social need is proposed as focused on the ground rather than
on the figure. A clinical example is finally provided.
Key words: aggression, conflict, intentionality of contact, need for rootedness, postmodern
society, ground, now-for-next.

The relations that exist between individual and society,
and between social groups, cannot be understood with-
out considering the problem of aggression. ( . . .) [T]he
remedies prescribed for aggression are always the same
old ineffective repressive agents: idealism and religion.
We have not learnt anything about the dynamic of
aggression in spite of Freud’s warning that repressed
energies not only do not disappear but may even
become more dangerous and more destructive if
driven underground. (Perls, 1969a, p. 7)
Introduction
This article proposes a new understanding of Fritz Perls’
concept of aggression, applied to our postmodern
society. Developing hermeneutically the original
(social and clinical) meaning of aggression, I reach the
point that, while in Perls’ ‘language’ aggression was
needed for people to get rid of imposed (neither lived
nor ‘owned’) social rules, in contemporary society
people need very different and in some ways opposite
things. People nowadays need to feel rooted, not
aggressive, and able to be autonomous from imposi-
tions. In this article I show how the original meaning of
aggression for Perls was a revolutionary way of sup-
porting autonomy in a social context dominated by the
idea of introjecting. His view was, however, from a
clinical and developmental perspective (how can we be
better psychotherapists considering the influence of
society on our clients), not from an ontological one.
The revolutionary quality of his idea has to be
developed into another society – ours – which has
other needs, the need for rootedness first of all, and
for surer relational ground.
Elsewhere I describe the development of social feel-
ings since the beginning of Gestalt therapy, and con-
nect it to psychotherapeutic values (Spagnuolo Lobb,
2013, pp. 24–29). If the need of aggression was the
appropriate support (according to the founder of
Gestalt therapy) for individuals to own their intention-
ality for contact and lead their contacts with harmony
and determination of their ego-functioning, the need
to feel rooted is what is missing today, in our society
which is characterised by globalisation and lack of sure
relationships, to let people re-own their awareness and
make deliberated, spontaneous, and ‘middle mode’
contacts.
After an outline of anthropological and social mean-
ings of Perls’ concept of aggression, I describe how this
concept is linked to Gestalt psychopathology. Then I
propose a revisitation of this concept in contemporary
society, and consider how the need for rootedness can
be the parallel concept nowadays. Finally, I describe
how this (needed) theoretical development changes our
clinical practice.
I conclude that the clinical problem is no longer that
of supporting aggressiveness in contact making (which
was appropriate to the society to which Perls belonged),
but rather to provide the opposite: the sense of security
in the relationship and in the other (working on the
ground more than on the figure), which permits a clear
perception/differentiation of oneself in relation to the

other, a harmonic perception of one’s own body (id-
functioning), and of the social definition of oneself
(personality-functioning), which makes aware and cre-
ative contact possible (ego-functioning).
How Perls linked the ‘individual
experience of aggression’ to ‘social
experience of conflict’
With his theory of dental aggression, Perls linked what
were traditionally defined as the ‘individual experience
of aggression’ and ‘social experience of conflict’ in a
conceptual continuum. Aggressiveness permits us to
reach not only an object useful for survival (food), but
also the other, a part of the environment that is equally
useful for survival. Aggression comes from the Latin ad-
gredior. To ad-gredere the other means reaching him or
her. The biting that Perls considered in child develop-
ment has to do with making parts of the environment
one’s own, and growing thereby, not annihilating it.1 In
order to grow we have to ‘bite’ parts of the environ-
ment, but this does not destroy the environment.2 Perls
intuitively matched the evolutionary idea included in
this concept with the social needs of his time.
Aggression is the ‘‘step toward’’ the object of appetite or
hostility. The passing of the impulse into the step is
initiative: accepting the impulse as one’s own and
accepting the motor execution as one’s own. (Perls et
al., 1951/1994, p. 122)
It is clear how Perls wanted to overcome Freud’s theory
of impulse and underline how there was a disequili-
brium between the environment’s aggression (the
imposition of rules) and the individual’s aggression
(the need to express his feeling and wish to contribute).
Perls’ epistemological operation was not easy. In fact,
his idea of dental aggression as criticism of the devel-
opmental theory of psychoanalysis was unsuccessful
when he presented it at the Marienbad congress of the
International Association for Psychoanalysis in 1936. It
implied liberation from the concept of the death
impulse, and hence from the super-ego and from
many other theoretical and methodological frameworks
that were holding up the structure of a culture based on
the dichotomies of good–bad, healthy–sick, and so on.
Not thinking in terms of life and death impulses any
more allowed our founders to refer to a phenomeno-
logical rather than to an analytical method, to an idea of
reality as an ongoing whole, with ranges of experiences,
rather than to bad or sick aspects that have to be
‘recovered’ (brought under certain rules) or kept
under control.
From introjection as a fundamental method of
change (and of overcoming conflicts) proposed by the
post-Romantic culture of the early twentieth century
Postmodern Gestalt perspective on conflict 33
(which was the cradle of dictatorships, of the patriarchal
family, of the sense of belonging as obedience) in which
psychoanalysis was born, the focus was moved to
‘dental aggression’, to rebellion and to the differentia-
tion of the self as a model of normal growth and of
managing conflicts. The child’s physiological ability to
bite was considered to correspond to the psychological
ability to deconstruct reality. Conflicts become a neces-
sary part of creative and nurturing relationships. Set-
tling conflicts prematurely (which meant introjecting
rules without ‘chewing’ them) was considered by Perls a
main modality to create neurosis (1969b, p. 7). The
client as well, in order to grow, must be able to say no,
must be able to rebel, even against the psychotherapist.
This was precisely the opposite formulation to the
psychoanalytic, which instead considered it necessary
for the client to accept the analyst’s interpretation, with
a view to ensuring the positive transference and there-
fore the cure. Positive transference for Perls meant not
to accept any interpretation from the analyst, but the
freedom for the client to ‘fight’ against the therapist’s
(or analyst’s) proposal (or interpretation) until a shared
co-created definition of the therapeutic encounter was
reached.3
Perls acutely linked the need for aggression of the
individual to the possibility to solve the social problem
of conflicts.
Anthropological foundation:
overcoming dichotomies
The developmental evidence for dental aggression
became the link to propose a different, more positive
anthropology which made it possible to pass from the
polarisation between individual needs and social
demands to their integration, by way of a process of
deconstructing and reconstructing the meanings cre-
ated in the relationship (see Spagnuolo Lobb et al.,
1996).
Fritz Perls’ intuition on childhood development,
which gives value to the deconstructing implicit in the
development of the teeth (dental aggression, Perls,
1942), is based on a conception of human nature as
capable of self-regulation, a positive concept as com-
pared with the mechanistic concept in force at the turn
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (with which
Freudian theory was imbued) which gave no space to
individual creativity. The child’s ability to bite supports
and accompanies her ability to deconstruct reality.
This anthropological stance is in line with a non-
dichotomous perspective on human relations, with
their phenomenological and unitary nature. To over-
come dichotomies was the main purpose that our
founders had when they gave Gestalt therapy the dignity
34 Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb
of a new method (Perls et al., 1951/1994, p. 17). The
concept of aggression cannot be erased from our theory
because it is crucial to it.
We may schematise the difference between the two
anthropological trends as follows (Spagnuolo Lobb,
2013, p. 136):
From intrapsychic anthropology . . . . . . to Gestalt anthropology
Human being – culture separation Unitary nature of the
Nature – culture separation developmental processes among
human beings – nature – culture
Pessimistic perspective on the Positive perspective on the human
human being being
Aggression as destructive, negative Aggression as indispensable
strength strength for survival
The conflict between persons – the social result of
aggressiveness – is seen in Gestalt therapy as part of the
normal development of relationships. This offers the
possibility of working through the differences without
any one emerging at the cost of others, reaching a new,
unimaginable co-created reality, in which each can
emerge with her own individuality and with the satis-
faction of having ‘won’ a unique sense of being-there in
the social community. In all aggression, then, it is
possible to trace an intentionality of contact, and in
every conflict that results from it there is a potential for
improving the contact.4 The question the Gestalt thera-
pist asks herself in situations of conflict is: what inten-
tionality for the co-creation of the contact is there in the
parts involved in that particular conflict?
At the origin of the conflict, in brief, is the desire to
make a positive contribution to the situation. Going
through the conflict means having faith in the self-
regulation of the relationships. This is what the foun-
ders of Gestalt therapy themselves have to say: ‘Our
differences were many, but by bringing them forth
rather than politely concealing them we many times
arrived at solutions that none of us could have anti-
cipated’ (Perls et al., 1951/1994, p. 13).5
The concept of psychopathology as
unsupported ad-gredere
The physiological experience of ad-gredere, which sup-
ports the more general organismic experience of going
towards the other, requires oxygen. It has to be balanced
and supported by exhalation, a moment of trust
towards the environment in which the organism relaxes
its tension and control, to go on to take another breath
(and oxygen) in a spontaneous, self-regulated manner.
The pause in control, letting oneself go to the other or to
the environment, is the fundamental cue for the con-
trol/trust rhythm to be able to occur spontaneously.
The constitutive novelty of contacting the other is
assimilated through the balancing of active and
restraining presence, creativity, and adjustment.
When this support of oxygen is lacking, excitement
becomes anxiety. The definition we give of ‘anxiety’ in
Gestalt psychotherapy is in fact ‘excitement without the
support of oxygen’. The physiological support to reach
the other is lacking. The contact comes about in any
case (it could not fail to come about as long as there is
the self, or as long as there is life), but the experience is
characterised by anxiety (Spagnuolo Lobb, 2004). This
implies a certain desensitisation of the contact bound-
ary. In order to avoid perceiving anxiety, it is necessary
to put to sleep part of the sensitivity in the here and now
of contacting the environment; the self cannot be fully
concentrated, awareness decreases, the act of contact
loses the quality of awareness and of spontaneity.6
For this reason, the Gestalt therapist looks at the
bodily process of the client-in-contact, and suggests
breathing out in the event that she sees that, concen-
trating on a significant experience, the client is not
exhaling fully. The therapist knows that in this case the
client’s physiological experience is of an excitement
without the support of oxygen; the client is distracted
at that moment from the therapeutic contact and
cannot assimilate any novelty contained in it. In other
words, the therapeutic contact cannot come about
without the support of oxygen because the change for
Gestalt therapy concerns all the psycho-corporeal and
relational processes. It is necessary to suggest to the
client that he breathe out in order to have the support of
oxygen to accept the novelty brought by the therapeutic
contact.
Gestalt therapy thus wonderfully puts together the
‘animal’ soul and the ‘social’ soul, for centuries con-
sidered mutually antagonistic in Western philosophical
culture: if the contact is a superordinate motivational
system, there is no separation between instinctive
motivation for survival and social gregarious motiva-
tion.7
The emphasis Gestalt therapy puts on relationality
thus has an anthropological valence in considering self-
regulation (between deconstruction and reconstruc-
tion) of the organism/environment interchange and a
socio-political valence in considering creativity a
‘normal’ outcome of the individual/society relation-
ship. Creative adjustment is in fact the result of this
spontaneous strength of survival that allows the indi-
vidual to be differentiated from the social context, but
also to be fully and importantly part of it. Every human
behaviour, even pathological behaviour, is considered a
creative adjustment.
The concept of ad-gredere finds its Gestalt application
in the formation of the contact boundary.

Aggression, conflict and intentionality
of contact in postmodern society
What has been said thus far briefly summarises the
revolutionary perspective that Gestalt therapy has on
aggressiveness and conflict. Many contributions have
been written about this ‘uneasy’ concept in our
approach, and not all of them have been supportive of
this valuable revolutionary epistemology. The crucial
part of Perls’ idea is, in my opinion, the faith in the
individual’s intentionality of contact, in the desire of
every human being to be seen and recognised for the
positive contribution he wants to make to the conflict
with his full, spontaneous presence, and above all in the
conviction that this implies a self-regulation of social
relationships. The social community should therefore
accept the uncertainty that derives from this trust:8 the
regulation of the group is in fact autogenous, it does not
require a control of what is good and what is evil with
rules imposed from outside. As I have written above, we
do not need to refer to the super-ego.
A contentious aspect of Perls’ use of the concept of
aggression is to consider as positive something that
includes a destructive meaning. This has brought a few
colleagues to consider different kinds of aggression.
Philip Lichtenberg (2012), for instance, considers in-
clusive and exclusive aggression: in the former the
other is included, while in the latter the other is not
considered. Staemmler (2009, p. 164) makes a criti-
cism of Perls’ theory of aggression: in his opinion, it
creates a confusion ‘of two entirely different motiva-
tional systems, the explorative-assertive system on the
one hand and the aversive-aggressive system on the
other hand’. For this author there cannot be a ‘positive
aggression’.
My opinion is that we have to understand Perls’
concept of aggression based on the etymology of the
word (the Latin ad-gredere) and the social feelings
which were figural at the time when he used this
concept. This hermeneutic view will help us to use
and possibly modify the term, if not suitable to con-
temporary society. I find Michael Vincent Miller’s
(2011, p. 45) idea of aggression as ‘curiosity’ the best
suitable to the hermeneutic of our approach.
Today, this perspective on aggressiveness and conflict
continues to challenge society in a twofold sense. On the
one hand, contemporary society is familiar with the
sense of uncertainty that derives from the lack of stable
points of reference, and hence is readier to accept the
idea of self-regulation. In a society in which postmo-
dern influences can challenge our traditional assump-
tions, self-regulation of contact is the form that may be
taken by the need to believe in something positive (years
ago the positive strength was seen in the power of the
ego).
Postmodern Gestalt perspective on conflict 35
On the other hand, in our contemporary postmodern
society the feeling of aggression no longer has the
emotional structure that it had sixty years ago: it
actually seems to be detached from conflict, which is
its relational context. People are aggressive for no
reason. Aggressiveness is felt without the perception
of a relational background that might contain it and
give it direction. Aggressiveness has become dangerous
precisely because it is not supported by the sense of the
relationship to which it belongs. One may kill at any age
and for any futile reason (or without reason). In Perls’
time, aggression was the feeling that people could not
express in order to conform themselves to given social
rules. So to be aggressive meant to get rid of oppressive
social rules. Today aggression is felt in a quite different
way: it is energy without the direction that is given by
relational (we should say contact) experience.
Today’s younger generation, when they are aggres-
sive, often seem angry with the world (understood in
undifferentiated terms); they have a psycho-physical
disturbance typical of those who are not nurtured,
contained, calmed by the arms of someone who loves
them. The negative energy unleashed in their bodies
unheard, unseen, gallops unreined and strikes someone
at random, in the hidden hope of being stopped
(Spagnuolo Lobb, 2009). Since the lack of relational
containment has not permitted the differentiation of
the self in the growth of the young, now, in conse-
quence, they behave in a confluent manner: shooting or
killing is unsubtle, makes no distinctions: it strikes at
the mass, in the fog of a confluent perception.
These young people must be provided with strong
arms that can contain and relax the terrible stress they
feel at having to live without the nurturing other in an
agonising solitude in which everything is a demand for
performance, arms that can make them rest and con-
centrate on the emotions, on the direction of the
excitement they feel, so that they may finally identify
‘who I am and what I want of you’.
From the need for aggression to the
need for rootedness
Psychosocial analyses today reveal a change in relational
capabilities. After what was called the ‘narcissistic
society’ (1970s–1980s) (Lasch, 1978), which later devel-
oped into what some defined as ‘borderline society’ and
others ‘technological’ (1980s–2000) (Galimberti, 1999),
today the term used is ‘liquid society’ (Bauman, 2000),
characterised by the lack of relational support and
consequent lack of self-support. Everything is liquid,
with no stable form. Feelings, relationships, points of
reference, jobs, people, can easily change. We are
mutants, like certain cartoons. Between globalisation
36 Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb
of communication, which allows children and whoever
to reach any part of the world, and spread their energy
all around the world, and the lack of sure ground in the
primary relationships, the social feeling today is liquid:
no certainties, no clear forms, no stability, and a lot of
solitude. This development of social needs influences
both the perception of people in general and the
individual experience of conflict.
Social feelings become increasingly ‘liquid’. They may
take many forms and at the same time have neither
containment nor structure. Children at school, for
instance, cannot stay still, they have to keep moving
continually, they are not used to concentrating. Their
breathing has no container; the experience of a whole
body that contains the emotions is lacking.
Some decades ago, in the period of greatest diffusion
of Gestalt therapy (1960s–1970s), the feelings of aggres-
sion were linked to the fulfilment of the self and
associated with establishing independence from au-
thoritarian figures. Today aggressiveness is perceived
by individuals with a certain ‘liquidity’, without the
support necessary to make its expression functional in
contact. What is missing is the ground of taken-for-
granted certainties that derives from earlier assimilated
contacts. For this reason the act of deliberating (identi-
fying oneself with or alienating oneself from parts of the
environment, the ego-function of the self) cannot be
clearly defined against the experiential background (id-
function and personality-function of the self).9
This experiential system seems not to give place to a
positive anthropology of self-regulation. It is difficult to
speak today of positive aggressiveness. Anything at all
may be done at the instant of aggressiveness, even
killing. There have been many recent examples of
violent acts by children and young people, such as the
case of Erika and Omar, two teenagers aged fourteen
and sixteen who, after ferociously killing Erika’s mother
and younger brother, went out for a beer;10 or the case
of Lorena, the fourteen-year-old Sicilian girl murdered
with cold brutality by three youngsters of the same age
with whom she had begun an adolescent sexual game
(see Spagnuolo Lobb, 2008); or Kim, the German boy
who in a moment of madness used his father’s weapons
to kill fifteen innocent youngsters, ex-schoolmates, and
a passer-by (see Spagnuolo Lobb, 2009). We might
relate many similar episodes, in which, faced with the
question ‘Why did you do it?’ the youngsters often
answer ‘I don’t know’.
It appears, then, that aggressiveness is experienced
without conflict, an unreined aggressiveness, without
relational intentionality.
The social denial of the need for rootedness
Western society has moved from the denial of aggression
(lamented by Perls) to the denial of the need for rooted-
ness. In the modern era, idealism and religion have been
the two great systems of removal of opposition and of
individual criticism (see Perls’ sentence in epigraph,
1969a, p. 7; Perls et al., 1951/1994, pp. 9–11). If this
levelling of individual difference responded to the social
and cultural strategy of denying aggression, a parallel
levelling carried out by contemporary society may be
identified in the denial of people’s need for rootedness. I
am referring to the move away from mass communica-
tions and legislative commitment in young people’s
need for work. Most young people are only temporarily
employed or are without work; again, the need of
immigrants to find a place to live, the need for primary
good relationships for children, who very often suffer
from the physical or relational absence of their parents
(who are away from home or distracted), irrespective of
whether they are separated or not. I do not think we are
sufficiently aware of (nor have we been helped to
realise) the degree to which children, from birth, live
in a condition of affective abandonment, of how rare it
is for parents and children to have a close physical
relationship 24 hours a day, which should be normal at
least in the first year of life. Children today grow up
adjusting to the absence of caregivers, developing anxi-
ety towards the containment of their emotions and
accustomed to not sharing them (the other is not there
or is always busy, or may be a paedophile whose
intentions are evil).
This condition does not improve as the child devel-
ops. Indeed, society shows itself to be increasingly
demanding and falsely nurturing. The school demands
the ability to concentrate and devotion to study; enter-
ing a university is sometimes a gamble; work, if one
finds a job, requires notable sacrifices and offers few
guarantees. Affective relationships, in these conditions
of stress, can become optional extras which may not be
relaxing, or alternatively provide a niche in which to rest
and sleep (instead of exercising one’s relational
creativity).
The experiential condition of young people today is
that of having to find one’s direction very quickly in a
complex world, in which the educators – parents and
teachers – know less than those they are educating
(Spagnuolo Lobb, 2011). Think of the world of the
internet and of those working relationships that are
based on values very different from those of twenty
years ago. Young people have to find their way without
a clear perception of where they are going, of the
balance between themselves and the environment, and
they have to do this quickly. The video game goes ahead
without pause and waits for no one. They learn to face
up to this emergency by means of trial and error and
cannot waste time between one game and the next.
Sometimes they do not even know whether they have
won or lost the games they are playing. They cannot

relax, there is no orientation phase in their lives – too
many emergencies, too little time and no adult who
knows more than they do.
Clients today are ‘liquid’ too. They suffer from
disorders that have to do with the lack of the ground
of taken-for-granted experiences – panic attacks, PTSD,
eating disorders, serious psychopathies (see Francesetti,
2007). Their experience is characterised by a lack of
relational support and, consequently, a lack of self-
support.
In short, if fifty years ago society showed insensitivity
to individuals’ need for differentiation and rebellion
against pre-established authority, today it shows insen-
sitivity towards individuals’ need for rootedness.
The co-creation of the ground as rootedness
What is needed in our society is the ability to be in a
relationship starting from the containment of the initial
chaos, which would allow individuals to experience that
sense of taken-for-granted security that comes from the
‘obvious’ presence of the significant other and from
which the differentiation of the self may emerge. The
relational ground on which the experience of novelty
can rest is missing. The experience of the aggressive
emotion needs to be supported with a relational
ground, in such a way that it can lead to contacting
the other rather than to its indiscriminate destruction.
Without the sense of solidity of the ground, the figure
cannot be clearly formed.
Going back to the experience of a healthy conflict,
young people must be made able to experience their ad-
gressing with the strength that comes from (physiolo-
gically and psychologically) feeling that one is rooted in
the earth, and from a harmonious, spontaneous sense of
self. One example might be having children at elem-
entary school start the day with a bodily relaxation
exercise, rather than with a task to which they imme-
diately react with distraction and hyperactivity. This
basic experience would allow the children to be in the
classroom with a more boundaried sense of self, and a
consequent deeper sense of belonging to the class.
Another example in the working world might be start-
ing the day in the factory with a briefing time, in which
anyone who wished to do so could tell the group of
colleagues what bodily sensations and relational emo-
tions he has at the start of the day. The workers might
focus better on their work having committed their
worries to the group, and benefit from a more congenial
working environment.
Postmodern Gestalt perspective on conflict 37
Aggression in the therapeutic
relationship today: from the support
of the figure to the support of the
background
The therapeutic relationship, like any other, must face
up to this sense of emergency by containing the chaos
that characterises the beginning of every experience.
Further, it must be based on procedural and aesthetic
aspects, defined elsewhere as implicit relational aspects
(Spagnuolo Lobb, 2006; Stern, 2006) capable of build-
ing the ground of acquired certainties from which the
figure can then emerge with differentiated clarity and
relational strength, with that charm that characterises
the harmony of opposites in the figure/background
dynamic. Without the sense of solidity that comes
from the earth, the ground, it is impossible to find
direction in relationships – especially in difficult
relationships – with clarity, and with the security that
acceptance of the different (the novelty) requires.
The feeling of aggression, the positive strength of
survival that Perls (1942) indicated as what society
needed to recognise in order to support the creative
power of every individual and to solve the problem of
managing social, personal and group conflicts, has to be
rethought today in terms of the lack of ground in the
experience of contact.
The clinical problem is no longer that of supporting
aggressiveness in the contact, but of supporting the
‘being-with’ of the client with the therapist, so that the
feeling of aggressiveness can find a solid relational
containment in order to orient itself in the contact.
The therapeutic relationship must therefore provide
not so much the courage to break authoritarian pre-
established rules, but rather the sense of security in the
relationship and in the other, which permits a clear
perception/differentiation of the figure and a clear
ability to decide, as an aware co-creation supported
by the curiosity towards the other.
Listening, the strategy ordinarily proposed for the
resolution of conflicts, must be supported today by
listening to one’s own body, by a kind of sensation – like
the sense of rootedness, the experience of being there in
a boundaried, powerful manner – which, if a few
decades ago was taken for granted, today has given
place to the experience of ‘liquidity’. It is becoming even
more important today to support everything that allows
one to remain concentrated on oneself within signific-
ant contacts.11
A clinical example
In order to show a possible example (there may be
many) of what all this means in the therapeutic setting, I
38 Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb
have transcribed here a piece of a session where con-
fluent modality of contact is evident: a desensitisation
of the contact boundary, characterised precisely by the
lack above all of aggressive energy:
Therapist: I’m sorry I made you wait 15 minutes
today. It’s been one of those days when delays built up
one on top of the other.
Client: Don’t worry. I didn’t even realise you were
late.
T: How could you not realise?
C: I thought you had a lot of things to do . . . as
always.
T: Yes, but I was the one who fixed the time for the
session, and then didn’t respect it.
C: I know. You’re always so busy!
T: What did you feel in the 15 minutes that went by
from the time I should have received you to the time I
called you in? And what did you feel when you sat
down here in front of me?
C: [sighs, then timidly, in a subdued voice] I guess
anger . . . [looks at me, sees that I am calm] . . . Yes, I
got angry [in a weak voice] and I thought that you
treat me this way because I’m a kind person.
T: Thank you for being so kind to me, and I
appreciate your telling me that you’re angry. In
those 15 minutes I decided to give priority to some-
thing else and not to you. I placed a difference,
something else, between you and me. You saw rightly,
and I think you mustn’t stop your senses seeing or
hearing what you feel. Your different feeling, your
anger helps me to see you better.
The client seems pleasantly amazed and is unsure
whether to ‘go back to sleep’ or experience the novelty
and stay with the excitement for contact (the aggression
feeling) that the therapist has recognised and respected.
When he feels supported to go on, he will experience a
sense of fully ‘belonging’ to the therapeutic contact
made of containment of perceived feelings.
Conclusion
All the above mentioned examples of everyday feelings
in our society in some way turn up in our therapy
rooms, where our clients try to bring to an end that ‘ad-
gressive’ motion in their relationship with us.
I always say that we therapists have the better part of
the relationship between parents and children, because
we are free of the emotional involvement that has made
the parents desensitised in the face of their children’s
needs.
I like to see the energy for differentiation that emerges
in the clients’ contact with me, their desire to be-there
fully. I look tenderly on both the clients and their
parents, in their aborted attempts to make their con-
tribution in difficult situations and try to make them
(both) aware of how heroic they have been. I know that
in this task of developing the awareness and the differ-
entiation that every therapist carries out, supporting the
ability to ad-gredere and to go through a conflict implies
an important social value and also, in some way, a
political value of psychotherapy.
At this moment, to whatever approach she refers, the
psychotherapist carries out a social and political mis-
sion when she works so that the individuals may re-own
inspired vitality, divergent faith and rooted passions,
overcoming the current impasse made up of violence
without a reason and of an emptiness of values that
starts from a physiology experienced without contain-
ment.
Notes
1. Perls distinguished between annihilating (rejecting the object)
and destroying (‘the demolition of a whole into fragments, in
order to assimilate them . . .’) (Perls et al., 1951/1994, p. 122).
2. ‘Destroying, on the contrary, is a function of appetite. Every
organism in a field grows by incorporating, digesting, and
assimilating new matter, and this requires destroying the
existing form to its assimilable elements, whether it be food, a
lecture, a father’s influence . . . .’ (Perls et al., 1951/1994, p. 122).
3. The influence of Otto Rank’s theory and method on Perls is
evident here (cf. Bocian, 2007).
4. When a Gestalt therapist in her clinical practice supports the
client to express aggression, she knows that the client does not
intend to destroy the other, but to emerge with his own energy
and individuality.
5. Ed Nevis related, ‘What I remember most from my early studies
with Fritz Perls, Laura Perls, and Isadore From is the almost
relentless way they pushed me to look at my objections to
considering a thought, an action, or an insight. Fritz kept
asking: ‘And what are your objections . . .?’ . . . ‘And what are
your objections . . .?’, on and on. It was not required that I
change my attitude or behavior; but it was imperative that I
achieved enriched awareness of the potential to be different, if I
so desired’ (2003, p. 293).
6. These concepts are the basis of the theory of Gestalt psycho-
pathology (see Francesetti et al., eds., 2013).
7. Daniel Stern’s theory of implicit relational knowledge as a
superordinate motivational system in humankind confirms
the intuition of the Gestalt theory of contact, brought to light
a good fifty years earlier (see Spagnuolo Lobb et al., 2009).
8. For the concept of uncertainty, see Staemmler (2006); for the
concept of trust/faith, see Lichtenberg (2009).
9. I develop a clinical and theoretical descripton of these terms in
Spagnuolo Lobb, 2013 (pp. 67–93).
10. On this, see the opinion of Umberto Galimberti on the
anaesthetised state of the young (Spagnuolo Lobb, 2010).
11. The original chapter (Spagnuolo Lobb, 2013, pp. 134–150)
continues with clinical examples of several forms of ad-gredere,
according to the client’s contact style.
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Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb, Director (since 1979) of the Istituto di Gestalt HCC, Italy (Siracuse,
Palermo, Milan). International trainer, full member of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy,
past President of the Italian Federation of the Associations of Psychotherapy (FIAP), past President
and first honorary member of the European Association for Gestalt Therapy (EAGT), past and
Honorary President of the Italian Association of Gestalt Psychotherapy (SIPG). Editor (since 1985) of
the Italian journal Quaderni di Gestalt, and prolific author.
Address for correspondence: margherita.spagnuolo@gestalt.it
British Gestalt Journal # Copyright 2013 by Gestalt Publications Ltd.
2013, Vol. 22, No. 2, 40–45

Gestalt therapy and 21st Century Socialism

Philip Lichtenberg

Received 17 July 2013

Abstract: Life lessons brought issues of democracy and equality to my personal and
theoretical commitments. Recent thinking and actions in South America have raised a new
socialism – 21st Century Socialism. The themes of this new socialism, in the form of a
‘socialist triangle’, are reviewed with a focus on human development rather than the
production of things. Gestalt therapy, in which processes lead to the growth of persons,
can be a major contributor to the creation of this new socialism.
Key words: 21st Century Socialism, democracy, substantive equality, human development,
rich human being.

Introduction McCarthy years, and I married a woman who came

Having spent much of my childhood and adolescence in
northern Indiana, I have some sense of why democracy
and equality have been key ideas in my mature adult life.
These were the 1930s and 1940s when Hitler and
Nazism were powerful forces in the world and there
was considerable sympathy for these persons and move-
ments in my home town. I remember ‘America First’
rallies at which Charles Lindbergh spoke before report-
edly huge audiences honouring Hitler. I recall rampant
anti-Semitism all around me, including among my
schoolmates. I have a vivid memory of seeing a cross
burning in front of the house of my brother’s girlfriend.
There were Japanese students fresh from internment
camps in my high school, and I learned that one of my
Sunday School teachers had fought with the Repub-
licans in the Spanish Civil War, and he was not trusted
by our military when he was inducted during World
War II. And I enlisted in the US Army Air Force near my
seventeenth birthday in order to oppose the Axis during
the war.
Later, as a graduate student, I was a teaching assistant
with Daniel J. Levinson, one of the authors of The
Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik,
Levinson and Sanford, 1950), and I did a Master’s
degree thesis on ‘The Authoritarian Personality and
Religious Conventionalism’ in which I found author-
itarian tendencies among all religious groups, including
among Jewish individuals. In today’s world this is
hardly surprising. That work encouraged me to
become a non-believer.
In college, I was active in the Progressive Party in
1948, which was to cause me trouble during the
from a leftist background.
In my first job, as a postdoctoral Research Fellow at
Harvard University, in a group led by Henry A. Murray,
I ran an experiment that demonstrated an equalising
tendency between persons in a dialogue, and I discov-
ered the work of John Macmurray who declared that all
relations of persons are inevitably relations of equals,
sometimes equality of satisfaction is high, more often
lower than it could be. A few years later, in a study in a
child psychiatry clinic, which relied on ideas from Kurt
Lewin and in which my colleagues and I leaned on ideas
from progressive education as well as psychoanalysis,
the union of democracy and equality came to the
forefront in our thinking (Lichtenberg, Kohrman and
MacGregor, 1960).
Yet, how are democracy and equality related to
socialism? Here, I rely on Paul Sweezy, an American
Marxist in the 20th century. Howard Sherman reports
that when Sweezy was calling the Soviet Union a
‘socialist dictatorship’, Sweezy ‘pointed out that demo-
cracy is the essence of socialism. There cannot be true
democracy without socialism, nor can there be true
socialism without democracy’ (Sherman, 2012). Sher-
man agreed with Sweezy and so do I.
Thus, when I moved into Gestalt therapy from a
commitment to ‘radical psychoanalysis’, whose propo-
nents favoured socialism, I found a kinship between
Gestalt therapy, democracy, equality and socialism that
I had previously claimed in my teaching and writing. In
rediscovering Paul Goodman’s Growing Up Absurd
(1960), I realised he had been there before me.
Now that capitalism and command and control
(authoritarian) socialism are failing all over the world,

it is time to rediscover true socialism as may be
happening in South America – 21st Century Socialism
it is called, and I find it much like the 19th century
socialism of William Morris (1890). Istvan Meszaros
(2010), Michael Lebowitz (2010), an economist, and
Marta Harnecker, (2010), a psychologist, who work in
Venezuela, have articulated the essence of this 21st
Century Socialism, and I believe there is significant
overlap with Gestalt therapy as I hope to show in this
brief article.
Meszaros refers to the ‘descending phase’ of capital-
ism in a historical perspective and the ‘ascending phase’
of socialism in the modern world. He has argued that
the alternatives before us are socialism or the end of
humanity given the trajectory of capitalism with its
destruction of persons and the material world. Taking
this historical approach, I believe, locates the present in
the dying phase of capitalism and the hoped for coming
into birth, painful as all birthing is, of socialism.
Issues and themes in 21st Century
Socialism
In 21st Century Socialism, as Lebowitz and Harnecker
articulate it, human development is placed first in social
policy and practice as an overriding concern. Attending
in every sphere of life to how human development is
promoted takes priority over all else. This concern
contrasts with the capitalist priority which is directed
toward the production of things in workplaces and the
distribution of things with an emphasis upon consu-
merism. As Ingrid D. Rowland says: ‘Capitalist success
is still measured by material gain and material gain
turns out to be as fickle as Fortune, the capitalist’s muse
and nemesis’ (2012, p. 34).
Theorists of 21st Century Socialism call for the
redefinition of wealth: we should produce rich human
beings rather than prosperous individuals or corpora-
tions.
When political leaders claim to direct policy toward
creating jobs and when colleges and universities focus
on preparing young people for business careers, for
example, they are putting forth strictly capitalist values
and priorities – all else is to be subordinated to this
focus. No critical attention is paid to the nature of the
jobs created nor is there appraisal of how these jobs
affect human development. Preference is quietly ceded
to profit-making and consumerism and the welfare of
those who control jobs, especially corporate leaders, the
pace setters.
21st Century Socialism has a democratic impulse in
contrast to capitalism and to 20th century socialism (i.e.
the state capitalism of the Soviet Union and today’s
China). At the new workplaces democratic practice
Gestalt therapy and 21st Century Socialism 41
differs from a ‘command and control’ orientation.
Democratic actions are participatory and protagonistic.
Policies guiding all organisations and institutions are
developed from the bottom up. In the political sphere,
the policies are first discussed at the local level in detail
and passed via delegates to the next higher level for
correction and discussion, which ultimately leads to the
top political levels of society. This stands in contrast to
‘representative democracy’ wherein elected represen-
tatives do the basic discussing and are often out of touch
with the views of the general population. I was able to
contrast policy-making in the United States with that in
Cuba when I visited Cuba not too long ago.
21st Century Socialism points toward and requires
substantive equality throughout society. In a world of
profound inequality under capitalist domination, this is
a major change. The most that spokespersons for
capitalism aspire to is equality of opportunity, which
quietly retains deep inequality. There are many
rationalisations for why equality of opportunity does
not lead to substantive equality. Most such explanations
blame the victims who get the least in society, such as
the ‘undeserving poor’, ‘welfare queens’, workers who
are too lazy or exploitative. Inequality is further justified
by valorising a competitive society in which there are
necessarily winners and losers, and little empathy is
directed toward the experiences of the losers.
The extent of psychopathology in modern society
testifies to the impact of a competitive, capitalist social
order. In the 1950s and early 1960s, my colleagues and I
did a study of mental health and mental illness, which
was a preparation for an epidemiological research
(Lichtenberg, Cassetta and Scanlon, 1960). We were
able to document that strivings for equality are basic to
mental health. We differentiated events in which people
intended equality or intended personal superiority or
inferiority, and we also delineated transactions embody-
ing intentions that were more egalitarian or more
negating of equality. The correlation of more intended
equality plus transactions embodying equality with
upper levels of mental health was demonstrated. The
research supported the earlier Harvard experiment of
mine in which more emotionally mature persons cre-
ated equal outcomes where less mature persons engaged
in efforts to dominate or to protect themselves from a
lesser result.
In a recent issue of the Journal of Social Issues (Case
and Iuzzini (issue eds.) ) (2012), the study of ‘systems of
privilege’ across many domains documented inequality
in the United States under the ‘intersectionality of
privilege’. Thus, men are privileged over women,
whites over people of colour, heterosexuals over per-
sons of different sexual orientations, Christians over
persons of other religions and non-believers, upper-
class and middle-class persons over working-class and
42 Philip Lichtenberg
poor individuals, and able-bodied over those with
disabilities in mind and body. When a competitive
capitalist society is promoted, these systems of privilege
are not mentioned although they are pervasive.
I turn next to the concerns of 21st Century Socialism
that foster substantive equality and thus mental health
and human development. Michael Lebowitz in his 2010
book has written about the ‘Socialist Triangle’, whose
parts are interdependent and form a whole. The sides of
the triangle are: (a) social property, which is the result of
past social labour; (b) social production, which is the
ongoing production of people and things; and (c) social
needs, i.e. the common good.
Social property is often listed as the ‘means of pro-
duction’, but that leaves social property as centred upon
the making of things to be consumed. Social property
would better include schools and colleges, as well as
railroad lines and wind turbines and solar panels, in
addition to hospitals and orchestra halls. All institu-
tions created by social labour can be included if they
contribute to the group and deserve social ownership.
We once had city hospitals for the physically ill and
mental hospitals for the mentally ill, but these have been
markedly diminished as capitalism has run riot.
All persons affected by decisions about the use of
social property are to be involved in deciding upon that
use. For example, when I was a child in Indiana the state
was home to all kinds of mass transportation, especially
trains and high speed trolleys that ran not only in cities
but between towns and cities all over the state. We could
go from my home town to the next city and down to the
state capital on such a trolley. Then the automobile
manufacturers decided to substitute cars, trucks and
buses while minimising trains and trolleys. Citizens
were not consulted and many small towns along the
way were bypassed by the roads that were built and were
effectively destroyed. This led to great congestion on the
roads and the spread of cities into farm country in the
form of suburbs. Many small farms met the same fate as
the small towns. All these decisions were made in
corporate boardrooms not in discourse among the
citizens affected by these decisions. That these choices
favoured rampant individualism rather than commun-
alism is hard to deny and the alienation of citizens is a
direct result.
With respect to social production, the second side of
the socialist triangle, the associated producers are
themselves in full control of their productive and
distributive interchanges according to Meszaros. The
emphasis shifts from the production of things to pro-
duction of people as citizens. Wealth is redefined as the
development of human capacity. Since people develop
their capacities through engaging in social activities
(including, but not restricted to work), they are sup-
ported in changing themselves and their circumstances
at the same time. Not only manufacturing but also
education, health services, household activity and com-
munity doings involve this doubly-directed change of
self and change of circumstances.
In the mid-20th century in the USA, mental hospitals
introduced the therapeutic community. All persons in
the hospitals, from administrators and psychiatrists to
nurses, psychologists and social workers, kitchen work-
ers and janitors, and, of course, patients, met daily in
the running of the hospitals. Everyone changed dra-
matically in these utopian socialist regimes. Then the
drug companies and politicians closed these endea-
vours along with mental health clinics, so that pills
could be a substitute for relationships, and the hospitals
were curtailed sharply.
Education in Finland, which follows Dewey’s pro-
gressive education, empowers teachers and students,
whereas education in the USA turned to the production
of workers, graduates fit for jobs, and instituted com-
mand and control practices. Students in Finland
achieve more and are also happier. In the USA the
push toward privatisation of public schools similarly
takes away social ownerships of schools, to the detri-
ment of society.
The third side of the socialist triangle is production
for the common good – producing for self and other.
The aim is to create a community developing rich
human beings – a solidarian society. Thus, education
is for all at all levels, health care is for all, widespread
social transit is made available, clean air and water,
satisfaction of ‘human’ needs. I am here referring to the
‘common welfare’ upon which the United States was
born.
In Yugoslavia, when it existed, production was organ-
ised by workers in socially owned institutions, thus
manifesting two sides of the socialist triangle, but
production was aimed at creating private wealth. Com-
petition between factories developed, inequality rose,
and the common good was subordinated. That made
Yugoslavia vulnerable to dissolution.
With the introduction of 21st Century Socialism,
disposable time is increased. With automation and
computers, less labour is needed. Jobs can be shared,
people can work fewer hours (remember the 8-hour day
movement of the early 20th century); leisure can be
promoted; people can slow down and relate to one
another on a different plane. William Morris’ utopian
novel, News from Nowhere, first published in 1890,
illustrated this theme vividly.
As I have suggested, change will come from the
bottom up. A contest of ideas can take place in the
public sphere, with citizens putting forth and sharing
information and their own truth without needing to
persuade others. Advertising, which aims at persuading,
will be tamed and social communication will seek to

promote full experiencing by those who observe it.
After all, persuasion relies on authority and promotes
top down efforts. Common sense can become the basis
for change, and it will relate to the historical details of
each unique society.
Finally, in dealing with opposition and difference,
21st Century Socialism will not be defenceless. It will
depend upon and foster aggressive actions that are
inclusive rather than exclusive (LIchtenberg, 2012),
what Lebowitz calls protagonism.
Issues and themes from Gestalt
therapy
Gestalt therapy, which was created by radical psycho-
therapists after World War II, can contribute support to
the 21st Century Socialism. The basic theory of Gestalt
therapy serves to promote dialogue, not only in the
therapy room and in organisations where Gestaltists are
consultants, but also in social life more generally (cf.
Melnick, J. and Nevis, E. C., Mending the World, 2009.) I
have argued that Gestalt therapy is relevant to culture
change (2008), and culture change will be useful in the
unfolding of the new socialism.
The processes we promote in Gestalt therapy unite
the efforts of persons to become real, separate persons,
differentiated individuals, while moving to merge in
units larger than themselves. Individuality and unique-
ness are created while persons marvellously create these
larger units, these small communities that serve as the
building blocks for larger communities. This dialectical
relation of individuality and community is central to
the contacting and withdrawing process that Gestalt
therapy articulates. In forecontacting and in contact-
ing, the accent is upon the unfolding of each
participant’s individuality and uniqueness. Following
Isadore From, I have spelled out this creation of a
‘distinct ‘‘I’’ ’ and a ‘distinct ‘‘You’’ ’ in contacting
(Lichtenberg, 2000). Each person is clarifying his or
her ‘I-ness’ by asserting what he or she wants, who he
or she is, and also by sharing what internal factors are
involved in reacting to others. Furthermore, each party
is asking the others who they are, what they want, and
what is coming up in them as they react to the prot-
agonist; we learn more about who we are by how others
respond to us.
I learn who I am as a distinct ‘I’ in four different ways.
(1) I articulate what I want. This does not mean I know
what I want as soon as I engage in a relationship; I find
what I want in the unfolding of the relationship, in
seeing its possibilities or reacting to what the other(s)
are putting forward. Discovering what I want is a
creative part of any relationship. (2) I find and present
who I am by what I bring forward of the special qualities
Gestalt therapy and 21st Century Socialism 43
and characteristics of the other(s) in that relationship. I
am in part responsible for the other(s) in the transac-
tion, how the other feels able to trust me, how he or she
feels open and encouraged, respected and seen as a vital
person, as an influence in respect to me. As I am finding
what I want in the present, so too is the other, and I am
affecting how that happens.
There is more in how I become a distinct ‘I’ as I
participate with others. (3) I have an effect on the
others, and I can pursue and discover how I am
influential. I can ask ‘How are you reacting to me
here and now?’ In a world of alienation we do not
often ask others such a question, but we are endlessly
curious about this and find that it marvellously pro-
duces dialogue as well as adds to our sense of who we are
in the world. When you participate in a relationship
with me, you are affected by me in any myriad of ways,
and finding that is also finding who I am. Finally, (4) I
become a distinct ‘I’ according to what comes up in me
as I react to you. Do I feel understood, appreciated,
relieved that I am seen, etc.? Am I reminded of other
relationships as I encounter you, such as my experiences
as a child, as a lover, as a student or citizen? Awareness
of what is stimulated in me contributes to my sense of
who I am as a distinct person.
We can compare this process of creating a distinct ‘I’
and a distinct ‘You’ with the common sense of social
relations in a competitive, alienated, paranoid society
which capitalism systematically creates. As corpora-
tions have proprietary characteristics which they
shield from others, so individuals regularly hide much
of their private concerns lest they be shamed or criti-
cised. Scandal is a common event and elicits condem-
nation rather than understanding. People are quite
interested in the private lives of movie stars and royalty,
well beyond what is inherently intriguing. We are
bombarded by advertisements for drugs for all
manner of personal problems without portrayal of the
pain and suffering that resides inside these problems.
Who would imagine how much depression lurks inside
our levels of suicide and alcoholism.
Try using what I have described above and see for
yourself how this deviates from the common sense of
today’s capitalist world.
This individuating process helps each individual to
find a distinct ‘I’ and a distinct ‘You’ in the relationship,
and it is also a marvellous ground from which people
‘meet’, from which, in final contacting, a merging of the
participants happens spontaneously. A new mini-com-
munity happens. Repeated instances of such meetings
eventuates in a bonding communal phenomenon,
which is how families and communities are formed.
This dialectic of individuation and communalism is
basic to growth of individuals, to ‘human develop-
ment’. Personal growth is the focus of Gestalt therapy,
44 Philip Lichtenberg
which is another way of saying that human develop-
ment is a priority. We aim to create ‘rich human
beings’. In therapy we try to achieve the meetings of
equals between client and therapist, and when that is
regularly achieved, we consider therapy done. In organ-
isational processing, we focus similarly on experience
and egalitarian relations. In social life more generally,
we aim to change culture and in our influence on such
things as education, we are akin to Paulo Freire in his
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), as well as progressive
education. In parenting, as my colleagues and I
described in Motivation for Child Psychiatry Treatment
(Lichtenberg, P., Kohrman, R. and Macgregor, H.,
1960), parents and children are best seen as equals
who have functional differences. Good parenting in-
volves the adult not only finding the child and support-
ing his or her needs; it also concerns the parent being a
real, vulnerable, challenging person to the child. As
parents and children ‘meet’, they each are satisfying
their needs, are equals in relationship.
In China, under the influence of Mao Tse-Tung, the
Cultural Revolution tried to implement equality among
citizens. Academicians and other authority figures were
sent to the countryside to work and mingle with the
peasants. They were put in groups for sessions involving
criticism and self-criticism. These groups were often led
by youths from the Red Guards. Here appeared a
disparity between intended equality and the transac-
tions that involved oppressive authority. The young
people demanded obedient self-criticism from the
former authorities. The oppressed had become in
action the oppressors.
In these groups, Gestalt therapy would have been
useful. I have, for example, run groups in my retirement
community concerning difficult conversations and
using a Gestalt therapy approach. In one of these
groups, a very smart woman, who had been a legislator
in a state system, responded to a point I had raised. She
went on at great length, far too long for the message she
intended to send. Another member of the group, who
elsewhere led writing workshops for residents, said to
her: ‘You need an editor’. The original speaker became
quiet and withdrew. When I saw this, I reacted to what I
considered an assertion of superiority by the critic in the
room. The ‘You need an editor’ remark was presumably
meant to be helpful, but it had a shaming quality to it.
This critic was accustomed to using such remarks in her
writing groups, and since she was a published author,
she assumed others would be helped thereby. Actually,
the members of the writing group began to resent her
approach and they ultimately revolted and left the
group.
I spoke to the original respondent in what I meant to
be an egalitarian remark. I said to her that I was very
interested in what she was saying, but I found after a
time that I was drifting away from her despite my
fascination with what she was saying. I owned a limita-
tion in my listening capacity. In response to my com-
ments, the woman brightened up and said ‘My
daughter has often told me that I go on too long’. The
session proceeded on a brighter note. I had turned an
inegalitarian situation into an egalitarian one, intended
quality was enhanced by a transaction of equals. This is
where Gestalt therapy would have helped groups in
transitions to socialism and where it will be useful in
future social change.
Gestalt therapy has a democratic-egalitarian em-
phasis not only in therapy and in organisational work
but also in all groups. We search for everyone’s voice
being heard and for consensus, which is exemplified in
our training institutes which are anti-authoritarian
rather than command and control-oriented. There is
a dialogical focus in relationships (actually colloquial
focus since more than two persons are involved). The
complexity of each person is allowed to surface rather
than a limiting confluence among participants that
follows on being subjected to a dominating figure. As
we involve more of ourselves in each encounter, we are
seen more completely in our specialness and unique-
ness.
Aggression in Gestalt therapy can be inclusive as well
as exclusive (Lichtenberg, 2012) – which relates to the
protagonism of 21st Century Socialism. Inclusive
aggression entails putting oneself forward energetically
while also measuring what the other can take in and
assimilate – i.e. it is adapted to the other. Inclusive
aggression involves urging the other to find and reveal
her or his own complexity. It differentiates between
useful, bonding anger and overwhelming or helpless
rage. Inclusive aggression attends to the meta-aspects of
relationship, what is happening here and now. It brings
into play the social-political aspects of what is happen-
ing locally in the present.
Exclusive aggression, on the other hand, is basic to
domination and submission, and calls for us to protect
ourselves, to search for and find support in diminishing
that aggression so that we can turn that aggression into
its inclusive form. It requires that we keep in contact in
the relationship and take time to resolve differences.
Characteristic of Gestalt therapy is that strong feel-
ings are aroused and supported until some resolution is
achieved. We counter the anti-psychological bent often
appearing in social action. We suffer deeply, exult
strongly, own profound anxiety, and keep on engaging
with others around us. We stay with ambiguity rather
than demand simple perspectives until a comprehen-
sive perspective evolves.
 Gestalt therapy and 21st Century Socialism 45

Conclusion Case, K. and Innuzzi, J. (eds.) (2012). Systems of privilege: Inter-

In a recent book, Lebowitz distinguished 21st Century
Socialism from 20th century socialism, which he called
‘Vanguard Socialism’ (2012). This earlier socialism in-
volved the ‘Conductor and the Conducted’. In Van-
guard Socialism the focus is upon the production of
things rather than the development of rich human
beings. Persons were seen primarily as workers, a
narrow view of humans, rather than as fellow human
beings. When our politicians emphasise preparing
youth and others for jobs as their main preoccupation,
they fail to see that all citizens need support in becom-
ing mature human beings. The processes described by
Gestalt therapy apply to all persons in all their group-
ings and in the institutions in which they live. Applying
our insights and ways of being everywhere in the wider
world, we Gestaltists will be promoting 21st Century
Socialism. In Gestalt therapy persons are brought to see
themselves as agents, not only in the immediate rela-
tionships in which they are engaged, but also as subjects
in the making of history. Further, we are brought to see
an historical perspective in our lives in which we live in
a given time and place in history, are determined by
that, and are the determiners of it. In this vividly
descending phase of capitalism and obscure ascending
phase of socialism, this is a most exciting time and a
worthy enterprise for us Gestalt therapists, us citizens of
the 21st century.
References
Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J. and
Sanford, N. (1950). The Authoritarian Personality. New York:
Harper.
sections, awareness, and action. Journal of Social Issues, 68, 1,
pp. 1–206.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and
Herder.
Goodman, P. (1960). Growing up absurd: Problems of Youth in the
Organized System. New York: Random House.
Harnecker, M. (2010). Latin America & twenty-first century social-
ism. Monthly Review, July–August, 62, 3, pp. 3–83.
Lebowitz, M. (2010). The socialist alternative. New York: Monthly
Review Press.
Lebowitz, M. (2012). The contradictions of ‘real socialism’: The
conductor and the conducted. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Lichtenberg, P. (2000). Creating a distinct ‘I’ and a distinct ‘You’ in
contacting. The Gestalt Journal, XXIII, 2, pp. 41–50.
Lichtenberg, P. (2008). Culture change: Conversations concerning
political and religious differences. Studies in Gestalt Therapy:
Dialogical Bridges, 2, 1, pp. 45–65. Also in Bar-Yoseph, T. L. (ed.)
(2012), Gestalt therapy: Advances in theory and practice, pp. 175–
184. London and New York: Routledge.
Lichtenberg, P. (2012). Inclusive and exclusive aggression: Some
(gestalt) reflections. Gestalt Review, 16, 2, pp. 145–161.
Lichtenberg, P., Kohrman, R. and Macgregor, H. (1960). Motivation
for child psychiatry treatment. New York: Russell and Russell.
Lichtenberg, P., Cassetta, R. K. and Scanlon, J. C. (1960) One
description of mental health and mental disorder. A.M.A.
Archives of General Psychiatry, 3, pp. 57–82.
Melnick, J. and Nevis, E. C. (2009). Mending the world: Social healing
interventions by Gestalt practitioners worldwide. Wellfleet, MA:
A Gestalt International Study Center Publication.
Meszaros, I. (2010). Social structure and forms of consciousness:
Volume 1, The social determination of method. New York:
Monthly Review Press.
Morris, W. (1890). News from Nowhere. In William Morris: Selected
Writings. New York: Random House (1934).
Rowland, I. D. (2012). When bankers had splendid taste. New York
Review of Books, LIX (15), p. 34.
Sherman, H. (2012). Two Pauls. Monthly Review, 64, 3, p. 117.

Philip Lichtenberg. Mary Hale Chase Professor Emeritus in Social Science and Social Work and Social
Research at Bryn Mawr College (Bryn Mawr, PA) where I taught for over thirty-five years. I am a co-
founder of The Gestalt Therapy Institute of Philadelphia where I continue on the Faculty. I have
published six books including Psychoanalysis: Radical and Conservative, recently re-published by
Ravenswood Press, and Community and Confluence: Undoing the Clinch of Oppression. I have also
published many articles and chapters in books. In 2012 I made a video in front of a live audience called
‘Four Corners and The Incomplete ‘‘I’’ ’. I am married, the father of four sons and grandfather of six
children.
Address for correspondence: 26 Kendal Drive, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania 19348–2321, USA.
British Gestalt Journal # Copyright 2013 by Gestalt Publications Ltd.
2013, Vol. 22, No. 2, 46–53

Beyond words: the function and value of silence in therapy

Kate Merrick

Received 2 October 2013

Abstract: In this article, I intend to create a deeper understanding of the functions and value of
silence, as well as exploring how we might work with silence to better support and enhance the
therapeutic ground. I shall explore the phenomenon of silence, by looking to Western society,
the wider cultural field, and to Gestalt Therapy Theory (GTT). I argue that the phenomenon of
silence travels along a continuum, and requires the same amount of investigation and
understanding as its relational counterpart, dialogue. I go back to our basic Gestalt theoretical
tenets to see how these can support us in investigating the structure of our client’s situation
even further, in order to gain a deeper understanding of their unique silent phenomenology, as
well as our own.
Key words: Gestalt therapy, silence, interruptions to contact, fertile void, dialogue, phenomen-
ology, inclusion, groups, culture, creativity, polarities, relationship.

Introduction (Maitland, 2008, p. 28). It would seem that some of our

This theme grew out of my growing frustration as a
Gestalt therapy trainee, at the simplistic view my fellow
peers and tutors seemingly held about silence and its
functions, particularly during group process but also in
individual therapy. Silence was often viewed as a prob-
lem, and assumed to be an interruption to contact, a
withholding of information, a freezing or a shame
response. I spotted a familiar introject; that talking
equals working and silence equals withdrawal. How-
ever, in my experience, silence held a rich variety of
meanings that were seemingly being overlooked. To
view people as retroflecting, or having withdrawn and
disengaged because there is no verbal communication
contradicts Gestalt’s phenomenological dialogic
approach. John Bernard Harris (1996, p. 25) argues
that this view is only tenable if we regard speech as the
main form of human communication, which holds a
strong Western cultural bias; a problematic bias for
therapists, given the diverse cultural communities we
both live and work in.
Western society and the wider field
In Western societies, silence is generally thought of as
the opposite of dialogue or sound, or as defined in the
English Oxford Dictionary (2012) as ‘a complete
absence of sound’ or ‘the fact or state of abstaining
from speech’. In addition, the commonly held position
in contemporary life is that silence is without meaning
attitudes to silence stem from some of our more pre-
dominant Western cultural norms, i.e. the emphasis on
doing, working, achieving, success, etc. Silence amongst
the Yoruba tribe in West Africa, for example, fits with
the description of an intelligent person (Gaffney, 2006,
p. 209). In Finland, silence is generally considered a
social norm, a common opinion being ‘wise persons
keep silent: speaking a great deal is not desirable’
(Lehtonen and Sajavaara, 1995, p. 194). And amongst
the Igbo people of Nigeria, silence is held as a highly
esteemed form of communication, with a large number
of rituals performed in mandatory silence. Silence in
these contexts automatically signals a socially and
culturally understood message (Nwoye, 1995, p. 185).
Within many religions, it seems there is a commonly
held belief that once an experience (i.e. an otherwise
ineffable mystical experience) is expressed in words, the
real essence disappears (see Tannen, 1995, p. 8; Mer-
leau-Ponty, 1964, p. 98; Maitland, 2008, pp. 42–43; Lao
Tsu, 1972); and ‘what we cannot speak about we must
pass over in silence’ (Wittgenstein, 1921). This is
different to Gestalt’s emphasis on voicing and sharing
one’s experience in order to heighten awareness,
whereby voicing your experience is a statement about
the field and your relationship to it: ‘ ‘‘voicing-ing’’ is
articulating, differentiating, creating the field and one’s
emerging shared place/part in it’ (Hodges, 2001, p. 2). It
would seem obvious then, that differing cultural norms
(on the appropriateness of when to speak and when to
remain silent), can give rise to cross cultural misunder-

standings and Gestalt’s emphasis on self-awareness and
voicing, for example, may create difficulties for another
cultural group, whose culture deems such behaviours
and beliefs to be inappropriate (Gaffney, 2006, p. 217).
Similarly, Saville-Troike (1995, p. 14) says that mis-
understandings occur when the patterned use of sounds
and silence by members of one speech community are
interpreted according to the norms and rules held by
members of another. In keeping with our field theoret-
ical approach, ‘you have to constantly modify your
perception of reality and how it is embedded and
revealed in a given environment’ (Zinker, 2003,
p. 141); thus, it is clear that the meaning of silence
will change depending on the cultural ground and
context of which it is a part.
In GTT, silence is seldom referred to, but is men-
tioned when referring to the quiet place of withdrawal,
which stands between assimilation and sensation in the
Gestalt Contact Cycle (Denham-Vaughan and
Edmond, 2010, p. 6). Perls, Hefferline and Goodman
(PHG) encourage us to maintain an internal silence in
order to arrive at a simpler appreciation of the facts and
our reactions to them, encouraging the need for a quiet,
non-verbal space from which new figures can emerge.
They warn against the tendency to mistake internal
silence for blankness (1951, p. 108). There is, however,
very little written in Gestalt theoretical texts about the
functions of silence, or how to work with silence as a
potentially positive, healing force. In the wider field,
research on communication has tended to focus on
small groups, dyadic dialogue, and more overt notice-
able behaviours, and because silence is often taken for
inaction, ‘silence, in the total framework of human
communication, has been largely overlooked’ (Saville-
Troike, 1995, p. 15). With so little written about silence
in Gestalt literature and with Gestalt’s emphasis on
contact, voicing, and sharing, it is perhaps no wonder
that the richness of silence may have become lost amidst
the speaking out of one’s experience. I agree with Joseph
and Sandra Zinker when they say that the phenomenon
of silence has been neglected within the Gestalt Contact
Cycle, which is mainly used to stimulate energy, action,
and contact (2001, p. 23).
Western society: functions of silence
However, there are four more obvious functions of
silence in Western cultures that are typically experi-
enced in relation to shame, power, mourning, and ritual.
I say more obvious because it has been my experience
that these events of silence are most commonly known,
talked about, and assumed to be happening. I will
briefly explore these four functions of silence from a
Gestalt perspective.
The use of silence in therapy 47
Shame: The function of silence may be most obvious in
the context of shame, where one silently withholds due
to a sense of inferiority, an existential belief that one is
fundamentally wrong or flawed. Shameful feelings will
tend to be hidden and kept private in order to avoid
further shame attacks, as ‘a fragile sense of self may fear
having little protection against an attacking super ego,
or Top-dog’ (Siederer, lecture 2010). Silence in this
context can often be a shame response, a way in which
one hides, plays dead, shrinks away, becomes invisible
(and visible!) and retroflects aggression and other feel-
ings, turning them inwards toward the self, ‘further
dividing us both from ourselves and from one another’
(Kaufman, in Wheeler, 1995, p. 82).
Power: In Gestalt, the most obvious intrapersonal
power dynamic lies with Perls’ ‘Top dog/Under dog’
concept (1972). However, a more subtle power inter-
play can sometimes be experienced in groups when it
comes to silence, as in my following example:
Vignette This is an example taken from a group I
co-facilitated as a trainee. The group was made up
of five male group members and one female group
member, a female co-facilitator – myself – and a
male co-facilitator. Firstly, I noticed how intellec-
tual the group were, and secondly, how my
process interventions were often ignored or
batted away by the men in the group. I felt a
pull to remain silent and noticed a pattern begin
to emerge. I noticed how the other female in the
group would often sit silently and when she did
speak, would often receive a courtesy acknow-
ledgment before the subject was changed and a
discussion ensued amongst the men. I became
interested in the co-creation of silence and the
field’s organisation. ‘A gestalt can only be as
strong as the field conditions allow’ (Hodges,
2003, p. 250).
With regard to the role that silence plays in gender/
power dynamics, John Bernard Harris (1996) uses Judi
Marshall’s (1984) position in discussing the two stances
of ‘agency’ and ‘communion’ that men and women
typically take towards life. They suggest that men and
our male-dominated society operate at an agentic level,
which involves themes of control and independence
with a preference for doing and talking. Communion,
on the other hand, involves interdependence, contact,
and openness. It is about being.
In our society, doing often involves talking, silence
wastes time. From this agentic perspective, talking is
valued far more than listening. Listening (for which you
48 Kate Merrick
need to be silent) is typically a communion skill.
(Harris, 1996, p. 28)
Applying this concept, if men are typically agentic in
their beliefs and behaviour and women hold a stance of
communion, the group may well have used these una-
ware gender norms to maintain power; valuing talking
about over dealing with, to silence contact, dialogue, and
present centred exploration.
Mourning: In Western culture, mourning tends to
involve dissociation, withdrawal, and isolation. At the
stage of withdrawal on Gestalt’s Contact Cycle, it is here
that mourning takes place, when old ways of being and
old relationships die and are organismically mourned
and integrated (Philippson, 1998, p. 59). Melnick and
Nevis describe this as the demobilisation stage, where
‘the person is able to disengage from the experience and
chew over it, absorb and digest it . . . and involves a
movement inward to a non public place, where one may
be alone’ (1997, p. 102). The stages of demobilisation
include turning away, assimilation, encountering the
void, and acknowledgment. The void is what Perls
(1973) described as ‘nothingness’, and called the ‘fertile
void’, a space in which new figures can emerge, from a
ground, which is pregnant with possibility. He used the
phrase ‘withdrawal into the fertile void’ to describe
staying with the feelings of helplessness and confusion
that are often encountered in the face of silent,
unknown terrain. In this context, silence allows for
the surfacing and processing of difficult emotions, a
deepening of one’s internal experience and periods of
quiet reflection and withdrawal.
Ritual: Working with silence in certain meditative and
religious practices supports stillness, allowing for
deeper reflection and a restoration of balance, inner
peace, and dialogue with the Divine. Silent rituals can
be observed throughout the world; the Igbo people, for
example, carry out sacrifices in silence, not only to mark
the solemnity of the event but also to show that the
carrier of the sacrifice is engaged in a serious spiritual
task, not to be disturbed by the spoken word (Nwoye,
1995, p. 185). A common cultural phenomenon in the
West is using silence as a mark of respect in times of
death, war, and natural disaster. Silence serves not only
to allow for a period of quiet reflection but also unites
people in a common shared experience. In terms of
ritualistic, repetitive and stereotyped thoughts and
behaviours, there are a variety of silencing messages
that some may observe during our early lives, which
may become introjected fixed gestalts in adulthood;
‘children should be seen and not heard’, ‘speak when
you are spoken to and not before’, ‘if you can’t say
something nice, don’t say anything at all’.
It is my experience that these varied functions of
silence travel back and forth along a continuum,
depending on their context and cultural field. I propose
that, at one end of the continuum lies silent withdrawal
as an interruption to contact – ‘[creative] energy is
blocked most often by fear of excitement or strong
emotions’ (Zinker, 1977, p. 102) – and at the other end,
silent withdrawal into the fertile void – ‘the deepest
source of authentic creativity’ (Frambach, 2003, p. 119).
Here, I shall use clinical vignettes to illustrate both ends
of the continuum, with a client whom I shall refer to as
Esther.
1. Silence as a function of interruptions to
contact
Vignette Esther came into therapy feeling utterly
powerless. Her ‘under-dog’ was fragile, confused,
and blaming; her ‘top-dog’ was critical and
powerfully silencing. As well as punishing herself,
Esther used her silence to punish those around her
for: (1) not noticing that she was depressed; (2)
feeling as though she was not able to express
herself honestly and authentically; and (3) pro-
jecting that they would judge her negatively if she
were to. Her silence was one way in which she
creatively adjusted in order to maintain some
semblance of power and control in relationships
where otherwise she felt completely powerless.
Esther silenced herself through frequent retroflec-
tion, alienating her needs and interests and interrupting
her own process of organismic self-regulation. She had
dulled her senses to the point where figure and ground
would ‘flow together indistinguishably’, becoming con-
fluent (PHG, 1951, p. 118). Esther was incredibly skilled
at silencing her own pain as well as leaving little space
for pause or silent reflection.
In a session with Esther, she talks about fading into
the background and wanting to be invisible. She uses
silence in her personal relationships to withhold a large
part of her experience, in the expectation that friends
and family will ‘misinterpret’ her. She retroflects her
anger and imagines there is something wrong with her,
using silence to hide and isolate herself. Her silence
causes further ‘misinterpretations’ and fights with loved
ones, which further compounds her feelings of isolation
and feeling misunderstood, confirming her core exist-
ential belief that something is indeed wrong with her.
Contact is interrupted. ‘Shame is a self protective
dynamic used to avoid the vulnerability to humiliation
and the loss of contact in relationships with others’
(Erskine, 1995, p. 107).

2. Silence as a function of the fertile void
Vignette An illustration of withdrawal into the
fertile void happens toward the end of my session
with Esther, when I invite her to experiment with
her metaphor of wanting to fade into the back-
ground. Esther imagined a scene where she was an
observer, painting the world going by. She felt her
enjoyment at not taking part yet quickly became
upset as she struggled to understand why she felt
the way she did. By working with the silence to
support a slower pace of work and encouraging
her to stay with the polarities of her experience,
firstly of taking part and then of not, Esther
immersed herself in silence and fully participated
in her own confusion which, in turn, provided her
with a new awareness that had been previously
unavailable to her. She discovered that it was not
the taking part that made her feel sad, but how she
fought with herself to understand why. She then
reached a peaceful place of acceptance for her
present actuality, and for the first time we sat in a
long period of uninterrupted silence together.
Such withdrawal, ironically, is made possible through
one’s becoming able to focus on the avoidance tech-
niques, which routinely interrupt it . . . and far trans-
cending any intellectualization (which in fact can only
interrupt this process). For Perls, it is in the fertile void
that ‘confusion is transformed into clarity, emergency
into continuity, and interpreting into experiencing’.
(Seltzer, 1984, p. 101)
It is important to note the role of silence during this
session. At the time of working with Esther I was a
trainee therapist: enthusiastic, busy, and with a pench-
ant for ‘figuring out’, our sessions were typically filled
with exploration and experimentation. Allowing myself
to slow down and inviting Esther to join me was a first
for the both of us. I believe that our silence in this
session enriched the support for the ground, making it
safer for Esther to stay with her discomfort for longer
than was usually tolerable, thus supporting her with-
drawal into the fertile void. Of course, a parallel process
was at work, as I too was able to sit with our silence and
remain curious as to my own discomfort and uncer-
tainty. It is my view that the silence (as well as a strong
working alliance and an I-Thou dialogic attitude)
helped to facilitate this natural process, and supported
the total organismic going into and experiencing of
Esther’s (and my own) subjective reality.
By the end of the session, Esther experienced an
altered state of awareness and was basking in a peaceful
The use of silence in therapy 49
accepting silence. Our silences offered the opportunity
for repair, in deepening her experience and for surfa-
cing unfinished business. I suspect Esther may have
experienced a moment of transcendence, or what Perls
called a mini satori (1973, p. 131), a Japanese Buddhist
term describing a momentary and spontaneous deeper
spiritual experience that allows insight into one’s true
nature; a feeling Esther questioned ever having felt
before.
3. Working with polarities
Friedlaender (1918), having developed the concept of
creative indifference and polar differentiation, stated
that in order for a phenomenon to be perceived and
appreciated it must stand for an opposite of something
else (cited in Frambach, 2003, p. 117). The distinction
between the two polarities I have just described would
be the function of silence to interrupt and restrict
creative expression, and at the other end, the function
of silence to immerse oneself in a deep creative state. As
Gestaltists supporting flexibility and range along the
continuum between two (or multiple) polarities, we
aim to support the person in becoming whole again.
The healing path involves ‘the process of centering, the
reconciliation of opposites so that they no longer waste
energy in useless struggle with each other but can join in
productive combination and interplay’ (Perls, 1971,
p. 19). In the case of the two polarities I have described,
reconciling these two opposites, I believe, has the
potential to integrate as creative expression.
Creative expression: a middle ground?
Creative expression, i.e. speaking out one’s phenom-
enological here and now experience, is an important
part of Gestalt’s dialogic process. Being able to report
one’s own experience provides clients with the oppor-
tunity to raise awareness of their situation and their part
in it. This points towards healthy functioning as voicing
also supports and strengthens figure/ground formation.
PHG might identify creative expression as poetry (1951,
p. 321), others might describe it as mythical language,
which includes poetry and metaphor (Hodges, 2003;
Woldt and Ingersoll, 1990). Here, I shall explore PHG’s
thoughts on verbalising and poetry in more detail, to
arrive at a greater understanding of creative expression
and its relationship with silence.
Verbalising and poetry
In Gestalt’s core text by PHG (1951), Paul Goodman
points out,
it is useful to define ‘personality’ as a structure of speech
habits and consider it a spontaneous act . . . a child
forming his personality by learning to speak is making a
spectacular achievement. (pp. 320–321)
50 Kate Merrick
He discusses habits and rhythms of speech, neurotic
verbalising, and poetry. In this context, silence is
referred to as a silent awareness that is held whilst
overt words are forming (p. 323). Goodman describes
how the combination of silent awareness and speech
creates a more authentic and contactful form of speak-
ing. He describes ‘neurotic verbalising’ and comments
on therapists who have become so exasperated by the
empty, superficial use of verbalising that they have
gone to the other polarity, of denouncing speech
altogether ‘as if only inner silence and non verbal
behavior were potentially healthy’ (p. 321). So I
wonder, what is the middle ground? He implies that
it is the creative speech of poetry, stating that poetry is
the contrary of neurotic verbalising and that it is
neither scientific semantics nor silence (p. 321). I
would argue, however, that silence is certainly a part
of poetry and that ‘the interaction of sound, silence and
movement’ is what epitomises creative speech (Saville-
Troike, 1995, p. 8). Rollo May suggests that it is the
silent space between the words that creates the tension
in poetry (1981, p. 173). I particularly like the example
of the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho who, on visiting the
island of Matsushima in Japan in 1689, was so in awe of
the vista that he became speechless. He began to com-
pose a poem, but was so overwhelmed by the island’s
beauty that he could not find more than two words to
express his feelings: ‘Oh, Matsushima!’ The poem
consisted of just the island’s name followed by his
silence, and was considered to be one of his master-
pieces (Saville-Troike, 1995, p. 8).
The type of language which seems to capture a
balance of all these themes, i.e. sound, silence, move-
ment, poetry, metaphor, and creativity, is described by
Woldt and Ingersoll as mythical language (1990, p. 96).
Mythical language offers us a description of authentic
creative expression, where individuals immerse their
whole selves in living and communicating their experi-
ence:
The aim behind symbols and mythic language is to have
an experience of what Jung called a ‘confirmation with
the heart’. . . . [M]ythic language was not meant to
stimulate ideas as much as to guide the individual to
experience her or his life more fully. (ibid.)
Beisser’s (1970) work on the paradoxical theory of
change supports this:
The Gestalt therapist believes in encouraging the patient
to enter and become whatever he is experiencing at the
moment. He believes with Proust, ‘To heal a suffering
one must experience it to the full’. (Biesser, p. 78)
Experimenting with metaphors cultivates creativity,
and encourages individuals to use their imagination
when it comes to expressing themselves, moving them
closer to their present actuality and away from a tend-
ency to ‘erect a wall of words’ between themselves and
their experience (PHG, 1951, p. 78). Zinker notes that
use of metaphor allows people to come together and
move in a novel direction, allowing a way of connecting
things that are not usually connected, thus giving new
meaning and vitality to the present situation (1977,
p. 170). Hodges writes,
. . . we are creating a new shared space: a space of
projection and discovery, of play and exploration,
which is transforming . . . . [O]ur language must be
the language of apprehension and delight, symbol and
metaphor, poetry and description. Pedestrian language
cannot catch the field. (2003, p. 255)
Creative expression, then, may well be the middle
point of the continuum, as it is here that we experience
silence, voicing, imagination, intuition, awareness, and
contact with others as well as with ourselves. Working
with silence as existing along such a continuum with a
lively, contactful, creative middle ground supports us as
practitioners in staying flexibly curious as well as
introducing flexibility and range along the continuum
for clients, thus developing more resilience and more
possibilities of response in dealing with fixed gestalts
and new situations. And, as the two poles are both
synonymous with withdrawal, in creative expression we
have the opportunity to become fully immersed in our
relatedness:
Creativity is a relational process. It is aroused in our
yearnings, our energy to move, sing, dance and touch
each other. Creativity is fuelled by . . . our desire to
become whole and fulfilled with each other. (Zinker,
2003, p. 141)
Silence: a Gestalt approach
So how do we, as Gestalt therapists, stay flexibly curious
or ‘alive in the question’ (anon.) when working with
silence, without making assumptions and interpret-
ations which essentially limit the field and undermine
our phenomenological, dialogic, relational attitude? I
propose that by looking to our classic philosophical and
methodological tenets of GTT for guidance, namely
dialogic relating, the phenomenological method of
inquiry and polarities, we have a versatile stockpile of
attitudes and procedures that will support us and guide
us in our work with silence. As I have already referred to
polarities, I will focus my attention on the other two
principles mentioned.
1. Dialogue
Dialogic relating (I-Thou attitude) is characterised by a
genuine desire to meet the other with openness, respect
and acceptance. Lynne Jacobs and Richard Hycner
(1995) describe it as

an attitude of genuinely feeling/sensing/experiencing
the other person as a person . . . . Furthermore, it is
the willingness to ‘hear’ what is not being spoken and to
‘see’ what is not visible. (p. xi)
Openness to dialogue allows us the opportunity to
expand our own horizons as therapists, as we come
into contact with what is both new and unknown to us.
Dialogue becomes the means whereby care and inclu-
sion become expanded to engage and include the
client’s experiential world and their unique silent
phenomenology (Jacobs, 2003, p. 93).
An important aspect of Gestalt’s dialogic approach is
that it is primarily non-verbal. Dialogic relating is not a
verbal phenomenon, it is a way of relating at the pre
reflective level, ‘the level of the lived body’ (Kennedy
2008, p. 88). Dialogic relating requires presence, inclu-
sion, curiosity, empathy, and a horizontal approach:
Maintaining the dialogue does not mean that I need to
do a lot of speaking . . . or to say much about myself. I
can uphold my side of the dialogue by my attention and
interest, the expression in my eyes . . . rather than by
finding a verbal response every time. (Philippson, 2001,
p. 150)
Des Kennedy states:
This pre reflective level is that sacred ground of pri-
mordial silence in each of us, beneath the chatter of our
words and carries the key to what I have become as a
human being. (2008, p. 88)
Listening to the total communication necessitates the
active use and trust of the senses of the therapist (an
embodied presence), supporting us in openly meeting
the other with interest and curiosity, with the aim of
discovery and increased awareness (Yontef, 1993,
pp. 62–69).
2. The phenomenological/relational approach
The phenomenological approach supports us in staying
as closely as possible to the individual’s here and now
experience and remaining open and interested as to
how a person makes meaning of their world, with the
intention of bracketing assumptions and interpret-
ations. Holding an attitude of horizontalism supports
us in experiencing both silence and dialogue, verbal and
non-verbal communication as being of equal import-
ance, not prioritising one event over the other but
simply staying with what is. Working phenomenologic-
ally encourages the client not only to make meaning of
his or her experience, but moves them closer to their
present actuality, which in my experience, invites them
to begin to find their voice again, their creative ex-
pression. Being actively curious about how a client
makes meaning of their world is key in beginning to
understand their relationship with silence.
Phenomenology assumes that reality is formed
The use of silence in therapy 51
between the observed and the observer (Yontef and
Jacobs, 2004, p. 336). This attitude allows us to keep in
mind the relational nature of silence and our part in its
co-creation. The phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty
writes:
. . . we must consider speech, before it is pronounced,
the background of silence, which does not cease to
surround it and without which it would say nothing
. . . we must uncover the threads of silence, from which
speech is mixed. (1964, p. 265)
For him, language is elusive and indirect. The meaning
is woven into the speech structure, living in the gaps and
tensions between words, by what is said and left unsaid
by both speaker and listener. It is in this total movement
that we make meaning between us (Shotter and Cun-
liffe, 2003). Tannen notes, ‘when there are two or more
participants in a conversation . . . anything that happens
or doesn’t happen, is said or unsaid, is the result of
interaction among the two’ (1995, p. 100). And from a
Gestalt perspective,
we are interested in what happens intersubjectively, we
therefore pay close attention to what emerges, and how
this emerges, between therapist and client rather than
focusing solely on the client. (Mann, 2010, p. 177)
This is illustrated in the case of Esther and I, as we
typically busied ourselves, avoiding silence together.
The result was that we avoided working at a deeper,
and often more painful, level. This only became obvious
to me as we both allowed a silent space for the unknown
to emerge. It is vital, then, that as therapists we are also
aware of our own silent phenomenology, nurturing the
capacity to stay with our visceral awareness whilst being
with the other. This is inclusion.
Summary
The phenomenon of silence is rich, varied, complex,
always present, and too important a part of the field to
remain limited and unexplored. Given that this has
been my experience of training, and given that, as a
society, doing is typically valued over being, it seems a
good time as therapists to consider our relationship
with silence and how it can support us and our clients in
staying with our present centred experience. I feel this is
especially relevant for new therapists in training, par-
ticularly when such a strong emphasis is placed on
speaking out; when there is very little mention of silence
in GTT; and when trainees are frequently referred to the
Gestalt Contact Cycle, which, as previously mentioned,
is mainly used to stimulate energy, action, and contact
(Zinker and Cardoso-Zinker, 2001, p. 23). However, I
do not imagine that this phenomenon is exclusive to my
training, being part of the wider Gestalt field.
Bringing silence into the foreground invites us to
52 Kate Merrick
open up our curiosity and interest as to our unique and
interconnected silent phenomenology. Rather than
narrowly viewing silence as an interruption to contact
and by acknowledging silence as existing along a con-
tinuum, there is the possibility of a much wider scope
from which to work. Integrating the basic tenets of our
theory and looking to the wider cultural field for a
variety of meanings are ways in which we may become
‘connoisseurs of silence’ (Harris, 1996, p. 27). Our
theory supports us in remaining open to our unique
relationships with silence, allowing us the opportunity
to discover something novel and exciting about our
client’s phenomenological world, as well as reminding
us of our lively and ever changing interpersonal reality.
The idea is not to abandon what we already know; that
knowledge is the ground on which we stand. The
challenge is to look toward what we do not know and
to make new meanings together. (Fairfield, 2004, p. 357)
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 The use of silence in therapy 53

Kate Merrick, MA. I am a Gestalt psychotherapist. Having previously worked in the field of substance
misuse and within the NHS, I am now in private practice in central London. Prior to my training, I
worked as a photographer and musician – art and creativity continue to inform my Gestalt and I am
currently developing my research in the area of psycho-spiritual growth.
Address for correspondence: 149 Hamlet Gardens, London, W6 0TR, UK.
Email: katemerrick@mac.com
British Gestalt Journal
2013, Vol. 22, No. 2, 54
Letter to the editor
Skype-diving into supervision
Bud Feder
Received 1 August 2013
Dear Editor,
Recently I have read Jon Frew’s article on ‘Gestalt group
supervision as education’ (2010, BGJ, Vol 19, 1, pp. 26–
32). As always I found Jon’s presentation outstanding
and I certainly benefited from reading it. My purpose in
this letter is to add an online fillip to the discussion (me,
of all people, a technological dinosaur).
I have been providing group supervision in what we
call the tri-state area in the US (NY, NJ and PA) for
many years, alone and with co-leaders Ruth Ronall
(now deceased) and Jack Aylward. Recently I plunged
into cold and muddy waters and organised an online
Skype camera supervision group of six people: four
from various regions of the US, one from Mexico and
one from the Philippines. We met once a month for two
hours. Major time differences presented an initial prob-
lem until we were able to come up with a viable time
plan. Technological difficulties were more problematic
and one thing I discovered is that six people is too many
for the current capacity of Skype. So next time I will
limit it to four persons. The seminar was conducted in
English and some problems understanding each other
surfaced but were overcome.
That there is something different about it shouldn’t
# Copyright 2013 by Gestalt Publications Ltd.
be surprising. I am not yet clear what that is all about.
One factor is that I am much more tense going into
these sessions. I don’t have a comfort level with the
technology and with the meeting of strangers from
other countries (full disclosure: I had met three of the
members before, one years ago and two at the AAGT
conference in Mexico). I feel a greater responsibility to
‘deliver’ something of worth, to make it worthwhile for
these good people to deal with the various discomforts
of this type of session.
We completed the academic season with six sessions
and over the course of the year two people dropped out,
one mysteriously and one because of a major life
change. What emerged for the remaining five of us
was a strong sense of being a group (all four want to
repeat, and so do I). We all learned from one another
and the geographic and cultural diversity remained a
strong figure of interest throughout. I think this is a
valuable tool for the Gestalt therapy community: for
supervision, for peer groups and maybe group therapy
(which I will try next academic year).
I am interested also to know if anyone else is doing
this and, if so, can we talk?
Bud Feder, PhD, is a psychologist in private practice for over
fifty years and is looking forward to being in London at
Metanoia in 2014.
Address for correspondence: 100 Valley Road, Montclair, NJ
07042, USA.
Email: bfeder@verizon.net
British Gestalt Journal
2013, Vol. 22, No. 2, 55–63
Book reviews
Personality pathology: a
matrix of wisdom for the
contemporary therapist?
Maggie Maronitis
A review of Personality Pathology: Developmental
Perspectives by Gilles Delisle, translated from French
by Dinah M. Ashcroft, Lynne Rigaud and Anne Kearns.
Published by Karnac Books, London, 2011, 212
pages. Price: £22.99.
I had the honour of meeting Gilles Delisle in 2011 when I
attended a three-day workshop that he facilitated on
ORGT (Object Relations Gestalt Therapy). I was so
inspired by his ideas, his integration of Object Relations
with Gestalt therapy, his gentle yet powerful presence,
and most of all by the way in which he respectfully and
intelligently responded to some strong challenges about
his approach, that I leapt at the chance of attending a
second workshop the following year. I continue to feel
enriched by his ideas that are still shaping the way in
which I work, and am appreciative of the colleague who
arranged the workshop on behalf of the Gestalt commu-
nity.
Attending Delisle’s workshops was not my first
encounter with his works. I found his earlier book,
Personality Disorders (1999, English edition), was par-
ticularly stimulating and thought provoking in terms of
reflecting upon the potential issues of integrating diag-
nostic perspectives in my clinical practice and what the
costs and benefits of doing so might be. It became a
most helpful environmental support in finding my own
position when writing up the diagnostic section for my
Gestalt clinical case study, and as a valuable reference
source for a number of assignments during my psycho-
therapy training some twenty years ago. I continue to
use the book to support myself and other therapists in
their practice.
Back then, Delisle was addressing the issue of psy-
chopathology from a Gestalt/humanistic perspective,
against the backdrop of a tradition of rejection of
diagnosis and the medical model. He translated specific
axis II personality disorders of the DSM into observable
phenomenology. His central tenet focussed on the
psycho–immune–metabolic function of the per-
# Copyright 2013 by Gestalt Publications Ltd.
sonality, and the where, when, and how dysfunction
was likely to occur at the contact boundary, through
experiential phases and resistance/adjustment pro-
cesses. His contribution was to offer us a phenomeno-
logical, relational approach to the understanding and
treatment of personality disorders. Whilst the develop-
mental history of the client was acknowledged as
important, it was not the primary concern of the text,
with the Gestaltist being more concerned with here and
now, being ‘functionally oriented as opposed to etiol-
ogy orientated’ (1999, p. 18). But even then Delisle
acknowledged how Gestalt arose from an Analytic
background and thought there were useful concepts
to remember. Delisle’s engagement in active research
from then until now is obvious in terms of the evolu-
tionary process which culminates with this current text,
Personality Pathology: Developmental Perspectives,
translated from French and published in the UK in
2011. This text has been some twenty years in the
making.
This is a beautifully written and well-organised book
with a clear structure which implicitly guides the reader
through Delisle’s research, development of concepts,
integration, and application to practice. He provides
tables and diagrams to clarify the concepts he is writing
about and offers case vignettes and transcripts of
therapist–client dialogues to highlight treatment of
the developmental issues he raises. Delisle very adeptly
presents the complexity of his topics in an easily
digestible form and because of this I felt heartened by
his cautioning of therapists to remember that the
business of psychotherapy is a complex one, particu-
larly in the light of present demands of many organ-
isations for short-term work with effective and
measurable behavioural outcomes. The danger of this
process could be paralleled here due to the ease in which
he presents material to the reader. At first glance, the
depth of this text could be overlooked. At a fuller
reading, the depth and breadth of his research and
contributions to the field become increasingly appar-
ent. I am left with no doubt that he is offering a rich,
unique, and valuable bridge between the there-and-
then and the here-and-now, of what happens in
between, in the ground of current experience, and of
how this shapes the formation of the self and the
development of the healthy or disordered personality.
Bridging this gap is foreground in this book. In his
introduction, Delisle describes how he felt he could no
56 Maggie Maronitis
longer practise from the phenomenological perspective
of GT without a developmental model, and how his
research was specifically to find a way of integrating the
intelligence already within the field rather than adding
yet another new theory. His work proposed ‘integrating
into the theory of Self a core structure, which allowed us
to consider personality disorder without giving up the
fundamental parameters of field theory’ (2011, p. x). He
argues a case for the etiology of personality disorders
being multi-faceted, rooted in the developmental field
and maintaining itself through the manifestation of
specific distortions into the experiential field. With
this in mind Delisle has developed what he believes to
be a congruent approach, integrating Object Relations,
to provide us with a greater understanding of the
etiology of personality disorders, manifestations in
clinical practice, and to enable us to work with serious
pathology from a relational perspective without losing
the fundamentals of Gestalt therapy.
Delisle aims for this text to be helpful for the ‘general-
ist’ (2011, p. xi), that is, those therapists who want to
know more about developmental theories and to be
able to work with those with personality disorders as
well as those with more practical presenting issues. I
find his willingness to bring together strands of mean-
ingful research particularly helpful in managing my
own competing positions as a Gestaltist. Struggling
with a purely phenomenological approach in the treat-
ment process when working with deep, longer-term
clinical work, and those with varying degrees of pathol-
ogy, ultimately led me to seek new knowledge, integrat-
ing from developmental and analytic perspectives as
support. One of those supports was Yontef ’s seminal
text Awareness, Dialogue and Process: Essays on Gestalt
Therapy (1993) which addresses similar issues in the
gaps in developmental, diagnostic, and analytic theories
in Gestalt. The difference in this later text from Delisle is
not just his focussed research on the developing per-
sonality and developmental issues but in how he pro-
vides us with a framework for treatment of the issues,
akin to an aim and methodology beyond awareness
alone.
Chapter one provides a foundation for understand-
ing the context of the remainder of the book. It deals
with developmental issues in the etiology of personality
disorders. Delisle informs us that we need a compre-
hensive and multi-perspectival view of personality dis-
orders beyond that of the DSM because of there being
several etiological factors that contribute, including
nature, nurture, genetics, and psychological. He terms
these factors in the person’s developmental environ-
mental field as ‘risk and resilience’. Delisle has designed
a hypothetical model of the systems of interactions
between organism and environment that will influence
the development of personality and the pathology of
personality disorders; a matrix of developmental tasks
to be achieved in the becoming of a person. He organ-
ises these tasks around three main developmental areas:
attachment, self-esteem, and eroticism. The ability to
mediate these areas successfully will be dependent upon
one’s risk and resilience factors, and he equates the
development of personality pathology as the sum of risk
factors balanced against the sum of resilience factors,
i.e. if the sum of risk factors in the developmental field
in both organism and environment is greater than the
sum of resilience factors. Delisle views the developing
person’s psychological functioning as a metaphor of the
psyche’s immuno-metabolic system of how our nour-
ishment will result in us developing either a healthy or
unhealthy metabolic and immune system. He argues
how these systems may or may not support us in our
personality development to resolve a number of devel-
opmental issues for good psychological functioning,
and therefore how deficits metaphorically mirror a
person’s preference for ‘favourite foods’. He asserts
that, ‘[P]athology in the structure of the personality is
the consequence of a setback in one or more develop-
mental areas’ (2011, p. 7).
Chapter two introduces the reader to a relational
psychotherapy that integrates concepts from the British
school of Object Relations with Gestalt therapy and
invites the reader to explore the theoretical foundations
of the approach, its belief in the origins of psychological
health, its links with Lewin’s field theory, and with the
wider field as being a dynamic interaction between the
organism and his or her environment. Delisle concep-
tualises the relationship between the self and the en-
vironment and how these are reproduced in the
damaged self in a matrix of field representations
which highlight ego functions as resistances to contact
through projection, introjection, retroflection, and
confluence, splitting processes between assimilated
internalisations and introjected microfields, and aware
self and other representations of a positive and negative
nature (2011, p. 15). A case vignette example clarifies
this process in action. In terms of the process and
practice of ORGT it is important for the practitioner
to understand the concept of experiential fields from
the here-and-now to the there-and-then. Delisle tables
eight experiential fields that consist of a matrix of four
space times, each having an external and internal level.
These fields are significant in recognising the client’s
experiences within them and in intentional interven-
tions in each of the fields on the part of the therapist.
Personality disorder clients are considered by Delisle as
‘unable to discriminate between experiences in the
different fields’ (2011, p. 20) and the therapist therefore
needs the ability to see the connections and work with
them with the client. These processes are exampled in
future chapters when treating developmental issues.

In chapter three the reader is taken on a brief journey
of key psychoanalytic developmental theories, visiting
significant areas that are complementary to the under-
standing of what is at the heart of mediating the terrain
through the developmental issues of attachment, self-
esteem, and eroticism. This chapter is a most useful one
for those wanting a window into Freudian theories,
relational theories, and the works of Melanie Klein,
Winnicott, Mahler, and Fairbairn. Each author is placed
within a historical context with their key concepts
illuminated and sequentially compared and contrasted.
Delisle does not arrive at a particular destination.
Instead, he guides us through what is available for us
to revisit in more depth, in our own time, and in a more
immediate way places us on the platform for the next
part of the journey through this text which is presented
as six chapters that are paired. Chapters four, six, and
eight are devoted to developmental issues and chapters
five, seven, and nine relate to their treatment issues
respectively.
The first developmental area covers attachment
issues. I experienced this as a rich, unique, and poignant
chapter. Although there is already a lot of existing
literature in this area, my interest was held and I felt I
was learning something very new. I also experienced a
deep sense of compassion in Delisle’s writing. He ini-
tially discusses how those who have successfully mas-
tered this developmental phase are likely to present
from a healthy adult position, of affective security and
ability to engage with others. He then places attachment
in a socio-cultural context before giving a brief over-
view of unhealthy attachment styles/types. Most excit-
ingly, for the reader, is how Delisle identifies signs of
attachment problems in the child and translates their
potential manifestations as adults from seven axes of
clinical presentation. These are: showing affection;
seeking comfort; behaviour towards support; behaviour
of cooperation; explorative behaviour; control behav-
iour; and Ainsworth’s et al.’s ‘Strange Situation’ (1978).
These are then linked beautifully to the risk and
resilience factors from an organism–environmental
perspective and how these are metabolised, placing
his earlier theoretical perspectives into the context of
clinical practice. His next chapter (chapter five) natu-
rally flows from this one as he offers the means of
treating attachment issues from an ORGT perspective.
This is a fine example of Delisle’s ability to integrate
seamlessly the complexity of theories, concepts, and
practice issues that he covers in all of the preceding
chapters, add to them, and present them in a compre-
hensive form that the reader can digest. I found this a
powerful chapter, particularly when considering the
‘how to’ of therapy! What stands out is Delisle’s
challenge for the therapist to be knowledgeable, com-
petent, active, and ethical in their practice, all areas
Book review: Personality Pathology, Delisle 57
being either explicitly or implicitly described in this
chapter. The clinical work shown through vignettes and
therapist–client dialogue is disciplined in all of these
areas and in addition through the therapist’s awareness
and intention of working within the matrix of the four
space times and the eight experiential fields that Delisle
identifies in his earlier chapter on relational psycho-
therapy. This is a pattern that runs through the remain-
ing two chapters that focus on treatment issues
(chapters seven and nine). Here he presents each treat-
ment issue with references to what came before (in the
text) that are common threads throughout the treat-
ment issues, and with additions that relate specifically
to the particular developmental area.
Specific attention to the treatment of attachment
issues includes the reactivation and resolution of devel-
opmental processes. Reactivation is considered to
colour the transferential relationship and to be under-
stood as a repetition of impasses in contact that are
seeking to be resolved (2011, p. 73). These can be
recognised as attachment issues in three significant
relationships in field 3 (the here and then), in romantic,
close friendships, and the parent–child relationships,
when the client is the parent. The difficulty of this work
is acknowledged because of the essence of the problem
being preverbal, alongside a denial of needs with a
defence against feeling the ‘intolerable’ and thereby a
defence against meaning-making. Delisle discusses the
kinds of interventions required for resolution through
the real relationship with the therapist. From his con-
temporary position he concludes that ‘only those who
can accept the role of parent to a client, who can permit
him to grow up, and who is willing to age alongside him
as a parent, will be able to access their resources and the
empathic resonance that will be necessary to accom-
pany the client’ (2011, p. 88).
The second of the developmental issues, that of self-
esteem (chapter six), is also explored from a contem-
porary position, this time through the links Delisle
makes between self-esteem issues and narcissism. For
clarity he advises, ‘When I use the term narcissism and
its derivatives, I shall rather be referring to the patho-
logical indicators of the phenomenon’ (2011, p. 89). I
found this chapter fascinating and particularly helpful
when reflecting on my own clinical practice, as right at
the beginning Delisle sets the scene of the problem of
narcissism as being at the heart of the therapeutic
dynamic. He discusses how all personality structures
have a narcissistic function of protecting self-esteem
through defences as support in particular situations and
in relating to others. He highlights how the problem is
interwoven with psychotherapy because therapy is
concerned with recognising specific flaws in the self
and includes the willingness to become aware of one’s
methods of defence and adaptations that have pre-
58 Maggie Maronitis
viously protected the self. He declares how, ‘[I]n the
end, a redefining of the very basis of self-esteem is the
price we must pay if the therapy is to succeed’ (ibid.,
p. 90). Therapy that is transformative necessarily in-
volves deconstruction, a complex process in the case of
the narcissistic personality due to its organisation
around ‘automatic responses in cognition and affect,
and behaviours that are enduring and independent of
situations and contexts’ (ibid., p. 90). This has the
making of a battlefield and therefore demands an in-
depth knowledge on the part of the therapist who needs
first to be aware of the clinical signs that may arise in the
therapeutic relationship. Delisle identifies these before
moving into theoretical views on the development of
this kind of pathology.
The theoretical contributions of two key authors,
Kohut and Kernberg, are referred to in this chapter
and Delisle offers some interesting ideas towards the
integration of their conflicting theoretical views on
narcissism in the following chapter (chapter seven),
‘Treating self-esteem issues’. Delisle is seeking a re-
sponsible methodology that includes empathic reson-
ance and moments of confrontation dependent upon
where the developmental arrests have occurred in the
person’s history. Again, he provides vignettes and
therapist–client dialogue to highlight the integration
of theory with practice.
Chapter eight, ‘Issues of eroticism’, is the final of the
developmental issues presented in the book. Unique to
this chapter is how Delisle introduces differentiation of
the sexes. He reminds us of the complexity of our
differences and how these have the potential to influ-
ence research, and he offers different perspectives in
response to developmental issues. An obvious example
is separating the resolution of the Oedipal conflict as
involving different tasks for girls and boys in the
tradition of Freudian theory. This distinction continues
when Delisle explores the issue of love and eroticism
from the humanistic perspective through an overview
of the works of Alberoni and the differences between the
male and female ‘erotic universes’. Pathology in this
developmental area is less clear than in the previous
chapters, rather Delisle concentrates on eight risk fac-
tors within the family and social environment: sexual
abuse, a dissymmetry in parental authority, physical
and psychological absence of the mother, role inversion,
a high level of stress, a hyper-sexualised family climate,
a puritanical family climate, and social isolation. He
concludes this chapter with two resilience factors in the
organism (child) family field (environment): 1) a rela-
tional field where talking about and giving language to
developmental experiences can support resolution, and
2) a relational field where recalling positive elements of
developmental experiences and hazards, i.e. discussing
these as growth opportunities for assimilation.
Treating eroticism issues (chapter 9) depends on
whether the issue is one of pathology manifested in
the romantic realm or a relational problem, and Delisle
proposes some questions the therapist can be alert to in
making this distinction. In keeping with previous
chapters, he illuminates how erotic impasses manifest
in significant relationships and in the therapeutic rela-
tionship, in different experiential fields, through case
vignettes and therapist–client dialogue. He alerts us to
paying close attention to when these occur and also to
when representations of the forbidden are present.
Delisle addresses issues of masculine and feminine
erotic transferences, how these may manifest in the
therapeutic relationship and how the male and female
client will differ in these respects. Most importantly, he
gives some guidelines for the therapist to recognise and
construct meaning around the erotic transference
impasse and possible sophisticated ways of working
with this, often taboo, phenomenon. He describes
reparation within the real relationship as being divided
into three areas with each area being summed up in one
word: ‘no; thank you; why?’ (2011, p. 158).
This formula was first presented to me in the second
workshop that I attended with Delisle and I have found
it an absolute gift in my work. It has enabled me to
respond with clear boundaries, with a deep respect for
the client’s desire of me, and has facilitated the opening
up of a space for the client to explore the meaning of this
current experience in relation to past experiences. I have
a real sense of the competency necessary to address the
erotic impasse and Delisle returns to those initially
outlined in the first treatment of issues chapter when
working with reproduction, recognition, and repara-
tion; reflexive competency, affective competency, and
interactive competency. He concludes this chapter with
these competencies specifically in relation to how they
apply to the problems of love and eroticism.
The final chapter (chapter 10) is a distinct chapter
informing us of the lifelong nature of development and
also of how not all suffering is to do with unfinished
business. Delisle considers developmental crises in
adulthood as life’s turning points. This is a worthy
chapter to read in order to understand adult develop-
ment and the tasks of the young adult (19–40 years), the
tasks of the adult between 40–65 years, and the tasks of
the mature adult (65 years and older). True to previous
chapters, Delisle does not simply state theoretical per-
spectives; he generously links theoretical aspects to
clinical practice, with examples of the tasks of the
therapist.
It feels difficult to do justice in a brief summary to the
many years of research and practice that Delisle encap-
sulates in this book. It is an impressive and valuable
contribution and I highly recommend it as a contem-
porary reference book for therapists of all persuasions.

References
Delisle, G. (1999). Personality Disorders: A Gestalt Therapy Per-
spective. Ottowa: CIG Press.
Yontef, G. (1993). Awareness, Dialogue and Process. Essays on Gestalt
Therapy. New York: Gestalt Journal Press.
Maggie Maronitis is a Gestalt psychotherapist working in
private practice with adults, couples, and groups. Her back-
ground was in working with adults in Acute Psychiatry and
more recently as Clinical Supervisor for Primary Care Coun-
selling within the IAPT system. She has a broad range of
teaching experience, to Masters level, within counselling,
psychotherapy, and supervision.
Address for correspondence: Temenos Counselling and
Psychotherapy, 78 King Street, Cottingham HU16 5QE, UK.
Email: maggiemaronitis@hotmail.com
Introducing Gestalt
counselling and coaching
Rodney Hill and Jamie Burnie
A review of An Introduction to Gestalt by Charlotte
Sills, Phil Lapworth and Billy Desmond. Published by
Sage Publications, London, 2012, 200 pages. Price:
£20.99 (pbk).
Rodney (R): One of the many quotations I like in this
book is from the Talmud: ‘We do not see things as they
are, we see things as we are’. I think you and I both felt
this should inform our approach to reviewing this
book.
Jamie (J): Yes. And I liked it when you suggested we take
a dialogic approach to reviewing the book. I felt excited
by the idea. There was much that I enjoyed about this
book but I wasn’t keen on the corporate ‘we’ of the three
authors.
R: Can you say some more?
J: I don’t get any sense of a writer. There is no identity or
personality, which I would expect in a book discussing a
relational therapeutic process. This gets lost in their
confluent ‘we’.
R: This is not something that had occurred to me. I
know we have different leanings: me to confluence, you
to isolation! Perhaps there is a difference there.
Although I agree with you on the lack of a personality.
You would have preferred single authorial voices rather
than a distillation of the three?
J: Yes – I like a personal view – a sense of who the person
is who is writing. This gets lost when you can’t untangle
the ‘we’ of the three authors. I think there is a price – a
loss of energy and personal engagement. And there were
Book review: Personality Pathology, Delisle 59
just too many ‘we’s’ and a lack of distinction between
the ‘we’ of the three authors and the ‘we’ of Gestalt
therapists in general. Not that I am comfortable with
widely differing Gestalt approaches being swept up in a
single ‘we’.
R: Although our founding ‘bible’, Perls, Hefferline and
Goodman (PHG) (1951/1972), is jointly written by
three . . .
J: Exactly . . . [laughs]
R: And yet with PHG I often have the sense of the
personal voice – usually that of Paul Goodman, particu-
larly in the most beautiful passages. So I suppose that
makes your point. And I agree that An Introduction to
Gestalt lacks a distinctive voice which most of the other
introductory Gestalt books do have.
J: We have been asked to review the book from the
perspective of 4th year Gestalt therapy students and for
us to consider its value as an introduction to Gestalt for
counselling/therapy students . . .
R: I can also give a coaching and organisational per-
spective, given my background and knowledge.
J: I think that will be useful in our dialogic approach.
Background
R: The book is a ‘fully revised edition’ of a previous
publication called Gestalt Counselling (1995). There
have been some significant changes from the original
publication.
J: Well, for one there is a change of authors: Desmond
replaces Sue Fish.
R: And the remit is much broader. The earlier book, as
the title suggests, was purely focussed on Gestalt coun-
selling. The new book covers a larger canvas by con-
sidering Gestalt, not only in the therapeutic sense, but
also in the workplace through coaching and organ-
isational change.
J: And they do see ‘Gestalt as a philosophy for living our
daily lives’ (p. 3). I know you have read the earlier
edition. Do you think this totally replaces it? If someone
has that on their shelves would they also need this?
R: There is some overlap, particularly in the examples
given and the case studies, but I think anyone who has
the first edition, particularly if they value it, would
welcome the new edition. The book is well produced
and it includes an impressively wide range of references
to recent publications and articles. And, as we have said,
the remit is much broader.
J: The authors have wide experience that informs the
broader nature of the revised edition. All of them are

References
Delisle, G. (1999). Personality Disorders: A Gestalt Therapy Per-
spective. Ottowa: CIG Press.
Yontef, G. (1993). Awareness, Dialogue and Process. Essays on Gestalt
Therapy. New York: Gestalt Journal Press.
Maggie Maronitis is a Gestalt psychotherapist working in
private practice with adults, couples, and groups. Her back-
ground was in working with adults in Acute Psychiatry and
more recently as Clinical Supervisor for Primary Care Coun-
selling within the IAPT system. She has a broad range of
teaching experience, to Masters level, within counselling,
psychotherapy, and supervision.
Address for correspondence: Temenos Counselling and
Psychotherapy, 78 King Street, Cottingham HU16 5QE, UK.
Email: maggiemaronitis@hotmail.com
Introducing Gestalt
counselling and coaching
Rodney Hill and Jamie Burnie
A review of An Introduction to Gestalt by Charlotte
Sills, Phil Lapworth and Billy Desmond. Published by
Sage Publications, London, 2012, 200 pages. Price:
£20.99 (pbk).
Rodney (R): One of the many quotations I like in this
book is from the Talmud: ‘We do not see things as they
are, we see things as we are’. I think you and I both felt
this should inform our approach to reviewing this
book.
Jamie (J): Yes. And I liked it when you suggested we take
a dialogic approach to reviewing the book. I felt excited
by the idea. There was much that I enjoyed about this
book but I wasn’t keen on the corporate ‘we’ of the three
authors.
R: Can you say some more?
J: I don’t get any sense of a writer. There is no identity or
personality, which I would expect in a book discussing a
relational therapeutic process. This gets lost in their
confluent ‘we’.
R: This is not something that had occurred to me. I
know we have different leanings: me to confluence, you
to isolation! Perhaps there is a difference there.
Although I agree with you on the lack of a personality.
You would have preferred single authorial voices rather
than a distillation of the three?
J: Yes – I like a personal view – a sense of who the person
is who is writing. This gets lost when you can’t untangle
the ‘we’ of the three authors. I think there is a price – a
loss of energy and personal engagement. And there were
Book review: Personality Pathology, Delisle 59
just too many ‘we’s’ and a lack of distinction between
the ‘we’ of the three authors and the ‘we’ of Gestalt
therapists in general. Not that I am comfortable with
widely differing Gestalt approaches being swept up in a
single ‘we’.
R: Although our founding ‘bible’, Perls, Hefferline and
Goodman (PHG) (1951/1972), is jointly written by
three . . .
J: Exactly . . . [laughs]
R: And yet with PHG I often have the sense of the
personal voice – usually that of Paul Goodman, particu-
larly in the most beautiful passages. So I suppose that
makes your point. And I agree that An Introduction to
Gestalt lacks a distinctive voice which most of the other
introductory Gestalt books do have.
J: We have been asked to review the book from the
perspective of 4th year Gestalt therapy students and for
us to consider its value as an introduction to Gestalt for
counselling/therapy students . . .
R: I can also give a coaching and organisational per-
spective, given my background and knowledge.
J: I think that will be useful in our dialogic approach.
Background
R: The book is a ‘fully revised edition’ of a previous
publication called Gestalt Counselling (1995). There
have been some significant changes from the original
publication.
J: Well, for one there is a change of authors: Desmond
replaces Sue Fish.
R: And the remit is much broader. The earlier book, as
the title suggests, was purely focussed on Gestalt coun-
selling. The new book covers a larger canvas by con-
sidering Gestalt, not only in the therapeutic sense, but
also in the workplace through coaching and organ-
isational change.
J: And they do see ‘Gestalt as a philosophy for living our
daily lives’ (p. 3). I know you have read the earlier
edition. Do you think this totally replaces it? If someone
has that on their shelves would they also need this?
R: There is some overlap, particularly in the examples
given and the case studies, but I think anyone who has
the first edition, particularly if they value it, would
welcome the new edition. The book is well produced
and it includes an impressively wide range of references
to recent publications and articles. And, as we have said,
the remit is much broader.
J: The authors have wide experience that informs the
broader nature of the revised edition. All of them are
60 Rodney Hill and Jamie Burnie
Gestalt psychotherapists and supervisors. Charlotte Sills
and Billy Desmond are on the staff of Metanoia Insti-
tute and Ashridge Business School, and Phil Lapworth
is well known for many writings in counselling and
psychotherapy.
Purpose and target readership
R: Who do you think the target readership is? I couldn’t
find any clear statement in the text.
J: I agree. I think this is the biggest weakness of the book.
There is no purpose given by the authors or any indi-
cation at whom they are aiming the book. They do
suggest that anyone new to Gestalt should start at Part 2
but there is little else . . .
R: Yes. I am surprised there is no Introduction to the
book. There would have been an opportunity to discuss
their purpose and to introduce themselves more as
individuals and to tell us what drew them to Gestalt
and why they are passionate about it. If I think of
another introduction to Gestalt, that of Jennifer Mack-
ewn (Developing Gestalt Counselling (1997) ) she makes
a very clear statement of her purpose and proposed
readership which you can measure the book against.
J: I suppose the best we have is the endorsement on the
back of the book and the publisher’s ‘blurb’. The
endorsement comes from Simon Cavicchia (an
APECS Accredited Executive Coach): ‘This is an ex-
tremely clear and accessible introduction for students of
counselling and psychotherapy, as well as an increasing
number of coaches and organisation consultants’. The
authors have succeeded not only in setting out the core
principles of a Gestalt orientation, but in bringing these
to life with case examples of Gestalt in use.
R: I think we have to make do with that, but I still think
if the authors had given a clear statement of what their
purpose was for the book it might have provided a
clearer focus and identity.
Structure and ease of use
J: How well do you think the book is structured? And do
you think that students or Gestalt novices would find it
easy to find their way round the book?
R: I like the structure. The book is divided into three
parts which link well together:
Part 1: Background: provides the reader with a useful
brief history of Gestalt and an overview of Gestalt
principles;
Part 2: Gestalt Theory: covers what they see as the five
principles of Gestalt; and
Part 3: Gestalt Practice: covers the Gestalt experience
from assessment to conclusion with many vignettes and
case studies including a chapter on Gestalt in organ-
isations.
As we have already noted they leave the option open for
Gestalt virgins to start at Part 2 and going back to Part 1.
J: Yes I agree. The book is very easy to read and user-
friendly. You probably get the most out of reading it
straight through but it is also an easy book, with the help
of a good index, to revisit for specific passages or
references.
R: There is one oddity for me in how they have ordered
their material. They have identified their Gestalt prin-
ciples as:
. Relationship in Gestalt practice
. Awareness
. Whole-making: the formation and completion of
gestalts
. Embodied self
. Interconnectedness and the field.
J: And I found these principles really useful . . .
R: Yes, so do I, although I prefer Yontef ’s (1993,
pp. 124–128) distillation to four concepts:
. The phenomenological perspective
. The field theory perspective
. The existential perspective
. Dialogue.
Or Malcolm Parlett’s (2000) five Gestalt capabilities:
interrelating, responding to the situation, embodying,
self recognising, and experimenting.
However, I do think their principles are a helpful way
of considering Gestalt and they illustrate them in a
model (Figure 2.1, p. 8), which seems to indicate they
flow from one to the other. They then consider each one
in a chapter but change the order, considering the
embodied self before whole-making. This is a small
point but it does seem to undermine the shape of the
figure.
J: I couldn’t make sense of the model. I just ignored it
and went on to consider the text!
Relating Gestalt theory
R: I like their broad statement on Gestalt when they are
considering the phenomenological method:
Gestaltists believe in the innate potential of all human
beings to grow, develop and live fulfilling lives. This
trust in the capacity of the person leads to methodo-
logical principles that are fundamental to the approach.
The central one is that it is through heightening aware-
ness that change occurs. Increased awareness of ‘what is’
supports clients in having a wider variety of options
 Book review: An Introduction to Gestalt, Sills, Lapworth and Desmond
from which to choose how they contact and live in
relationship with others. (p. 96)
J: What drew you to that quote . . .?
R: I like its clarity and succinctness. I think it catches
well the optimism of Gestalt and its wider application,
e.g. Gestalt in organisations. I think it is a good example
of the authors’ ability to keep things in plain English
and is typical of their approach.
J: I do think they write very clearly and cover Gestalt
theory well. I think they have a wide and current
knowledge of Gestalt thinking and publications. They
signpost well to other reading and I couldn’t think of
any area that they didn’t cover.
R: I concur with that. I can’t think of another introduc-
tion to Gestalt which brings in so many references to
such disparate articles, from Polster’s ‘Tight therapeutic
sequencing’ (which I was aware of from supervision but
hadn’t seen discussed before) to Melnick’s five indi-
cators of counter-transference.
J: The section I found most useful was on healthy and
unhealthy relational contact (pp. 19–25). I haven’t seen
this as clearly discussed before and laid out like they do.
I shall certainly be using this with clients. They are also
good on heightening awareness and sharpening the
figure (pp. 135–136).
R: One sadness I feel is that in so many recent introduc-
tions to Gestalt how little PHG is mentioned. Indeed,
considering the pivotal role Perls played in the devel-
opment of Gestalt I would have liked more references to
his writing (beyond the place he is given in the chapter
on a brief history of Gestalt). In spite of an extensive
bibliography they don’t mention one of my favourite
Gestalt books, Gestalt is (Stevens, J., 1975).
J: I don’t know that particular title.
R: What I did like were the numerous vignettes,
examples, case studies, and practical examples given.
They give a great sense of Gestalt in real time. You really
could use the book as a practical ‘Teach Yourself
Gestalt’. If you remember that yellow and blue series
of publications which was ubiquitous in the 1960s and
’70s?
J: Before my time . . .
Coaching and organisational Gestalt
R: What do you think of their approach to Gestalt in
organisations and coaching? This makes it unique
amongst the introductory books we have read.
J: I found chapter 14 on Gestalt in Organisations: With
the gestalt Coach or Consultant (pp. 165–180) to be a
61
bolt-on. I didn’t feel it was well integrated. I really didn’t
find it helpful and could have done without it.
R: I think that is unfair. You must remember there is a
long and well-established history of using Gestalt theory
in the organisational context. I do believe they make
great efforts to integrate coaching and organisational
Gestalt throughout the book. They often use coaching
examples to illuminate therapeutic points. For example,
there is a very clear differentiation between I-Thou and
I-It made using an organisational example that I
thought really helped to clarify it in the counselling/
therapeutic process.
J: Yes I can see that . . .
R: And they have a running case study of John (coach)
and Lisa (client) throughout the section of Gestalt
Practice rather than a counselling/therapy example. I
think this works well.
J: But I have a worry that coaches will think they can
counsel on the basis of this book . . .
R: Actually, I have the mirror image fear – that coun-
sellors/therapists will feel they will be able to coach on
the basis of this book. Whilst I think the book provides a
good context on Gestalt for a coach I don’t think the
reverse is true. For example, there are no references
made to any of the standard coaching textbooks, e.g.
Whitmore (2002), Rogers (2008), and not even to those
that are Gestalt-based, e.g. Bluckert (2006), and there is
little signposting. I also don’t think there is sufficient
emphasis made on the difference between coaching and
counselling and the need for a boundary between the
two.
Conclusion
J: Where would you position this book amongst the
other introductions to Gestalt?
R: I think it stands up well alongside the other intro-
ductory books to Gestalt. They all have their own
particular strengths. I like Dave Mann’s (2010)
approach. He is particularly strong on the Gestalt
therapeutic journey. He is also very good on diversity
and equality issues. These don’t feel as alive in the book
we are reviewing. The downside to Mann is that there is
no index although it is an easy book to work with.
J: I also like Mackewn (1997), Clarkson (2004), and
Joyce and Sills (2010). All three have an edge of
excitement about them.
R: Yes. The Clarkson was the first of them I read and I
was so excited that I wanted to man (or is it storm?) the
barricades!
62 Rodney Hill and Jamie Burnie
J: That’s a coincidence because it was the first one I
read – and I felt the same.
R: Although I would probably see some flaws in it now.
But the important point is that for a first book you
probably want something with that passion and excite-
ment.
J: So my view is that the new publication is an excellent
trainee book and stands well alongside the others but is
probably best not to be read as the very first book on
Gestalt.
R: I think that’s right. And I know you have bought a
copy and I have a well-thumbed review copy on my
shelves . . . so what better recommendation?
References
Bluckert, P. (2006). Psychological Dimensions of Executive Coaching.
Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.
Clarkson, P. (2004). Gestalt Counselling in Action. London: Sage
Publications.
Joyce, P. and Sills, C. (2010). Skills in Gestalt. London: Sage
Publications.
Mackewn, J. (1997). Developing Gestalt Counselling. London: Sage
Publications.
Mann, D. (2010). Gestalt therapy: 100 key points and techniques.
Hove. UK: Routledge.
Parlett, M. (2000). Creative Adjustment and the Global Field. British
Gestalt Journal, 9, 1, pp. 15–27.
Perls, F., Hefferline, R. and Goodman, P. (1972). Gestalt Therapy:
Excitement and growth in the human personality. London: Sou-
venir Press.
Rogers, J. (2008). Coaching Skills: a handbook. Maidenhead, UK:
Open University Press.
Sills, C., Fish, S. and Lapworth, P. (1995). Gestalt Counselling.
Bicester, UK: Winslow Press.
Stevens, J. (ed). (1975). Gestalt is. Moab, Utah: Real People Press.
Whitmore, J. (2002). Coaching for Performance: GROWing People,
Performance and Purpose. London: Nicholas Brealey.
Yontef, G. (1993). Awareness, Dialogue & Process: Essays on Gestalt
Therapy. Gouldsboro, ME: Gestalt Journal Press.
Rodney Hill and Jamie Burnie have just completed a 4-year
Gestalt course at Manchester Gestalt Centre.
Rodney Hill has had over thirty years of senior management
experience in local government and the charitable sector. He
is a qualified executive and business coach. He volunteers as a
counsellor for Mind and has recently started a private
practice in Manchester.
Address for correspondence: 204 The Quadrangle, Lower
Ormond Street, Manchester, M1 5QE, UK.
Email: rodney@monsalvat.co.uk
Jamie Burnie works in both private practice and within the
Priory Group as a therapist and group facilitator.
Address for correspondence: jamieburnie@hotmail.com
Living Gestalt
Nicky Burton
A review of Gestalt at Work: Integrating Life,
Theory and Practice. Collected Papers of Seán
Gaffney, Volumes 1 and 2 edited by Anne Maclean.
Published by The Gestalt Institute Press, New
Orleans, 2010, 352 pages (vol. 1) and 376 pages
(vol. 2). Price: £22.00 each (pbk).
Anne Maclean in her foreword invites us to ‘see what
themes and threads you discover, what mystery you
may encounter as you read, what excites you as you
consider this collection’ (vol. 1, p. xi). This is wise
advice because there are so many different and disparate
themes within these volumes which deserve, and some-
times demand, reading, reflection, and re-reading. This
is because of the varied content (personal experiences,
theory and practice), because of the range of themes
covered (personal experiences, favourite philosophers,
groups, teams, organisations, cross cultural working,
social change) and because of Seán’s different ways of
creating dialogue and debate in print (such as his
invitations to colleagues to provide their perspective
and comments on his writing and ideas followed by his
reactions and responses). Seán Gaffney’s papers there-
fore require active participation and reward engage-
ment with stimulating ideas.
The most exciting and inspiring theme is, for me, the
story of Seán’s life: of Seán finding his way, opening to
new experiences, developing and integrating life, theory
and practice, and at the age of sixty-seven, completing a
doctorate of which these collected papers are an essen-
tial part. Throughout both volumes, Seán shares the key
events and relationships which formed, transformed,
and continue to shape his life.
Irish by birth, Seán is widely known as an inter-
national Gestalt practitioner, therapist, supervisor, OD
consultant and university lecturer who has lived in
Sweden since 1975 and has developed significant think-
ing and practice in group work. His potential as a
teacher and communicator was first perceived by the
novice master at the Cistercian monastery which Seán
entered as a novice monk aged seventeen. Seán’s story is
rich and diverse: the church’s insistence that he leave to
pursue a different vocation, his ensuing sense of failure,
the emergence of his international teaching, consulting
and therapy career, and his return to the monastery
forty years later. The resulting dissolution of his sense of
failure is absorbing.
I was particularly impacted by Seán’s descriptions of,
and his conversation with Belinda Harris about, his
son’s brutal illness and death, the breakdown of his
marriage, his own journey through mourning and the
62 Rodney Hill and Jamie Burnie
J: That’s a coincidence because it was the first one I
read – and I felt the same.
R: Although I would probably see some flaws in it now.
But the important point is that for a first book you
probably want something with that passion and excite-
ment.
J: So my view is that the new publication is an excellent
trainee book and stands well alongside the others but is
probably best not to be read as the very first book on
Gestalt.
R: I think that’s right. And I know you have bought a
copy and I have a well-thumbed review copy on my
shelves . . . so what better recommendation?
References
Bluckert, P. (2006). Psychological Dimensions of Executive Coaching.
Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.
Clarkson, P. (2004). Gestalt Counselling in Action. London: Sage
Publications.
Joyce, P. and Sills, C. (2010). Skills in Gestalt. London: Sage
Publications.
Mackewn, J. (1997). Developing Gestalt Counselling. London: Sage
Publications.
Mann, D. (2010). Gestalt therapy: 100 key points and techniques.
Hove. UK: Routledge.
Parlett, M. (2000). Creative Adjustment and the Global Field. British
Gestalt Journal, 9, 1, pp. 15–27.
Perls, F., Hefferline, R. and Goodman, P. (1972). Gestalt Therapy:
Excitement and growth in the human personality. London: Sou-
venir Press.
Rogers, J. (2008). Coaching Skills: a handbook. Maidenhead, UK:
Open University Press.
Sills, C., Fish, S. and Lapworth, P. (1995). Gestalt Counselling.
Bicester, UK: Winslow Press.
Stevens, J. (ed). (1975). Gestalt is. Moab, Utah: Real People Press.
Whitmore, J. (2002). Coaching for Performance: GROWing People,
Performance and Purpose. London: Nicholas Brealey.
Yontef, G. (1993). Awareness, Dialogue & Process: Essays on Gestalt
Therapy. Gouldsboro, ME: Gestalt Journal Press.
Rodney Hill and Jamie Burnie have just completed a 4-year
Gestalt course at Manchester Gestalt Centre.
Rodney Hill has had over thirty years of senior management
experience in local government and the charitable sector. He
is a qualified executive and business coach. He volunteers as a
counsellor for Mind and has recently started a private
practice in Manchester.
Address for correspondence: 204 The Quadrangle, Lower
Ormond Street, Manchester, M1 5QE, UK.
Email: rodney@monsalvat.co.uk
Jamie Burnie works in both private practice and within the
Priory Group as a therapist and group facilitator.
Address for correspondence: jamieburnie@hotmail.com
Living Gestalt
Nicky Burton
A review of Gestalt at Work: Integrating Life,
Theory and Practice. Collected Papers of Seán
Gaffney, Volumes 1 and 2 edited by Anne Maclean.
Published by The Gestalt Institute Press, New
Orleans, 2010, 352 pages (vol. 1) and 376 pages
(vol. 2). Price: £22.00 each (pbk).
Anne Maclean in her foreword invites us to ‘see what
themes and threads you discover, what mystery you
may encounter as you read, what excites you as you
consider this collection’ (vol. 1, p. xi). This is wise
advice because there are so many different and disparate
themes within these volumes which deserve, and some-
times demand, reading, reflection, and re-reading. This
is because of the varied content (personal experiences,
theory and practice), because of the range of themes
covered (personal experiences, favourite philosophers,
groups, teams, organisations, cross cultural working,
social change) and because of Seán’s different ways of
creating dialogue and debate in print (such as his
invitations to colleagues to provide their perspective
and comments on his writing and ideas followed by his
reactions and responses). Seán Gaffney’s papers there-
fore require active participation and reward engage-
ment with stimulating ideas.
The most exciting and inspiring theme is, for me, the
story of Seán’s life: of Seán finding his way, opening to
new experiences, developing and integrating life, theory
and practice, and at the age of sixty-seven, completing a
doctorate of which these collected papers are an essen-
tial part. Throughout both volumes, Seán shares the key
events and relationships which formed, transformed,
and continue to shape his life.
Irish by birth, Seán is widely known as an inter-
national Gestalt practitioner, therapist, supervisor, OD
consultant and university lecturer who has lived in
Sweden since 1975 and has developed significant think-
ing and practice in group work. His potential as a
teacher and communicator was first perceived by the
novice master at the Cistercian monastery which Seán
entered as a novice monk aged seventeen. Seán’s story is
rich and diverse: the church’s insistence that he leave to
pursue a different vocation, his ensuing sense of failure,
the emergence of his international teaching, consulting
and therapy career, and his return to the monastery
forty years later. The resulting dissolution of his sense of
failure is absorbing.
I was particularly impacted by Seán’s descriptions of,
and his conversation with Belinda Harris about, his
son’s brutal illness and death, the breakdown of his
marriage, his own journey through mourning and the
 Book review: Collected Papers of Seán Gaffney, Maclean (ed.)
discovery of meaning in his son’s life (chapters three
and four, vol. 1, and chapter fourteen, vol. 2). Seán’s
poems express the rawness of his grief particularly
vividly and poignantly, along with his courage and his
growing acceptance and capacity, through his Gestalt
training, to stay with his grief whilst being open to new
challenges, to find joy and ‘always being alive’ (vol. 1,
p. 68).
This aliveness is conveyed in other ways: through
recounting other aspects of his life such as his experi-
ences of being Irish and the impact of racial prejudice
(chapters one and fifteen, vol. 2), through his passion-
ate interest in theory, especially Kierkegaard and Lewin
(chapter one, vol. 1; and chapters twelve, vol. 1, and
thirteen, vol. 2, respectively), through his sharing of live
consulting experiences and his exploration and refining
of this thinking about groups and multiculturalism. I
particularly enjoyed Seán’s chapter on Kierkegaard’s life
and ideas. Seán conveys simultaneously his own sense of
fun and scholarliness whilst positioning Kierkegaard as
an early Gestaltist, connecting themes in Kierkegaard’s
work with Paul Goodman’s writings, with awareness,
the experiment in Gestalt and with the paradoxical
theory of change, and finally illustrating how Kierke-
gaard has informed his own Gestalt practice.
As an organisation development consultant, Seán’s
detailed step-by-step description of an OD intervention
is simultaneously familiar and illuminating (chapter
five, vol. 1). Alongside the story of an engagement in the
complex area of HIV/AIDS work, Seán explores aspects
ranging from contracting, fees, and report writing to
relevant Gestalt theory and process. He also shares his
in-the-moment feelings and thoughts and use of self, as
things go well and not so well. It is rare to read this level
of self-disclosure and to have such a multidimensional,
integrated description of an OD intervention. Seán
conveys beautifully how Gestalt OD is a lived change
process, not a checklist of change techniques, and this
chapter is an innovative approach to providing both a
cognitive understanding and a felt sense of what Gestalt
OD is all about. In ensuing commentaries, a physician
and community/economic development specialist
explore their personal experiences in similar HIV/
AIDS work, exploring how Gestalt can be a valuable
process theory whilst pointing out limits to Gestalt
theory in understanding complex social phenomena.
Seán describes further examples of integrating theory
and practice (chapters eleven, vol. 1, and eleven and
thirteen, vol. 2). Often Gestalt psychotherapy and OD
are seen as separate practices but Seán makes the case
for the two to be seen as siblings or twins, with the same
theoretical roots. His examples illustrate how Gestalt
OD can make the same demands on practitioners as
psychotherapy, but in an environment made more
complex by multiple dimensions.
63
Seán explores the theme of working in complex
environments from a theoretical and personal perspec-
tive in his papers on Gestalt and social change and on
multicultural and group working. With mini cases and
cross cultural incidents, Seán shows how well known
theories and constructs such as individualism, famil-
ism, and collectivism can deepen understanding of
different cultures. He emphasises the importance of
being aware of our own cultural context, for example,
how Gestalt OD is grounded in low context cultures of
individualism. As an alternative to culture-bound US
and Anglo Saxon models, Seán proposes a culture-free
Gestalt-based model for improved working with diverse
groups, working with contact modalities and emphasis-
ing working with clients from where they are. The paper
(chapter seven, vol. 1) is completed with eight com-
mentaries and final comments from Seán raising,
amongst other aspects, field theory and phenomen-
ology as critical for working multiculturally.
In sharing his thinking and practice about group work,
Seán proposes egotism and confluence as the existential
dilemma and foundation of group process, providing
lively examples of his model in practice. At times in
describing his approach to working multiculturally and
with groups, Seán’s writings are lively and at times dense
as he seeks to weave his thinking into a range of theoret-
ical perspectives and differentiate his own perspective. In
chapter eight, vol. 1, four commentaries and a conversa-
tion tease out further aspects of Gestalt theory in relation
to groups at the end of Seán’s paper. This format is varied
slightly in chapter seven, vol. 2, with comments from
practitioners and students on a paper on group process
and dynamics. Including comment after or within a
paper is an interesting and valuable way of expanding
and diversifying debate. However, it requires concentra-
tion on the part of the reader to enter into the thinking of
different commentators especially when comments are
inserted between paragraphs. The effect can be disruptive
and at times it creates a sense of work unfinished or
unevenly integrated.
Seán’s collected papers exemplify the integration of
life, theory, and practice, and are a major contribution
to the theory and practice of contemporary Gestalt. The
richness and diversity of the content means that they are
demanding to read from cover to cover, and in many
ways are best dipped into, and here an index would have
been helpful.
Nicky Burton is an executive coach and organisation devel-
opment consultant working with individuals and teams
internationally. She has masters degrees in Organisation
Behaviour and Gestalt Psychotherapy and is a BWY yoga
teacher.
Address for correspondence: nickyjburton@gmail.com
British Gestalt Journal
2013, Vol. 22, No. 2, 64–65
Opinion
The psychotherapist as a
hacker
Georgios Giaglis
Received 2 May 2013
Context: Hacking refers to exploring computer systems
and making them do more than they are designed to do.
Psychotherapy is also about exploration and innova-
tion. The two cultures may not be as different as they
seem!
The information processing theory is an approach to the
study of human development, where the human brain is
seen as a kind of neural computer. Although I don’t
agree with this view, I would consider the idea that a
psychotherapist is a hacker of the human soul. Opposite
to the popular belief that a hacker breaks into computer
systems to steal or infuse chaos, the original meaning of
the term (used by hackers themselves) refers to ‘a
person who delights in having an intimate understand-
ing of the internal workings of a system’,1 ‘someone
who gets a thrill from solving problems’.2 In other
words, a hacker is a person who is not content with
superficial knowledge, who enjoys in-depth under-
standing (of computers and networks), and who
actively uses her knowledge in order to solve problems
and promote the improvement (‘growth’) of the
system. Or, my personal favourite definition, ‘hacking
means exploring the limits of what is possible in a spirit
of playful cleverness’.3 Sounds familiar?
Hackers are different from most people. They are
intelligent, creative, curious, explorative and certainly
persistent. Psychotherapists, on the other hand, tend to
be empathic and emotionally aware (let’s call that
emotional intelligence!) while patience, curiosity and
a love for adventure in the realms of human interaction
surely are qualities of the (good) therapist. A hacker
enjoys action (programming) rather than theorising
about it.4 In order to gain access to (and subsequently
modify) a computer system, the hacker experiments
with different approaches, invents new ways of inter-
action, breaks the pattern, finds exceptions to the rules.
In order to enhance the functionality of a system, the
hacker incorporates contemporary knowledge, ad-
dresses current needs, transforms the obsolete into the
up-to-date. Experimentation, breaking the patterns of
# Copyright 2013 by Gestalt Publications Ltd.
interaction, creativity in problem solving and ‘updat-
ing’ the self to the current needs, desires and limitations
are also objectives of psychotherapy.
In the second chapter of his book Hackers: heroes of
the computer revolution,5 Steven Levy described the
hacker ethics. One of the foremost is that ‘[A]nything
might teach you something about the way the world
works’ (Levy, p. 28). In the same way, any experience,
any feeling, any ‘little’ detail can teach the therapist and
her client about the way we are; exploring is pivotal to
understanding. Information-sharing is also very im-
portant. Hackers like to help other people (especially
‘newbies’). They believe it is their duty to share their
expertise by writing open-source code, i.e. programs
that can be adopted, modified and used by anyone.
Psychotherapists treat their knowledge the same way:
they like to share it with their clients and with the whole
world.
Hackers mistrust authority as much as (humanistic)
psychologists mistrust dogma. The truth is not (or
should not be) a privilege of the few. Hackers love
‘forks’, i.e. taking a piece of software and independently
developing it, creating a distinct piece of software.
Linux, hackers’ favourite operating system, has more
than a hundred different versions/forks! If it doesn’t
suit you, you can modify it to fit your needs (i.e.
personalise it)! Therapists encourage their clients to
create their own truth, keeping what is useful, dropping
what is harmful, giving personal meaning to their
experience.
Finally, hackers (like therapists) believe that compu-
ters (like therapy) can change life for the better. Com-
puters can be used to create art and beauty, not only for
tedious work; such as life itself should be. Recently ‘life
hacking’ has been proposed: trying to make everyday
life easier, using tricks or novel approaches to solve
problems in a clever way.
So, what can we learn from hackers? Eric S. Raymond
in How to become a hacker advises, among other things:
Work as intensely as you play and play as intensely as
you work. Study a meditation discipline. Train in a
martial-arts form. Don’t be content with a narrow range
of skills. Develop an ear for music, your appreciation of
puns and wordplay. Publish useful information. Serve
the hacker culture itself.2
Personally, I find that identifying myself as a ‘hacker
of the soul’ inspires me into sharing knowledge, having
more patience and commitment, exploring and experi-

menting, creating a new technique for each problem, a
new therapy for each client, and constantly learning,
evolving as well as contributing back to the community
(as I am doing right now, hopefully). But above all, the
hacker mindset helps me to be playful with my work. As
Eric S. Raymond writes: ‘For true hackers, the bound-
aries between ‘‘play’’, ‘‘work’’, ‘‘science’’, and ‘‘art’’ all
tend to disappear, or to merge into a high-level creative
playfulness’.2
Notes
1. Malkin, G. and Parker, L. (1993). RFC 1932. Internet Users’
Glossary. https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1392.txt Accessed 29 April
2013.
2. Raymond, E. (2001). How to become a hacker. http://www.cat-
b.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html Accessed 29 April 2013.
The psychotherapist as a hacker 65
3. Stallman, R. (2002). On hacking. http://stallman.org/articles/on-
hacking.html Accessed 29 April 2013.
4. Raymond, E. and Steele, G. (eds.). (2003). The online hacker
jargon file, version 4.4.8. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/
hacker. html Accessed 29 April 2013.
5. Levy, S. (1984/2010). Hackers: Heroes of the Computer
Revolution – 25th Anniversary Edition. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly.
Dr. Georgios Giaglis is a neurologist and a psychologist. He
holds a MSc in Medical Research, a MSc in Cognitive
Psychology and a PhD in Neuroscience. He has studied
neuropsychology and neuropsychiatry in London. He is a
Gestalt therapist, trained by the Gestalt Foundation of
Greece. He is currently living and working in Thessaloniki,
Greece.
Address for correspondence: giaglis@hotmail.com