For nearly a half century, the major part of his professional life, Frederick Perls, a significant co-creator of Gestalt Therapy, did not explicitly delineate this change theory, but it underlies much of his work and is implied in the practice of Gestalt techniques. I will call it the paradoxical theory of change, for reasons that shall become obvious. Briefly stated, it is this: change occurs when one becomes what he is, not when he tries to become what he is not. Change does not take place through a coercive attempt by the individual or by another person to change him, but it does take place if one takes the time and effort to be what he is – to be fully invested in his current positions and way of being. By rejecting the role of change agent, we make meaningful and orderly change possible.
The Gestalt therapist rejects the role of ‘changer,’ for his strategy is to encourage, even insist, that the patient be where and what he is. He believes change does not take place by ‘trying,’ coercion, or persuasion, or by insight, interpretation, or any other such means. Rather, change can occur when the patient abandons, at least for the moment, what he would like to become and attempts to be what he is. The premise is that one must stand in one place in order to have firm footing to move and that it is difficult or impossible to move without that footing.
The person seeking change by coming to therapy is in conflict with at least two warring intra-psychic factions. He is constantly moving between what he ‘should be’ and what he thinks he ‘is,’ never fully identifying with either. The Gestalt therapist asks the person to invest himself fully in his roles, one at a time. Whichever role he begins with, the patient soon shifts to another. The Gestalt therapist asks simply that he be what he is at the moment.
The patient comes to the therapist because he wishes to be changed. Many therapies accept this as a legitimate objective and set out through various means to try to change him, establishing what Perls calls the ‘top-dog/under-dog’ dichotomy. A therapist who seeks to help a patient change has left the egalitarian position and become the knowing expert, with the patient playing the helpless person, yet his goal is that he and the patient should become equals. The Gestalt therapist believes that the top-dog/under-dog dichotomy already exists within the patient, with one part trying to change the other, and that the therapist must avoid becoming locked into one of these roles. He tries to avoid this trap by encouraging the patient to accept both of them, one at a time, as his own.
The Analytical Therapist (e.g. Freudian), by contrast, uses devices such as dreams, free associations, transference, and interpretation to achieve insight that, in turn, may lead to change. The Behaviorist Therapist (e.g. Skinner) rewards or punishes behavior in order to modify it. 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.’
The Gestalt therapist further believes that the natural state of human beings is as a single, whole being – not fragmented into two or more opposing parts. In the natural state, there is constant change based on the dynamic transaction between the self and the environment.
Kardiner has observed that in developing his structural theory of defense mechanisms, Freud changed processes into structures (for example, denying into denial). The Gestalt therapist views change as a possibility when the reverse occurs, that is, when structures are transformed into processes. (Passive into active. Denial is a CONCEPT, denying is an active PROCESS and therefore contains more ‘leverage’.—JS note.) When this occurs, one is open to ‘participant interchange’ with his environment.
If alienated, fragmentary selves in an individual take on separate, compartmentalized roles, the Gestalt therapist encourages communication between the roles; he may actually ask them to talk to one another. If the patient objects to this or indicates a block, the therapist asks him simply to invest himself fully in the objection or the block. Experience has shown that when the patient identifies with the alienated fragments, integration does occur. Thus, by being what one is—fully—one can become something else.
The therapist, himself, is one who does not seek change, but seeks only to be who he is. The patient’s efforts to fit the therapist into one of his own stereotypes of people, such as a helper or a top-dog, create conflict between them. The end point is reached when each can be himself while still maintaining intimate contact with the other. The therapist, too, is moved to change as he seeks to be himself with another person. This kind of mutual interaction leads to the possibility that a therapist may be most effective when he changes most, for when he is open to change, he will likely have his greatest impact on his patient.
What has happened in the past 50 years to make this change theory, implicit in Perls’ work, acceptable, current, and valuable? Perls’ assumptions have not changed, but society has. For the first time in history, we find ourselves in a position where, rather than needing to adapt ourselves to an existing order, we must be able to adapt ourselves to a series of constantly-changing orders. Another ‘first’: The length of an individual’s life span is now greater than the length of time necessary for major social and cultural change to take place. Moreover, the rapidity with which this change occurs is accelerating.
Those therapies that direct themselves to the past and to individual history do so under the assumption that if an individual once resolves the issues around a traumatic personal event (usually in infancy or childhood), he will be prepared for all time to deal with the world; for the world is considered a stable order. Today, the problem is discerning where one stands in relationship to a shifting society. Confronted with a pluralistic, multifaceted, changing system, the individual is left to our own devices to find stability. We must do this through an approach that allows us to move dynamically and flexibly with the times while still maintaining some central gyroscope to guide us. We can no longer do this with ideologies, which become obsolete, but must do it with some kind of change theory, whether explicit or implicit. The goal of therapy becomes not so much developing a good, fixed character, but to being able to move with the times while retaining individual stability.
In addition to social change, which has brought contemporary needs into line with his change theory, Perls’ own stubbornness and unwillingness to be what he was not allowed to be made him ready for society when it was ready for him. Perls had to be what he was despite, or perhaps even because of, opposition from society. However, in his own lifetime he became integrated with many of the professional forces in his field in the same way that the individual may become integrated with alienated parts of himself through effective therapy.
The field of concern in psychiatry has now expanded beyond the individual as it has become apparent that the most crucial issue before us is the development of a society that supports the individual in his individuality. I believe that the same change theory outlined here is also applicable to social systems, that orderly change within social systems is in the direction of integration and holism; further, that the social-change agent has as his major function to ‘work with and in an organization so that it can change consistently with the changing dynamic equilibrium both within and outside the organization’. This requires that the system become conscious of alienated fragments within and without so it can bring them into the main functional activities by processes similar to identification in the individual. First, there is an awareness within the system that an alienated fragment exists; next that fragment is accepted as a legitimate outgrowth of a functional need that is then explicitly and deliberately mobilized and given power to operate as an explicit force. This, in turn. leads to communication with other subsystems and facilitates an integrated, harmonious development of the whole system.
