Living at the Boundary by Perls Laura (Lore)

Author:Perls, Laura (Lore) [Perls, Laura (Lore)]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: The Gestalt Journal Press
Published: 2012-03-23T04:00:00+00:00

"Two Instances of Gestalt Therapy" originally appeared in Volume III (1956) of Case Reports in Clinical Psychology.

One Gestalt Therapist's Approach

Confronted with the formidable list of questions that the Program Committee has set up, I am a very reluctant speaker. If this grand inquisitor were a patient coming for his first session with me armed with this type of question "what do you do, when ... ?" I would not try to answer a single one. Instead I might tell him a story.

Two beggars, a blind man and a fool, are traveling together. At the end of a long, hot day they come to a farmhouse and the fool says: "Let's go in and ask for a glass of milk." The blind one asks: "What is milk?" "Milk? Milk is white." "What is white?" "White? White is a swan." "But what is a swan?" "A swan is a large bird with a bent neck." "And what is 'bent'?" The fool takes the blind one's arm, straightens it out and says: "You see? This is straight. And this," he bends the other one's arm at the wrist and elbow: "this is `bent'." "Aaahh," says the blind man, "now I know what milk is!"

So let us go begging together and try to answer the first question: What to do with the reluctant patient?

All patients are reluctant about something or other, some time or other, Almost all patients are poorly motivated in the sense that they come, or are made to come, for the wrong reasons. I am suspicious of the patient who shows a great deal of insight and wears his suffering on the tip of his tongue. And I am wary of the overeager, enthusiastically cooperative patient who agrees and confirms, picks up the jargon in a jiffy, and dreams to order, He is reluctant to experience and express his difference of opinion, his doubts and objections.

But altogether, I am not particularly interested in the questions of motivation and referral. I take the patient as he presents himself at the time of his session with me, He was motivated enough to come for that appointment, and we take it from there, making contact with one another strictly on the basis of our mutual awareness at the time. Focusing on what is rather than on what is not or what should be usually gives the patient sufficient support to come for the next session — not necessarily a better motivation for "having therapy," but the willingness to continue contact with the therapist.

I have made home calls only in cases of immobilizing accidents and in two cases of agoraphobia. After a few weeks both patients were able to come to my office.

The patient who forgets or refuses to pay your fees will give indications of his reluctance right from the beginning of therapy not only in respect to money, but to anything else that you may ask of him: punctuality for appointments, information, expression of opinions and feelings, attempting an experiment, evaluation of his own or other people's attitudes and actions.

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