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Hello, darkness |
| "Noting and accepting the pain that enters our lives is far less damaging to our wellbeing than avoiding it – with the ensuing loss of a meaningful humanity" |
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Two authors in your October 2007 issue – Steven Hayes (‘Hello darkness’on developments in the field of CBT), and John Rowan (‘The dialogical self’ on personification) – offered their topics as new.
Ever heard of Gestalt?
Two authors in your October 2007 issue – Steven Hayes (‘Hello darkness’on developments in the field of CBT), and John Rowan (‘The dialogical self’ on personification) – offered their topics as new. It seems that neither author knows much about Gestalt therapy, which has been advocating these approaches for years.
I found it wonderful and exciting that CBT seems to be transforming itself into a humanistic and very Gestalt approach. There is the pleasure of Gestalt being confirmed and corroborated. But more importantly, I felt relief and excitement that such a huge chunk of the world’s total practice might be transformed, over time, into the more creative and three dimensional therapy (heart, head and body) that Gestalt has always been. Maybe ‘the field’ does have some holistic teleological force within it.
‘Personification’, that is, taking ownership of and speaking from various ‘I-positions’, has always been part of Gestalt – and not just as a fixed twochair technique. Perls was doing this in the 1950s.
It seems that the process of Gestalt’s ideas seeping into other approaches – which has been going on since its inception – is continuing. Maybe this is a reflection of Gestaltists’ reluctance to put their theory and practice forward into the wider world that needs to be addressed. But there is still something galling about clothes being stolen without recognition, or even awareness.
I know about the philosophical and historical roots of Gestalt and how there are no new ideas in the world; Gestalt started as a particularly powerful synthesis and integration of the ideas around at that time. I’m also fairly aware of the plethora of other therapies in the field – whereas the lack of awareness, especially on the part of Steven Hayes, seems astonishing, re-inventing parts of Gestalt and calling it something new.Jim Robinson
