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CHARACTER, PSYCHOPATHOLOGY, AND DEVELOPMENT

            The conception of character in Gestalt therapy was inspired by the work of Wilhelm Reich, a leading figure in German psychoanalysis in the 1920s and 1930s, and a teacher of F. S. Perls. Reich developed character analysis when it had become apparent that examining the mental life of those in psychoanalysis was not enough to effect significant changes in their lives. Reich concluded that the body needed analysis in the same way the psyche did. Although this was entirely in keeping with Freud's emphasis on psycho­somatic unity, Reich was much more interested in how the body is tied to the psychic life or mind than the other way around.

           Character analysis is a way of paying attention to the physical dimensions of the individual--the body: movement, breathing, musculature, speech, posture--in the therapy. As holists, Gestalt therapists consider the body/ mind a unity, and involve ourselves with the physical dimensions of the individual with the same avid interest we bring to the emotional, spiritual, and cognitive dimensions. Reich's method, with its present-centered focus on the individual in the therapy room, has been adopted and adapted by Gestalt therapists.

           From the Gestalt perspective, character is what we do characteristically. That is, it is the typical ways in which we function emotionally, physically, intellectually, spiritually. Each of us has a characteristic way of walking, of talking, of responding to fatigue and sleeplessness, of becoming sexually aroused, of meeting new people, of using our eyes and voice, of understand­ing a problem. Character is what is characteristic of us.

           This conception of character is a present-centered one. It is true, of course; that what is characteristic of us is what we have learned in context and interplay with what we are given--that is, it is something we have grown to. At the same time, we are not saying that character is something inside us that makes us act a certain way. That is mechanistic thinking, the engine which is needed to drive the machinery. It creates an extra part of the individual, "character," which makes us act. On the contrary, in Gestalt therapy, what we are and what we do are inseparable. Character is what we are, what we do regularly.

           In health, there is very little character, just as there is very little personal­ity. A hallmark of free functioning is flexibility. No matter how similar to a past situation the present one is, the present moment is unique. You are not the person you were then--you cannot be--and the situations are therefore never identical, even if the other conditions appear to be identical. In con­trast, habitual behavior is out of touch. To be responsive to unique situations is to respond differently than you have done before. This is free functioning, and it suggests that character restricts our responsiveness.

           In another way of speaking, taken from everyday language, character connotes integrity and distinctiveness. In this sense, character is plenteous in health. Integrity and distinctiveness are important dimensions of free functioning, because free functioning requires that we find our unique responses to the present circumstances, the ones which most exactly fulfill them.

           Gestalt therapists work with a theory of psychopathology based on figure formation and the contact boundary disturbances. When the contact boundary is disturbed outside awareness, we become unable to distinguish the field as fully as we would be able to if the boundary had not been altered; we may mistake one thing for another and miss certain other things altogether. A careful and thorough description of how this occurs as figures emerge, de­velop, and are destroyed in each single instance constitutes an understanding of what is amiss and what is right from the Gestalt point of view. It is an understanding of figure formation; it can be applied in a multitude of circumstances because it is the structure of these situations, of our everyday lives as well as the remarkable special moments. This is what Van Gogh had in mind when he wrote, "If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time insight into and understanding of many things."

           Though Gestalt therapists are informed about current conceptions of psy­chopathology, they are out of step with them, for several reasons. Our emphasis, in Gestalt therapy, on the necessarily unique events occurring in the present moment and on individual solutions to individual problems has led to a concentration on enhancing the particulars of psychotherapy--in method, a focus on learning to be fully in the present moment, for instance--and not to the kind of generalizing which would result in a theory of psychopathology. Gestalt therapists are inclined by their training to consider pathology as emergent in the therapeutic process, to be encountered as it appears, not before. This way of doing things--in contrast to the usual method, where estimates are made about the individual at the beginning of therapy on the basis of tests and interviews--reduces the value of developing a theory of psychopathology. Finally, we believe that human beings, virtually all of us, are both the architects of our own misfortune and the ministers of our own healing. Psychopathology itself, with its attendant connotations of disease (afflictions from outside) and treatment (also, in the medical model that spawns psychopathology, applied from outside) is foreign to our point of view.

           Our preference, instead, is for a careful, moment-by-moment examina­tion of the way in which the person creates figures in the therapy situation. This is done utilizing the conceptual structure of the contact boundary distur­bances and figure formation. If we examine any figure as it is being created and destroyed, we can see if the creative process is interrupted or impaired in any phase, and also how the contact boundary is manipulated in order to do this.

           There are a multitude of possibilities. Perhaps a person avoids the uncer­tainty inherent in the forecontact phase and forces the figure/ground differen­tiation instead, without taking the time to find out what is available in the field and what interests him or her. Perhaps the person does this by deducing appetites rather than feeling them: "I must be hungry--it's time to eat," or "Of course I love you! I wouldn't have married you if 1 didn't love you." Perhaps she acts on principle, whether it applies in this situation or not: "Of course I trust you, doctor--you are a professional person." Perhaps he proceeds without even the illusion of an appetite: "I know I need to be here. My wife and all my friends say so."

           In contacting, in the second phase, is she clumsy and grabby or penetrat­ing or insufficiently curious or afraid of the aggression required by the acts of tearing things apart and grinding them up: "I don't want to cause anyone any pain. I wouldn't want to say what I think; it might hurt him." Can he bite things off and tear them away from what they are a part of while staying in touch with them and the experience of dividing the element? "I know I need to talk to him. He's been working for me for 2 years and can't do the job, but I can't bear to fire him." Or, "Yes, I'm not very happy with the way things are going, but I am afraid to speak up. I don't want to make any trouble."

           In the final contact phase of figure formation, is he afraid to let go, afraid of really getting his teeth into it, afraid to go beyond what we can control? Is she nonorgasmic? Does he always have to be in charge when he gets together with his friends? Conversely, is she unwilling to wait until passions are high enough? Does she plunge into new romances without making sure he is worthy of her love?

           In the penultimate postcontact phase, does she allow enough time for contemplating the end of the figure, or does she distract herself immediately after the job is completed? In therapy, for instance, does she cry a bit and then reach for the tissues, saying "That's enough, now. I know why I'm crying." Does he hold on to what is dying or dead, an old girlfriend or college days or the 1950s: "I suppose I should go find someone else, but honestly, I try. No one else interests me. I would rather think about her." Or, its opposite, does she rush into a new activity as soon as the old one shows signs of ending ("Sorry--I've got to get back to work"), though it is still not concluded?

           Each of these observations is based on our understanding of figure forma­tion. We start by observing where the phases do not coincide with what will create the best figure. We will be able to notice where important elements of the field are being avoided. Sometimes these elements are aspects of the self, as when a woman avoids asserting herself because she does not want to experience taking charge of a situation. Subsequently, our knowledge of the contact boundary disturbances guides our observations as we learn to see how these interferences with free functioning are achieved. If you do not have an orgasm, how do you achieve this? Do you sense the rising wave of release and resist it by tightening your vaginal muscles or sphincter, or do you check out, beginning to think about something else? If you eat when you are not hungry, are you avoiding your anxiety or even anger about the job your teacher is doing, chewing your food with a ferocity which is intended for chewing her out?

           Anxiety, a difficulty of these first two phases, warrants especial mention both for the frequency with which it occurs and for Gestalt therapy's remark­able approach to it. It arises in this contact phase and sometimes earlier, in the forecontact phase, when the emerging figure cannot develop further because it is divided. Instead of figure/ground emerging out of the undifferentiated field, the differentiation takes the form of two elements which are both significant but which cannot join in a single figure. Since figure formation requires that a single figure emerge and develop, the process remains stuck at this point. The figure divides when one's interests are split or unclear or, as in this case, when the important elements which enter the foreground are at odds with each other.

           Anxiety is a special case of this. When the individual is anxious, the emerging figure is being divided by the tension which occurs at the same time as the mounting excitement which normally accompanies (or even sometimes announces) the gestalt. This tensing of the musculature is often experienced as labored breathing or rapid, shallow breathing, alert tunnel vision, self-consciousness, tingling in the soft inside of the arm, and an overall tension in the superficial muscles. Emotionally, the main experience is fear or a feeling related to it: restlessness, dread, panic. The reader will recognize that these physical reactions are symptoms of fear. Perls et al. (1951) called anxiety the fear of one's own daring, and it now becomes possible to understand this. Anxiety is the conflict which arises when we are caught between our interest in something and our fears of it. We want to speak up in class because we have something to say, but we are afraid to say something stupid.  We want to introduce ourselves to someone in the room, but we do not want to appear vulnerable. The paradigm for anxiety is stage fright: We want to go on stage, we are ready to go on stage--but the curtain does not go up for another hour. So we are anxious, at odds with ourselves.

           Eating and its ancillary functions--the development of appetite, seeking out food, taking it in, tasting and chewing it, and the subsequent digestion and elimination--is a familiar and penetrating instance of figure formation.  F. S. Perls, in Ego, Hunger and Aggression, developed and extended it beyond its immediate circumstances into a conceptualization called the mental metabolism. Some of the examples in the preceding paragraphs utilize it.   We have appetites for companionship, for sleep, for meaningful work, for recognition, for honesty. The folk wisdom of our culture already recognizes this, in phrases such as, "Let me chew on that for a while," "I need something more substantial to do--something I can get my teeth into," "You make me sick," and "Do you expect me to swallow that?" The mental metabolism discloses an important developmental dimension to Gestalt theory. It suggests that the ability to deal aggressively and creatively with the world, which is a given in the infant, takes a leap forward with the acquisition of teeth in the last half of the first year. From the onset of baby teeth, children are not limited to what can be gummed and swallowed and require less of the predigestion on the part of the environment which milk and then mashed and ground-up foods represent. Children have a more varied and skilled way to deal with their environment and turn it to their own interests. Young children can encounter more of the field, since their teeth can tear and bite off a piece more alien and process difficult aspects of it and chew them completely before it is swallowed. This conclusion has been seconded by recent research in child psychology and amendments to analytic theory which give infants a more central role in creating their life experi­ences. As Gestalt therapists, it obliges us to see how active even the youngest children are in shaping their own experience, and it supports our conviction that we are intimately involved in creating for ourselves the lives we lead.