Aware Relations

Here and Now: Primacy of the Present Moment

In its theory, is methodology, its practice, and its applications, Gestalt therapy is a present-centered approach. Both of the central concepts upon which Gestalt therapy is based--awareness, and the field--have meaning only in terms of the present moment. All of the important strains of philosophical, spiritual, political, scientific, and psychological thought which underpin Gestalt therapy's concentration on the phenomenology and problems of awareness share this, though some simply take it for granted while others put it front and center.

Gestalt psychology, for example, is concerned with the nature and structure of perceptual experience. This work is unavoidably present centered: By definition it is about what is perceived in the present moment. Many areas of inquiry and knowledge are present-centered in this same way: physics, chemistry, biology, architecture, and nursing are examples. In contrast, others such as astronomy, sociology, anthropology, and political science, look to a significant extent at the past, while another group--history itself, of course, but also geology, paleontology, the law, archeology--turn their attention as much or more to the past as to the present. Holism, akin to Gestalt psychology, is another scientific and philosophical field which has made an important contribution to both the central ideas of Gestalt therapy. It is present centered in the same way as Gestalt psychology, because it is impossible to conceive of the holistic perspective without its present-centered focus.

This is also true of phenomenology. Phenomenology takes as its subject matter the study of the objects and events we perceive and the development of thorough and comprehensive methods for observing and examining them. The philosophical school called existentialism takes as its main concern modern (and present-centered) questions about the nature and meaning of living, death, and personal relations, and the nature of our relation to authorities, including God. Even psychoanalysis betrays a recognition of the importance of the here and now, in concepts such as transference and countertranseference, which are ways of characterizing phenomena in the psychotherapeutic present moment, and in its current interest in what they call "the real relationship" in therapy. Reich's seminal analytic work on character analysis, where the therapy centers on the body and bodily experience in the present moment, was a step further forward in that same direction.

What does this mean, "present centered"? In essence, it means that what is important is what is actual, not what is potential or what is past, but what is here, now. What is actual is, in terms of time, always the present; in terms of location, it is what is here, in front of us. Hence this familiar phrase: the here and now. Behind this idea is the conviction that studying, describing, and observing what is available to us now will allow us to comprehend it satisfactorily. In Kierkegaard's famous phrase, "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." A present-centered approach is distinguished from a historical one, in which the present is seen as a consequence of past causes. The historical point of view stands inevitably in the present, looking backward to the past. A present-centered approach stands in the present and looks at it, here and now.

For a historical perspective the critical animating force is the question, Why? What caused these present conditions? The answers have to do with past events. This necessarily turns one's eyes away from the present moment. "To understand," wrote Poulet, "is almost the opposite of existing." A present-centered approach raises different questions: How? What? What is this? What is the experience of this? Of what does it consist? How is this for me? How is this organized? From this point of view, the past is here, now. It is embedded in the present. The present contains everything. Memo-ties, dreams, reflections are all present activities. They take place in the now. They concern events which occurred at some other time, as do anticipating, planning, preparing. But remembering is done in the present, planning is done in the present, reflecting is done in the present. It cannot be otherwise.

In the Gestalt present-centered approach, our interest is as much or more in the experience and awareness of remembering as it is in what is remembered. A present-centered approach leads more to attempts to embrace the present, to encompass it, and to appreciate it than it does to questions about the past (even the past in the present). A present-centered psychotherapy almost inevitably becomes a way of making it possible to better embrace the present moment, as well as a way of illuminating how we manage to miss so much of the present. Some present-centered philosophies come to despair in the recognition that our present lives are all there is. It is perhaps an article of faith in Gestalt therapy--or maybe just a profound commitment to its conception of our own human nature--that the present moment, should we be fully attuned to it and absorbed in it, is sufficient. It will allow us to make lives that are not only the best that can be lived in the circumstances, but also, granting some measure of decent circumstances, good enough.

The Nature and Shape of Awareness: Awareness as Creation

We usually think awareness is an indiscriminate, random, and passive process--that waves of light touch our eyes, that waves of sound touch our ears, that our awareness of events and people is controlled by the way they capture our attention. In our view, this is only a partial description of the character of awareness. It is a description of its passive aspect. Gestalt therapists consider awareness as an interplay in which both the individual and the environment participate. Each is both active and passive in turn.

Take this example. You are beginning to lose interest in your work, having become aware that you are hungry. Your textbooks and papers, your desk and chair fade out of your awareness as you begin thinking about the things in the refrigerator and whether the local pizza delivery place is still open. Opening the refrigerator door, you sort out its contents with your hands and eyes, shifting bottles and containers. Notice how your awareness is shaped by what is important to you, and how you shape your reality accordingly. You see what is interesting and important to you now, at this moment-this hungry moment--reaching out into the field with your eyes: you seek out and see the refrigerator, not the dishwasher, the cans of beans, not furniture wax. Conversely, the things that are not important at this moment--your studies, your family, your sexual appetites--are phenomenologically insignificant. For the moment, they do not exist; you have caused them to disappear.

Or take this different example. It is early morning. You have been up late last night past the hour when you can count on having a good night's sleep. Sure enough, when your alarm goes off, it interrupts your sound sleep and wrenches you awake. From your point of view, your awareness is suddenly awakened by the sound of your alarm clock, as though the clock has thrust itself under your nose or shaken you by your collar. . Here, the environment is active--vigorously so--from the phenomenological point of view. You, on the other hand, are positively pushed around by the force of the interruption in this particular interplay of individual and environment.

What Is Awareness?

Awareness has five distinct qualities. They are contact, sensing, excitement, figure formation, and wholeness.

Contact is the meeting of differences. For us--that is, from the point of view of our own experience--it is coming up against the other, what is different from what we think of, or feel, or experience as us. (This is discussed in the next section.)

Sensing determines the nature of awareness. Close sensing is sensate, touching or feeling; far sensing is visual and auditory perception. Although these last two are functions of our organs, they are experienced at a distance. Although most close and far sensing occurs outside us, sensing can also occur within us, where it is called "proprioception." Thoughts and dreams are included here, as well as body sensations and emotions.

Excitement covers the range of emotional and physiological excitation from the most diffuse hum of well-being through the sharper alertness and interest to the most shrill and concentrated. If we turn to see someone on the street who reminds us of a close friend, our awareness includes contacting the person we see, the stranger in the environment. It also includes our memories, the proprioceptive contacting of ideas and feelings. Our interest, a form of excitement, might be just a mild murmur of attentiveness or it might be an arresting swell, felt as deep breathing or pleasure, tingling or flushing, or an impulse toward action. When we speak of our experience, it is usually these qualities, awareness, sensing, and excitement, and figure formation to which we are referring.

Figure formation refers to the way awareness is shaped and developed. In this example of seeing a stranger, a central focus of interest has emerged. This is characteristic of the second phase of figure formation. Figure formation will be discussed in the section after contact.

The final fundamental quality of awareness is wholeness. The statement for which Gestalt psychology is perhaps best known, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts," embodies holistic principles. The word "greater" is meant qualitatively, not quantitatively. The whole is different from, more encompassing than what you can conclude by adding the parts together. Looking at the functioning of the components of our hands--the five digits, the palm, the back--is not sufficient to tell us what the totality is. A hand is a unity, a whole, which, while composed of elements, can be understood fully only in its entirety. In fact, it cannot be understood essentially at all except as a whole.

What is a whole? First, it is a loose translation of the German word "gestalt," meaning something which is experienced as a singularity although it is composed of distinct elements. The word "gestalt" suggests much more in its German context than do the words which are used in English as equivalents: whole, configuration, and figure. As a consequence, it is used in our own language even outside Gestalt therapy and Gestalt psychology to refer to these wholes of experience.

Anything which is experienced as a whole may be a gestalt. A person may be a whole, though he or she has a heart, a mind, a history. Yet, at another time, a person may be a part of a whole, part of a marriage or a class or a team or a music group. In these instances, each aggregate is the whole, and the individuals themselves are elements. Gestalts can be composed of any elements in the field. A hand is a grouping of physical elements; so is a body. Wholes may be groupings of ideas: The Rights of Man is one example; women's rights is another. Wholes may be composed of past events, such as a history of the Middle Ages, or of the American Revolution. Wholes may combine different kinds of elements; America, love, Buddhism, and evolution are examples.

These examples also illustrate how these wholes are given in the nature of our experience. In fact, it is basic to Gestalt thinking (brought over from Gestalt psychology) that wholes are existentially intrinsic to us. We cannot live without forming wholes of experience. Gestalt therapy is concerned with wholeness in other ways as well: with wholeness as a defining quality of healthy living; with the unity of mind, body, and spirit (the wholeness of the individual); and with ecological wholeness, the oneness of ourselves and our environment.

The Field Perspective

There are other principles which underlie Gestalt psychology and also serve as a basis for the theoretical structure of Gestalt therapy. They come from modern physics and are part of what is known as field theory. The field perspective views all phenomena as inextricably linked, part of a vast network of interaction which is called the field.

The field perspective makes the interactive nature of the field primary. From this point of view, particular things, be they objects, animate life, ideas, exist first by virtue of the interplay with each other and their relation to the entire field. Of course, their particular qualities are to be known as well, but these are never considered abstractly, by themselves, in isolation, but always in the context of the field.

As this applies to Gestalt therapy, the authors of Gestalt Therapy put it this way:

In any psychological investigation whatever, we must start from the interacting of the organism and its environment. Every human function is an interacting in an organism/environment field, socio-cultural, animal and physical. No matter how we theorize about impulses, drives, etc., it is always to such an interacting field that we are referring, and not to an isolated animal. [Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1951, p. 228]

The interactive grounding of Gestalt therapy inevitably focuses its psychotherapy on the interactions which occur in the here and now of the therapy meeting. By definition, the relation of the persons in therapy is a major focus of the therapeutic work, whether the therapy is individual, couple, group, or family therapy, or working with larger groups such as agencies, work groups, organizations, cities, or nations.

The field includes those who study or observe it. Since all the aspects of the field are related, there is no way to know a field except within it, as a part of it. Thus, studying the field means including yourself in your study. Elements of the field can be known only in terms of their relation to us, our relation to them, and of course in terms of the tools, instruments and sensibilities with which we meet and study them. There is no objectivity in field theory, because there is nothing you can objectify, nothing you can stand outside. You are related to everything; everything is different because you exist in relation to it. Since there is no objectivity, there is no subjectivity, either--you cannot have one without the other. Instead, there are only different perspectives, different positions.

Research in a field includes the researcher's own tools and perspective, Therapy includes the therapist. What takes place in therapy is created by both the therapy and the person or persons who come to therapy, and the therapeutic work is the work done by all the individuals in the room. These principles underlie the conviction shared by Gestalt therapists that technical and theoretical knowledge is not sufficient for the thorough training of Gestalt therapists. Intensive personal therapy is required as well. Since the therapist is part 6f the therapeutic work, effective psychotherapy demands the therapist's fullest measure of self-knowledge, so that his or her contribution to the therapy can be fully known.

In the 20th century, the field perspective has begun to replace the Newtonian or mechanistic scientific perspective which emerged in Western civilization at the onset of the Enlightenment. It is useful to contrast them. The Newtonian universe is a universe composed of subjective experience and reality, consisting of objects which are connected in the way billiard balls are connected, the ways the parts of a machine are connected. They are connected by contrivances and collisions which move them without changing them in any other way. Reality in this perspective exists independently of our experience, outside us. It is objective reality, the pool players' place, God's viewpoint--outside of things. Because reality is objective, facts--right and wrong--and objective truth are possible in this universe.

In contrast, in the relativistic universe--the term comes from the relativity theories which first defined the new physics--" facts" are replaced by probabilities dependent on context. Objectivity disappears, since there are no independent objects, no view outside the field.

Elements of the field are altered by their position in relation to other things. Nothing is independent. In a relativistic universe, we are part of what we are observing, describing, or measuring. In the Newtonian universe, the emphasis is on objects and their properties. In the relativistic one, the emphasis is on interaction, and objects and their properties are inseparable and known only in the different contexts in which they are found, as wholes and parts of whole events.

Although the older mechanistic approach has been replaced in modern science, the reader will recognize that the peoples of most Western cultures, including our own, still see the world in this way. Naturally, most psychological theories are also of this type. They look for the individual and the individual's psychological properties, ego states, cognition, tendencies to self-realization or to individuation. These are objects, the equivalents of the planets in a Newtonian universe. Alternatively, the new perspective looks at the dimensions of interplay in time and space, the effects of relatedness over time. Its terminology reflects relatedness. Important wholes in the field, for example, are characterized as vague or pervasive, looming or far reaching, concentrated or diffused, directly or complexly related. This contrasts with the equivalent mechanistic terms, which include "core," as in core neurosis; "deep"; "early," as in early trauma; "low" and "high," and as in higher functioning, for instance. The model of the latter is historical rather than present centered, and three or even two dimensional rather than four dimensional (the fourth dimension is time, which in this context is process), as well as object oriented.

A principal conclusion of the Gestalt psychologists shows how the interactive field perspective and a phenomenological, awareness orientation are unified. Their experiments demonstrated that organizing our experience is intrinsic to our nervous systems. In the very moment we perceive or sense, we organize what we experience. Life as we live it is already organized.

If what exists is shaped, created as it is apprehended, the field is part of our awareness; our awareness is part of the field. The interaction is primary. Reality and experience are inseparable. It is impossible to separate the two. This is not the same as saying we structure reality, for that suggests that reality exists, out there, and we structure it. Rather, there is only the reality we know, the organized reality of our experience. The field is ourselves, too; we and the environment. It is a whole composed of us and the environment. The Gestalt psychologists sought to define the principles by which our experience is structured in our interplay with the rest of the field. Gestalt therapy works to attune each individual to the organizing principles themselves, by concentrating on awareness, the primacy of relations, and their unity.