Dr.

Frederick �Fritz� Perls � on the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Gestalt

Therapy Verbatim - 1969.

Fritz Perls was one of the most creative, courageous, and influential
psychotherapists of the 20th Century. The creator of Gestalt Therapy, he was ever
exploring new ways of working. Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, published in 1969, was a
book that transformed psychotherapy for decades and it is still an astonishing and
empowering book to read. In it, Perls brings together a unique and powerful mix of
Psychoanalysis, Existentialism, Psychodrama, and Buddhism - along with his
astonishing gifts as a healer - to create an extraordinarily powerful form of
psychotherapeutic healing � one that continues to influence many contemporary
integrative therapies. In many respects, a complex and tragic man, he fought
through his pain and darkness to give the world this extraordinary therapy. On the
occasion of this anniversary, it is again appropriate to say, as so many others
have said, �Thank you, Fritz.�

�One of the most important moments in my life was after I had escaped Germany and
there was a position as a training analyst available in South Africa, and Ernest
Jones wanted to know who wanted to go. There were four of us: three wanted
guarantees. I said I take a risk. All the other three were caught by the Nazis. I
took a risk and I'm still alive.�

General Reflections

�Anxiety is the excitement, the elan vital which we carry with us, and which
becomes stagnated if we are unsure about the role we have to play.�

�We are not a summation of parts, but a coordination - a very subtle coordination
of all these different bits that go into the making of the organism.�

�Health is an appropriate balance of the coordination of all of what we are.�

�And I believe that this is the great thing to understand: that awareness per se -
by and of itself- can be curative.�

�The inner conflict, the struggle between the topdog and the underdog, is never
complete, because topdog as well as well as underdog fight for their lives.�

�Many people dedicate their lives to actualize a concept of what they should be
like, rather than to actualize themselves. This difference between self�
actualizing and self-image actualizing is very important. Most people only live for
their image.�

�Usually, the anxiety is not so deeply existential. It is just concerned with the
role we want to play, it's just stage fright.�

�When we think, we mostly talk to others in fantasy. We plan for the roles we want
to play.�

�We become phobic, we run away.....the ability to stay with what we are avoiding is
not easy, and for this you need somebody else to become aware of what you are
avoiding, because you are not aware...�

�We are continually projecting threatening fantasies onto the world, and these
fantasies prevent us from taking the reasonable risks which are part and parcel of
growing and living.�

�We would rather walk this earth as half-corpses than live dangerously, and realize
that this living dangerously is much safer than this insurance-life of safety and
not taking risks, which most of us decide to do.�

�Our life energy goes only into those parts of our personality with which we
identify.�

�But responsibility can also be spelled response-ability: the ability to respond,

to have thoughts, reactions, emotions in a certain situation. Now, this
responsibility, the ability to be what one is, is expressed through the word �I�.�

�Responsibility means the ability to respond: the ability to be alive, to feel, to

be sensitive.�

�Life is process; death is thing.�

�Fritz: Can you imagine what amount of energy is required to keep yourself so
stiff, playing the corpse?�

Awareness, Polarities, Dialogues, and Chairwork

�Basically I am doing a kind of individual therapy in a group setting...�

�I believe that in the workshop, you learn so much by understanding what's going on
in this other person, and realize that so much of his conflicts are your own, and
by identification you learn.�

�There was once a girl, a woman, who had lost her child not too long ago, and she
couldn't quite get in touch with the world. And we worked a bit, and we found she
was holding onto the coffin. She realized she did not want to let go of this
coffin. Now you understand, as long as she is not willing to face this hole, this
emptiness, this nothingness, she couldn't come back to life, to the others. So much
love is bound up here, in this coffin, that she rather invests her life in this
fantasy of having some kind of a child, even if it's a dead child. When she can
face her nothingness and experience her grief, she can come back to life and get in
touch with the world.�

�Change seats. Now the term I have for this is "write your script." You invent a
script of a dialogue between two opponents. This is part of integrating the
fragmented parts of your personality, and these usually go in opposites - for
instance, topdog and underdog. So talk back to him. Is it a he or she who sits
there?�

�Can you invent a dialogue between your right hand and your left hand? Have them
talk to each other.�

�Fritz: ... Change seats again. Now I would like you to close your eyes and enter
your self. What do you experience right now? Begin to feel something.�

�I want you to write a script, a good girl and a bad girl talking to each other.�

�Life always works in polarities like this.�

Dreams, Projection, and the Re-Integration of the Self

�Now the most important thing to understand is the idea of projection. Every dream
or every story contains all the material we need.�

�Because of the phobic attitude, the avoidance of awareness, much material that is
our own, that is part of ourselves, has been dissociated, alienated, disowned,
thrown out. The rest of our potential is not available to us. But I believe most of
it is available, but as projections.....

We can reassimilate, we can take back our projections, by projecting ourselves

completely into that other thing or person.�

�I believe we are all fractionalized. We are divided. We are split up in many

parts, and the beauty of working with a dream is that in a dream every part - not
only every person, but every part is yourself.�

�If you're capable of projecting yourself totally into every little bit of the
dream-and really become that thing - then you begin to reassimilate, to re�-own
what you have disowned, given away. The more you disown, the more impoverished you
get. Here is an opportunity to take back.

The projection often appears as something unpleasant - as a spider, or as a train,

or as a dead house, an incomplete house. But if you realize, �This is my dream. I'm
responsible for the dream. I painted this picture. Every part is me,� then things
begin to function and to come together, instead of being incomplete and
fragmented.�

[May has a dream in which there is a wall.]

�So, we have to see whether you can re-identify this alienated part, and the means
is playing that part which we have alienated. This wall is part of the self-
alienation, of the disowning of something, of some potential, and we have to do the
opposite of alienation - identification. The more you really become this thing
again, the easier it is to assimilate and make our own again what we have thrown
out. �.

Fritz: So, let's go back to the wall. Will you play the wall now...
May: I will not let you come in contact with anyone.
Fritz: Say this to me. You're the wall and I'm May.
May: May, I will not let you contact anyone completely."

[Liz has a dream about a spider.]

�Liz: I don't like spiders. �.

Fritz:: You are a spider now. ....
Fritz: ....Put the spider in that chair and talk to the spider. ...."

�Everything the person disowns can be recovered, and the means of this recovery is
understanding, playing, becoming these disowned parts. And by letting him play and
discover that he already has all this (which he thinks only others can give him) we
increase his potential. So what we are trying to do in therapy is step-by-step to
re-own the disowned parts of the personality until he person becomes strong enough
to facilitate his own growth....�

�So the simple fact is that against the - excuse this expression - evil of self�
alienation, self-impoverishment, there's only the remedy of re-integrating, taking
back what is rightfully yours. Each time you change an it or a noun into an I or a
verb you get, let's say, a ten-thousandth of your potential back, and it will
accumulated. Each time you can integrate something it gives you a better platform,
where again you can facilitate your development, your integration."