THE PERSONALITY-FUNCTION IN GESTALT THERAPY

RESEARCH THE PERSONALITY-FUNCTION IN GESTALT THERAPY Antonio Sichera From the very origins of psychoanalysis, the question of personality – its status, possibilities and limits – has been an unsolved problem. the position expressed by Gestalt Therapy through its foundational text cannot but appear as fundamentally contradictory. 1. Psychoanalysis and personality From the very origins of psychoanalysis, the question of personality – its status, possibilities and limits – has been an unsolved problem. In the Freudian model, in fact, the fundamental balance of subjectivity is so weighted in favour of the unconscious that the minimal territory left to the conscious is subject to an inevitable difidence which enormously limits its importance. Consequently, the overall quality of the personality in Freud’s work appears to be the result of psychological impulses and thrusts which the organism is unable to dominate in its dayto-day awareness: one acts, thinks and feels on the basis of submerged factors which are powerful enough to shed but poor light on any aware deinition of the ego. An ego which is called on to recover, thanks to therapeutic work, at least partially the psychological territory which is normally lost, in favour (above all) of the Id. At irst sight, Jung’s approach does not appear to differ greatly. From the point of view of Freud’s greatest ‘heretical’ pupil, the starting-point still remains the comparison of the personality with a «mask», if one takes this to be the original meaning of the ancient persona of the Romans, that is, the dress with which we cover ourselves every day, concealing our real self behind a role or deinition. The scope of a possible recovery of the value and consistency of consciousness, rated much more highly by analytical psychology than it was by its elder Freudian sister, does not remove the similarities in initial input with that of the Viennese master: as far as we know, day by day we think and do things for ourselves, but if this is left to the naivety of the subject then it turns out to be inevitably eroded by a sense of incompleteness; it can be compared to a leaky waterproof covering and as a serious obstacle in our journey towards truth. In this context, the position expressed by Gestalt Therapy through its foundational text cannot but appear as fundamentally contradictory. In Goodman’s writing, in fact, the psychoanalytical yeast is not killed off but is fostered through widespread moods of anarchy, amongst other things. Nevertheless, 17 from a different angle, in all of Gestalt Therapy, alternative forms of fermentation are in evidence which project a different – and sometimes unexpectedly alternative – light upon the personality and its domain. It could not have been otherwise, however, in a work which never settles into a deinitive position but which is ready to call everything into question (including itself) when confronting the mobility and totality of existence. We will now attempt to understand something of this. 2. The personality as a secondary construct: society and language in Gestalt Therapy If one reads the pages of Gestalt Therapy supericially, then one risks being blinded by the undeniable refutation of any primacy in the position of the personality. It is depicted, most commonly, as a social construct overlying the original poiesis of the organism, drenched obviously in environmental elements but differently from the way in which the personality is formed. Concretely, the argument has two main threads: irst society and then language: «Primitively, the ties of sex, nourishment, and imitation are social but pre-personal: that is, they likely do not require a sense of the partners as objects or persons, but merely as what is contracted. But at the stage of tool-making, language, and other acts of abstraction, the social functions constitute society in our special human sense: a bond among persons. The persons are formed by the social contacts they have, and they identify themselves with the social unity as a whole for their further activity. […] ‘persons’ are relections of an interpersonal whole, and ‘personality’ is best taken as a formation of the self by a shared social attitude».1 The reasoning running through Goodman’s argument is crystal clear. In following books like Communitas, the material author of Gestalt Therapy was relecting undoubtedly a commonly 1 F. Perls, R. Hefferline, P. Goodman (1994)(or. ed, 1951), Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. With a New Introduction By Isadore From and Michael Vincent Miller, The Gestalt Journal Press, Highland, NY, 92-93. 18 In Goodman’s writing, in fact, the psychoanalytical yeast is not killed off. Nevertheless, from a different angle, in all of Gestalt Therapy, alternative forms of fermentation are in evidence which project a different – and sometimes unexpectedly alternative – light upon the personality and its domain. In Goodman’s vision, the organism’s primary functions are intimately social but still do not presuppose the appearance of the traditional idea of society. The adult male in sophisticated society, then, in the face of a chronic social threat as far as his integral functioning is concerned, falls back on mechanisms of obliteration, hallucination, isolation and regression and creates an original form of psychological problem held standpoint of the foundational group when he intends to separate the organism-in-contact-with-the-environment within a uniied ield from what in common language is called a ‘person’. In Goodman’s vision, the organism’s primary functions are intimately social but still do not presuppose the appearance of the traditional idea of society. We are born, that is, we are immersed in an O/E ield and consequently we ind ourselves exposed to the nourishing experience of contact, but we experience all of this as socially inluenced organisms (if we imitate others, feed ourselves and we live out our sexuality) and not as ‘people’ who enter into interpersonal relationships within a shared symbolic and cultural context. When, in fact, one emerges from the state of the primary organic condition and the social unity and the abstract culture with which human beings identify themselves come to light, as far as Gestalt Therapy is concerned, there is a grave danger of substituting (and not integrating) the basic organic level with the social and interpersonal one. In contrast, ultimately, with Heidegger’s reconstruction of Dasein, typical of the inluential Sein und Zeit, Goodman denies that instruments and symbols (that is, the techniques of material and cultural constructs, of exchange and governance, as well as of science) are the primary constituents of the world. This substitution constitutes – according to a hermeneutical line within Gestalt Therapy – an important but dangerous form of progress that threatens the organism’s equilibrium: the latter sees itself as bereft of any form of animal satisfaction and of personal satisfaction, in the widest sense, and inds itself obliged to invent that «[…] very recent acquisition of mankind» that is «the neurotically split personality as a means of achieving equilibrium»2. The adult male in sophisticated society, then, in the face of a chronic social threat as far as his integral functioning is concerned, falls back on mechanisms of obliteration, hallucination, isolation and regression and creates an original form of psychological problem, engendered by the impossibility, in a context characterised by extreme abstraction, and strong juridical and cultural prescriptions, to serenely give 2 Ivi, 95. 19 expression to his individual social ‘animal’. Ultimately, «personality is a structure created out of such early interpersonal relationships; and in its formation there has usually already been the incorporation of an enormous amount of alien, unassimilated or even unassimilable material (and this, of course, makes the later conlicts between individual and society so much the more insoluble)»3. Here, we ind ourselves facing the irst reason for difidence towards the ‘secondary’ status of the personality, which a little further ahead becomes ‘doubled’ in the book, in a certain area of discourse on language and its impact on human life. The personality is, in fact, also deinable as «a structure of habits and words» and must therefore be placed in close relationship with the acquisition of language, which is the most potent system of symbols available to human beings. There is personality – in Goodman’s opinion – when there is a «sub-vocal discourse» (and thus, thought), when «convictions» are consolidated as habits of syntax and of style, when «evaluations» are produced and are considered as a whole composed of rhetorical stances. The ‘verbal’, ultimately, gives a ‘personal’ form to the organism (in that it is a preverbal entity), supplying it with interiorised discursive thought, allowing it to form convictions and to formulate evaluations taking as its staring-point a determined linguistic coniguration of the self. Even in this case, Gestalt Therapy energetically moots the question of the integration of the pre-verbal and the verbal, afirming that in a physiological process which is not externally conditioned, there would be a spontaneous bidirectional low, so it would be normal to have a return to the pre-verbal from the verbal, as well as a forward movement of the pre-verbal in the realm of language. That is to say, by leaving the human organic dynamism alone, there would be a normal integration of linguistic and conceptual abstractions with the primitive dimension of murmuring, shouting, of non – modulated articulation of the voice-from onomatopoeia to musical games – which accompany the fundamental experience of feeding, of imitating and of sexuality. In a society like the modern one, however, over-crowded with 3 Ivi, 99-100. 20 There is personality – in Goodman’s opinion – when there is a «sub-vocal discourse» (and thus, thought). In a society like the modern one, however, overcrowded with linguistic constructs and a high rate of abstraction and symbolism which normally occupy a pre-eminent position, the free movement between preverbal and verbal is practically impossible, so much so as to produce the neurotic, split personalities that Goodman calls’ «verbalising personalities». linguistic constructs and a high rate of abstraction and symbolism which normally occupy a pre-eminent position, the free movement between preverbal and verbal is practically impossible, so much so as to produce the neurotic, split personalities that Goodman calls’ «verbalising personalities». This expression refers in the book to a quality that characterises the men and women of our time who are separated from their roots and divorced from the intimate awareness of their own bodies: it is entirely verbal, empty, shallow and lacking in true contact with ones’ self. Language, for these individuals, is merely an artiice with which to uselessly cover their distance from the generative humus and the consequent deicit of a full and nourishing contact with the environment. However, as we have realised, the question does not end here. 3. Some contradictions. From the basic conflict to the spectacular quality of language On the basis of the considerations that have just been made, those who think that they can easily classify Gestalt Therapy among psycho-analytical approaches, on principal convinced of a fundamental incompatibility between the individual and society and equally doubtful about the cost/beneit ratio of language, since it is both a capability but also a hindrance to pre-linguistic man’s authentic sensory and motor nature, would undoubtedly need to take a change of direction. A few sentences are enough to say why. In the irst place, I would refer to the inal line of the long reconstruction we have just made that led us to consider society, in its widest sense, as a factor which deforms the original social instinct and thus of the origin of a conlict that engenders unease: «On the other hand, it is also likely (even if the different likelihoods are contradictory) that these ‘irreconcilable’ conlicts have always been, not only at present, the human condition; and that the attendant suffering and motion toward an unknown solution are the grounds of human excitement»4. 4 Ivi, 96. 21 This passage is brief but extremely important. It brilliantly presents us with the (profoundly hermeneutic) hypothesis that the relationship between individual/society should not be read in the usual Freudian terms of «civilization and its discontents». Coherently with the fundamentals of his critical re-reading of Freud, and therefore of the vision of the world as an element of the ield and thus of open possibilities, of reconstruction and of creative reworking, Gestalt Therapy postulates the fertile doubt of whether the conlicting dynamic between social norms and individual urges actually belongs to the fundamental experience of human beings and, far from being an unavoidable curse, whether it actually represents a decisive source of excitement and so of energy from the point of view of contact and of growth. We do not suffer from an irresolvable conlict, but we measure ourselves with the world, with its opportunities and its asperities, taking from the meeting and from aggression the vital lymph which turns us into subjects and makes us grasp the Lebenswelt in which we are planted. The same type of healthy reversal is found in the pages of Gestalt Therapy that deal with language. If, on one hand, the emergence of language can bring with it the risk of an undesirable burial of primary (and pre-verbal) urges of the organism, on the other, language is portrayed in the book as a source of immense potential in the moment in which it is well assimilated in the contact process. «In speech of good contact, these levels cohere in the present actuality»5. It is a union between speech, as thought in its sub-vocal and pre-personal social communication aspects: it is a form of integration which reaches its apex in poetry, true therapy of verbalisation and so an authentic pathway for the therapeutic rebirth of the self. This is because denying language is not the way to get out of the cage, as many therapeutic models based on the body think, on the contrary, we should seek in poetry the skeleton key that will open the defences of the separation between verbal and pre-verbal and will restore beauty and light to 5 Ivi, 101. 22 Gestalt Therapy postulates the fertile doubt of whether the conlicting dynamic between social norms and individual urges actually belongs to the fundamental experience of human beings. In a world which is not «[…] a lost paradise» it makes no sense to insist on the purely theoretical and ideal dimension of the human which comes before language, but we should blaze the trail of an effective gestaltic reconnection of the levels of existence. Placing the personality at the beginning of the book is a way to assign a primary role in the ield to this highly controversial function contact (and thus to life): «[…] the contrary of neurotic verbalizing and creative speech; it is neither scientiic semantics nor silence; it is poetry»6. In a world which is not «[…] a lost paradise»7 it makes no sense to insist on the purely theoretical and ideal dimension of the human which comes before language, but we should blaze the trail of an effective gestaltic reconnection of the levels of existence. It is there that language, declined in its purest form, assumes an irremovable paradigmatic value. In this context of personality one can then still speak of another light. 4. A different verbum relationis: the personalityfunction of the self What does an alternative vision of the relationship between the individual and society and of language involve? What occurs in Gestalt Therapy is ultimately the construction of a paradigm which is no longer in harmony with psychoanalytical prejudices. The proof and, above all, the consequences for today of this new direction are manifold. Let us list them. The irst element to consider is certainly the book’s subtitle: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. Perhaps little attention has been paid to the fact that in the reading pathway laid out in the irst words of Gestalt Therapy (the subtitle, that is) two aspects are being focussed on: on one hand, excitement as the propulsive energy of experience and, on the other, growth as the outcome, whilst the human personality is situated as the balancing-place between the essential poles of contact, its alpha and omega: excitement that moves the organism or blocks it in angst, the growth that emerges from good contact and rendered useless by the experiences which are lacking in the physiological dynamism of the self. And it does not end there. Placing the personality at the beginning of the book is a way to assign a primary role in the ield to this highly controversial function, when we realistically consider 6 Ibidem. 7 Ivi, 105. 23 the subjects of the experience as an indivisible mixture of body and language, of sense and movement, of multiple languages. It is almost that ultimately, if we look closely, a lot rests upon precisely that apparently secondary level but which coincides with the hips where contact experiences converge after an important number of them have been received. This brings us to the second element. Going back to language, in this more complex and less ideologically rigid vision, it comes as no surprise that Gestalt Therapy considers the personality – in its intimate connection with language – as an exceptional conquest: «A child forming his personality by learning to speak is making a spectacular achievement […]»8. This means that the boost that the human organism receives at the moment in which it begins the developmental process of learning language is to be considered exceptional as well as being tightly correlated to the formation of the personality: it is the ‘linguistic’ personality, self aware and capable of expressing itself and thus of communicating with itself and others. It is the great leap forward that makes us what we are and which allows us to project ourselves out into the world. That this dimension of linguistic self-awareness is absolutely central is demonstrated by the analysis of the triple movement contained in speech acts, where there is always an «it», the message, an «I», the style and tone of the speaker, and a «you», the rhetorical attitude, the desire, directed towards the other, which is expressed in the words that are said (and, as we have by now realised, rhetorical attitudes or habits is the same thing as saying «personality»). Now, it is precisely the level of the «you» that comes to the fore in poetry, when the poet does not physically have an interlocutor in front of him but when he creates his own ideal audience he speaks to himself using the informal ‘thou’ form and he succeeds in reworking through this «thou», that is, in the play of the personality-function, the many «thous» that his personal history has accumulated, assimilated or – above all – that have left an open wound in his body 8 Ivi, 100. 24 it is the ‘linguistic’ personality, self aware and capable of expressing itself and thus of communicating with itself and others. It is the great leap forward that makes us what we are and which allows us to project ourselves out into the world. which blocks the low of contact. Without this ability of linguistic reworking of the self which is typical of the personality-function, there would be no poetry and consequently there would no longer be the possibility of an integration between the organism and the environment suficient for a world which is not a paradise, a world in which it is necessary (and also beautiful) to speak. However, Goodman’s astute considerations concerning «spontaneity», seen as a key factor in the process of good contact, need to be placed and context and limited. Certainly, in a simple spontaneous act, the three functions are merely the stages of creative adaptation: the Id as bodily background, the ego as the process of identiication/alienation, the personality as the created igure, which the self becomes and assimilates in the organism, joining it to the results of previous growth9. However, in common daily experience, a dose of intentionality is normally required; this dose of intentionality and deliberate choice are normally much greater than an ideal one (that is why the ego predominates), that is to say, we have a happily disintegrating form of relaxation (and here we see the centrality of the Id’s role), or, to take a different angle, a synthetic component of autonomy and responsibility, which belongs to the personality as a system of interpersonal attitudes. When «[…] for it is one’s own situation that one engages in according to one’s role»10 then the personality as «[…] responsible structure of the self»11 comes into play, because it renders the process both adequate and appropriate. However, Goodman does not succeed in hiding – if one thinks about the society and culture in which Gestalt Therapy was written – his predilection and marked preference for spontaneity and the natural middle mode of contact experience. Despite this, the considerations he makes concerning language and the personality remain as indicators of a method and probably as a provocation which remain exceptionally pertinent for us today. 9 Cfr. Ivi, 156-157. 10 Ivi, 161. 11 Ibidem. 25 In fact, even if one merely appreciates the bodily aspect which is bound to the personality, the creative and linguistic expression of the substances assimilated in good contact – and therefore the background of contacting, in a diverse but not inferior manner in relation to the Id – that is enough to ind oneself face-to-face with the emergency of unease that we have today. This emergency concerns experience which lacks the ‘rules of engagement’ written in the body, which lacks vital reference points to the context and to the ‘other’, without a personality that constitutes the linguistic opening-out of the self and thus the guide of creative excitement. Today what is in doubt is not the question of the intensity of emotions (on the contrary, they are pathologically sought) but the integration of the various aspects of the subject: the possibility, that is, to be free to express oneself whilst one deines oneself, whilst one occupies a place in the world and is able to present oneself as a solid and integrated identity. Is it perhaps that the most signiicant gestaltic question with regards to the unease of post-modern society is no longer «what do you feel?» but also (and perhaps above all) of «who are you?» given that the present is never separated from the lux of time? 26 Is it perhaps that the most signiicant gestaltic question with regards to the unease of postmodern society is no longer «what do you feel?» but also (and perhaps above all) of «who are you?» given that the present is never separated from the lux of time? Abstract The status of the personality-function of the self is subject to a series of thrusts and counter thrusts in Gestalt Therapy. Even though it is to be found in the middle of the work and its title (Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality), Perls and Goodman seem to consider the personality as a secondary function, bound up with a less vivid and spontaneous mode of human experience. At any rate, its space in the developmental framework comes ‘after’ autonomy and ‘after’ language acquisition, in a less relevant zone of the self. However, if one digs more deeply into the prose of the basic text one inds that there is another facet to the issue. In truth, in the experience of interpersonal contact, the personality-function takes on a central role and guides the search for the correct positioning of the subject in the world in relation to what is ‘other’. 27