Gestalt therapy emphasizes “awareness” and “focusing on the obvious”. in working with people our existential message can be paraphrased: “come to your senses”, or “lose your mind and gain your senses” as Fritz Perls outs it. Coming to one’s senses” is synonymous with coming to one’s body. There are no senses in the cortex, or mind, only an oversized “computer”. Much of my effort as a psychotherapist is aimed at breaking the deadlocks, or hang ups, which the person’s computer has established over many years and at the expense of the natural, organismic flow of his body and its senses.

If this “computer” were to appear in the form of a human body, the grotesqueness of its structural distortions would frequently be nothing short of horrifying. It would take a calculus to find its “center as a psychologist, when I experience someone functioning descriptively as a dead person with a fragmented identity, I undertake to help him come alive and integrate himself. I cannot recall an instance in which I have met a person in this kind of psychological limbo who did not also make the same kind of statement about his self and his existence with his Body appearance, posture, movements and physical gestures. The current vogue, in my experience, is the “enlightened”, intelligent, educated, “successful” man (or woman) who speaks in cliches, is psychologically sophisticated and functions well in his work and social environment. But, in terms of his emotional aliveness and his experienced intimacies with others, his functioning is disabled or deadened. He is somewhat analogous to an athlete who can run a four minute mile but who gets dizzy and falls on his face when asked to bend down and touch his toes. The “split” in human integration is even more obvious on the cultural level of our society. We are a people who will shortly land men on the moon while on the other hand we find it increasingly impossible to live together in harmony with each other, least of all in intimacy, for sustained periods (human intimacy, not sexual intimacy).

Having, I hope, conveyed my message of denunciation about the “cortical gadfly” at least for the moment, (it always returns at the least opportunity) I would like to turn to the central issue of the Gestalt therapy approach to integration. try thesis is that Gestalt therapy is philosophically and operationally the psychic counterpart to structural Integration on the somatic level.

I would like to enumerate ten statements which I believe will serve as an introductory statement about the parallels in philosophy and technology between Gestalt Therapy and structural Integration. In the quest for a total organismic approach in the “helpinq professions” it seems to me that the two approaches are most compatible and indeed both are involved with the total organismic statement of the individual and differ only in that they approach the unity the organismic on different levels. For theoretical purposes I would postulate a “third leg” of the vital triangle of organismic function in the here and now: nutrition.* To sun up, an endeavor to promote health and growth in the human beging beginning with his present state of existence must include what he does for himself (and what we can do to assist this) physically, psychologically as well as what he feeds into his system, which tend to promote his well being and further development. I consider it academic which of the three leas of the triangle is “most basic” or “prior”. Three legs make a better foundation than two or one.

1. Heredity and experiential events in the life history of the individual have shaped him structurally and psychically into his present state of existence and functioning.

2. Having granted the validity of causative factors, Gestalt and SI reject as unnecessarily laborious, if not futile, the focusing or dwelling on the past, physically or psychologically. Understanding the “why” questions of a person’s life history may enhance our know ledge of human development but it has little or no therapeutic value to the individual.

3. Treatment focuses on areas of malfunction as these are observed by the therapist in the here and now.

4. Therapeutic methods are aimed directly at reducing the “hanguns”.

5. The only meaningful criteria for improvement is observable and experienced change.

6. The past represents an abundant source of “excuses” for the individual to use in order to avoid making effort and committing himself to take responsibility for his own health and growth in the present.

7. Therapeutic methods focused on the here and now are potentially “intensive” and “produce lasting benefits”. my greater effectiveness of other more subtle, indirect or prolonged treatments is not accepted.

8. The human organism has the continuous potential for further growth, and integration throughout his entire life.

9. A normal human being being will naturally develop into a healthy, integrated arson if his experiences do not distort or warn this natural development excessively.

10. All of life is an organismic process which functions as a unity. Speaking about different levels of functioning or different aspects of
behavior is only Justifiable for semantic reasons.

Any aspect of living is a process and there is no more popular method of “self torture” than fantasies o completing something with a feeling of finality and perfection. This is the thought I have in mind as conclude this pacer. It is my expression of the issue as experience it at the moment and I feel no sense of completeness about it. I do feel some sense of satisfaction that it is a “beginning” When I was first “Rolfed” I must admit that part of the appeal was that “ten sessions had lasting a benefits”. I had a subsequent short series a year later and I am beginning a third series this week. I feel more satisfied with my present attitude which is focused on my eagerness and appreciation of the experience itself and, experientially, “the lasting benefits” are now secondary. Healthy functioning includes everything a person does to nourish himself organismically in whatever mode or forms these might take. My function in this pacer is, hopefully, to nourish the integration process between our respective disciplines.

*Since life is biolocically based, it is obvious that the input of material into the organism is also basic. Too oaten this fact is given “lip service” and ignored behaviorally. I hope this area will be dealt with by someone more capable and qualified than myself.

Everyone has heard of the Hippocratic oath. Have you ever read it?

“I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Health, by Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that 1 will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture. To hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture; to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and to indentured pupils who have taken the physician’s oath, but to nobody else. I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give a woman a necessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein. Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrongdoing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things, to be holy secrets. Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain for ever reputation among a11 men for my ‘life and for my art; but if I transaress it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.    [:de]Gestalt therapy emphasizes “awareness” and “focusing on the obvious”. in working with people our existential message can be paraphrased: “come to your senses”, or “lose your mind and gain your senses” as Fritz Perls outs it. Coming to one’s senses” is synonymous with coming to one’s body. There are no senses in the cortex, or mind, only an oversized “computer”. Much of my effort as a psychotherapist is aimed at breaking the deadlocks, or hang ups, which the person’s computer has established over many years and at the expense of the natural, organismic flow of his body and its senses.

If this “computer” were to appear in the form of a human body, the grotesqueness of its structural distortions would frequently be nothing short of horrifying. It would take a calculus to find its “center as a psychologist, when I experience someone functioning descriptively as a dead person with a fragmented identity, I undertake to help him come alive and integrate himself. I cannot recall an instance in which I have met a person in this kind of psychological limbo who did not also make the same kind of statement about his self and his existence with his Body appearance, posture, movements and physical gestures. The current vogue, in my experience, is the “enlightened”, intelligent, educated, “successful” man (or woman) who speaks in cliches, is psychologically sophisticated and functions well in his work and social environment. But, in terms of his emotional aliveness and his experienced intimacies with others, his functioning is disabled or deadened. He is somewhat analogous to an athlete who can run a four minute mile but who gets dizzy and falls on his face when asked to bend down and touch his toes. The “split” in human integration is even more obvious on the cultural level of our society. We are a people who will shortly land men on the moon while on the other hand we find it increasingly impossible to live together in harmony with each other, least of all in intimacy, for sustained periods (human intimacy, not sexual intimacy).

Having, I hope, conveyed my message of denunciation about the “cortical gadfly” at least for the moment, (it always returns at the least opportunity) I would like to turn to the central issue of the Gestalt therapy approach to integration. try thesis is that Gestalt therapy is philosophically and operationally the psychic counterpart to structural Integration on the somatic level.

I would like to enumerate ten statements which I believe will serve as an introductory statement about the parallels in philosophy and technology between Gestalt Therapy and structural Integration. In the quest for a total organismic approach in the “helpinq professions” it seems to me that the two approaches are most compatible and indeed both are involved with the total organismic statement of the individual and differ only in that they approach the unity the organismic on different levels. For theoretical purposes I would postulate a “third leg” of the vital triangle of organismic function in the here and now: nutrition.* To sun up, an endeavor to promote health and growth in the human beging beginning with his present state of existence must include what he does for himself (and what we can do to assist this) physically, psychologically as well as what he feeds into his system, which tend to promote his well being and further development. I consider it academic which of the three leas of the triangle is “most basic” or “prior”. Three legs make a better foundation than two or one.

1. Heredity and experiential events in the life history of the individual have shaped him structurally and psychically into his present state of existence and functioning.

2. Having granted the validity of causative factors, Gestalt and SI reject as unnecessarily laborious, if not futile, the focusing or dwelling on the past, physically or psychologically. Understanding the “why” questions of a person’s life history may enhance our know ledge of human development but it has little or no therapeutic value to the individual.

3. Treatment focuses on areas of malfunction as these are observed by the therapist in the here and now.

4. Therapeutic methods are aimed directly at reducing the “hanguns”.

5. The only meaningful criteria for improvement is observable and experienced change.

6. The past represents an abundant source of “excuses” for the individual to use in order to avoid making effort and committing himself to take responsibility for his own health and growth in the present.

7. Therapeutic methods focused on the here and now are potentially “intensive” and “produce lasting benefits”. my greater effectiveness of other more subtle, indirect or prolonged treatments is not accepted.

8. The human organism has the continuous potential for further growth, and integration throughout his entire life.

9. A normal human being being will naturally develop into a healthy, integrated arson if his experiences do not distort or warn this natural development excessively.

10. All of life is an organismic process which functions as a unity. Speaking about different levels of functioning or different aspects of
behavior is only Justifiable for semantic reasons.

Any aspect of living is a process and there is no more popular method of “self torture” than fantasies o completing something with a feeling of finality and perfection. This is the thought I have in mind as conclude this pacer. It is my expression of the issue as experience it at the moment and I feel no sense of completeness about it. I do feel some sense of satisfaction that it is a “beginning” When I was first “Rolfed” I must admit that part of the appeal was that “ten sessions had lasting a benefits”. I had a subsequent short series a year later and I am beginning a third series this week. I feel more satisfied with my present attitude which is focused on my eagerness and appreciation of the experience itself and, experientially, “the lasting benefits” are now secondary. Healthy functioning includes everything a person does to nourish himself organismically in whatever mode or forms these might take. My function in this pacer is, hopefully, to nourish the integration process between our respective disciplines.

*Since life is biolocically based, it is obvious that the input of material into the organism is also basic. Too oaten this fact is given “lip service” and ignored behaviorally. I hope this area will be dealt with by someone more capable and qualified than myself.

Everyone has heard of the Hippocratic oath. Have you ever read it?

“I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Health, by Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that 1 will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture. To hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture; to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and to indentured pupils who have taken the physician’s oath, but to nobody else. I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give a woman a necessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein. Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrongdoing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things, to be holy secrets. Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain for ever reputation among a11 men for my ‘life and for my art; but if I transaress it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.”[:fr]Gestalt therapy emphasizes “awareness” and “focusing on the obvious”. in working with people our existential message can be paraphrased: “come to your senses”, or “lose your mind and gain your senses” as Fritz Perls outs it. Coming to one’s senses” is synonymous with coming to one’s body. There are no senses in the cortex, or mind, only an oversized “computer”. Much of my effort as a psychotherapist is aimed at breaking the deadlocks, or hang ups, which the person’s computer has established over many years and at the expense of the natural, organismic flow of his body and its senses.

If this “computer” were to appear in the form of a human body, the grotesqueness of its structural distortions would frequently be nothing short of horrifying. It would take a calculus to find its “center as a psychologist, when I experience someone functioning descriptively as a dead person with a fragmented identity, I undertake to help him come alive and integrate himself. I cannot recall an instance in which I have met a person in this kind of psychological limbo who did not also make the same kind of statement about his self and his existence with his Body appearance, posture, movements and physical gestures. The current vogue, in my experience, is the “enlightened”, intelligent, educated, “successful” man (or woman) who speaks in cliches, is psychologically sophisticated and functions well in his work and social environment. But, in terms of his emotional aliveness and his experienced intimacies with others, his functioning is disabled or deadened. He is somewhat analogous to an athlete who can run a four minute mile but who gets dizzy and falls on his face when asked to bend down and touch his toes. The “split” in human integration is even more obvious on the cultural level of our society. We are a people who will shortly land men on the moon while on the other hand we find it increasingly impossible to live together in harmony with each other, least of all in intimacy, for sustained periods (human intimacy, not sexual intimacy).

Having, I hope, conveyed my message of denunciation about the “cortical gadfly” at least for the moment, (it always returns at the least opportunity) I would like to turn to the central issue of the Gestalt therapy approach to integration. try thesis is that Gestalt therapy is philosophically and operationally the psychic counterpart to structural Integration on the somatic level.

I would like to enumerate ten statements which I believe will serve as an introductory statement about the parallels in philosophy and technology between Gestalt Therapy and structural Integration. In the quest for a total organismic approach in the “helpinq professions” it seems to me that the two approaches are most compatible and indeed both are involved with the total organismic statement of the individual and differ only in that they approach the unity the organismic on different levels. For theoretical purposes I would postulate a “third leg” of the vital triangle of organismic function in the here and now: nutrition.* To sun up, an endeavor to promote health and growth in the human beging beginning with his present state of existence must include what he does for himself (and what we can do to assist this) physically, psychologically as well as what he feeds into his system, which tend to promote his well being and further development. I consider it academic which of the three leas of the triangle is “most basic” or “prior”. Three legs make a better foundation than two or one.

1. Heredity and experiential events in the life history of the individual have shaped him structurally and psychically into his present state of existence and functioning.

2. Having granted the validity of causative factors, Gestalt and SI reject as unnecessarily laborious, if not futile, the focusing or dwelling on the past, physically or psychologically. Understanding the “why” questions of a person’s life history may enhance our know ledge of human development but it has little or no therapeutic value to the individual.

3. Treatment focuses on areas of malfunction as these are observed by the therapist in the here and now.

4. Therapeutic methods are aimed directly at reducing the “hanguns”.

5. The only meaningful criteria for improvement is observable and experienced change.

6. The past represents an abundant source of “excuses” for the individual to use in order to avoid making effort and committing himself to take responsibility for his own health and growth in the present.

7. Therapeutic methods focused on the here and now are potentially “intensive” and “produce lasting benefits”. my greater effectiveness of other more subtle, indirect or prolonged treatments is not accepted.

8. The human organism has the continuous potential for further growth, and integration throughout his entire life.

9. A normal human being being will naturally develop into a healthy, integrated arson if his experiences do not distort or warn this natural development excessively.

10. All of life is an organismic process which functions as a unity. Speaking about different levels of functioning or different aspects of
behavior is only Justifiable for semantic reasons.

Any aspect of living is a process and there is no more popular method of “self torture” than fantasies o completing something with a feeling of finality and perfection. This is the thought I have in mind as conclude this pacer. It is my expression of the issue as experience it at the moment and I feel no sense of completeness about it. I do feel some sense of satisfaction that it is a “beginning” When I was first “Rolfed” I must admit that part of the appeal was that “ten sessions had lasting a benefits”. I had a subsequent short series a year later and I am beginning a third series this week. I feel more satisfied with my present attitude which is focused on my eagerness and appreciation of the experience itself and, experientially, “the lasting benefits” are now secondary. Healthy functioning includes everything a person does to nourish himself organismically in whatever mode or forms these might take. My function in this pacer is, hopefully, to nourish the integration process between our respective disciplines.

*Since life is biolocically based, it is obvious that the input of material into the organism is also basic. Too oaten this fact is given “lip service” and ignored behaviorally. I hope this area will be dealt with by someone more capable and qualified than myself.

Everyone has heard of the Hippocratic oath. Have you ever read it?

“I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Health, by Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that 1 will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture. To hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture; to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and to indentured pupils who have taken the physician’s oath, but to nobody else. I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give a woman a necessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein. Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrongdoing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things, to be holy secrets. Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain for ever reputation among a11 men for my ‘life and for my art; but if I transaress it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.”[:es]Gestalt therapy emphasizes “awareness” and “focusing on the obvious”. in working with people our existential message can be paraphrased: “come to your senses”, or “lose your mind and gain your senses” as Fritz Perls outs it. Coming to one’s senses” is synonymous with coming to one’s body. There are no senses in the cortex, or mind, only an oversized “computer”. Much of my effort as a psychotherapist is aimed at breaking the deadlocks, or hang ups, which the person’s computer has established over many years and at the expense of the natural, organismic flow of his body and its senses.

If this “computer” were to appear in the form of a human body, the grotesqueness of its structural distortions would frequently be nothing short of horrifying. It would take a calculus to find its “center as a psychologist, when I experience someone functioning descriptively as a dead person with a fragmented identity, I undertake to help him come alive and integrate himself. I cannot recall an instance in which I have met a person in this kind of psychological limbo who did not also make the same kind of statement about his self and his existence with his Body appearance, posture, movements and physical gestures. The current vogue, in my experience, is the “enlightened”, intelligent, educated, “successful” man (or woman) who speaks in cliches, is psychologically sophisticated and functions well in his work and social environment. But, in terms of his emotional aliveness and his experienced intimacies with others, his functioning is disabled or deadened. He is somewhat analogous to an athlete who can run a four minute mile but who gets dizzy and falls on his face when asked to bend down and touch his toes. The “split” in human integration is even more obvious on the cultural level of our society. We are a people who will shortly land men on the moon while on the other hand we find it increasingly impossible to live together in harmony with each other, least of all in intimacy, for sustained periods (human intimacy, not sexual intimacy).

Having, I hope, conveyed my message of denunciation about the “cortical gadfly” at least for the moment, (it always returns at the least opportunity) I would like to turn to the central issue of the Gestalt therapy approach to integration. try thesis is that Gestalt therapy is philosophically and operationally the psychic counterpart to structural Integration on the somatic level.

I would like to enumerate ten statements which I believe will serve as an introductory statement about the parallels in philosophy and technology between Gestalt Therapy and structural Integration. In the quest for a total organismic approach in the “helpinq professions” it seems to me that the two approaches are most compatible and indeed both are involved with the total organismic statement of the individual and differ only in that they approach the unity the organismic on different levels. For theoretical purposes I would postulate a “third leg” of the vital triangle of organismic function in the here and now: nutrition.* To sun up, an endeavor to promote health and growth in the human beging beginning with his present state of existence must include what he does for himself (and what we can do to assist this) physically, psychologically as well as what he feeds into his system, which tend to promote his well being and further development. I consider it academic which of the three leas of the triangle is “most basic” or “prior”. Three legs make a better foundation than two or one.

1. Heredity and experiential events in the life history of the individual have shaped him structurally and psychically into his present state of existence and functioning.

2. Having granted the validity of causative factors, Gestalt and SI reject as unnecessarily laborious, if not futile, the focusing or dwelling on the past, physically or psychologically. Understanding the “why” questions of a person’s life history may enhance our know ledge of human development but it has little or no therapeutic value to the individual.

3. Treatment focuses on areas of malfunction as these are observed by the therapist in the here and now.

4. Therapeutic methods are aimed directly at reducing the “hanguns”.

5. The only meaningful criteria for improvement is observable and experienced change.

6. The past represents an abundant source of “excuses” for the individual to use in order to avoid making effort and committing himself to take responsibility for his own health and growth in the present.

7. Therapeutic methods focused on the here and now are potentially “intensive” and “produce lasting benefits”. my greater effectiveness of other more subtle, indirect or prolonged treatments is not accepted.

8. The human organism has the continuous potential for further growth, and integration throughout his entire life.

9. A normal human being being will naturally develop into a healthy, integrated arson if his experiences do not distort or warn this natural development excessively.

10. All of life is an organismic process which functions as a unity. Speaking about different levels of functioning or different aspects of
behavior is only Justifiable for semantic reasons.

Any aspect of living is a process and there is no more popular method of “self torture” than fantasies o completing something with a feeling of finality and perfection. This is the thought I have in mind as conclude this pacer. It is my expression of the issue as experience it at the moment and I feel no sense of completeness about it. I do feel some sense of satisfaction that it is a “beginning” When I was first “Rolfed” I must admit that part of the appeal was that “ten sessions had lasting a benefits”. I had a subsequent short series a year later and I am beginning a third series this week. I feel more satisfied with my present attitude which is focused on my eagerness and appreciation of the experience itself and, experientially, “the lasting benefits” are now secondary. Healthy functioning includes everything a person does to nourish himself organismically in whatever mode or forms these might take. My function in this pacer is, hopefully, to nourish the integration process between our respective disciplines.

*Since life is biolocically based, it is obvious that the input of material into the organism is also basic. Too oaten this fact is given “lip service” and ignored behaviorally. I hope this area will be dealt with by someone more capable and qualified than myself.

Everyone has heard of the Hippocratic oath. Have you ever read it?

“I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Health, by Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that 1 will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture. To hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture; to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and to indentured pupils who have taken the physician’s oath, but to nobody else. I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give a woman a necessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein. Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrongdoing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things, to be holy secrets. Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain for ever reputation among a11 men for my ‘life and for my art; but if I transaress it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.”[:ja]Gestalt therapy emphasizes “awareness” and “focusing on the obvious”. in working with people our existential message can be paraphrased: “come to your senses”, or “lose your mind and gain your senses” as Fritz Perls outs it. Coming to one’s senses” is synonymous with coming to one’s body. There are no senses in the cortex, or mind, only an oversized “computer”. Much of my effort as a psychotherapist is aimed at breaking the deadlocks, or hang ups, which the person’s computer has established over many years and at the expense of the natural, organismic flow of his body and its senses.

If this “computer” were to appear in the form of a human body, the grotesqueness of its structural distortions would frequently be nothing short of horrifying. It would take a calculus to find its “center as a psychologist, when I experience someone functioning descriptively as a dead person with a fragmented identity, I undertake to help him come alive and integrate himself. I cannot recall an instance in which I have met a person in this kind of psychological limbo who did not also make the same kind of statement about his self and his existence with his Body appearance, posture, movements and physical gestures. The current vogue, in my experience, is the “enlightened”, intelligent, educated, “successful” man (or woman) who speaks in cliches, is psychologically sophisticated and functions well in his work and social environment. But, in terms of his emotional aliveness and his experienced intimacies with others, his functioning is disabled or deadened. He is somewhat analogous to an athlete who can run a four minute mile but who gets dizzy and falls on his face when asked to bend down and touch his toes. The “split” in human integration is even more obvious on the cultural level of our society. We are a people who will shortly land men on the moon while on the other hand we find it increasingly impossible to live together in harmony with each other, least of all in intimacy, for sustained periods (human intimacy, not sexual intimacy).

Having, I hope, conveyed my message of denunciation about the “cortical gadfly” at least for the moment, (it always returns at the least opportunity) I would like to turn to the central issue of the Gestalt therapy approach to integration. try thesis is that Gestalt therapy is philosophically and operationally the psychic counterpart to structural Integration on the somatic level.

I would like to enumerate ten statements which I believe will serve as an introductory statement about the parallels in philosophy and technology between Gestalt Therapy and structural Integration. In the quest for a total organismic approach in the “helpinq professions” it seems to me that the two approaches are most compatible and indeed both are involved with the total organismic statement of the individual and differ only in that they approach the unity the organismic on different levels. For theoretical purposes I would postulate a “third leg” of the vital triangle of organismic function in the here and now: nutrition.* To sun up, an endeavor to promote health and growth in the human beging beginning with his present state of existence must include what he does for himself (and what we can do to assist this) physically, psychologically as well as what he feeds into his system, which tend to promote his well being and further development. I consider it academic which of the three leas of the triangle is “most basic” or “prior”. Three legs make a better foundation than two or one.

1. Heredity and experiential events in the life history of the individual have shaped him structurally and psychically into his present state of existence and functioning.

2. Having granted the validity of causative factors, Gestalt and SI reject as unnecessarily laborious, if not futile, the focusing or dwelling on the past, physically or psychologically. Understanding the “why” questions of a person’s life history may enhance our know ledge of human development but it has little or no therapeutic value to the individual.

3. Treatment focuses on areas of malfunction as these are observed by the therapist in the here and now.

4. Therapeutic methods are aimed directly at reducing the “hanguns”.

5. The only meaningful criteria for improvement is observable and experienced change.

6. The past represents an abundant source of “excuses” for the individual to use in order to avoid making effort and committing himself to take responsibility for his own health and growth in the present.

7. Therapeutic methods focused on the here and now are potentially “intensive” and “produce lasting benefits”. my greater effectiveness of other more subtle, indirect or prolonged treatments is not accepted.

8. The human organism has the continuous potential for further growth, and integration throughout his entire life.

9. A normal human being being will naturally develop into a healthy, integrated arson if his experiences do not distort or warn this natural development excessively.

10. All of life is an organismic process which functions as a unity. Speaking about different levels of functioning or different aspects of
behavior is only Justifiable for semantic reasons.

Any aspect of living is a process and there is no more popular method of “self torture” than fantasies o completing something with a feeling of finality and perfection. This is the thought I have in mind as conclude this pacer. It is my expression of the issue as experience it at the moment and I feel no sense of completeness about it. I do feel some sense of satisfaction that it is a “beginning” When I was first “Rolfed” I must admit that part of the appeal was that “ten sessions had lasting a benefits”. I had a subsequent short series a year later and I am beginning a third series this week. I feel more satisfied with my present attitude which is focused on my eagerness and appreciation of the experience itself and, experientially, “the lasting benefits” are now secondary. Healthy functioning includes everything a person does to nourish himself organismically in whatever mode or forms these might take. My function in this pacer is, hopefully, to nourish the integration process between our respective disciplines.

*Since life is biolocically based, it is obvious that the input of material into the organism is also basic. Too oaten this fact is given “lip service” and ignored behaviorally. I hope this area will be dealt with by someone more capable and qualified than myself.

Everyone has heard of the Hippocratic oath. Have you ever read it?

“I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Health, by Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that 1 will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture. To hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture; to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and to indentured pupils who have taken the physician’s oath, but to nobody else. I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give a woman a necessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein. Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrongdoing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things, to be holy secrets. Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain for ever reputation among a11 men for my ‘life and for my art; but if I transaress it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.”[:it]Gestalt therapy emphasizes “awareness” and “focusing on the obvious”. in working with people our existential message can be paraphrased: “come to your senses”, or “lose your mind and gain your senses” as Fritz Perls outs it. Coming to one’s senses” is synonymous with coming to one’s body. There are no senses in the cortex, or mind, only an oversized “computer”. Much of my effort as a psychotherapist is aimed at breaking the deadlocks, or hang ups, which the person’s computer has established over many years and at the expense of the natural, organismic flow of his body and its senses.

If this “computer” were to appear in the form of a human body, the grotesqueness of its structural distortions would frequently be nothing short of horrifying. It would take a calculus to find its “center as a psychologist, when I experience someone functioning descriptively as a dead person with a fragmented identity, I undertake to help him come alive and integrate himself. I cannot recall an instance in which I have met a person in this kind of psychological limbo who did not also make the same kind of statement about his self and his existence with his Body appearance, posture, movements and physical gestures. The current vogue, in my experience, is the “enlightened”, intelligent, educated, “successful” man (or woman) who speaks in cliches, is psychologically sophisticated and functions well in his work and social environment. But, in terms of his emotional aliveness and his experienced intimacies with others, his functioning is disabled or deadened. He is somewhat analogous to an athlete who can run a four minute mile but who gets dizzy and falls on his face when asked to bend down and touch his toes. The “split” in human integration is even more obvious on the cultural level of our society. We are a people who will shortly land men on the moon while on the other hand we find it increasingly impossible to live together in harmony with each other, least of all in intimacy, for sustained periods (human intimacy, not sexual intimacy).

Having, I hope, conveyed my message of denunciation about the “cortical gadfly” at least for the moment, (it always returns at the least opportunity) I would like to turn to the central issue of the Gestalt therapy approach to integration. try thesis is that Gestalt therapy is philosophically and operationally the psychic counterpart to structural Integration on the somatic level.

I would like to enumerate ten statements which I believe will serve as an introductory statement about the parallels in philosophy and technology between Gestalt Therapy and structural Integration. In the quest for a total organismic approach in the “helpinq professions” it seems to me that the two approaches are most compatible and indeed both are involved with the total organismic statement of the individual and differ only in that they approach the unity the organismic on different levels. For theoretical purposes I would postulate a “third leg” of the vital triangle of organismic function in the here and now: nutrition.* To sun up, an endeavor to promote health and growth in the human beging beginning with his present state of existence must include what he does for himself (and what we can do to assist this) physically, psychologically as well as what he feeds into his system, which tend to promote his well being and further development. I consider it academic which of the three leas of the triangle is “most basic” or “prior”. Three legs make a better foundation than two or one.

1. Heredity and experiential events in the life history of the individual have shaped him structurally and psychically into his present state of existence and functioning.

2. Having granted the validity of causative factors, Gestalt and SI reject as unnecessarily laborious, if not futile, the focusing or dwelling on the past, physically or psychologically. Understanding the “why” questions of a person’s life history may enhance our know ledge of human development but it has little or no therapeutic value to the individual.

3. Treatment focuses on areas of malfunction as these are observed by the therapist in the here and now.

4. Therapeutic methods are aimed directly at reducing the “hanguns”.

5. The only meaningful criteria for improvement is observable and experienced change.

6. The past represents an abundant source of “excuses” for the individual to use in order to avoid making effort and committing himself to take responsibility for his own health and growth in the present.

7. Therapeutic methods focused on the here and now are potentially “intensive” and “produce lasting benefits”. my greater effectiveness of other more subtle, indirect or prolonged treatments is not accepted.

8. The human organism has the continuous potential for further growth, and integration throughout his entire life.

9. A normal human being being will naturally develop into a healthy, integrated arson if his experiences do not distort or warn this natural development excessively.

10. All of life is an organismic process which functions as a unity. Speaking about different levels of functioning or different aspects of
behavior is only Justifiable for semantic reasons.

Any aspect of living is a process and there is no more popular method of “self torture” than fantasies o completing something with a feeling of finality and perfection. This is the thought I have in mind as conclude this pacer. It is my expression of the issue as experience it at the moment and I feel no sense of completeness about it. I do feel some sense of satisfaction that it is a “beginning” When I was first “Rolfed” I must admit that part of the appeal was that “ten sessions had lasting a benefits”. I had a subsequent short series a year later and I am beginning a third series this week. I feel more satisfied with my present attitude which is focused on my eagerness and appreciation of the experience itself and, experientially, “the lasting benefits” are now secondary. Healthy functioning includes everything a person does to nourish himself organismically in whatever mode or forms these might take. My function in this pacer is, hopefully, to nourish the integration process between our respective disciplines.

*Since life is biolocically based, it is obvious that the input of material into the organism is also basic. Too oaten this fact is given “lip service” and ignored behaviorally. I hope this area will be dealt with by someone more capable and qualified than myself.

Everyone has heard of the Hippocratic oath. Have you ever read it?

“I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Health, by Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that 1 will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture. To hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture; to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and to indentured pupils who have taken the physician’s oath, but to nobody else. I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give a woman a necessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein. Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrongdoing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things, to be holy secrets. Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain for ever reputation among a11 men for my ‘life and for my art; but if I transaress it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.”[:pb]Gestalt therapy emphasizes “awareness” and “focusing on the obvious”. in working with people our existential message can be paraphrased: “come to your senses”, or “lose your mind and gain your senses” as Fritz Perls outs it. Coming to one’s senses” is synonymous with coming to one’s body. There are no senses in the cortex, or mind, only an oversized “computer”. Much of my effort as a psychotherapist is aimed at breaking the deadlocks, or hang ups, which the person’s computer has established over many years and at the expense of the natural, organismic flow of his body and its senses.

If this “computer” were to appear in the form of a human body, the grotesqueness of its structural distortions would frequently be nothing short of horrifying. It would take a calculus to find its “center as a psychologist, when I experience someone functioning descriptively as a dead person with a fragmented identity, I undertake to help him come alive and integrate himself. I cannot recall an instance in which I have met a person in this kind of psychological limbo who did not also make the same kind of statement about his self and his existence with his Body appearance, posture, movements and physical gestures. The current vogue, in my experience, is the “enlightened”, intelligent, educated, “successful” man (or woman) who speaks in cliches, is psychologically sophisticated and functions well in his work and social environment. But, in terms of his emotional aliveness and his experienced intimacies with others, his functioning is disabled or deadened. He is somewhat analogous to an athlete who can run a four minute mile but who gets dizzy and falls on his face when asked to bend down and touch his toes. The “split” in human integration is even more obvious on the cultural level of our society. We are a people who will shortly land men on the moon while on the other hand we find it increasingly impossible to live together in harmony with each other, least of all in intimacy, for sustained periods (human intimacy, not sexual intimacy).

Having, I hope, conveyed my message of denunciation about the “cortical gadfly” at least for the moment, (it always returns at the least opportunity) I would like to turn to the central issue of the Gestalt therapy approach to integration. try thesis is that Gestalt therapy is philosophically and operationally the psychic counterpart to structural Integration on the somatic level.

I would like to enumerate ten statements which I believe will serve as an introductory statement about the parallels in philosophy and technology between Gestalt Therapy and structural Integration. In the quest for a total organismic approach in the “helpinq professions” it seems to me that the two approaches are most compatible and indeed both are involved with the total organismic statement of the individual and differ only in that they approach the unity the organismic on different levels. For theoretical purposes I would postulate a “third leg” of the vital triangle of organismic function in the here and now: nutrition.* To sun up, an endeavor to promote health and growth in the human beging beginning with his present state of existence must include what he does for himself (and what we can do to assist this) physically, psychologically as well as what he feeds into his system, which tend to promote his well being and further development. I consider it academic which of the three leas of the triangle is “most basic” or “prior”. Three legs make a better foundation than two or one.

1. Heredity and experiential events in the life history of the individual have shaped him structurally and psychically into his present state of existence and functioning.

2. Having granted the validity of causative factors, Gestalt and SI reject as unnecessarily laborious, if not futile, the focusing or dwelling on the past, physically or psychologically. Understanding the “why” questions of a person’s life history may enhance our know ledge of human development but it has little or no therapeutic value to the individual.

3. Treatment focuses on areas of malfunction as these are observed by the therapist in the here and now.

4. Therapeutic methods are aimed directly at reducing the “hanguns”.

5. The only meaningful criteria for improvement is observable and experienced change.

6. The past represents an abundant source of “excuses” for the individual to use in order to avoid making effort and committing himself to take responsibility for his own health and growth in the present.

7. Therapeutic methods focused on the here and now are potentially “intensive” and “produce lasting benefits”. my greater effectiveness of other more subtle, indirect or prolonged treatments is not accepted.

8. The human organism has the continuous potential for further growth, and integration throughout his entire life.

9. A normal human being being will naturally develop into a healthy, integrated arson if his experiences do not distort or warn this natural development excessively.

10. All of life is an organismic process which functions as a unity. Speaking about different levels of functioning or different aspects of
behavior is only Justifiable for semantic reasons.

Any aspect of living is a process and there is no more popular method of “self torture” than fantasies o completing something with a feeling of finality and perfection. This is the thought I have in mind as conclude this pacer. It is my expression of the issue as experience it at the moment and I feel no sense of completeness about it. I do feel some sense of satisfaction that it is a “beginning” When I was first “Rolfed” I must admit that part of the appeal was that “ten sessions had lasting a benefits”. I had a subsequent short series a year later and I am beginning a third series this week. I feel more satisfied with my present attitude which is focused on my eagerness and appreciation of the experience itself and, experientially, “the lasting benefits” are now secondary. Healthy functioning includes everything a person does to nourish himself organismically in whatever mode or forms these might take. My function in this pacer is, hopefully, to nourish the integration process between our respective disciplines.

*Since life is biolocically based, it is obvious that the input of material into the organism is also basic. Too oaten this fact is given “lip service” and ignored behaviorally. I hope this area will be dealt with by someone more capable and qualified than myself.

Everyone has heard of the Hippocratic oath. Have you ever read it?

“I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Health, by Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that 1 will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture. To hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture; to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and to indentured pupils who have taken the physician’s oath, but to nobody else. I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give a woman a necessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein. Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrongdoing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things, to be holy secrets. Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain for ever reputation among a11 men for my ‘life and for my art; but if I transaress it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.”