| |
| |
| |
| |
The next year I chanced upon the Gestalt Therapy work of Fritz Perls, whose willingness and ability to demonstrate change work blew my mind out of the water. Here was someone who could actually DO something, even if it had a bit much of the angry Buddhist! For the next ten years I spent most of my free time learning and practicing his ways of utilizing live behavior and all aspects of awarenessdreams and other unconscious communications, including nonverbal gestures, postures, voice tone, dialoguing between parts of a person, etc.
During this time I edited and published two Fritz Perls books, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, and his autobiography, In and Out the Garbage Pail. Under my former name, John O. Stevens I wrote and published Awareness: exploring, experimenting, experiencing, a handbook of gestalt awareness exercises for individuals and groups (many of which were “road-tested” in my junior college psychology classes). Ten years ago, when I was asked to write a new forward to the British edition, I found it still as useful as when I had written it twenty years before. I would not delete anything; only add the presupposition of positive intention, a very important piece missing from the Gestalt model. Gestalt dialogues are often much longer and noisier than they need to be. Adding the presupposition of positive intent makes them a hundred times shorter, quieter and more usefuland saves a lot of pillows and furniture from unnecessary violence.
| |
| |
| |
| |
