What about this creative process?

What about this creative process?

On Ariadne’s Thread Website there is a lot I write about being a creative process and I have been asked recently what this is.

Gestalt therapy/ counselling has always been very much based in the present moment.  Fritz Pearls, who was the founder, was very influenced by existentialism on the one hand and phenomenology on the other. Both are pointing to what is happening Now! Here in this moment.  What is important in this meeting, this act of two people being in the same space together. Both bring something of themselves. All the experience and expertise about themselves. All that has happened and all that may happen.  It is an encounter and at its best creates a situation of equality. Gestalt as with many of the foundational therapies were children of psychodynamic therapy (Think Sigmund Freud). At the time this was a very medical model of therapy. A person sat or lay on a couch and the analyst (the expert) sat behind them, perhaps umming a bit probably with a notebook and very often saying nothing. The relationship was kept strictly under control, the therapist was there to analyse what was said with a medical style knowledge or experience. The eventually names Person centred schools of therapy were something of a reaction against this. The person was seen as being the expert on their own condition with a sense that as Carl Rogers believed that given the right circumstances people would grow thrive and survive the best, given what they had.

Pearls was influenced by the growing sense of understanding that people often knew something if not all about the problems they brought. Sometime of course the problems were not what was first disclosed and ran much deeper, but in general people understood themselves at some level but often could not reach them. 

I have written about how Gestalt understands our lives as being cycles or waves of encounters and experiences that undulate through several points of reference. At their best they complete the cycle but very often they do not. Its these incomplete cycles that can become problematic. It’s partly about the past but it’s because what was left out back then intrudes upon the present, the now. This is not exclusive to Gestalt many therapies would also see this.  What is special is that Gestalt uses several ways to reach the partially resolved issues and works to complete them. 

Pearls was influenced by the growth of Psychodrama and worked alongside Moreno as this developed. 

Practically this developed a therapy that can be creative in a very practical way. Perhaps the best known is that of two (or three, four) chair work. A process whereby the person can interact with themselves as another person, or aspect of their self. This is known as a gestalt experiment and has special boundaries and skilled therapeutic interactions around it.  Creative work may be about bringing a dream, a poem, song picture, video model either made before the session or constructed within it. Another creative process widely known is ‘sand tray’ work.

For some people there is just something lovely about the feel of sand, but in the therapy room a tray of sand can become anything.  Maybe the seaside remembered as a child, with the blue tray the sea. Maybe a family day is recreated, that was tarnished by a family upset. Questions like how do you feel that was? Perhaps you might like to tell dad/mum/ brother how you feel about that as six-year-old Mary. How might your bother Bob have been kinder? What would you want to say to him as an adult now? 

These of course are simple imagined responses but when engaged in the therapy they are very much a response to what is going on. A part of the therapist skill is to see things some pass by others brought up with a simple question. Gestalt is in my own view very democratic. Its enquiry is much more about professional curiosity. People often think there is some hidden agenda behind the therapy, but whilst there is a here and now piece of work being done it is the role of the therapist to wonder not about their own issues but those that ae about the process of the person they are working with.

I have worked with young people who have come into the session not telling me what the ‘problem’ is but building a Lego model and suddenly being able to “see” the problem then by manipulating it come to a resolution, without my ever knowing more than that.

The emphasis is very much on the skill of knowing when greater knowledge or experience is helpful to the process and when it is not. Often the therapist is watching for opportunities to nudge rather than solve. 

With pictures words of songs poems or music it can be similar. What is it about this that is important? Why now? 

I would not want to claim this exclusively for Gestalt therapy because it is around for many other things as well, or perhaps its just that the process appeals to me, and I notice or collect up similar methods.  There is for example a style of Sunday school that utilises a similar approach.  Godly Play presents a biblical story to a group sat around in a circle watching the unfolding story.  Wooden people are ‘walked’ across the felt that is laid out rather than just being placed. The story is told with the attention focused on the table around which everyone is sat. The story is told and then ‘wondering’ questions are asked. Answers are not ‘given’ with further wondering about some of the answers brought up. Those who are a part of the group (often adults as well as children) will then go off to do some form of creativity or perhaps sit quietly. The session ends with general feedback about what has been done whilst sharing fruit juice and food or perhaps communion of bread and wine. There are no right or wrong answers. This is based on the understanding that people are innately spiritual and hold valid beliefs.  It is reflected in the notion of ‘Growth Mind’ whereby there is a focus on not having got things wrong but that there are still things to be learned. Its not yet found or perhaps there is another answer or solution. This itself is a part of the area of positive psychology. 

It engenders a sense of excitement in discovery, that the journey may be as if not more exciting than the solution. Much of this is based on the understanding that humans are inquisitive by nature. Society has become far to pointed towards goals rather than what it takes to get there. For myself it has become something about when the holiday starts.

When I was a child, I lived in the city and there was a general exodus in August down the M5 to the south coast for two weeks holiday. I could never wait to get there                                                                                                                  because the holiday began when we got to the sea. Being older I tend towards thinking that the journey to somewhere is as much a part of the holiday. I enjoy driving and like picking a rout that may take-in some interesting and beautiful spots. Somewhere good to eat lunch, a back road rather than the motorway. I also like or need to get to some place without fuss at time so will travel directly. But when there is time perhaps in the words of Super Tramp I might ‘Take the long way home’

In therapy terms what after all is better than working with someone over time and their finding solutions themselves as they travel through the process.

Unlike some shorter-term therapies like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) this sort of work reaches the why more than just the what. Often once folks have been through therapy, they are equipped with the process of being able to work through difficulties better themselves.

Takeaway

Therapies are as different as the people who come to them. Modern therapies such as CBT help people cope with short term difficulties. In gestalt the creative processes help to see why things happen and enable the recourses within us to resolve them more satisfactorily.

I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped.

— Fritz Perls, "Gestalt Therapy Verbatim", 1969