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Paul Goodman and the Origins of Gestalt Therapy •I• •~ • A Gestalt Institute of Cleveland publication HERE NOW NEXT Here Now Next Paul Goodman and the Origins of Gestalt Therapy Taylor Stoehr Jossey,Bass Publishers • San Francisco Copyright© 1994 by Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers, 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco, California 94104. Copyright under International, Pan American, and Universal Copyright Conventions. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form---except for brief quotation (not to exceed 1,000 words) in a review or professional work-without permission in writing from the publishers. e A Gestalt Institute of Cleveland publication Substantial discounts on bulk quantities of Jossey-Bass books are available to corporations, professional associations, and other organizations. For details and discount information, contact the special sales department at Jossey­ Bass Inc., Publishers. (415) 433-1740; Fax (415) 433-0499. For international orders, please contact your local Paramount Publishing International office. Manufactured in the United States of America. Nearly all Jossey-Bass books and jackets are printed on recycled paper containing at least 10 percent postconsumer waste, and many are printed with either soy- or vegetable-based ink, which emits fewer volatile organic compounds during the printing pro­ cess than petroleum-based ink. Selected quotations from Gestalt Therapy by Frederick Perls, M.D., Ralph F. Hefferline, Ph.D., and Paul Goodman, Ph.D., copyright © 1951, 1979 by Frederick Perls, Ralph F. Hefferline, and Paul Goodman, are reprinted by permission from Crown Publishers, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stoehr, Taylor, date. Here now next : Paul Goodman and the origins of Gestalt therapy / Taylor Stoehr. -1st ed. p. em.- {Jossey-Bass social and behavioral science series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7879-0005-Z 1. Goodman, Paul, 1911-1972-Contributions in gestalt therapy. 2. Gestalt therapy-History. I. Title. II. Series. RC489.G4S76 1994 150.19'82'09-dc20 94-9711 CIP FIRST EDITION HB Printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Code 9478 Contents Preface xi Acknowledgments xv The Author xvii ONE At the Crossroads 1 TWO Fritz and Lore Perls 40 THREE Bones to Pick with Wilhelm Reich and A. S. Neill 60 FOUR Writing Gestalt Therapy 81 FIVE The Intellectual Tradition 99 SIX The New York Institute and Its Founders 136 SEVEN Goodman the Therapist 164 EIGHT "Can Anything Be Salvaged from All That Effort?" 203 vii CONTENTS NINE Gestalt and Politics in the Sixties 248 TEN "My Only Son Fell Down and Died" 268 ELEVEN A Memorial Service for Fritz 275 TWELVE Neither Guru nor Sacred Text-the Gestalt Way 288 Notes 305 Selected Bibliography 323 Index 328 viii To Geoffrey Gardner, friend and counselor Preface THE STORY TO BE told in this book is twofold: first, Paul Goodman's role in establishing the principal ideas of Gestalt therapy, and after that, the way in which Goodman's own practice as a therapist changed him and ultimately led him to a new vocation, which might be called socio-therapist of the body politic. As one of Goodman's younger friends I was witness to much of his later career, and as his literary executor and biographer I have become familiar with the facts of his life and their con­ texts in a way that no friend or even family member could know them. I am only a layman with regard to psychotherapy, how­ ever, and was never a member of any Gestalt group. Except for Goodman himself, I knew no therapists and few patients dur­ ing the early days of the Gestalt Institute. I did meet Fritz Perls once-on the same occasion when a friend first brought me to Goodman's Manhattan apartment, one night in February 1950. This was the very time Perls and Goodman were working on Gestalt Therapy, but I was a naive eighteen-year-old, and had no idea that the grey-looking man with the accent and the vivid man who kissed me at the door-much to my amazement- xi PREFACE were writing a great book together. I left the East Coast soon after that and never lived in the same city with Goodman, but I kept in touch and our friendship grew, especially during the sixties. Over twenty years elapsed before I met another Gestalt therapist, Goodman's protege George Dennison. We had heard of each other from Goodman, but when we finally met it was at Goodman's graveside in 1972, after which we became close friends. Although Dennison had worked as a therapist for only a short time, he had a lot to tell me about his training with Goodman and the way Goodman ran his groups. After I decided to write Goodman's biography-a larger undertaking than the present volume-1 began to meet other therapists, who had been part of the original institute and could report their versions of its founding. I am grateful to those who shared their memories. Without their help, my story would have been too dependent on Goodman's own point of view, so fully revealed in his letters and journals and lecture notes for the training sessions he ran. It is important to know how his col, leagues and patients saw him from their unique perspectives. The book I now offer concentrates on Goodman's contri, butions and indebtedness to the Gestalt therapy movement. Very little is said of his earlier interest in psychoanalysis, his absorption and championing of Wilhelm Reich's ideas, or his own self,analysis which immediately preceded his work with Perls. The line had to be drawn somewhere. And there are other omissions and, no doubt, some distortions because of them. While the ideas and practice of psychotherapy were cer, tainly central for Goodman during the ten years I am recon, structing here, other concerns took as much or more of his attention-his deepening engagement in the politics of non, xii PREFACE violence, his ambivalent love affair with the Living Theatre, his devotion to his art and his efforts to get his work published, and his absorption with his family and with the circle of friends and disciples that constituted his community. All these points of contact come into play in the story of Goodman as Gestalt therapist; sometimes one or another of them threatens to become the center of attention and to push psychotherapy into the background. I try to keep a strong figure before the reader, for the sake of vitality and closure, but I am aware of unfinished business in the corners. It is a problem of perspective Gestalt therapists will appreciate. I hope my other readers, too, will find some poignancy in this portrait of a man in the very quick of his existence, facing the great turning point of his life. This is not something that could be captured in a tidy summary of Goodman's role in inventing a new psychotherapy. The expression "here and now" has quite rightly been asso, ciated with Fritz Peds, whose life and whose practice as ather, apist were so focused on the present moment. I call my book Here Now Next to emphasize Goodman's particular contribution to the theory of Gestalt therapy, his insistence that awareness can develop fully only in an ongoing present. Lively engagement with the unpredictable world of the next moment was what being in the vital present really amounted to for Goodman. It was what he meant when he gave his.half of Gestalt Therapy the title ''Novelty, Excitement and Growth." The phrase "here now next" might even be considered an adverbial translation of that title, taking it out of the static realm of abstract nouns. And of course Goodman used the phrase often in his later writings when he wanted a shorthand way of saying what was important in making contact with experience. xiii PREFACE Furthermore, I mean to suggest by my title something of the political dimension of Goodman's view of psychotherapy. Indeed, one might say that the here now next of my book is the movement from Goodman as theorist, to Goodman as thera, pist/patient, to Goodman as prophet. In this sequence Gestalt therapy may be seen as the necessary groundwork for Good, man's later career as a social critic and political philosopher. My book then is not simply a history of the Gestalt therapy move, ment and its antecedents, nor a biographical study of Good, man's own participation in its founding and development, but also an examination of the psychological import of that ~eat upheaval of the sixties known as the New Left. More than any other person Goodman articulated the point of view, at once utopian and practical, of that remarkable political movement. And at every point Gestalt insights and therapeutic experience informed his ideas. Almost a whole generation later, we have perhaps arrived at another crossroads, for the health of the body politic and the here now next of our culture. I think we could do worse than to look to Goodman for advice and inspiration. Cambridge, Massachusetts · Taylor Stoehr ]une 1994 xiv Acknowledgments MANY PEOPLE HAVE aided my work by sharing their memories and understanding of Paul Goodman and the Gestalt therapy movement and by other forms of advice and support. I wish to thank Diva Agostinelli, Rogers Albritton, Robert Anderson, Rose Mary Anderson, David Andree, Gregory Bate~ son, Karl Bissinger, Burt Brooks, Holley Cantine, Jonathan Croall, George Dennison, Mabel Dennison, Honore Valincourt Elkus, Howard Frisch, Isadore From, Jane Gapen, Frieda Gard~ ner, Geoffrey Gardner, Betty Gomory, Naomi Goodman, Per~ cival Goodman, Sally Goodman, Susan Goodman, Marilyn Hamilton, Toby Huff, Karen Humphrey, Alexander Katz, Richard King, Richard Kitzler, Lawrence Kornfeld, David Koven, Edmund Leites, Abba Lerner, Glenn Lewis, Diana Liben, Meyer Liben, Nilo Lindgren, Alexander Lowen, Judith Malina, Ilse Mattick, Paul Mattick, Robert Merideth, Richard P.
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