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An Interview with Felicia Carroll

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An Interview with Felicia Carroll An Interview with Felicia Carroll March, 2015 How carefully they have removed “life” away from learning, said Alice. No mess, no fuss, said the Rabbit to his watch. Alice took the watch from the Rabbit. The Rabbit heard the beat of his heart for the first time. --Lederman, 1978 Perhaps I shall begin from what prompted me to find ….”the answer”. One day I asked myself, why is psychotherapy divided into two groups one working with adult clients and the other with children? I have come across many theories citing the importance of dividing life into successive stages explaining human development. The child is not an adult person, and adult is not a child nor a teenager. However, after many years of studying, I feel it is strange to divide human life in into adults and children. Although I understand this division, I began to think about other points of view regading human development and I feel as if I am standing at the opposite pole. In reality our life is continuity. For example, after many years working in the field, not once have I seen adults try to fufil their desire to satisfy their childhood needs—i.e. reading a fairy tale. I have experieced first hand children's need to be taken seriously, as if they were capable of full decision- making. Despite not having worked in the office with children in the Gestalt approach, but only through the TRE approach (here also I have found a lot of inspiration), I began to search for profesionals who believe and practice phsychotherapy both with children and adults. Fortunately, my seach led me to Felicia Carroll whom I had the pleasure to meet. I followed Felicia and her work through the Violet Solomon Oaklander Foundation. When I learned that she was conducting a seminar in Prague early in February, I got in touch with her over email and agreed to meet in the Czech Republic. As that was not fortunate enough, Felicia introduced me to Alena Vávrova who is a Gestalt phychotherapist and who also happened to organize the Felicia’s seminar. Alena and Felicia confirmed that it is possible to work parraller with adults and children in phychotherapy. Before meeting face to face, I attended Carroll’s lecture which I arrived 1.5 hours late because of the train schedule. I was imagined to have a normal, lecture and did not expect to attend such emotional lecture. Felicia Carroll was retelling "Pinocchio" story and in parrallel she was making small pauses to apply gestalts diagnosis. The fairy tale ended was unique because it was the Italian version. I will not disclose the ending because I do not know if Felicia wants to use it for her seminar in Poland which will be held in Warsaw form the 23th to the 26th of February, 2016. For more detail follow the link: www.instytutdoswiadczania.com.pl. My trip to Prague brought a lot of interesting insights which I would like to share below: Desptite the fact that Slovakia and the Czech Republic are two separate countries, they share strongly intertwined history. Similarly, they have joined forces (!) and have put together a group of therapists using the Gestalt approach to work with children. After the workshop, I had the pleasure to meet most of the participants from the training led by Felicia Carroll. I was dumbstruck to see the ease with which not only two but 30 therapists worked with both adults and children. They were equaly taken when I told them that in Poland this ease in therapy is only applicable to adult clients. Yes, there are psychotherapists who use the Gestalt approach, but too fet to service a country with almost 40 million. Germany seems to subscrive to the Gestalt approach with children. But that's material for another article. In the meantime, I invite you to enjoy the interview that I conducted with Felicia Carroll. Gosia : Who inspired you to work with children in the Gestalt approach? Felicia: As a young woman I was a classroom teacher for 12 years teaching sixth grade social studies. The school librarian introduced me to humanistic education which eventually led me to Esalen Institute where one of the many educators who had inspired me, Janet Lederman, had started an early childhood project for the children in the Big Sur area. Janet had been a close associate of Fritz Perls. She based the philosophy and approach of the school/park on the organismic principles that she had developed as an educator and Gestalt practitioner. While living at Esalen I met Violet Oaklander which was the beginning of a mentorship/friendship which continues to this day. I also studied with other Gestalt educators such as George Brown and Stewart Shapiro. I then went on to training opportunities at the Gestalt Therapy Institute of Los Angeles and the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland. Gosia: From my training program I find working with adults more easy than working with children. This is because while working with adults you are focused on that person contrary to working with children when you deal with two adults (parents) & kid. Is working with children more difficult for you than with adults or does it come from my unique experience? Felicia: Certainly there are differences in working as a Gestalt Therapist with children and with adults. I find that if you can do therapy with children then you can easily work with adults. However, being trained to work only with adults does not prepare you in any way to work with children. You are correct in that working with children can be more complicated in terms of how the therapist thinks about the field conditions surrounding the child. Parents definitely have to be involved in assessment and treatment planning if the work is to be successful. I find building the therapeutic alliance with parents to make my work easier and more effective. Together we come to understand the needs of the child and make decisions about what interventions will be used. When parents understand that they are a necessary part of this process then they begin to build trust and assume responsibility. When we work with adults we still have to consider the field conditions of the person’s difficulties. It is too bad that often we are limited in our ability to work directly with the field. Gosia: Does the knowledge which you will spread amoung program participants in Poland concerning working with children will be applicable also to working with adults? Felicia: Yes! We are learning the importance of working with right brain processes, implicit memories, and imagery, and embodied experience in therapy with persons of all ages. Too often we rely only on the use of language in adult therapy. The person trained to use these other modalities in a phenomenological way can make their work with adults more alive and enjoyable. Gosia: What are the strengths and weaknesses of working with children using Gestalt approach? Felicia: I must say that I do not see any weaknesses in using the Gestalt approach with children. In fact, everything I am learning from the findings of neuroscience is confirming our approach. The Gestalt approach is fundamentally relational, embodied, vertical in approach, and integrative. The Gestalt approach is holistic in that body, emotions/affects, cognitions, consciousness, narrative, language, imagination, and the development of a sense of self are all woven together to restore integration that allows the child to move through their difficulties and to move on with their development. Gosia: You train psychotherapists all around the world. As far as I know now you head to Singapore. I am curiouse how the Gestalt approach connected with children varies in different countries. Could you discribe the diffrences and similarities please? Felicia: I am fortunate to have many opportunities to meet wonderful child therapists all over the world. I have now been on five continents: Brazil, Germany, Czech Republic and Slovakia, South Korea and Singapore, as well as Morocco. Many more therapists and students attend the Summer Intensive Training that is available in California. I have to say that fundamentally there are no major differences in the usefulness of the Gestalt approach across cultures. And yet, when I do supervision with individuals I learn about subtle cultural nuances that each clinician must consider when creating experiments or utilizing other interventions. One therapist I have the privilege of consulting with in Japan talks about , “feeling the atmosphere” as she decides on what is needed. Gosia: From TRE expirience I find that the shame & guilt is the most important issue when you work with children. Have you considered the same in Gestalt approach? Felicia: Absolutely! Shame is a primary affect and the shame response can be observed in infants. From my view, shame is the underlying experience to most of the symptoms and difficulties that bring a child into therapy. In Gestalt therapy we think about negative introjects. These are the faulty beliefs that a child develops about herself, her relationships with others, what she is to express and do within given field conditions. When a child experiences that something in fundamentally wrong with who she is, then she is becoming shame based, creating splits within her organismic process. This internal conflicts interfere with the child’s ability to get her needs met. So, being able to identify and work with such introjects is essential in our work as Gestalt therapists. Gosia: In my opinion there is no culture/ custom working with children when it comes to Gestalt approach in Poland. What is your advice to start building the above mentioned process in Poland? Felicia: First and foremost is to begin with training, studying, and reading the literature.
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