Table Of ContentA Gestalt Institute
of Cleveland Publication
On Intimate Ground
On Intimate Ground
A Gestalt Approach
to Working with Couples
Gordon Wheeler
Stephanie Backman
Editors
Jossey-Bass Publishers • San Francisco
Copyright© 1994 by Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers, 350 Sansome Street,
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Chapter Five is adapted from P. Papernow, "La therapie gestaltiste avec
des families reconstitutees," which is an article that appeared in the journal
Gestalt ("Families en Gestalt-therapie," issue no. 5, 1993), a publication of
the Societe Fran~aise de Gestalt.
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library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
On intimate ground : a Gestalt approach to working with couples I
Gordon Wheeler, Stephanie Backman, editors. - 1st ed.
p. em. - (The Jossey-Bass social and behavioral science
series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7879-0039-7
I. Marital psychotherapy. 2. Gestalt therapy. I. Wheeler,
Gordon. II. Backman, Stephanie III. Series.
RC488.5.0527 1994 94-17754
616.89'156-dc20 CIP
FIRST EDITION
HBPrinting 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I Code 94122
Contents
Preface: The Gestalt Model in Context
Gordon Wheeler ix
The Editors XXV
The Contributors xxvii
Introduction
Gordon Wheeler 1
Part I Theory
1. The Tasks of Intimacy: Reflections
on a Gestalt Approach to
Working with Couples
Gordon Wheeler 31
2. Contact and Choice: Gestalt Work
with Couples
judith Hemming 60
3. Self-Organization and Dialogue
Hunter Beaumont 83
4. Processes of Experiential Organization
in Couple and Family Systems
Netta R Kaplan and Marvin L. Kaplan 109
Partll Applications
5. Therapy with Remarried Couples
Patricia Papernow 128
vii
viii Contents
6. Gestalt Couples Therapy with Gay Male
Couples: Enlarging the Therapeutic
Ground of Awareness
Allan Singer 166
7. Gestalt Couples Therapy with Lesbian
Couples: Applying Theory and Practice
to the Lesbian Experience
Fraelean Curtis 188
8. Working with the Remarried Couple System
Isabel Fredericson andJ oseph H. Handlon 210
9. The Gestalt Couples Group
Mikael Curman and Barlno Curman 229
10. Trauma Survivors and Their Partners:
A Gestalt View
Pamela Geib and Stuart Simon 243
Partm Perspectives
11. Couples' Shame: The Unaddressed Issue
Robert Lee 262'
12. Intimacy and Power in Long-Term
Relationships: A Gestalt Therapy-Systems
Perspective
Joseph Melnick and Sonia March Nevis 291
13. The Grammar of Relationship:
Gestalt Couples Therapy
Cynthia Oudejans Harris 309
14. Giving and Receiving
Richard Borofsky and Antra Kalnins Borofsky 325
15. The Aesthetics of Gestalt Couples Therapy
Joseph Zinker and Sonia March Nevis 356
Epilogue: The Aesthetic Lens
Stephanie Backman 400
Index 408
Preface
The Gestalt Model
in Context
he reader who knows the Gestalt model only in its late
T Perlsian workshop version of psychodramas and empty
chairs is in for a surprise-we believe a very pleasurable
and instructive one-with the present volume. In place of the
confrontation, hyperindividualism, and percussive rhythms of
the Perlsian model we have here a very different Gestalt per-
spective, one that derives from the lineage of Kurt Lewin, Kurt
Goldstein, Laura Perls, Fritz Perls (especially the earlier work),
Paul Goodman, Isadore From, and many Gestalt writers of the
past twenty years-the Nevises and Polsters, Yontef, Zinker, and
others. Many of these were our teachers, and all in their various
ways emphasize themes of contact and context, dialogue, growth
in relationship, the phenomenological perspective, and a con-
structivist view of the self as the "organizer of the field" and the
artist of life.
Because this approach is so different from some common
preconceptions, it seems worthwhile to consider briefly what
this Gestalt model is and how it fits into the wider context of psy-
chological and psychotherapy models. The discussion will be
brief because the entire history of psychology as a science, after
all, and of psychotherapy as a discipline and a practice within
that science, goes back only about a hundred years-long
enough to give some perspective, but still perhaps short enough
to allow a summary of a few dominant streams.
ix
X Preface
The Gestalt Model in the Context of Other Models
A full century has now passed since the earliest beginnings of
the Gestalt perceptual model, which completely revolutionized
our understanding of human cognition and human experience.
With the passage of time we can now understand perhaps bet-
ter than the early framers of the model some of the implications
of the perspective for behavior, affect, cognition, and mean-
ing-which are the components of experience itself. Some of
these implications are:
tt. We perceive in wholes, not in bits and pieces or individual
"stimuli" that are somehow added up, as the old associa-
tionist and behavioral models would have it; we resolve the
whole field at once, or try to, and the parts take on meaning
in relation to this context of understanding.
• What we experience is this whole-field resolution; our expe-
rience of any given event doesn't lie in the event itself, but
in the meaning we attach to it. Psychotherapy, no matter the
terminology of the particular school, has to involve the ex-
ploration of this constructed meaning.
• This means that there is no seeing without interpreting, and
no perceiving that does not include feeling and evaluating.
There is no such thing as experience that is prior to mean-
ing: both arise in the same act and process of taking in the
world. This is a point borne out by contemporary brain re-
search, which more and more shows the involvement of the
whole brain in the organization of perception and cogni-
tion, and the mediation of perception and memory by affect.
• Our behavior is never the simple product ofintemal "drives"
and "schedules of reinforcement," as the classical Freudian
and behaviorist models maintained. Appetites, drives, and
conditioning may all be important at various times, but our
actual behavior is always mediated and organized in terms of
our "map" or resolution of the whole field, the whole con-
text of perceived risks and resources, in relation to our own
felt needs and goals.
• In a systemic perspective, the same thing applies. Systems
