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I went to a fortune teller with a group of friends. I don't believe in them but this one gave me a valuable tip.

"There is something you want to do;" she told me. "You are holding back because there seems to be an obstacle of some kind in your way."(Would apply to the first ten people you meet.) "I'm going to give you some advice. This thing that you want to do -- go ahead and start it. If you wait until everything is just right you will never begin at all, for things are never just right. You have to make a start and put things right as you go."

This anecdote communicates a simple but dynamic truth about growth that is often overlooked -- that a major dreamsquelcher which causes us to postpone our potentializing indefinitely is the belief that "I can't do what I'd really like to do because . . ." If you feel some serious inner or outer obstacles to making creative changes in your life, welcome to the human race! So do most people. I can think of lots of "good" reasons for not risking the new scary things that could enable me to develop more of my possibilities. My reasons often (but not always) turn out to be ingenious rationalizations to justify staying in my relatively comfortable cocoon. Liberating the butterfly in you or me to fly is usually risky and often frightening. But the problem with staying in one's cocoon is that, though it's safe and warm and comfortable, the price of staying there indefinitely is very high. The view from a cocoon is very limited, to say the least. One avoids facing one's fear of flying but, by so doing, misses the excitement and joy of flying.

Remember, the most important person for any of us to see through the growth-hope perspective is ourselves. Only as I see myself through the glasses of growth will I be able to see the rich potentialities in you or in the others I meet along the way. Only as I risk letting the butterfly

in me out of its cocoon to soar, can I encourage the people whose lives touch mine to risk leaving their cocoons. So let me invite you to see an inner picture of yourself as a butterfly struggling to leave your cocoon. When you succeed, enjoy the freedom and joy of the flight of growth! (Close your eyes and try this now.)/

Of course, as you probably know from experience, our cocoons aren't all that safe or secure, at least not permanently so. Life has a way of kicking us out of our comfortable adjustments, our little havens, sooner or later. Each life stage and each major change in our relationships and in society feels strangely as if someone pushed the ejection button on the cocoon we constructed

in the previous stage. So actually we have only two options -- to be ejected from our cocoons or to choose to leave them intentionally, even though it's scary, because our longing to fly is stronger (perhaps only a little) than our fear of flying. Leaving each cocoon is, in my experience, like leaving another womb. Unlike the first time we exited a womb, we have some choice in our own

rebirthing. Our awareness of both the price and the possibilities of growth gives us the wonderful, though frightening, freedom to choose!

If you followed the suggestion that you keep a journal of your own growth insights and plans as

you read the book, I recommend that you look through it now. Or, if you underlined and scribbled notes to yourself in the margin of the book or simply made mental notes to yourself, fine! Take a leisurely stroll through your own responses to what you encountered in this book. Stop to enjoy the things you noted./ Write some additional comments, affirmations, or criticisms of your

notes to yourself, as you experience these from the perspective of having finished the book./ Reflect on your notes, picking out the insights and methods of growthing that now raise your energy level most. Trust the barometer of your energy level to suggest that those resources may be crucial ones for your own growth or for your increasing effectiveness as a growth enabler with others. You may find it helpful to make a list of these energy-raisers!/

Now, I suggest that you let your mind relax and play with these ideas, one at a time, taking as long as you wish. Let yourself roam among them playfully. Frolic with them, dialogue with them (listening carefully to what they say), push against them, arm wrestle with them, or let them caress your mind. See what happens as you stay with them actively and playfully for a while. Let yourself be open to whatever emerges./ Don't say to yourself, "Now I've got to implement these good ideas, whether I feel like it or not!" (That's Homey's "tyranny of the oughts and shoulds," which, as she made clear, frustrates rather than facilitates creative change.) See if you can avoid putting that trip on yourself. Just stay among the growth resources that feel most energized./ What do you want to do with these? Let your mind play with them as they come back to you and see what happens. Where do they take you? What emerges? What are the next steps? Or jumps? Or flights? Up? Or down? Or sideways? What do you really want to do? Let your plans "grow legs or

arms"!/ I find it helps me to write out some change plans. See where this process takes you. Perhaps your butterfly will decide to fly in a new place, in a storm or in a serene place. Flow with your experiencing. Trust it. If you do, you'll find that new ways to use these growth resources emerge from your own creativity. You'll not only decide to use them, you'll enjoy doing so in your

own unique ways!

This "conclusion" didn't go where I expected it would when I started writing it, which is probably just as well. For the only conclusion that will be worth much to you is the one you decide to write in your own thought and in your actions and relationships. When you do that, it is really not

a conclusion, of course, but a beginning. It's your new beginning! (However, if you'd like some more organized suggestions for using the growth insights of a book like this, you'll find these at the end of the companion book to this

one.(2))

Whichever or whatever you decide to do or not to do, I had fun writing this non-conclusion. I hope you enjoyed reading it! So, HAPPY FLYING!

NOTES

1. (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1955), pp. 149-50.

2. See Growth Counseling, Hope-Centered Methods for Actualizing Human Wholeness, pp. 185-90.

Psychosynthesis was developed by psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli, who was born in Venice, Italy, in 1888. He had his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Florence, where he also studied philosophy and psychology. Assagioli was part of the original psychoanalytic group in Italy, but around 1911 he began to move beyond Freud, developing his own approach. He continued to change and develop psychosynthesis until his death in Florence in 1974. Until relatively recently, his work was not widely known outside of Italy. But in the last decade his books have been translated into many languages, and psychosynthesis institutes have developed in various parts of the world. In this country his ideas are influencing a growing number of therapists as well as persons in the human potentials movement.

Psychosynthesis is a whole-person approach to healing and growth. It is one of the most productive sources of both concepts and methods for growth-oriented counselors and therapists. Psychosynthesis is explicitly growth-centered. With prophetic insight, Assagioli declares: " Only the development of his inner powers can offset the dangers inherent in man's [sic] losing control of the tremendous forces at his disposal and becoming the victim of his own achievements. . . .

This is indispensable for maintaining the sanity and indeed the very survival of humanity."(1)

Psychosynthesis is also explicitly spiritually oriented. Many of its methods are useful in facilitating spiritual growth. The impact of psychosynthesis on pastoral counseling theory and practice has been relatively slight, even though it is potentially invaluable as a resource for any spiritually oriented counselor. The full incorporation of this approach is one of the challenges for the future of pastoral counseling.

Until the last few years, I did not sense the significance of psychosynthesis and therefore did not take time to explore this therapy in depth. When I did, I was excited by its riches and struck by the many parallels with the approach that I was by then calling Growth Counseling.

Psychosynthesis' Insights About Growth

In discussing the affinities of his views with those of Carl Jung, Assagioli states his wholeness orientation:

In the practice of therapy we both agree in rejecting "pathologism," the concentration upon morbid manifestations and symptoms of a supposedly psychological "disease." We regard man [sic] as a fundamentally healthy organism in which there may be a temporary malfunctioning. Nature is always trying to re-establish harmony, and with the psyche the principle of synthesis is dominant. . . .The task of therapy is to aid the individual in transforming the personality, and integrating apparent contradictions.(2)

Assagioli has an appreciation for the way in which the intensive study of pathology by psychoanalysis and depth psychology has enlarged and deepened our understanding of the human psyche. But he also declared:

Psychosynthesis affirms the natural drive of persons to grow by integrating their lives at higher levels. The fact that the growth drive can become conscious in us human beings enables us to cooperate with this drive and thus to accelerate the process of actualizing our potentials.

Assagioli accepted many insights derived from Freud's brilliant exploration of the "lower unconscious." Yet he saw Freud's conception of persons as incomplete and inadequate. When asked about the difference between psychosynthesis and psychoanalysis, in an interview not long before his death, he responded with a striking metaphor:

In one of his letters Freud said, "I am interested only in the basement of the human building." We try to build an elevator which will allow a person access to every level of his personality. After all, a building with only a basement is very limited. We want to open up the terrace where you can sun-bathe or look at the stars. Our concern is the synthesis of all areas of the personality. This means psychosynthesis is holistic, global and inclusive. It is not against psychoanalysis or even behavior modification, but it insists that the need for meaning, for higher values, for a spiritual life, are as real as biological or social needs.(4)

Here is the "egg diagram," which Assagioli created to show the interrelatedness of the various dimensions of personality:(5)

Assagioli's view of human beings is more complex and richer than Freud's. As the diagram suggests, the unconscious has three levels. In addition to the lower unconscious there is also a middle unconscious, which is accessible to our waking consciousness, and a higher unconscious or "superconscious." The higher Self, our creative center and essence, is within this higher unconscious. The "I," or the self of everyday experience, is not one's ultimate identity. Rather, it is a reflection of the much more creative higher Self. Making our true Self the unifying center of our being is the primary goal of psychosynthesis. The oval delimiting the individual is analogous to the permeable membrane of a cell, which permits active interchange with the whole body. A person is in constant interaction with the wider interpersonal and transpersonal psychological and spiritual environment.

Spiritual Development

Psychosynthesis seeks to combine the objectivity of science with the passion of a seeker for religious truth. "Spiritual" is used in psychosynthesis to include specifically religious experiences but also the whole range of ethical, aesthetic, and humanistic values. Psychosynthesis recognizes and respects the need of many people for formal religion. But its goal is to help people enrich their lives through direct spiritual experience.

The basic resources for growth come from the higher Self or superconscious. As do other therapies, psychosynthesis seeks to help people utilize their sexual and aggressive energies creatively. But it also aims at helping them use "the potent superconscious spiritual energies, which have a transforming and regenerating influence on the whole personality." Assagioli emphasized the remarkable potency of these spiritual energies when he declared: "This release may be compared to that of intra-atomic energy latent in matter."(6) The energies of the higher Self exert a continual pull toward the actualization of our higher potentialities.

For Assagioli, the spiritual growth drives are as natural as the sexual and aggressive drives of the lower unconscious:

The will, understood as the capacity for decision, planning, and purpose, is regarded as a key resource in all phases of psychosynthesis. The will is a muscle-like part of the personality that can be strengthened and developed by will-training exercises. Decision and action, guided by an effective will, are the main thrusts of growth toward higher levels of integration. Assagioli writes: "The will is like the conductor of an orchestra. He is not self assertive but rather the humble servant of the composer and the score."(8) Among all our potentials, the power of the will should be given priority in striving to create both more complete, integrated selves and a better world. Only by the mobilization of the creative powers of the will can the human family avoid destroying ourselves by our runaway technology.

The imagination is another essential growth resource in psychosynthesis. Images and symbols are accumulators and transformers of the psychological energies that empower all growth, whether in therapy, education, or in other contexts. For this reason, the use of guided imaging has a key place in the practice of psychosynthesis.

When one considers the patriarchal climate of the era in which his thinking developed, Assagioli was remarkably liberated in his attitudes toward women. He had a strong emphasis on androgynous wholeness in his understanding of growth. Following Jung's thought (without most of Jung's patriarchal biases) in seeing "masculine" and "feminine" components, he declared: "Only by accepting both the masculine and feminine principles, bringing them together, and harmonizing them within ourselves, will we be able to transcend the conditioning of our roles, and to express the whole range of our latent potential."(9) He emphasized the need in our society for women to be more involved in social and political life and thus to bring greater compassion, altruistic love, and respect for life into the public arena. He affirmed the right of women to combine the public roles with traditional family roles, if they choose, or to give their full energies to social and political roles. He called for a new society that is neither patriarchal nor matriarchal, but a global culture incorporating the best contributions of both men and women. With buoyant optimism, he declared: "All of this is within our reachùfor not only is it very beautiful -- it is very human."(10)

What are the resistances to growth in psychosynthesis? Growth can be blocked by a variety of forces on various levels of the psyche. Assagioli pointed to the conflict between inertia and the craving for security, on the one hand, and the drive toward growth and adventure on the other. Resistance to growth can result from the way emerging needs and drives threaten old securities. Growth also can be blocked by failure to use the will constructively and by overidentification with one of the "subpersonalities" within individuals. The therapist's or client's acceptance of a traditional view of psychopathology can limit growth by causing them to ignore the essential resources for growth in the Self -- will, imagination, creativity. Furthermore, inadequate ideals and heroes/heroines can diminish actualization by depriving a person of growth-enhancing goals and models of the good life.

The Process of Growth

A therapist begins psychosynthesis by discovering the particular needs stemming from the unique problems that an individual is facing. If growth is being blocked by unresolved conflicts in the lower unconscious, therapy has an analytic phase in which traditional psychotherapeutic approaches may be used. But analysis -- "a separating of the whole into component parts in order to understand the nature, function and relationship of these parts"(11) is seldom more than a minor part of therapy. The primary emphasis, as the word "psychosynthesis" suggests, is synthesis -- "an integration, a wholeness, a unity, a harmonious use of all your potentialities."

Although there are three phases of the process of psychosynthesis, in actual practice the phases do not necessarily occur in succession or separately. Often they take place in a back-and-forth or parallel manner, depending on the unique growth needs of the individual. If, for example, initial exploration reveals serious ethical and religious conflicts, as is often the case, these may be taken up in therapy immediately. The first level of psychosynthesis is personal synthesis. This phase aims at the synthesis of the conflicted or competing "subpersonalities" around the conscious self or ego (a method for doing this is described later in this chapter). The second level, "spiritual synthesis," aims at integration around the Self, the higher spiritual center. This process seeks to realize the superconscious potentials of personality -- the capacities for meaning, values, love, altruism, and for aesthetic, scientific, and spiritual creativity. New creative energies are released in one's life and relationships as synthesis occurs around this spiritual center. The purpose of life, as understood in psychosynthesis, is to manifest this Self as fully as possible in one's everyday life and relationships.

Assagioli saw the process of spiritual development as "a long and arduous journey, an adventure through strange lands full of surprises, difficulties, and even dangers."(12) Disturbing crises often precede and result from a spiritual awakening. But he also saw the joy in growth. Responding to Maslow's call for a "technology of joy," Assagioli defined enjoyment as that which results from the satisfaction of any need; pleasure he saw as resulting from the gratification of a "basic need" (Maslow's term); joy from the satisfaction of a higher need. He declared: "Acts of good will have rich and sometimes amazing results. Altruistic, humanitarian activities give deep satisfaction and a sense of fulfilling one's true purpose in life. As an Eastern sage said, 'World tasks are like fires of joy.'"(13) Self-actualization gives one a joyous sense of power, freedom, and mastery. Full transpersonal Self-realization, involving communion or identification with the transcendent Reality, results in what Assagioli called Bliss.

The third level of the process of psychosynthesis, according to Assagioli, is transpersonal synthesis. This phase aims at getting one into a harmonious relationship with other persons and with the cosmos. Clearly psychosynthesis is a system-oriented approach. The integration of synthesis of interpersonal relationships, of the individual with various groups, with the whole human family, and with the spiritual reality called God -- all may be a part of this third phase of growth. The essential unity of these different relationships is understood as a transpersonal spiritual oneness. Since persons live inextricably in relationships, a "good will" always involves harmonization with the wills of others and with nature. An inclusive ecological awareness is present in Assagioli's understanding of growth:

Selfeenteredness is deeply destructive to the cooperation without which a person cannot live a full life in community. This same principle applies to an individual's relation to nature and the universe. No person can take an arrogant stand and consider himself unrelated to the universe. Like it or not, man [sic] is part of the universal will and he must somehow tune in and willingly participate in the rhythms of universal life. The harmonization and unification of the individual and universal will is one of the highest human goals, even if it is seldom realized.(14)

There is an outreach thrust in Assagioli's thought which I find refreshing: "Inner experience is not an end in itself but a means to a deeper, more dynamic and effective involvement with and service to humanity."(15) It is significant that Assagioli attempted to launch a "Will Project" aimed at generating good, strong, transpersonal wills to improve relationships in families, between different racial and religious groups, and among nations.(16) In a recent paper in the psychosynthesis journal Donald Keys describes what he calls the "synthesis of the nations," the process by which planetary values and a sense of global responsibility are developed through the "planetization of our consciousness."(17)

The therapist takes an active role in the early phase of psychosynthesis, utilizing whatever methods are needed to actualize that dimension of a person's potentials. Gradually, the individual exercises increasing responsibility, and the therapist becomes primarily a catalyst in the growth process. In the later phases the role of the therapist is gradually taken by the individual's higher Self, of whom the person has increasing awareness and identification. The inner wisdom of one's own higher Self is seen as the most valid source of guidance. Knowing this (as Robert Gerard points out) gives a therapist a sense of both humility and hope:

If you recognize the existence of a spiritual Self with a capital "S" then you also recognize as a therapist that there is within your patient (within all of us, for that matter) an inner source of love, of intelligence, of wisdom, of creativity, of inner direction and purpose. . . . It can help a great deal if the therapist has a conviction, drawn from direct experience, that regardless of how wretched, confused or sick the individual may appear on the surface, there is this inner center of psychological health, of wisdom, of purpose, which is there to be evoked.(18)

The therapist's central task is to help the person become aware of and learn to use this inner wisdom and power for healing and growth.

The nonhierarchical, egalitarian style of psychosynthesis is expressed in Assagioli's view that having a therapist, although an advantage, is not essential: "Psychosynthesis can be applied by the individual himself or herself, fostering and accelerating inner growth and self-actualization. . . , Such self-psychosynthesis should be practiced . . . by every therapist, social worker, and educator (including parents)."(19)

Weaknesses from the Growth Perspective

The weaknesses in psychosynthesis seem to me to be relatively minor, when viewed in the context of its many strengths. Although this therapy has a thoroughly ecological-systemic conception of growth, the lion's share of attention in psychosynthesis circles has been given to intrapsychic growth. Consequently there has been too little effort invested in applying psychosynthesis to interpersonal relationships and to impacting the wider structures of society and the ecosystem. Fortunately, the systemic emphasis seems to have become stronger in recent years. Hopefully it will become an increasingly central concern of therapists who are developing the theory and practice of psychosynthesis.

The emphasis on the will runs the danger of all approaches to growth that highlight intentionality. This is the risk of encouraging what Karen Homey called the "tyranny of the oughts and shoulds." Pushing oneself toward high ideals can produce unproductive frustration and even despair. It is noteworthy that Assagioli warned of this danger. In discussing the use of ideals and action plans in therapy he emphasized that these need to be "authentic," that is, in line with the natural development of the person. Assagioli saw that a "genuine ideal model" can help one tap the resources of the higher Self. Using the power of images, such a model releases the energies of change.(20) Falling into the trap of perfectionism is seen as being prevented by getting in touch with the wisdom of one's higher Self.

Assagioli seems to underestimate the tenacious resistances to growth in us human beings and in society. His enthusiasm for the importance of the will in growth caused him to underemphasize the considerable extent to which the wills of us human beings are "in bondage" (as Martin Luther put it).

Growth Methods from Psychosynthesis

The choice of particular therapeutic methods in psychosynthesis is made in light of the emerging growth needs of each individual. I shall now describe some of these tools which I have found useful. Let me recommend that you try them yourself before you attempt to use them in counseling or therapy or in growth groups:

Disidentification and Self-Identification. This exercise is a way of identifying the "I," or center of consciousness, around which personal synthesis can occur. According to psychosynthesis theory, we are dominated by that with which we are identified. As a middle-class male, I frequently become overidentified with my work and with striving for material security and "success." When I do, my anxieties in that one area of my life dominate my sense of identity and self-worth. To that extent that I disidentify myself from my job, my professional roles, and my anxiety about material things, I free myself inwardly from being the captive of my work and of things. It becomes easier to view my job in a more balanced perspective as only one important dimension of my life and not the center of my identity or worth.

The first part of this exercise is disidentification. Read the following statements a few sentences at a time and then close your eyes and repeat them in your mind silently. Or ask someone to read them to you sentence by sentence while you repeat them inwardly. Sit in a comfortable position, relax, and close your eyes.

I affirm: I have a body but / am more than my body. My body may find itself in different conditions or sickness; it may be rested or tired. . , . My body is my precious instrument of experience and action in the outer world. . . . I treat it well; I seek to keep it in good health. . . . I have a body, but l am more than my body. (21)

In a similar way, disidentify your self from your feelings and emotions (I have emotions, but lam more than my emotions, and so on); your desires; your intellect and thoughts; your job; your social roles (e.g., father or mother, husband or wife, your job roles); your relationships; your problems. Go through the whole list, taking one aspect of your life at a time. Be aware of those aspects with which you feel overidentified. (I find this exercise helpful when I am investing excessive energy in a part of my body that is giving me trouble -- for example, "I have teeth and they are causing me discomfort at this moment, but I am more than my teeth.")

The second part of this exercise is self-identification. After finishing the disidentification process, repeat the following:

It takes most people considerable practice before the profundity of this simple exercise is experienced fully.

Getting to Know Your Subpersonalities. Each of us has a diversity of semiautonomous subpersonalities within us. TA emphasizes the Parent-Adult-Child sides of our personalities; gestalt therapy focuses on the Top Dog vs. Under Dog sides. Psychosynthesis has identified hundreds of other subpersonalities. I can recognize many subpersonalities within myselfùthe Mystic, the Materialist, the Crusader, the Sneak, the Doubter, the Playful Kid, the Prisoner, the Clown, the Dreamer, the Cynic, the Good Professor. When our subpersonalities are unknown to us, they produce inner conflicts and diffusion in our sense of "I-ness." It facilitates our growth to get to know, understand, and like our subpersonalities. By so doing, our self can learn to direct their expression according to our goals and needs. Thus they become allies and resources for enriching our identity, our life, and our relationships.(23) Here is an exercise for getting to know one's subpersonalities:

"Sit comfortably and relax. After closing your eyes, take a few deep breaths. Imagine a big wooden door in front of you. On the door there is a sign that says SUBPERSONALITIES. Imagine that they all live behind the door. Now open the door and let some of your main subpersonalities come out. Just observe them. Don't get involved. Be aware of them."(24)

Now choose a subpersonality that seems most interesting to you. Carry on a dialogue with this one, finding out what it is like and what it wants and needs./ Now let yourself become that subpersonality. Discover how this feels./ Be yourself again and choose another subpersonality with whom to get acquainted. Take all the time you need to develop the best possible relationship with all your subpersonalities one at a time on successive occasions of growth work.

Will Training Exercises. There are six stages of willing, according to Assagioli; (1) the existence of a purpose to be achieved; (2) deliberation on the various goals and their relative importance; (3) making a decision on one important goal and setting aside the others; (4) confirmation of the choice by an affirmation of this goal by will; (5) development of a plan to achieve the goal; (6) directing the implementation of the plan. Will strengthening occurs as one moves intentionally through these stages.

Try this, now. Reflect on the various goals you would like to accomplish within the next week./ Choose one that has high priority and is achievable./ Confirm the choice by affirming that you will invest yourself in achieving this goal./ Devise a concrete, detailed plan and then use your will to implement it. If your goal is to strengthen your body, develop a daily program of physical exercise appropriate to your health. If your goal is to increase your sense of being in charge of your life or to decrease the amount of time you waste, plan and implement a realistic, meaningful schedule for yourself. I recall a client who was plagued by the chronic chaos of trying to accomplish too many things in a given period of time without a prioritized schedule. After a week of implementing a carefully prepared, realistic schedule, he reported: "I feel as though I'm on top of my situation. It's like I'm running my life rather than having circumstances run me!" It is important to become aware of and deal with the subpersonalities that interfere with the functioning of your will -- the Self-doubter, the Saboteur, Lazy Bones, and others.

Imagination Training. Images can be used at many points in the process of growth. Some of the common images used in psychosynthesis include seeing oneself walking along a stream, being in a meadow, visiting a house, becoming a lion (to get in touch with one's strong, assertive side), and so on. One's active imagination can provide both motivation and energy for growth. (It activates the energies and creativity of the right hemisphere of our brains.) Assagioli observed that "images and mental pictures tend to produce the physical condition and external acts corresponding to them."(25)

This principle is being used effectively in many areas. The use of imaging by cancer patients, as pioneered by the Simontons (see chapter 8), is one productive application. The next time you have a sore muscle from overexertion of some kind, try relaxing that part of your body and, in your imagination, surround it with a warm, healing energy as you visualize it as well again. Do this several times a day and be aware of the effects. This imaging process seems to release healing energy within the body. If you are worried about some demanding event in the future, try this brief daily exercise: See yourself in your imagination coping with that event in a strong, effective way. Even see yourself enjoying it. Or, if you regard yourself as a shy person, image yourself behaving as a confident and competent person who is obviously respected by others.

Symbolic Identification. This method, developed by Robert Gerard, involves "becoming" an admired person or thing in one's imagination. One identifies with certain qualities in the person or thing and is thus able to "own" resources within oneself that have been ignored. Psychological provincialism is becoming increasingly costly on our shrinking planet. Symbolic identification can help us develop the global consciousness and caring which are needed for survival on a livable planet. Martha Crampton reports: "Symbolic identification may ... be used to expand our consciousness and to gain a deeper sense of participation in, and oneness with the universe. 'Becoming' such natural symbols as flowers, a tree, a rock, a river, the ocean, the sun, or even the galaxy, can be particularly valuable for this purpose."(26) I suggest you try identifying with a sluggish, polluted river for a while; then identify with a clear, joyful mountain stream./ Be aware of the differences of the impact of these two images./ Or identify with a growing tree or an unfolding flower. Let the images feed your inner life./ Or try symbolic identification with a person or people in great need in your community or in other parts of the world.

Discovering the Self. Psychosynthesis offers a variety of methods for facilitating spiritual growth by opening oneself to the creative energies and wisdom of one's higher Self. I have found one of the most valuable to be the exercise of imagining myself journeying up a mountain path to enjoy communicating with my higher Self at the summit. I invite you to experience this now.(27)

Another approach to increased awareness of your higher Self is to picture and carry on an inner dialogue with your Wise Teacher or the Wise Woman or Wise Man within you, or image and consult with your "inner light," as the Quakers and Mahatma Gandhi refer to the inner source of wisdom. For creative energies to flow it is necessary to relax one's analytical mind temporarily and simply be expectantly open. After the intuitive images or messages are received they must be tested and understood in the fires of the mind through hard, critical thinking. They then can be translated into constructive action. A busy man described his experience:

In facilitating growth work in counseling and in therapy and growth groups, I find it helpful to invite people to view from the perspective of their higher Selves the problems and growth issues with which they're working. I first experienced the transforming power of this perspective as a client in a relationship with a therapist trained in psychosynthesis.(29)

Erma Pixley, a marriage and family counselor, leads growth groups for women using a variety of psychosynthesis methods. She has the women list the demanding and conflicting roles they play in everyday life and their various subpersonalities -- e.g., nurturer, playful child, sensuous lover, counselor. She leads the women in a disidentification, self-identification exercise to become aware of their center of consciousness, which is more than their roles or subpersonalities. She then invites the women to carry on an inner dialogue among their roles and subpersonalities, particularly those which are usurping too much of themselves. She suggests that they bring into this conversation their inner wisdom or higher Self to help them establish balance and integration among their subpersonalities. The women are invited to lift their consciousness to a higher and more inclusive level each day by getting in touch with the essence of all humanity within themselves.(30)

Meditation. Assagioli welcomed insights and methods of enhancing consciousness from the East. (He learned Sanskrit to allow himself to read Eastern mystical texts in their original language.) During the Second World War, he held firmly to his strong convictions about the oneness of humankind. Because of his ideas Mussolini made him a political prisoner. In prison, he worried about his patients in Rome. Quickly he began to observe his own worry, asking himself, "What good can I get from worry? What can I do that is more useful?" This was the answer, which he believed came from his higher Self: "Meditate. You've always wanted to, but were always too busy." Being in solitary confinement, he was not bothered by anyone. He meditated for hours every day. The results surprised him. He never had felt such peace. He recalled that never in his life had he so enjoyed being alive.(31)

Assagioli describes three types of meditation: reflective meditation (to acquire in-depth understanding of our ordinary consciousness), receptive meditation (to open ourselves to the wisdom of the higher Self), and creative meditation (to regenerate and transform our personality). All effective meditation is understood as "inner action" in that it requires will training and results in spiritual energies that produce changes in oneself. Assagioli provides a succinct guide to the uses of the three types of meditation.(32) Receptive meditation is particularly valuable in spiritual growth work. In discussing this, he describes the technique using a mental picture that induces calm, silence, and peace -- a tranquil lake mirroring the blue sky, or the starry sky in the silence of the night. He also suggests repeating a phrase such as this one from a hymn of the Greek Mysteries: "Be silent, 0 strings, that a new melody may flow in me."(33)

For Further Exploration of Psychosynthesis

Assagioli, Roberto. Psychosynthesis, A Manual of Principles and Techniques. New York: Viking, 1971. The basic manual on the theory and practice of psychosynthesis.

---The Act of Will. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1974. A guide to experiencing the strengthening of the will in all its dimensions.

Churchill, Craig M, Contributions of Psychosynthesis Toward a Growth Oriented Model of Pastoral Counseling. An unpublished Ph.D. dissertation written at the School of Theology at Claremont, 1973. Available from University Microfilm, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Haronian, Frank. "Psychosynthesis: A Psychotherapist's Personal Overview," Pastoral Psychology, Fall, 1976, pp. 16-33.

---"A Psychosynthetic Model of Personality and Its Implications for Psychotherapy," Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Fall, 1975.

Synthesis, The Realization of Self. The psychosynthesis journal, which includes a Psychosynthesis Workbook with practical techniques for enhancing one's growth. The Synthesis Press, 150 Doherty Way, Redwood City, CA 94061.

The following papers and many more are available from the Psychosynthesis Institute, 3352 Sacramento Street, San Francisco, CA 94118.

--Crampton, Martha. "The Use of Mental Imagery in Psycho-synthesis."

--Keen, Sam. "The Golden Mean of Roberto Assagioli." An interview with Assagioli shortly before his death, reprinted from Psychology Today.

--Kretschmer, W. H. "Meditative Techniques in Psychotherapy." A description of ways to use meditation in therapy.

--Vargiu, James. "Global Education and Psychosynthesis." The application of psychosynthesis to the development of global consciousness.

NOTES

1. The Act of Will (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1974), p. 6.

2. Sam Keen, "The Golden Mean of Roberto Assagioli," reprinted from Psychology Today magazine, Dec., 1974., p. 98. Copyright, 1974 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company.

3. Psychosynthesis (New York: Viking, 1971), p. 35.

4. Keen, "The Golden Mean," p. 98.

5. The Act of Will, p. 14.

6. Psychosynthesis, p. 8.

7. Ibid., p. 6.

8. Ibid., p. 100.

9. "A Higher View of the Man-Woman Problem" (an interview with Assagioli by Claude Servan-Schreiber) Synthesis, vol. I, no. I, p. 45.

10. Ibid., p. 49.

11. Psychosynthesis, p. 3.

12. Ibid., p. 39.

13. The Act of Will, p. 200.

14. Keen, "The Golden Mean," p. 105.

15. Psychosynthesis, p. 207

16. The Act of Will, pp. 205-8.

17. "The Synthesis of the Nation," Synthesis, vol. I, no. 2, pp. 8-19.

18. Robert Gerard, "Psychosynthesis, A Psychotherapy for the Whole Man" (mimeographed

paper, no date), pp. 5-6.

19. Ibid., p. 9.

20. Psychosynthesis, p. 26.

21. This is paraphrased from Psychosynthesis, pp. 118-19.

22. Paraphrased from Psychosynthesis, pp. 118-19. For further information about this exercise see The Act of Will, pp. 211-17.

23. For an illuminating discussion of subpersonalities, see the paper by James G. Vargiu in "Psychosynthesis Workbook," Synthesis, vol. I, no. I, pp. WB 9-47.

24. "The Door," Synthesis, vol. I, no. I, pp. WB 50-53.

25. Psychosynthesis, p. 144.

26. "Answers from the Unconscious," Synthesis, vol. I, no. 2, p. 145.

27. See Growth Counseling, pp. 126-28, for a full description of this exercise.

28. "Dialogue with the Higher Self," Synthesis, vol. I, no. 2, p. 135.

29. See Growth Counseling, p. 123.

30. Personal communication. May 1979.

31. This story is from C. W. Henderson, Awakening (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975), p. 170.

32. See The Act of Will, pp. 218-31.

33. Ibid., p. 225.

Feminist therapies are one type of radical therapy. The common motif in all the radical therapies is the conviction that personal growth and social change are inextricably interdependent. In my view, this motif must be one dimension of any therapy that seeks to maximize human growth. A systemic-political awareness is needed to offset the temptation, besetting every therapeutic and growth approach, to become the luxury of the privileged, a privatized, socially irresponsible form of secularized salvation-seeking. The awareness of the societal roots of every personal problem can help keep us counselors, therapists, and teachers working at the crucial though difficult task of integrating our commitment to personal growth with our concern for helping to create growth-sustaining institutions. The philosophy and the methodology of the radical therapies can help the disciplines of counseling and therapy to transcend their middle-class origins and become channels of liberation and growth for the poor and oppressed who are the vast majority of the earth's people.

There are three major streams of radical therapies. In an early type of radical therapy, R. D. Laing, Thomas Szasz, and others challenged the apolitical belief system and the oppressive institutional practices of conventional psychiatry.(1) A second stream emerged from the impact of the new left (during the sixties and early seventies) on certain mental health professionals including Claude Steiner, Hogie Wyckoff, and Phil Brown.(2) In a paper representing this perspective, Lester Gelb declares, "In the treatment of the individual or group of individuals we must be aware that social change may be the most meaningful therapeutic goal and therefore must be a real part of our professional concern."(3) The third stream of radical therapy, feminist therapy, is the most rapidly growing and influential in terms of its impact on therapists of many orientations.

All three streams share the view that the societal context of an individual's problems is an essential concern in therapy. As the radical therapy manifesto declares: "Liberation from within must be accompanied by liberation from without."(4) All these streams see the traditional mental-health philosophy and delivery systems as unhealthy for patients, especially for the relatively powerless people in a society -- including the poor, minorities, and women. All three streams call for the democratizing of hierarchical therapist-patient relationships and of mental health centers. The

credo of radical therapy -- "Therapy means change not adjustment" -- is a motif of all three streams.

I will focus in this chapter on the feminist stream of radical therapy for several reasons. Feminist therapies concentrate attention on the growth-inhibiting ways that half the human family (and their institutions) treats the other half. (What could be more basic for anyone who does therapy or receives it?) It is clear that sexism is a massive cause of truncated growth, in both women and men, and a major cause of diminished effectiveness in most therapies. Feminist therapists tend to keep a balance between the goals of personal healing and growth, on the one side, and sociopolitical empowerment to equip and motivate persons to change sexist systems, on the other. Most feminist therapies have a robust sense of the interrelatedness of personal, relational, social, political, and historical factors in liberation. This contrasts with the most radical of the radical therapists, who seem to reduce therapy to social action. Furthermore, feminist therapy tends to be explicitly growth-oriented:

"Therapy" is not something reserved for desperate and "sick" people -- but rather it can be for anyone functioning well who would like to function better. Therapy is viewed as a process of heightening one's consciousness and mobilizing one's personal powers. By learning tools for self-awareness, you can integrate the "therapeutic" process into your life so that you continue to develop and grow consciously.(5)

The feminist vision of human wholeness is an essential dimension of any therapy that is truly liberating for either women or men. In my experience, there is fresh hope and fresh power for growth in this vision.

There is no one body of theory and methods shared by all feminist therapists. A "feminist therapist" is any therapist for whom the feminist perspective is a central therapeutic philosophy and orientation. Such therapists represent a variety of therapeutic orientations and degrees of radically in their feminism. (6)

My closest relationship is with a radical feminist who is also a skilled therapist. Charlotte Ellen's(7) feminism and her work as a feminist therapist have been a continuing challenge and stimulus to my awareness of the importance of the issues explored in this chapter. My personal struggles with these issues undoubtedly have colored my reflection on them.

Insights about Growth in Feminist Psychology

Feminist psychologists have identified the male biases that have distorted the understanding of "normal" human development, which undergirds the work of growth-oriented professionals.(8) They also have documented the growth-diminishing sexism in traditional psychotherapeutic theories and in the practice of most therapists. They have exposed the need for the "liberators" of growth to be liberated from sexism so that they can facilitate the full becoming of both women and men. The growth possibilities inherent in the feminist understanding of human growth are well stated in Jean Baker Miller's powerful book. Toward a New Psychology of Women. Here are some of her salient points:

A dominant group [men] inevitably has the greatest influence in determining a culture's overall outlook -- its philosophy, morality, social theory, and even its science. The dominant group thus legitimizes the unequal relationship and incorporates it into society's guiding concepts. . . .In the case of women, for example. despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the notion persists that women are meant to be passive, submissive and docile -- in short, secondary. From this premise, the outcome of therapy and encounters with psychology and other "sciences" are often determined.(9)

According to Miller, the potentialities assigned in our culture to the dominant group (men) for development reflect only a limited part of the total range of human potentialities. Subordinates (women and others) are assigned potentials that are less valued by the culture. Yet, in our present world value crisis, the very potentials that women have overdeveloped and men have largely ignored, are the key to developing more humanizing ways of living by both sexes. In male-dominated societies, women have had to develop greater awareness of relationships and of feelings, and greater tolerance of these feelings of vulnerability that are inherent in all growth. They have had to develop relationship-and people-nurturing skills, which are not well developed by most men. They have come to recognize the essential cooperative and creative nature of healthy human relationships. The lopsided development of nurturing and serving capacities by women, and their socially reinforced neglect of their many other potentials, contribute to the problems that bring women to therapy. (The same is true, in reverse, for men.) But the value for both sexes of the socially denigrated potentials women have had to develop is real, nonetheless. They have developed the very attributes that the world needs to save us from lopsided values of men, which drive them and male-led institutions and nations to "advance at any cost, pay any price, drive out competitors, and kill them if necessary."(10) Our society must learn to value the strengths women have developed and provide them equal opportunity to participate in reshaping our institutions and our society. Only thus will women and men be able to develop their full potentials in our society.

Growth toward wholeness for women involves developing their strong, assertive, rational potentials and integrating these with the nurturing, relational strengths they have overdeveloped. Growth for men involves developing their neglected nurturing, feelingful, vulnerable, relating, cooperative capacities and integrating these with the strengths that society has programmed them to overdevelop. Miller reflects on how the splitting of human potentials between the sexes impoverishes everyone: "We do not yet talk about how much we are all interdependent and need to relate to an equal, how challenging and beneficial that process can be, how often this is thwarted, and how little practice we get in it, and how much of our life is spent at the much more primitive level of learning how to be either one-up or one-down."(11) Healthy growth for both women and men must involve developing and bringing together in creative synthesis the nurturing strengths and the assertive strengths that all human beings possess potentially. This understanding of human growth is an invaluable contribution from feminist psychology to all parents and to all of us in the growth professions.

Feminist thinkers have exposed the ways in which the effectiveness of traditional therapies has been reduced by sexism in both their theory and practice. Freud, whose theories have been formative in most psychotherapeutic schools until recently, perceived women as damaged men (without a penis). Women, he believed, see themselves as defective and inferior and therefore turn their aggressiveness inward. This produces "normal" personality in them that is passive, dependent, and masochistic. Their innate submissiveness fits them for their "normal" roles as dependently attached to men, serving others as wives and mothers. The general history of psychotherapeutic theory, until the advent of the feminist therapists, has reflected and reinforced the misogynic prejudices of male-dominated culture.(12) Clara Thompson and Karen Homey offered refreshing exceptions to the male distortions of psychotherapeutic understandings. As foremothers of contemporary feminist therapists, they pointed to the sexist misconceptions and blind spots of psychoanalytic theories.(13)

In her classic study, Women and Madness, Phyllis Chesler points out that the professions of psychiatry and psychology are dominated by men while the majority of their patients are women. She shows that most clinicians, both male and female, do therapy on the basis of traditional myths about female inferiority and sex-role stereotypes; that most therapists defend as "scientific" and "therapeutic" views of women as innately submissive and dependent; and that the institutions of private therapy (for the affluent) and mental hospitals (for the poor) mirror rather than challenge the general female experience of being treated as inferior in a patriarchal culture:

For most women, psychotherapeutic encounter is just one more instance of an unequal relationship, just one more opportunity to be rewarded for expressing distress and to be "helped" by being (expertly) dominated. Both psychotherapy and white or middle-class marriage isolate women from each other; both emphasize individual rather than collective solutions to woman's unhappiness; both are based on a woman's helplessness and dependence on a stronger male authority figure. . . . Both control and oppress women similarly -- yet, at the same time, are the two safest (most approved and familiar) havens for middle-class women in a society that offers them few -- if any -- alternatives.

Chesler points to the consequence for women of isolating the personal from the cultural dimensions of their problems:

A revealing study of sex-role stereotypes in therapists was done by Inge K. Boverman and four other psychologists. They developed a questionnaire consisting of 122 bipolar items, each of which described a human characteristic such as "Very aggressive -- Not at all aggressive." They administered it to 79 psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers (46 men, 33 women).(15) One-third of the clinicians were asked to pick the characteristics describing a "healthy, mature, socially competent adult person"; one-third to pick items describing a "healthy, mature, socially competent adult man"; and one-third a "healthy, mature, socially competent adult woman." The researchers found that clinicians of both sexes held concepts of "health" and "maturity" that parallel our society's sex-role stereotypes. The traits chosen to describe a healthy adult did not differ significantly from those describing a healthy man, but they were strikingly different from the traits chosen to describe a healthy woman. Other studies have shown that the characteristics identified with a healthy woman are less valued in our society than traits identified with a healthy adult male. The choices of the clinicians of both sexes revealed a negative conception of a "healthy" woman. They described a healthy woman as more emotional, less objective, more excitable in crises, less competitive, more easily influenced, less aggressive, less independent, less adventurous, more conceited about appearance, having more easily hurt feelings, and disliking math and science, more than a healthy adult or a healthy man.

It seems clear that the clinicians' unconscious sex-role stereotypes must constrict the full potentializing of their women clients. If a woman client accepted and internalized these therapists' criteria of wholeness, she could not develop personality potentials that are most valued by our culture and identified with a "healthy male" and a "healthy adult."

Some Key Concepts of Feminist Therapies

Drawing on the thought of Anne Kent Rush, Jean Baker Miller, Elizabeth Friar Williams, and Charlotte Ellen, let me overview the key concepts in the thought of feminist therapists:

---Contrary to the dominant beliefs of our society, women generally possess strong potentials for autonomy, competency, and leadership. The task of therapy is to help them discover and develop all their rich inner potentials and powers.

---For women to develop hidden strengths is an exciting but risky adventure. When they risk moving out of their subservient "place," they receive flak from both men and from unliberated women. But this is the necessary risk of growth.

*---The societal programming of women is a basic block to their growth which must receive attention in any effective therapy. Their problems in living cannot be reduced to intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamics, for these both are rooted in the wider dynamics of their relative powerlessness and inferiority as defined by society. In contrast to traditional therapies, feminist therapy includes consciousness-raising to help women regain their power and self-worth by redefining themselves. The personal and political dimensions of women's (and other oppressed people's) problems must not be separated. Personal empowerment (growth) should equip and motivate one to sociopolitical action with others, to change the social sources of diminished growth.

*---Consciousness-raising therapy for women should increase their understanding of the past and present roots of their personal problems in the historical and the contemporary social position of women.

---Women need to develop their own special powers both for their own wholeness and for the wholeness (and perhaps survival) of society. Having been devalued and neglected for so long, female energy and insights must now be emphasized to counterbalance the destructive effects of male dominance.

*---Women in therapy should be encouraged to develop strong, autonomous identities, not derived from their relations with men.

---There is excitement for women in recovering their lost heritage as healers and growth nurturers through the millennia.(16)

*---Therapy for women seeks to enable them to integrate the many splits that they have internalized from patriarchal cultures -- splits between mind and body, thought, feeling, and action; the rational and the intuitive; the scientific and the artistic; the objective and the subjective; the individual and her environment. Therapy seeks to restore the essential unity of life.

*---Therapy for women is best done in small groups of women, with a woman therapist. There the energy and powerful mutuality of women can be experienced. In such a reality-oriented community of mutual caring, women can grapple together with inner and relational problems and potentials, and with the impact of the wider society on their lives. A women's therapy group (which must include consciousness-raising) can help women integrate the experience of therapy with their total lives; it can reduce the isolation from other women (in middle-class society) and the hurt of being "helped" by powerful authority figures, usually male.

*---Women in therapy should be encouraged to explore and expand their life options and to move intentionally toward self-chosen growth goals. They should be encouraged to be assertive in satisfying their real needs, choosing life-styles and occupations that they find fulfilling (in the home, in paid employment, or a combination of both).

---Women should be helped in therapy to recognize their appropriate anger at their one-down position in society. They should be encouraged to use this anger to change relationships and social practices rather than turning their anger on themselves in ways that produce depression, masochism, and psychosomatic problems.

*---Women should be free to define "normal" for themselves. Every woman is ultimately the only real "expert" in her own healing and growth. Therapy should help her discover her capacity for self-healing.

*---Only therapists with raised consciousness, who are continuing to work on their own continuing liberation, can function as growth-liberating rather than subtly oppressive therapists. The political awareness of the therapist is a crucial resource in any therapy that is really liberating.

*---Nonhierarchical relationships between therapist and client are essential for therapy to be fully effective. The professional elitism of some mental health professionals increases the inequality and hurts the client's already frayed self-esteem.

---Women in therapy should discover precisely how they make themselves vulnerable to exploitation by others, especially men.

*---Body awareness and empowerment is a vital part of therapy for women since most women have been alienated from both their physical strength and their pleasure potentials. Women should be helped to develop their capacities for enjoying their own bodies and encouraged to derive at least as much pleasure from sex as do their partners.

*---Women in therapy should be freed to enjoy other women as desirable, loving friends.

---Women in therapy should learn to respect and satisfy their own needs. Serving others should be an expression of one's love for them rather than one's sole mission in life; a woman should learn to expect others whom she serves to reciprocate fairly in meeting her needs.

The feminist vision that energizes feminist therapists is releasing a growth renaissance among women today. Jean Baker Miller declares:

Feminist Therapy Resources for Therapy with Men

Some of the working concepts of feminist therapy parallel emphases in other growth-oriented therapies -- e.g., the affirmation of the riches of human potentials; nonhierarchical therapist-client relationships; the goal of restoring unity within oneself and with one's environment; the emphases on self-healing and body work. Furthermore, the principles of feminist therapies offer valuable resources for the growth of men as well as women. Elizabeth Williams states: "I think of feminist therapy as a way to sensitize people of both sexes to the way in which they use role behavior to keep themselves at a distance from their own and other's realities and from realizing themselves as fully developed human beings."(18) As an experiment, go back and change "woman" to "black" in these principles./ Now, try changing the word "woman" to "man" and vice versa in the principles with the asterisks./ The use of these principles with growth-oppressed people, even those who are subtly oppressed (white males for example), can increase awareness of their need to change constricting social definitions of wholeness for themselves. Feminism and feminist therapies offer new, more whole definitions of healthy "maleness" as well as healthy "femaleness."

For us middle-class white males, it is more difficult to become aware of how our growth is limited by social programming than it is for women and minorities. Our growth-constrictions are sugarcoated and hidden behind the rewards of our one-up position. The payoffs of our privileges and power are so seductive, it's easy to ignore their high costs. Only when men feel anger at the price they pay by sacrificing their full humanity do they begin to free themselves by making radical changes in their values and life-styles.

More and more men are beginning to sense that we can't have it both ways. We can't have the power and comfort of trying to keep women in their "place" without boxing ourselves in with the male mystique -- the exhausting one-upmanship; the struggling to always win; the feelings of damaged self-worth when we don't win; the loneliness of never letting ourselves be vulnerably open with another person, particularly a man; the chronic hiding of half our feelings -- the vulnerable, fearful, tender, needy, longing, "weak" feelings; the disguised, only half-satisfying ways of getting the nurture we need from others; the always precarious foundation for our self-worth in proving our "manly" value by continuing successes; the chronic stress of feeling ultimately responsible for supporting one's family "successfully"; the pressure to stay on the success-seeking treadmill until one is knocked off by a mid-life heart attack.

It is essential for therapists who work with men to help raise their consciousness concerning ways the chronic pressures to "be a man" spawn both intrapsychic and interpersonal problems. Just as women are dehumanized by being treated as sex objects, men are treated as success objects.(19) Because many of us men have not developed the inner powers of wholeness, we are threatened by the blossoming power that women are discovering in themselves. The fact that we tend to perceive other men as potential competitors means that we must concentrate most of our normal human needs for closeness and dependency on women, often on only one woman. Ourunconscious shame about dependency (which feels "unmanly") produces anger and ambivalence toward the woman upon whom we are dependent. Consequently we both express aggression toward her and frighten ourselves with the fantasy (which often proves not to be a fantasy) that she will leave us if she really discovers her strength as an autonomous person.(20)

The glib statement, "Never mind about women's liberation -- I'm for human liberation!" often indicates that the speaker (usually a man) is ignoring the unique liberation needs of women in our society. The growth-oppression of women overlaps and intertwines with that of men but, in many respects, it is different. Achieving liberation from a one-down position in society is very different from achieving liberation from a one-up position. For women, liberation is like struggling to swim upstream against the powerful current of institutional sexism. For men, in contrast, liberation is like discovering that the current we thought was taking us where we wanted to be is carrying us away from those we love and toward the brink of a waterfall (an early death from chronic male stress). Our liberation as men and as women has separate and unique dimensions, even as it also has many areas of similarity and interdependence. Whatever members of either sex do to liberate themselves and their full potentials makes it more urgent for the other sex to grow freely and fully.

Firsthand encounter with the feminist awareness in a woman therapist or in another close relationship can increase a man's awareness of himself as an oppressed oppressor. It can help him see how he is contributing, directly or indirectly, to the diminished growth of women, in his personal relationships and in institutions where he has decision-making power. This confrontation may help a man sense his own need for liberation as well as the need to renegotiate a fair marriage contract or, help create equal opportunities for advancement among the women employees of his business.

I had only a vague inkling that I needed to liberate myself from anything (except my personal hang-ups) until Charlotte began to challenge and change her growth-restricting programming as a woman and as a wife. As she moved out of her "box," I gradually became aware of mine. Just as the black freedom movement triggered a chain reaction of other liberation movements (including the reawakening of the women's movement), the feminist awareness and its political consequences are triggering demands for liberation among many men. The emotional intimacy in many women-men relations makes the impact on men of changes in women very powerful. I know from experience that, when a woman who is liberating herself is someone with whom a man has a deep bond of caring, that man's motivation for change can become very strong.

It is essential for both male and female counselors-therapists to be involved in their own continuing self-liberation and to get their consciousness raised (regarding the role of sexism in personal problems). Elizabeth Williams states: "It is theoretically possible for male therapists to be good feminists, but it takes work for them to achieve a real understanding of sexism and its effects on women. Some feminist-therapy referral organizations have a few men on their lists -- men who have taken the time and trouble to go through consciousness raising."(21)

Whatever his feminist awareness, a man has two disadvantages as a growth enabler for women. He cannot know the experience of women in a sexist society from the inside, and he cannot serve as a role model, for a woman client, of a strong, competent, caring woman. But if his consciousness has been raised and if he is warm, open, vulnerable, and growing (as well as competent), relating to such a man can be growth-enabling for both women and men. A male counselor who has struggled and grown in his self-liberation has certain advantages over women therapists in working with male clients. He can understand from the inside the pain of a man who is struggling ambivalently for liberation. He also can function as a role model of a man who is on the liberation journey. Women feminists can be effective growth enablers for men as well as women if they have owned their own power, so that they can avoid projecting their anger toward the male-dominated power establishment inappropriately onto male clients.

Here are some characteristics of a liberated and liberating counselor-therapist, female or male: Such a counselor: 1. Values being female equally with being male. A woman counselee cannot learn to value herself from a counselor who devalues women. 2. Believes in complete equality between women and men at all levels and in all areas of public and private life, on the job, and at home. 3. Is aware of the fact that deeply embedded cultural stereotypes are likely to have their influence on him or her at an unconscious level, even though intellectually he or she rejects such stereotypes. 4. Is nondefensive, unpretentious, and nonjudgmental. 5. Holds the basic philosophy that it is his or her job to help the client find out who she or he is and wants to be. This may mean raising the issue of other choices and options for persons who are 'not raising that issue for themselves. 6. Is constantly aware of his or her limitations in working with a person of the other sex. 7. Is in the process of becoming (and encouraging counselee and client to become) a more whole person.(22)

Our society will need many more liberated counselor- therapists in the years ahead. As the speed of change in women's identity accelerates, the epidemic of painful conflict in female-male relationships will increase by geometric progression. This crisis in intimate relationships is fraught with pain but also with unprecedented potentialities. In our times there probably is greater conflict in male-female relationships than during any previous period in history. But there are also greater opportunities for developing the depth and creativity that are possible only between equals. Many couples will need the skills of a growth-oriented, liberated therapist to learn how to use these growth opportunities.

To be fully effective, women's CR (consciousness-raising) and CR-therapy groups must be led by women and men's groups by men. Before they can relate to men and participate in society from a position of equality, many women must mobilize these inner strengths from which they have been alienated by society's programming. This mobilization occurs most effectively in small groups composed of and led by women. Because women therapists have the advantages described earlier, they must be the primary growth-enablers for women clients. Similarly, male therapists whose consciousness has been raised must carry the primary responsibility for facilitating the liberation and growth of male clients.

To meet the increasing need for female growth therapists, more women must be trained for all the counseling-therapy professions, including pastoral counseling. Graduate training and continuing education for therapy professionals should include consciousness-raising experiences that heighten therapists' awareness of sexism and of other societal problems that must be faced in therapy. The training of both female and male therapists should balance the analytical, critical, rational, left-brain, so-called "masculine" orientation (which has dominated most training) with training experiences that foster personal growth and the development of the nurturing, integrative, creative, intuitive, right-brain side of their personalities. Training should make counselors-therapists aware that professional elitism and the hierarchical delivery systems that are still prevalent within the mental health establishment are counterproductive to wholeness and must be changed.

The Process and Methods of Feminist Therapies

Feminist therapists use a wide variety of methods, depending on their therapeutic training, style, and preference. But the feminist orientation is at the center of their work, influencing everything they do. A brochure from a feminist therapy center describes the way in which various approaches are used: "While we rely on and find valuable many of the modalities of traditional therapies, we utilize these in a non-sexist context and strive toward demystifying the power relationship between client and therapist."(23)

An open, nonhierarchical client-therapist relationship is basic in any radical therapy style. One feminist therapist I know well uses these approaches to help demystify therapy and change the "doctor-patient" relationship that many clients expect when they come: She introduces herself by her first name rather than "Doctor"; she feels free to share her own feelings and struggles as these are relevant to the client's issues; she demystifies the therapy process by saying why she is using particular techniques; she affirms the client's capacity and responsibility for self-healing and growth; she does much of her therapy sitting on pillows on the floor.

The central and unique methodology of feminist therapies is the use of consciousness raising in both individual and group therapy.(24) The source of CR methods is the CR groups as these developed within radical therapy and within the feminist movement. Because this model integrates personal growth and social-political change, the CR group is a valuable innovation for the whole field of therapy and growth work.

Effective CR groups blend processes that help to restore a sense of personal self-esteem, power, and competency, together with conscientizing processes that help people become aware of the role of societal oppression in their problems and empower them to join with others in social change efforts. The CR group model can be used for therapeutic-growth-liberation work with any oppressed group. It may be the key to creating indigenous socio-therapies among those in pockets of poverty in affluent countries and among economically and politically oppressed people in the developing countries.

In their unmodified form CR groups have no professional "leader" or "therapist"; they are explicitly not "therapy" (with the connotations of privatized sickness, and passivity in receiving help from a one-up professional that that word connotes for many people). But, as the experience of countless women demonstrates, an effective CR group can be very therapeutic. CR groups illustrate the remarkable healing-growthing power of lay, self-help groups that are flourishing in many places.

The authors of a manual on setting up CR groups state the philosophy of feminist consciousness raising:

The key to all that happens in the CR . . . is the phrase "from the personal to the political." In the CR meeting the members will begin by discussing their own experiences, being as personal as they can and wish; but with the guidance of the leader they will recognize the common denominators of their experiences and see the political implications of whatever is happening in their own lives. . . . "Political" . . . in this context refers not to political parties or voting, but to the concept of power in society: who has it, how it is used, how can one get it, how society is managed. Unless the political point is made for each topic discussed in CR, there is a danger that the women will not genuinely have their consciousness raised; they may -- or may not -- achieve some relief from tension or pain, but until they see the connection between what happens to them as individual women and what happens to all women in a sexist society, they are not experiencing real feminist CR. . . . The other kinds of group activity labeled CR miss the essence of the feminist approach when they concentrate solely on ways the individual woman can improve her situation or beef up her personal "copability"; however valuable these may be, they are at best temporary expedients and at worst illusory, since they coax the woman to work on herself rather than society. There are no personal solutions to social problems -- only adjustment, accommodations, temporary loopholes -- and pain. Nothing a woman can do for herself alone will solve her basic problem of being female in a society rigged against her.

They conclude with this affirmation of the values of the process:

In an in-depth analysis of CR groups as an alternative to traditional psychotherapy for women(26) Barbara Kirsch cites a study describing four stages in the group process: (1) Opening up -- Each member tells personal experiences as a woman in a nonjudgmental atmosphere of support and acceptance of feelings; group closeness and mutual trust develop rapidly. (2) Sharing -- Through deeper expression of feelings, needs, and experiences, the individuals discover that many of their problems are shared by other women; this leads to the awareness that their problems root in society's problems more than in their individual inadequacies. The sense of group cohesion grows stronger with this awareness. (3) Analyzing --The group reaches beyond personal experiences and focuses on the devalued position of women in society. This leads to new objective understandings, which are integrated with the member's personal experiences as women. (4) Abstracting -- The group members evolve a new vision of their potentials as women, and the group begins to see itself as a means for changing social institutions so that the potentials of women can be realized

more fully.

Some feminist therapists have discovered that the CR group's philosophy and methods can be integrated with professionally led group therapy in ways that deepen the growth-enabling effects of both. Charlotte Ellen reports these learnings from experiences with small CR-therapy groups: I have learned a few things since I first began doing such groups. It is clearly possible to combine therapy with CR. The group members become even more "therapeutic" for each other than the "therapist" has been. It is possible to do gestalt work in a way which really includes and enhances the group instead of just being individual work in a group setting. . . . The group feeling and support, and the strengths of the individuals grow much faster when the facilitator becomes a member of the group. My function has become, in such groups, simply that of having up my sleeve possible agenda items and exercises, moving in on those rare occasions when the group is bogged down or when someone clearly needs my "more skilled" intervention. My own pain and struggle as a woman are at least as "therapeutic" as my leadership skills.(27)

Charlotte's groups ordinarily run for eight weekly two-hour sessions. Group sessions usually begin with a CR type go-round in which each woman has a chance to share her situation and needs. Sessions may focus, in CR group fashion, on topics suggested by the therapist or group members out of their evolving needs -- e.g., developing a stronger sense of self; learning how not to give one's power away; enjoying one's sexuality; career dreams and changes; issues around children; relations with women and men; women's spirituality. A part of each session is spent in a structured CR-growth experience -- e.g., assertiveness training, body awareness work, guided fantasies. Group members often take between-session assignments such as journal writing or drawing a self-portrait. The last session is a four-hour mini-marathon ending with a joyful celebration of the growth that group members have experienced. CR groups, in both their original form and their modified CR-therapy form, can be effective liberation-growth experiences for men as well as women. For over three years, I have been part of a small, leaderless men's sharing group. We try to be both supportive and honest with one another as we wrestle with personal issues and explore ways of liberating ourselves as men. For me it is a refreshing discovery to find that I can risk being vulnerable and being nurtured by men. Gradually we are discovering the reward of mutual caring as "brothers."

For men who are living with liberated women, a men's CR group can be particularly valuable. It can help them deal openly with the pain and anger of a changing relationship, in a climate of acceptance, trust, and honesty. It can support them while it also confronts them with their blind spots and their contributions to the problems in their marriage or other committed relationships. It can reduce their overdependency on women and encourage them to develop self-nurture and inner strengths so that they will be able to enjoy interdependency with strong, liberated, growing women. (28)

Weaknesses of Feminism from the Growth Perspectives

As essential as the feminist perspective is for growth-enabling therapy, there are certain strands in some radical feminist thought that are potentially counterproductive of growth. One of these strands is the viewpoint that declares that the entire therapeutic establishment is inherently oppressive to women. In her blanket condemnation of therapies, Mary Daly rejects even feminist therapy. Daly calls for all women's healing to occur without the label of "therapy" and outside the therapeutic establishment.(29) Her valid awareness of the growth-oppressiveness for women of many conventional therapies apparently causes her to ignore the fact that many women do experience liberating growth as a result of therapy with therapists for whom the feminist perspective is a central and transforming orientation.

Radical feminists who regard sexism as the basic cause of all other injustices and oppression fail to recognize the complex, circular causality among all forms of oppression. I agree with the basic feminist view that the inequality of the sexes feeds all other injustices in our society and that liberation from sexism is essential for the full potentializing of women or men. But it seems clear that sexism is also fed by other social evils -- racism, economic exploitation, class inequality.

Wholeness-enabling counselors and therapists must be equally committed to working for, and to enabling their clients to work for, the elimination of all these intricately interrelated societal problems, which together constitute the swamp in which the malarial mosquitoes of personal problems proliferate.

The position of some radical feminists who advocate separatism of women from men as a long-range strategy cannot provide a basis for either a growth-sustaining society or growth-enabling therapies. It is a psychological illusion that either women or men can develop their full humanity totally isolated from the other half of the human family. The "power of absence," to use Daly's phrase, is a short-term necessity for some women to help them force chanes in unjust personal relations with men. Collectively the power of absence may be a necessary time-limited method of forcing changes in the male-dominated institutions of society. But separatism and further polarization of the sexes cannot provide a long-range strategy for a growth-enabling society. There is evidence that most women and men want and need close relations with the other sex. When these are relationships of real equality, they can be environments of mutual growth for both sexes. The full liberation and growth of women and men

are deeply interdependent. It will take the best efforts of liberated women and liberated men working together as equals to accomplish the difficult but essential transformation of our major institutions which alone will free people of both sexes to become full human beings. Separatism as a long-range strategy is counter-productive of the essential climate of mutuality and reciprocity that is needed to motivate men and women to collaborate in this way.

These weaknesses in the thought of some radical feminists are not present in the approaches of most feminist therapists. Nor do these weaknesses diminish the importance of the central thrust of feminist vision for all growth-enablers, including therapists. Think of the mind-boggling gains for humankind that can be actualized as the dream of full human liberation is gradually fulfilled. The leadership and creativity pool of the human family eventually could be doubled, without increasing the world's population, as women free and equip themselves to use their full intelligence, relational skills, creativity, leader- ship, and growth-nurturing abilities in society, and as men free and equip themselves to use their full relational, nurturing, feelingful, and creative capacities in the home and in society. As women develop more of their other potentials, they will not need to satisfy most of their esteem and power needs by having many children. Thus the threat that we will breed ourselves off a livable planet will be reduced. If the skills and values that women have developed are incorporated into our life-styles and our institutions, the need to conquer, subdue, and exploit one another, other groups and nations, and the earth will tend to gradually diminish. Whether we move in these directions depends on how we respond to the challenges of the feminist critique and vision. The challenge to us as counselors, therapists, and growth enablers is direct and powerful!

Experiencing Growth Methods from Feminist Therapy

Rush's Getting Clear, Body Work for Women, and Feminism as Therapy by Mander and Rush, offer a rich variety of CR-growth methods, many of which can be used with both sexes. Responsible Assertive Behavior by Lange and Jakubowski has exercises for developing constructive assertiveness in one's attitudes and behavior. (Chapter 10 discusses ways of combining assertion training and consciousness raising in women's and men's groups.) Counseling for Liberation by Charlotte H. Clinebell describes the "fishbowl," the "sex reversal fantasy" (pp. 68-71), and the "unlived life fantasy" (71-72), all of which can provide powerful experiences of consciousness raising for both women and for men. If you have access to these books, I recommend that you take time to sample and experience several of these growth exercises.

Here are some additional CR exercises that I invite you to try now, to raise your own consciousness and to become aware of which exercises you can use in counseling and in growth groups. Debrief each experience with someone you trust:

For Further Exploration of Feminist and Radical Therapy

Brenton, Myron. The American Male. New York: Coward-McCann, 1966. Explores how the code of masculinity cripples the personality and restricts the enjoyment of men, and suggests how they can liberate themselves.

Broverman, Inge K., et al. "Sex Role Stereotypes and Clinical Judgments of Mental Health," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, vol. 34, no. I, pp. 1-7. Report on research revealing the sexism of therapists.

Brown, Phil, ed. Radical Psychology. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1973. A collection of papers on radical therapy. Chesler, Phyllis. About Men. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978. A revealing study of the destructiveness of male dominance and values.

---Women and Madness. New York: Avon Books, 1973. Documents the central role of sexism in "mental illness" in women and the destructiveness of much of their treatment by male therapists.

Clinebell, Charlotte Holt. Counseling for Liberation. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976. Describes methods of integrating counseling and consciousness-raising and methods of liberating pastoral counseling and the church.

---Meet Me in the Middle/On Becoming Human Together. New York: Harper, 1973. An autobiographically oriented discussion of the issues facing women and men struggling for more liberated, whole lives.

Daly, Mary, Gyn/Ecology, The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Boston: Beacon Press, 1979. A powerful expose of male destructiveness to women in Indian suttee, Chinese foot binding, African genital mutilation, European witch burning, and American medicine and psychotherapy. Documents the blindness of male scholarship to the meaning of all these forms of massive male cruelty.

Dinnerstein, Dorothy. The Mermaid and the Minotaur, Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1976. A depth exploration of the deleterious effects of the prevailing form of emotional symbiosis between the sexes.

Farrell, Warren. The Liberated Man. New York: Bantam Books, 1975. Describes male trappedness, what liberation can mean for a man, and how to achieve it.

Fasteau, Marc F. The Male Machine. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974. Explores the destructiveness of the masculine stereotype and looks to an androgynous future.

Franks, Violet, and Burtle, Vasanti, eds. Women in Therapy, New Psychotherapiesfora Changing Society. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1974. Essays on the changing psychology of women and the new therapeutic approaches that emerge from this.

Gornick, Vivian, and Moran, Barbara K. Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness. New York: New American Library, 1972. A series of papers exploring the experience of women in a male-dominated world.

Jongeward, Dorothy, and Scott, Dru. Women as Winners. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1976. Uses TA and gestalt therapy to understand our society's constrictions on the full growth of women and to provide methods of removing these limitations.

Lange, Arthur J., and Jakubowski, Patricia. Responsible Assertive Behavior. Champaign, III.: Research Press, 1976. Cognitive and behavioral procedures for trainers planning and leading assertion groups.

 Malcomson, William L. Success Is a Failure Experience, Male Liberation and the American Myth of Success. Nashville: Abingdon, 1976. Explores the bondage of the male success myth and ways of breaking free.

Mander, Anica Vesel, and Rush, Anne Kent. Feminism as Therapy. New York: Random House/Bookworks, 1974. An exploration of feminism as a healing experience for women.

Miller, Jean Baker, ed. Psychoanalysis and Women: Contributions to New Theory and Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1973. A collection of papers by persons challenging, correcting, and enriching the traditional male-defined psychology of women.

---Toward a New Psychology of Women. Boston: Beacon Press, 1976. A groundbreaking book that sets forth a new understanding of women!

Nichols, Jack. Men's Liberation, A New Definition of Masculinity. New York: Penguin Books, 1975. Discusses the need for men to be liberated and shows how the lives of both sexes can be enriched when this happens.

Peri, Harriet, and Abarbanell, Gay, coordinators. Guidelines to Feminist Consciousness Raising. Prepared for the National Task Force on CR of the National Organization for Women; published by the coordinators in Los Angeles in 1975. A how-to manual on the philosophy, ground rules, and leadership for consciousness-raising groups.

Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born, Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: Bantam Books, 1976. Explores the two meanings of motherhood -- as a relationship of women to their creative powers, and as a male-defined, constricting institution that diminishes both sexes.

Rush, Anne Kent. Getting Clear, Body Work for Women. New York: Random House, 1973. Methods of self-growth for women (and men).

Steinmann, Anne, and Fox, David J. The Male Dilemma. New York: Jason Aronson, 1974. Analyzes the responses of men to changing sex roles with suggestions for developing more liberated relationships between the sexes.

Weisstein, Naomi. "Psychology Constructs the Female," in Gornick and Moran, Woman in Sexist Society, chap. 8. An overview of the blindness of male-oriented psychology to the discovery of the real potentials of women.

Williams, Elizabeth Friar. Notes of a Feminist Therapist. New York: Praeger, 1976. Describes feminist therapy and presents feminist issues as reflected in the lives of women in therapy.

Wyckoff, Hogie, ed. Love, Therapy and Politics, Issues in Radical Therapy. New York: Grove Press, 1976. Twenty articles from the journal Radical Therapy.

NOTES

1. For a series of papers on these and other radical therapists see Radical Therapy, Phil Brown, ed. (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1973).

2. See Jerome Agel (Producer), The Radical Therapist (New York: Ballantine Books, 1971); Rough Times (Ballantine Books, 1973); Love, Therapy and Politics, Issues in Radical Therapy (New York: Grove Press, 1976); and Hendrick M. Ruitenbeck, Going Crazy: The Radical Therapy of R. D. Laing and Others (New York: Bantam Books, 1972).

3. In Going Crazy, p. 196.

4. The Radical Therapist, I, p. 1.

5. Rush, Getting Clear, pp. 6-7.

6. This is illustrated by the positions of Williams in Notes of a Feminist Therapist (New York: Praeger, 1976), and Mander and Rush in Feminism as Therapy (New York: Random House/Bookworks, 1974). The authors of both volumes are feminists. Yet the first book reflects a less radical feminist perspective than the second.

7. To avoid confusion, it is important to point out that Charlotte Ellen's earlier name, which still appears on the book cited in this chapter, was Charlotte Holt Clinebell.

8. See Growth Counseling, chap. 6.

9. Miller, Toward a New Psychology of Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976), pp. 1,10.

10. Ibid., p. 88.

11.

Psychoanalysis and Women (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1973), p. 391.

12. Although Jung emphasized the bisexuality of the psyche in both sexes and valued the

"feminine" side of persons, he accepted the sexist stereotypes of his culture when he defined the home-centered roles of women as "normal." Alfred Adler recognized that their social powerlessness contributes to the inferiority feelings of women; and Wilhelm Reich identified the interrelatedness of political and sexual oppression. For feminist critiques of Freud and Jung, see Rosemary Radford Reuther's New Women, New Earth, Sexist Ideologies and Human

Liberation (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), chap. 5; Naomi R. Goldenberg, Changing of the Gods (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), chap. 5.

13. Although Clara Thompson was one of my mentors at the White Institute of Psychiatry, my male programming caused me to ignore this significant thrust in her thought during those years.

14. Women and Madness(New York: Avon Books, 1973),pp. 121-22; Chesler further illuminates the role ofsexism in therapy in her paper, "Patient and Patriarch: Women in the Psychotherapeutic Relationship," Woman in a Sexist Society, chap. 7.

15. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, vol. 34, no. I, pp. 1-7.

16. See Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives and Nurses, A History of Women Healers (Old Westbury, N.Y.: The Feminist Press, 1973).

17. Psychoanalysis and Women, pp. 379-80.

18. Notes of a Feminist Therapist, p. II.

19. Farrell, The Liberated Man (New York: Bantam Books, 1975), p. 49.

20, See Phyllis Chesler, About Men (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978), p. 244.

21. Williams, Notes of a Feminist Therapist, p. II.

22. Charlotte Holt Clinebell, Counseling for Liberation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), pp. 22-23. The author used "androgynous" originally in describing the last characteristic, a term she no longer regards as adequate for expressing psychic wholeness.

23. Center for Feminist Therapy, Los Angeles, California 90064.

24. CR groups are one form of what I call "growth-action groups." See Growth Groups, chap.10.

25. Peri and Abarbanell, Guidelines to Feminist Consciousness Raising (Los Angeles, 1975), p. 2.

26. "Consciousness-Raising Groups as Therapy for Women," in Franks and Vasanti, Women in Therapy (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1974), chap. 15. The study she cites is "Free Space: A Perspective on the Small Group in Women's Liberation," by P. Alien.

27. Personal communication. May 7, 1977.

28. For resources for men's CR groups, see Peri and Abarbanell, Guidelines, pp. 40-45; Unbecoming: A Men's CR Group Writes on Oppression and Themselves (New York: Times Change Press, 1971); and the books by Brenton, Farrell, Fasteau, Malcomson, Nichols, and Steimnann/Fox.

29. See Gyn/Ecology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), chap. 7.

The diverse cluster of therapies whose aim is to facilitate creative change in relationships and in social systems represents a highly significant development in contemporary therapies. These relational-systems approaches reflect fundamental changes in our understanding of both the nature of human growth and the central focus of therapy. The shift in their therapeutic focus is away from a primary concern with what occurs within individuals (the preoccupation of the mainstream of therapy since Freud) and toward enhancing interpersonal relationships and small social systems such as families. This conceptual reorientation has given rise to therapies that are a veritable gold mine of resources for enriching the quality of relationships and helping institutions, organizations, and communities become more growth-nurturing for everyone.

There are four broad categories of systemic approaches to personal-social change: The first category, ad hoc group therapies, includes the many types of group counseling and therapy, growth groups, and self-help groups that are flourishing today. All of these create and use small ad hoc groups to help individuals experience healing and growth. From a systems perspective, this is a hybrid category. It retains the primary goal of the individualistic therapies -- transforming what goes on within individuals -- but also introduces a new systems methodology that uses a growthful quality of group experience to enable individuals to change.

The second category of systemic therapies aims at changing ongoing, natural systems such as marriages and families. This category includes the many forms of conjoint marriage counseling and therapy, marriage and family enrichment, and the multiple-family and extended family approaches to therapy and family enrichment. The common goal of these methodologies is to enhance the quality of relationships within these natural systems so that they will become environments of healing and growth for everyone within them.

The third category of systemic approaches includes all those which aim at making the emotional climate of larger face-to-face systems (such as churches, schools, industries, and social agencies) more growth-enabling. Included are the therapeutic community approaches and what is called "organizational development." These approaches intervene directly in larger social organisms to increase their growthfulness for individuals. Organizational development seeks to increase the effectiveness of organizations in fulfilling their institutional objectives in ways that also fulfill the needs of individuals.

The fourth category of systemic approaches includes all those which aim at making larger, non-face-to-face systems such as governments, institutions, and economic and legal systems more responsive to the real needs of people and therefore more supportive of human development. The radical therapies, which aim at empowering persons to engage in effective institutional-societal change action, belong in this category, as do other social action approaches (which ordinarily are not called therapies). Feminist therapies (chapter 10) combine the goals of the first and fourth categories. They seek to heal the psychological wounds of women caused by our sexist society, and (as an essential part of this healing) to empower them to work together to eliminate the collective growth-constriction of all women by all our social systems and institutions. The therapies in this fourth category are beginning to bridge the chasm that has existed between most therapies, with their exclusive concern for personal and rational growth, and social action aimed at social-political change.

All the therapies in these four categories, though differing widely, share one guiding motif -- a commitment to the central therapeutic importance of the systemic perspective. All of them see groups as the place where healing and growth can be facilitated most effectively. All share the implicit assumption that the degree of wholeness that individuals are able to maintain is strongly influenced, if not determined, by the relative wholeness of their need-satisfying interpersonal systems. All four types seek to create growth systems that will provide a nurturing environment within which people will develop more competence, creativity, and power to live effectively.

This chapter will highlight some growth resources in systemic therapies by focusing on the principles of family therapy. (I will not attempt to describe in detail the significant differences among the various family therapies.) Growth groups are the most widely applicable systemic methodology for nurturing human growth. Obviously, they should have a central place in the work of any growth-oriented professional or institution. Conjoint marriage counseling and enrichment offer superb opportunities for nurturing growth in marriage systems. These approaches also should be a prominent part of any growth program. Self-help groups (many of which are modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous) represent one of the most hopeful developments in the whole field of contemporary therapeutic groups. Because I have discussed growth groups, marriage counseling and enrichment, and self-help groups in some detail elsewhere,(1) I will not deal with these important methodologies here. In the next chapter I will explore growth resources in feminist therapies.

The Systems Conception of Growth in Family Therapies

To understand the nature and goals of growth in family therapies, one must understand the systemic perspective as a way of perceiving human beings.(2) This perspective in itself is the most important growth resource available in these therapies. Like the growth perspective, the systemic perspective functions like a new set of glasses for growth-enablers. When counselors and therapists put on these glasses, a new world becomes visible as the glasses provide fresh ways of seeing and understanding people. The growth resistances, needs, and possibilities of individuals often are illuminated dramatically as they are perceived in their interpersonal context. As clients are helped to put on these glasses, they sometimes get a new understanding of both the growth problems and the growth opportunities they face. The systems perspective can help all of us be more aware that both our brokenness and our wholeness are the consequences, to a considerable degree, of the quality of our systems of need-satisfying relationships.

For those of us who have invested years of professional training in putting on the intrapsychic glasses, it usually requires strenuous effort to learn to also see people through the interpersonal-systemic glasses. But the glasses for seeing intrapsychic dynamics, which we have learned to wear, provide a much more meaningful picture of human beings when the interpersonal-systemic way of perceiving is added.

As was pointed out in chapter 3, interpersonalism was the central motif of the thinking of Harry Stack Sullivan, the foreparent of systems therapies. The systemic therapies presuppose an interpersonal view of human beings. In a profound sense, we human beings are our relationships. The within and the between of persons' lives are two interdependent aspects of their personalities.

Intrapsychic dynamics reflect the individual's pattern of interpersonal relationships and vice versa. Systems theory developed beyond Sullivan's view by showing how individuals can be understood fully only when they are seen in the context of all the social systems -- the family, extended family, institutional and cultural systems -- of which they are a part and which shape their personal identity, behavior, and relationships. Building on this awareness, systemic therapies took the crucial step methodologically by intervening directly in interpersonal systems to help them become more growth-enabling as systems.

Using family systems as illustrative, let's look at the dynamics of social systems and how they nurture or negate human growth. Families are the basic system of "people making" (Satir) in all human societies. A family is a primary social organism with a distinctive identity or "personality" of its own, which is more than the sum of its parts. There is an organic interdependency among members of any primary social system that is somewhat analogous to the parts of one's body. The functioning of any one part of such a system reflects and influences, to some degree, the interaction of all the parts of the whole organism. To illustrate, family therapists have discovered that children who are "identified patients" (to use family therapist Virginia Satir's term for family members who are emotionally disturbed, delinquent, or psychosomatically ill) often are expressing, in their dysfunction, the hidden conflicts in their parents' marriage. The identified patient's dysfunction actually serves a function in the family system in that it allows other family members to avoid facing and taking responsibility for their own pain.

The behavior, attitudes, values, and pattern of relating of individual family members are shaped by the family structure -- that is, by the unconscious family rules, expectations, values, taboos, beliefs, patterns of communication, and distribution of power among its members. This dynamic family structure can frustrate or facilitate the potentializing of all its members. Because of a family's organic interdependency and its unconscious structure, it often is difficult for one person to change and grow unless the whole family system changes in directions that support that individual's growth or the individual leaves the family and establishes a new network of nurture. Those who do therapy in institutional settings with psychologically disturbed persons have long been aware that such persons often regress dramatically when they return to their families. The basic goal of family therapy is to work with the whole family organism to help them change their underlying rules and patterns so that all their members will be free to grow and none will be needed as a scapegoat to bear hidden family pain.

Family therapist Nathan Ackerman suggests that the term "organism" connotes the family's living process, functional unity, and natural life history -- "a period of germination, a birth, a growth and development, a capacity to adapt to change and crisis, a slow decline, and finally, dissolution of the old family into the new."(3) The family's collective identity evolves and its joint "ego strength" fluctuates with the stresses and resources of each stage of the family life cycle. Some families cope constructively, for example, with the heavy pressures of the stage when the children are young but develop dysfunction when the children become teenagers. This often reflects the unfinished growth work from the parents' own adolescence. Many families need help in revising their family patterns of interaction to cope more growthfully with stressful crises and new family stages.

A family system, like other social organisms, is composed of several interdependent subsystems. It is important for family counselors and therapists to be aware of the patterns of interaction within and among these subsystems -- husband-wife, mother-children, father-children, child-child, grandparents- parents, grandparents-children, child-pet, and so on. The marital subsystem develops as two newly married persons work out a functional blend (often with severe clashes and pain) of the diverse family patterns that they carry within them from their families of origin. The joint marital pair identity, which the couple evolves through their interaction, becomes the core of their new family's identity. As children are added they alter the couple's and the family's identity to some degree, even as they are shaped by that identity. Young children automatically learn the implicit rules of their culture as these are reflected in their parents' pattern of approval and punishment. Fortunately, parents who become aware of their implicit family rules, values, and expectations may diminish or interrupt the transmission of ungrowthful patterns to their children. Thus, the family systems perspective, as implemented in family therapy, empowers adults to discover and change intentionally the transgenerational transmission of family patterns that they internalized in their own childhood.

Family therapist Salvador Minuchin describes how unconscious family patterns tend to constrict potentializing: Family patterns put blinders on people. . . .You are who you are in your context. This means that your relationship to your brother, your husband, your parents, your sister, and your children, causes you and them to focus sharply on certain aspects of your life and let your other skills and possibilities lie idle and perhaps atrophy. . . . Therapy can sometimes facilitate the activation of such unused skills.(4)

The Goals of Family Systems Therapy

What are the characteristics of growth-enabling families toward which these therapies seek to help families move? Virginia Satir, whose approach is thoroughly growth-centered, has identified four dynamics in families in which growth flourishes. First, within those families, people feel and support one another's self worth. One key to unlocking trapped growth in a family is to teach them how to enhance rather than diminish each other's esteem. Second, persons in growthful families communicate in direct, clear, and honest ways. As Satir put this, "Communication is the greatest single factor affecting a person's health and his relationships to others."(5) The most accurate way to diagnose the nature of a family system's problems is to watch their basic communication pattern -- who talks? Who talks to whom or/or whom? Third, the implicit rules within growthful families are fair, flexible, human, and open to renegotiation as the family's situation changes and individuals within the family grow. Fourth, such families are open systems that interact in a mutually nurturing way with a considerable number of people, families, and institutions outside their own family boundaries. Thus, a family's identity and wholeness are determined not just by its inner dynamics but also by its relations with the extended family and close friends, with its community and the organizations that effect its members' growth. Satir sees a positive reciprocity between all these factors: "Feelings of worth can only flourish in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family."(6)

Like other social systems, families can be either rigid and closed, or open and growing. Open and closed families can be distinguished by the number and quality of their extrafamilial relationships and by their responses to crises and change. Open, healthy families have more persons in their network of mutual-support than do closed families. Closed, rigid families are extremely vulnerable to crises. They resist change and try desperately to maintain the status quo by inflexible rules and by psychological or physical coercion. In contrast, open families tend to cope more constructively with crises and change. They are more open to revising, through negotiation, their family's working agreement (family contract) concerning the distribution of satisfactions, responsibilities, decision-making, and power within the family. They are more apt to seek to resolve their conflicting wants and needs by fair compromises or in other win-win rather than win-lose ways. They recognize that in intimate relationships if one person loses, no one really wins because the relationship is hurt thereby.

The research of family therapist Murray Bowen(7) has illuminated another crucial goal in helping families become more growth-enabling. A family is a system of interacting and counterbalancing forces, according to Bowen. Two primary forces in all families are the force toward togetherness and fusion, and the counter force toward differentiation and individuality. The togetherness-fusion force, which is deeply rooted in the biological survival needs of human beings, is the cohesive force that makes for the bonding of family systems (and other close relationships). The autonomy-individuality force is also rooted in a profound human need. Families vary greatly in the ratio of these two needs.

The basic pattern of a family's individuality-togetherness ratio is passed on from one generation to the next. A healthy balance between togetherness and individuality allows family members to be closely involved with one another without losing their sense of autonomy. When a family system maintains its optimal balance between these two forces, it is able to handle heavy stress

constructively without family members' developing symptoms of dysfunction. Bowen has discovered that the most disturbed and growth-stifling families are those in which the fusion force far outweighs the individuality force. This creates sticky interdependency, rigidity, and an intolerance of individualism and nonconformity within the family. When heavy internal or external stress strikes such families, they are very vulnerable. Family members are likely to develop

emotional, behavioral, relational, or psychosomatic problems as maladaptive responses to the family organism's stress. Although both togetherness and individuality are essential human needs, families that nurture optimal growth and cope-ability among their members are those in which individuality is valued and encouraged. Bowen's therapy seeks to help family members who are symbiotically enmeshed with one another to move toward greater self-definition and individuality.

Here, in summary, are the major operational goals of family systems therapy. Family therapists usually meet with the whole family and occasionally with one or more subsystems within the family seeking to help the family learn:

(1) To communicate their feelings (both positive and negative), needs, desires, values, and hopes more openly, clearly, and congruently. The therapist is a "coach" of effective, relation-ship strengthening communication skills. (2) To shift from focusing mainly on the "identified patient" and to deal with the hidden pain, conflict, and blocked growth in all family members that cause the individual's problems. This may involve a number of marriage therapy sessions with the wife-husband subsystem. (3) To interrupt their mutually damaging hurt-anger-attack cycles sooner and to gradually substitute self-feeding cycles of mutual need satisfaction among family members. (4) To mutually nourish rather than starve self-esteem in all family members. (5) To

become aware of their family's contract -- its implicit rules, roles, values, expectations, and belief s -- and then to renegotiate a more growthful working agreement that distributes satisfactions and responsibilities, power, and growth opportunities fairly. (6) To see the positive but abortive growth strivings in much of the frustrating behavior of family members and to learn how to encourage the expression of these strivings in more self-actualizing ways.(8) (7) To resolve more constructively the inevitable conflicts of living together, recognizing that growth often can be activated precisely at the points of conflict. (8) To develop a healthier balance between their need for togethemess and their need for autonomy, giving more room for the latter. (9) To experiment with new behaviors and ways of relating that are more responsive to the real needs of all family members. This often involves doing family "homework" assignments between sessions. (10) To make the interaction within and among their subsystem more growth-engendering. (11) To open up their family system by developing more supportive relationships with other people, families, and institutions outside the family. (12) To create an interpersonal climate of high-level wellness within the family, thus making it a better growth environment for all its members.

Because the marital subsystem is the dynamic core of a family's evolving identity, growth-oriented marriage counseling (concurrent with family therapy) is sometimes essential for enhancing family interaction. Encouraging couples to commit themselves to a redefinition of "love" as caring about and encouraging each other's fullest possible development, helps them make their marriage a better interpersonal environment of mutual growth. Experiencing both personal growth and a mutually growthful marriage empowers parents to nurture their children's fullest becoming.

A central issue in growthful marriage counseling is how to develop real equality between spouses. This issue has not been emphasized adequately in most of the literature on marriage counseling and family therapy. There is overwhelming evidence that the institution of marriage and the ways in which many couples define their personal marriage contracts is growth-limiting, particularly for women. To illustrate, single women, on the average, are healthier both physically and psychologically than married women. The opposite is true for men.(9) Many of the problems of troubled children and adolescents, which bring families to therapy, stem from the unfulfilling, one-down position of their mothers and the emotionally distant, high-pressure life-styles of their success-driven fathers. Women who have few sources of esteem and power outside of the family tend to overinvest in wifing and mothering roles. They exercise their basic human need for power through controlling their children (and often their husbands) in covert, manipulative ways.

If marriage counseling and family therapy are to be growth-liberating, professionals who work with families must have their own consciousness raised regarding the destructiveness of sexism in the laws and customs defining the institution of marriage. They must actively assist couples to become aware of and correct the areas of injustice and unfairness in their marriages, with respect to the distribution of power, decision-making, and opportunities for self-development. They should challenge and coach couples in developing the skills needed to renegotiate and update their marriage contract (covenant) regularly to provide opportunities for both parties to share fairly in child care, breadwinning, education, personal satisfactions, and household chores. Growthful marriage counseling and enrichment should aim at encouraging couples to relate as two strong, growing individuals who choose to form a relationship of interdependency that respects differences and autonomy.

Our culture's growth-constricting sex roles are learned by children by observing and internalizing the roles their parents act out. The implicit family rules, which shape the self-image, sense of competence, and esteem of children, are usually very different for girls and boys, even in the same family. Different behavior is rewarded and punished. Sexist dual standards and self-definitions are thus internalized and passed on through the generations in family systems. To help break the stranglehold of sexism on the full becoming of both women and men, it is essential that marriage and family therapy and enrichment help parents learn methods of nonsexist child-nurturing.(10)

FAMILY SYSTEMS THERAPIES

Some Applications of Family Therapy Approaches

The goals and principles of family therapy described above are equally relevant for use in family life enrichment experiences for relatively functional, "healthy" families who wish to develop more of their unused growth potentials. "Healthy family growth sessions" involve the use of enrichment methods with the whole family.(11) In family enrichment workshops and camps, functional families can support one another's creative change. The growthfulness of many families could be increased significantly if they had such a family growth "booster" once or twice a year.

The systemic philosophy and methodology of family therapy and enrichment can be applied productively to any close, committed relationship. Any close friendship can be made more mutually growthful by applying the principles of marriage and family enrichment and therapy. There is a pressing need also to use such approaches to help the millions of single people in our society to develop family-like support systems. These are needed to nurture their growth in our lonely, urbanized society where "being married" is defined as the norm, making singles feel diminished self-worth.

The systemic perspective offers a valuable orientation for understanding and helping individuals to grow. In doing growth-oriented counseling with individuals, it is important to remember that their family-of-origin and present family (or other network of mutual nurture) are always present within them. We all carry within us, throughout our lives, the influence of the family system in which our personalities were created. This inner family tends to shape our present relationships. Individual therapy aims at helping people grow beyond the limitations and claim the latent strengths of their internalized families of origin, and to withdraw the projection of inappropriate attitudes and expectations from those families onto their present intimate relationships. Individual growth is more apt to continue after therapy if a person's growth is accompanied by creative changes in her or his contemporary family system. It often facilitates this process to have a few sessions with a person's "significant others" during individual therapy. Or, in marriage therapy, a few sessions involving the couple's children and/or parents, frequently reveals otherwise hidden dimensions of their marital interaction that prove effective in helping them alter their growth-stifling ways of relating. Seeing the couple's parents interact may illuminate for the couple the sources of their own communication hang-ups and conflicts. In doing individual therapy with persons who still value their marriages, it sometimes becomes essential to integrate marriage therapy with the process in order to prevent the person's growth from alienating him or her from the spouse.

The systemic perspective offers a variety of resources for enhancing spiritual and value growth. In one sense, family therapy is a way of helping families whose guiding values and priorities are not functioning growthfully to reformulate their values and priorities. A family's basic philosophy of life, spiritual orientation and values are "caught" by young children more than they are "taught," as they absorb the spiritual-values climate of that family. Continuing spiritual development throughout adulthood is best nurtured in family-like caring groups in which spiritual values are experienced in relation- ships. The systemic perspective reaffirms the ancient Hebrew awareness that spiritual growth occurs best in a caring community with a shared commitment to spiritual values. A biblical expression of this systemic awareness is found in references to the early church as the "body of Christ" in which individuals are "members of each other."

A vital dimension of an open, growing family system is its openness to the wider spiritual reality whom we call God. This openness provides a transpersonal and transfamilial context of meaning and support. The wholeness of family members can be profoundly nurtured by their awareness of their connectedness with other persons and ultimately with the whole of humankind, with the biosphere, and with the loving Spirit of the universe.

Wholeness in Larger Systems

When one works holistically to increase the growthfulness of intimate systems, it is a natural progression to look beyond their boundaries to the larger systems that deplete or enrich the lives of all individuals and families. Several family therapists have researched the impact of larger social systems on the family. I was first introduced to this orientation during my training in family therapy with Salvador Minuchin. (I recall the impact of spending time, at Minuchin's suggestion, in the homes of client families in the ghetto of Philadelphia.) From his work with ghetto families, Minuchin has developed a keen awareness of the reciprocity between family systems and societal structures. He believes that it is important for family therapists to learn about a family's experiences when they are not in the clinic and to become more aware of the socioeconomic oppression which has a profound, negative impact on those families' systems every hour of their lives. He declares:

 Minuchin also points to the insidious impact on slum families of chronic male unemployment. This produces an overvaluing of the role of "provider" and an undervaluing of the other significant roles of men -- husband, father, human being.

Minuchin calls for multiple-leveled intervention in order to help slum families:

The questions are no longer, "can we introduce change by just working within family systems?" or "can intervention at the societal level alone modify the ecological unbalance in these families?" The false dichotomy implied by such questions and the need for multiple levels of intervention have been acknowledged. The coordination of work within the family with community approaches now raises a new set of questions: How can the use of multiple levels of intervention be made coherently functional?(13)

He sees the need for increased study of the little-understood mechanisms by which family systems regulate their interaction with outside systems. Without this understanding it will remain impossible to devise social change programs (e.g., youth job training, head start) that ghetto families can use fully, in conjunction with family systems therapy, to interrupt the vicious, mutual reinforcement of family and community problems.

Murray Bowen has been examining the forces in contemporary society that increase stress on families and render them highly vulnerable to dysfunction -- e.g., the frantic pace of life, the loss of supportive contact with the extended family, the pressures caused by the population explosion and the depletion of nonrenewable resources. These and other social changes have provided a society in which many parents experience heightened anxieties together with diminished awareness and self- confidence. All of this blunts their effectiveness in parenting.

From her perspective, Virginia Satir declares: "I see a need for families to ask to become partners in any institution in which any of their members are involved and to be considered a part of that establishment."(14) As a practical approach to meeting this need she recommends that parents sit down with their children in family meetings so that everyone can get in touch with where everyone else is in relation to outside institutions -- school, business, church, boy scouts, the track team, etc. "The family meeting would be the one place where lacks, oversights, injustices, rewards and experiences by individuals would be looked at in the frame of everyone's needs and the adjustment [in the family and in outside institutions] that might have to be made."(15)

Re-creating the Extended Family

The family systems perspective makes it clear that, to cope creatively with the multiple crises and pressures of our world, many people desperately need to find substitutes for the extended family.

In our rootless, highly mobile society, millions of individuals and families do not get a sense of support from their extended family or from their neighbors. Without a vital support system their capacity to cope is greatly reduced. To lessen psychological and family disorders and to increase human potentializing, an innovative strategy is needed to provide a variety of easily available networks of caring and mutual nurture for individuals and families within every community. The major growth-nurturing institutions of our society -- schools and churches -- have a tremendous opportunity to help develop such nurturing networks.

Here are some suggestions for helping religious organizations function as extended family networks of nurture. Similar approaches can be used to revitalize other people-serving institutions: (1) The consciousness of many religious leaders (professional and lay) concerning the urgent need in their community for networks of nurture for both individuals and families must first

be raised. (2) Many leaders of congregations need on-the-job training in the skills of facilitating small growth-healing-action groups. Mental health professionals, including specialists in pastoral counseling, are the logical persons to provide this training. (3) Leaders of congregations should develop a smorgasbord of small groups, workshops, classes, and retreats, designed to meet

the needs for nurture and growth-support of individuals and families in their congregation and community. The aim of such groups is the prevention of personal and family pathology through mutual nurture of growth. Here are some of the types of growth groups currently being used by churches -- grief recovery groups; divorce growth groups; preparation for marriage and early marriage enrichment groups; creative singlehood groups; parenting skills groups; solo parenting groups; mid-years marriage renewal groups; creative retirement groups; parents of handicapped children groups; support groups for families of terminally ill persons. Participants in such groups should be encouraged to reach out to other persons facing similar life situations. (4) Leaders of congregations should recruit, train, and continue to coach carefully chosen caring teams to provide better support for individuals and families experiencing major life crises. To illustrate, the pastor of a church in Minneapolis has trained some twenty young adult and middle adult couples to provide support for the newly marrieds in his congregation. Such "befrienders" can be a rich resource to help young couples (particularly the highly vulnerable teen couples) learn the relational skills to cope with the stresses of growthing a new marriage. Experience has shown that some lay people who have weathered crises and grown as a result, can be trained to co-lead growth nurturing groups effectively. Thus, the leadership pool for a church's nurture-support network can draw heavily on these natural growth facilitators who are available in every congregation. Pastors with training in counseling (including group methods) should take the major responsibility in training and coaching caring teams from which support group leaders can be drawn. Mental health professionals in the congregation and community should be enlisted to provide assistance in the training and also to provide the backup services that are needed when lay persons encounter persons who need professional help, The basic structure of the support-nurture network in a congregation can be modeled on the self-help groups, which represent one of the most dynamic thrusts in the contemporary therapeutic scene. By developing caring teams and a network of nurture groups, church leaders can help enliven their congregations, making them more family-like places of healing and growth throughout the life cycle.

A Unified Systemic Model

This diagram depicts the interdependent dimensions of an ecological model of personal growth and social change:(16)  

The diagram would be more complete and accurate if it could be three-dimensional. The dimension that integrates these seven interacting circles on the target of growth-change is what Tillich called the vertical dimension. This is the transpersonal dimension of the one Spirit in which all reality has its common roots.

Which change-growth methods are useful in each sphere of this target? Education, counseling, psychotherapy, and growth groups can produce change in individuals (circle 1). Relationship-oriented counseling methods . -. . and growth groups are viable instruments of change within the intimate relationships of circle 2. In circle 3 . . . and circle 4. . . , dynamic education, group therapy, growth groups [and organizational development] are effective methods. Changes in circle 5 (larger, more impersonal organizations) and circle 6 (the systems beyond the local community) may occur through educational [and] persuasive approaches, but often they require the use of political [and other social action] methods. . . . Effecting change in larger systems ... and between systems usually involves a greater use of confrontation in the form of political and economic power.(17)

Change in circle 7 involves a combination of consciousness- raising education designed to increase enlightened caring for the whole biosphere, and social-political action to produce changes in the institutions of our society that are essential to protect our precious and fragile ecological environment.

Change within any system depends on interaction with other systems. On the target of systems (above), change in one circle is more likely to occur and be permanent if the systems on one or both sides also change. To illustrate, individual growth is more likely to occur and be sustained if the family also changes constructively; family changes are more likely to occur and be sustained if the extended family changes to support them; growth in all three is more likely to occur and be sustained if the institutions of society are growth-oriented. Movement toward a person-enhancing world community requires simultaneous action for change in each sphere on the target.(18)

An ecological-systems orientation to change and growth helps keep one aware, when attempting to effect change in one circle, of the interdependence of that dimension of change with all other dimensions.

The systemic perspective can provide the general principles for developing the sorely needed sociotherapies for the larger groups, institutions, and socio-economic-political systems, which collectively determine the healing-growthing climate of our communities and of our world society. The working concepts and methods of the systemic therapies may well give us resources for fostering the continuing self-renewal which is needed within our people-serving institutions and wider systems.

The urgency of implementing a multileveled systemic approach to personal growth and social change cannot be overemphasized. Perceptive students of the future continue to confront us with the awesome evidence that time may be running out for humankind. At least seven immense, interdependent threats to the quality of life on spaceship earth continue to escalate: the population explosion; the widening gulf between rich and poor nations; massive malnutrition (caused mainly by economic injustice, which produces maldistribution of available food); environmental pollution and degradation; the depletion of the irreplaceable resources of our finite planet; the growing threat of nuclear terrorism and eventual holocaust (with the equivalent of one and a half million Hiroshima-sized bombs in the arsenals of the world); and the worldwide tendency for the fruits of science and technology to be used without ethical responsibility.(19) Before World War II, H. G. Wells asked, "What would a world of human beings gone sane be like?"(20) In our pathogenic societies, life-loving people everywhere long to experience a world of human beings and institutions gone sane! The individualistic growth therapies, no matter how widely they become available, cannot interrupt the deadly momentum of the impersonal forces of massive destructiveness. Only the development of more effective methods of institutional and societal transformation, undergirded by a groundswell of personal and relational growth, can turn the tide toward planetary sanity.

Experiencing a Family Self-Change Method

The Intentional Family Method (IFM) is a do-it-yourself communication tool that can be used by families to move toward greater wholeness (and the goals of family therapy and enrichment described earlier). As a self-help tool, it can be taught to families in family counseling and therapy, and in family enrichment groups, workshops, and camps. Experiencing the IFM can help families feel mutually affirmed; become more aware of their strengths; identify the areas of needed change to make their interaction more mutually growthful; and negotiate a new family contract that will enable these changes to occur and thus reduce the causes of unconstructive family conflict. I have described the use of this tool by couples in detail elsewhere.(21) Therefore, I will only outline the steps here to show how it can be used by families. I suggest that you invite your whole family to try this exercise, setting aside at least an hour for this purpose. Read the instructions for each step and then take as long as you need to complete it:

Step #l: Your family undoubtedly has a lot going/or it, even though there are things each of you would like to change. In order to become more aware of your family's strengths and assets, do a "go-round," giving each family member a chance to say what she or he likes about being a part of this family,/ Now, do a second go-round focusing on one person at a time. Allow everyone an opportunity to say what they like and appreciate about that family member. Start with the person who is feeling "down" or under particular pressures now./ Share how you all feel now about this experience.

Step #2: The purpose of this step, which builds on the first, is to identify some unmet needs or wants of family members. Do another family go-round, giving everyone an opportunity to say what they need or want more of from the family. Give everyone a turn before you discuss the various needs or wants./ Now as a family communication exercise, let other family members tell each person what they heard his or her wants and needs to be./

Step #3: Your family and your relationships will be enriched if you work out together a family change plan to meet at least one of each person's wants or needs. If there are needs that several of you mentioned -- e.g., having more family work or fun time together -- you'll find that those needs will be the easiest to satisfy as a family. Negotiate a joint plan that is fair and acceptable to all of you. This may be the most difficult step, but it is also the payoff of the whole exercise./ After you have worked out a fair, feasible plan, write it down including the time schedule and each person's part in implementing it./

Step #4: Now, begin implementing your change plan, keeping track of your progress./ As you thus increase the mutual need-satisfaction and decrease the causes of conflict among ourselves, congratulate yourselves! You deserve it. You are becoming change agents who are learning to intentionally improve your family system./ After you implement your first plan, select a new set of needs-wants of each family member and devise and implement a plan to meet those./ If your efforts to change your own relating do not work, I recommend that you join a family enrichment group or workshop, or have some conjoint family counseling, to gain the help of a trained family communications facilitator in developing the rich family potentials you want to actualize./

For Further Exploration of Growth Resources in Systemic Therapies

Ackerman, Nathan. The Psychodynamics of Family Life. New York: Basic Books, 1958. A classic by a pioneer in family therapy.

Bertalanffy, Ludwig von. General Systems Theory: Foundation, Development, Application. New York: George Braziller. 1968. A basic introduction to systems theory.

Bowen, Murray. "Family Therapy and Family Group Therapy ."chap. II in Treating Relationships, David H. L. Olson, ed. Lake Mills. Iowa: Graphic Publishing Co., 1976. Includes a brief history of family therapy and a description of Bowen's contributions to family therapy.

Clinebell, Howard. Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling. Chap. 6, "Role-Relationship Marriage Counseling"; chap. 7, "Family Group Therapy and Transactional Analysis"; chap. 12, "Group Pastoral Counseling."

---Growth Groups, chap. 10, "Training Change Agents to Humanize Society." Describes the use of growth groups in social action.

Guerney, Bernard G., Jr. Relationship Enhancement. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1977. Describes relationship skills training programs that can be used in therapy, problem prevention, and enrichment.

Kantor, David, and Lehr, William. Inside the Family, Toward a Theory of Process. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1975. Reports what trained observers discovered about how family systems actually function.

Leas, Speed, and Kittlaus, Paul. The Pastoral Counselor in Social Action. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981. Two social action specialists focus on processes and techniques that can be used to facilitate social change, using pastoral counseling insights.

Luthman, Shirley G., and Kirschenbaum, Martin. The Dynamic Family. Palo Alto, Calif.: Science and Behavior Books, 1974. A thoroughly growth-oriented approach to family therapy, derived in part from Virginia Satir's approach.

Minuchin, Salvador. Families and Family Therapy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974. An introduction to structural family therapy, an approach that seeks to change the organization of the family.

---et al. Families of the Slums. New York: Basic Books, 1967. An exploration of the structure and treatment of disadvantaged families.

Pattison, E. Mansell. Pastor and Parish -- A Systems Approach. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977. Using a systems approach to increase the effectiveness of a church.

Sanford, Nevitt. Self and Society, Social Change and Individual Development. New York: Atherton Press, 1966. Presents a developmental model to help institutions become more growth-enabling.

Satir, Virginia. Conjoint Family Therapy. Palo Alto. Calif.: Science and Behavior Books, 1964. A guide to the theory and practice of her communication-centered approach.

---Peoplemaking. Palo Alto, Calif.: Science and Behavior Books, 1972. A book to help parents develop more growth-nurturing families.

Seifert, Harvey, and Clinebell, Howard. Personal Growth and Social Change. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974. A guide for ministers and lay persons to help them become change gents.

Stewart, Charles W. The Minister as Family Counselor. Nashville: Abingdon, 1979. Describes ways of strengthening families and sees the church as a family of families.

NOTES

1. See "Role-Relationship Marriage Counseling," chap. 6 in Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling; "Enriching Marriage and Family Life," in Growth Counseling: New Tools for Clergy and Laity, Part 1; Growth Counseling for Marriage Enrichment; Growth Counseling for Mid-Years Couples; and "Alcoholics Anonymous -- Our Greatest Resource," chap. 5 in Understanding and Counseling the Alcoholic.

2. Systems theory, a "general science of wholeness," undergirds the systemic therapies. See Ludwig von Bertalanffy's General Systems Theory (New York: George Braziller, 1968).

3. The Psychodynamics of Family Life (New York: Basic Books, 1958), p. 17.

4. "The Artificial Boundary Between Self and Society," Psychology Today, January, 1977, p. 66.

5. Conjoint Family Therapy (Palo Alto, Calif.: Science and Behavior Books, 1964), p. 58.

6. Peoplemaking (Palo Alto, Calif.: Science and Behavior Books, 1964), pp. 26-27.

7. For a discussion of his theory see Bowen's "Family Therapy and Family Group Therapy."

8. See Luthman and Kirschenbaum, The Dynamic Family (Palo Alto, Calif.: Science and Behavior Books, 1974), p. 5.

9. For documentation of the negative effects of marriage on women, see Jesse Bernard's Future of Marriage (New York: Bantam Books, 1973), chaps. I, 2, and 3.

10. See Carrie Carmichael, Non-Sexist Childraising (Boston: Beacon Press, 1977).

11. I have described such sessions and illustrated them by segments from a healthy family growth interview in cassette course IIIB, in Growth Counseling: New Tools for Clergy and Laity, Part 1.

12. Families of the Slums (New York: Basic Books, 1967), p. 374.

13. Ibid., p. 370.

14. Peoplemaking, p. 296.

15. Ibid.

16. This diagram is adapted from Growth Groups, p. 148.

17. Ibid., p. 149.

18. Ibid., pp. 149-50.

19. For a powerful discussion of these threats, see The Seventh Enemy by Robert Higgins (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978).

20. From A Star Begotten; quoted by Halford E. Luccock in Unfinished Business (New York: Harper and Bros., 1956), p. 162.

21. See Growth Counseling for Marriage Enrichment, chap. 2.

If counseling and therapy are to enable whole-person growth they must use methods that raise the level of physical vitality as well as those which enliven the psychological dimensions of people's lives. Most traditional psychotherapies have been just thatùtherapies for the psyche. By virtually ignoring the human body, they have exacerbated the dualistic mind-body split, which diminishes the vitality of both. Sam Keen observes:

The psycho-therapeutic method that evolved from Freud's vision has been antisomatic and antierotic. It has been so concerned with producing a strong, realistic ego that it has more frequently enabled men [sic] to work than it has liberated them to love. The body has been considered the special province of the medical profession. This has been perpetuated by the division of labor made by the healing professions.(1)

In contrast to the professional compartmentalization in which psychotherapists traditionally have participated, wholeness- oriented counselors and therapists must seek to facilitate healing and growth in all dimensions of people's lives, including the physical dimension.

This chapter highlights body enlivening resources from three interrelated thrusts in the contemporary health-therapy field -- the holistic health movement, biofeedback, and the body therapies. Each thrust offers insights and methods that can help strengthen the physiological foundation of whole-person growth.

Growth Resources from Holistic Health

The holistic health movement is having an increasing impact among health professionals, including counselors and psycho- therapists. The movement includes an increasing number of persons from the medical professions who are not satisfied with either the philosophy or the results of main-line, highly specialized medical practice. The movement has also attracted many persons who are interested in nonorthodox healing methods. The whole-person philosophy of the movement makes closer peer collaboration among the various health-care professionals essential. Growth-oriented counselors and therapists should see themselves and be seen by other health professionals as an essential part of any whole-person health team.

The guiding principles of holistic health reflect emphases that are weak or missing in both the philosophy and practice of orthodox medicine. These principles coincide with some of the basic concerns of growth-oriented counseling and therapy:(2)

---Health is much more than the absence of sickness. It is the presence of high-level wellness. There are many degrees of wellness just as there are many degrees of sickness. Health professionals, including counselors and psychotherapists, should be committed to nurturing high-level wellness rather than simply waiting until people develop illnesses that require treatment. The technology of modern medicine, oriented to treating gross pathology and trauma by surgery, powerful drugs, and space-age technology, has little to do with either the degree of wellness of individuals or the general level of wellness in society.

---High-level wellness involves balanced and integrated interaction among all the interdependent dimensions of people'slives. Holistic health is concerned with increasing people's wellness levels in the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, interpersonal, and environmental (3) areas; but its primary focus is the whole person, who is more than simply the sum of these various aspects.

---The keys to achieving and maintaining wellness are wellness-awareness and self-responsibility. Wellness-increasing behavior in one area of a person's life tends to encourage wellness behavior in other areas. Persons who respect, enjoy, and care for their bodies by general wellness practices are less inclined to engage in self-hurting behavior such as smoking, chronic overeating, or over drinking of alcohol.

---Two major determinants of levels of wellness (or sickness) are one's life-style and the level of chronic stress in one's life. Changing to a wellness life-style and reducing stress can simultaneously help to increase the satisfactions in one's life and reduce the risk of illness. Here is how Donald B. Ardell describes the potential rewards of a wellness life-style: "There is excitement, adventure, enjoyment, fulfillment for us on earth. A wellness lifestyle will not guarantee . . . that you experience these states but it can certainly bend the odds your way. At a minimum, you can expect that a healthy body, emotional equilibrium, and an alive mind will give you one hell of a good start. . . . Be well, drink deep, go for it."(4)

Here are seven interrelated strategies that counselors and therapists can use to help clients raise their levels of wellness:(5)

(1) A wholeness-oriented counselor-therapist should encourage increased self-responsibility by clients for their total health and for their life-styles. It's important for wellness-enablers to communicate, by their general attitudes if not in words:

"You are in charge of your own life. Others [including health care professionals and counselors] have influence, can make things easier or more difficult, but in the end you must make your own choices and accept responsibility for what . . . health or disease occur in your life." (6) This emphasis on self-responsibility seeks to counteract a major cause of unwellness in Western societies -- the "medical model" in which people view themselves as passive "patients" and view physicians as having primary responsibility for their health and healing. Self-responsibility is the key to increased wellness in all areas of our lives. Even when factors beyond a person's control play a role in causing illnesses, the responsibility for responding in the most constructive way possible still is with the individual. The awakening of self-responsibility is absolutely essential in any counseling or therapy that is to be growth-enabling. Self- responsibility for one's wellness has many practical ramifications, including the six strategies described below.

(2) A wholeness-oriented counselor-therapist should encourage clients to increase their nutritional awareness and practice sound nutrition as the foundation of high-level wellness. A vicious cycle operates in many people's lives between their emotional problems and their eating, drinking, and smoking patterns. Many people use overeating (including eating enormous quantities of junk foods), smoking, and excessive drinking of alcohol as forms of self-medication in a vain attempt to treat their stress, depression, and low self-esteem. Unfortunately the use of junk food, alcohol, and nicotine as temporary, self-prescribed pain-reducers tends to produce even more pain in the long run. Many psychological and emotional problems apparently are exacerbated by poor nutrition. Furthermore, the level of zest and positive satisfactions in living are lowered in many people by poor nutrition and/or the overconsumption of food and alcohol. Most psychotherapists have focused their healing efforts on only the first side of the two-way interaction between how we feel and what we eat and drink. In contrast, whole-person approaches must direct their healing efforts to both sides, since both are causes as well as effects of levels of unwellness. Many people could raise their general level of wellness at the same time they enhance their appearance and self-image, by doing two things -- drastically reducing or eliminating the intake of junk food, refined sugar, and other carbohydrates, saturated fats, alcohol, and nicotine; and adding more healthful foods to their diets including vegetable proteins, whole-grain cereals and bread, raw vegetables and fruits, and high fiber foods.(7)

(3) A wholeness-oriented counselor-therapist should challenge clients to keep physically fit by exercising vigorously several times a week. The human body is designed, by evolutionary survival needs through the millennia, for vigorous physical activity. A Rutgers anthropologist declares: "When we run, we are . . . reviving the work of yesteryear, hunting-gathering work. The muscles, bones, cartilage, lungs, heart and mind of the primate best adapted to running want to be used. When we use them (within reason, and with appropriate concern for slowly increasing strength, stamina, etc., and correcting for age) we feel better. When we don't run or do some similar exercise, we feel worse." (8) Unfortunately, inactivity is a way of life and a serious health hazard for many people (45 percent of Americans say they never exercise). Chronic inactivity contributes to a wide variety of medical problems, including premature aging, obesity, heart disease, chronic fatigue, and hypertension. Apart from reducing the likelihood of illness, the benefits of keeping fit through exercise are impressive. Studies have shown that many people find jogging an effective way of lifting depression, releasing stress, and increasing feelings of self-esteem. Fast walking is one of the most healthful exercises. Finding a form of vigorous exercise that one enjoys is the secret of getting a double (health and pleasure) benefit from the activity.

Like many males I was turned off in my youth by the glorification of super-competitive sports in which I did not excel and by unimaginative physical education classes. During most of my young-adult years I did not exercise vigorously (except for foolish binges of overexertion on rare occasions such as mountain climbing, backpacking vacations). But during the last fifteen years I have discovered that jogging several times a week helps to energize my mind, reduce my depression, and tone up my body. Within the last two years I have found that a twenty-minute session of hatha (physical) yoga exercises, in the morning or evening, is remarkably enlivening.(9) The stretching and breathing exercises have enabled me to gradually recover body flexibility and awareness that I had lost through years of sedentary living. I feel generally more alive and energized now in the later mid-years than I did in my twenties and thirties!

(4) A wholeness-oriented counselor-therapist should teach clients one or more of a variety of relaxation techniques for reducing stresses regularly. Chronic stress contributes to many types of physical, emotional, interpersonal, and psychosomatic problems. When the normal fight-or-flight response to stress (with its elevated heart rate, blood pressure, and body tension) becomes a continuing pattern of living, the body pays a high price. Protracted unrelieved stress depletes the body's remarkable self-defense and self-repair resources. Learning to reduce unnecessary stress and cope better with unavoidable stress is an essential ingredient in a wellness life-style.

There are many self-quieting techniques that counselors and therapists can teach to clients as well as practice themselves. One of the most popular of these, meditation, has been shown to produce significant physiological benefits including lowered blood pressure and heart rate, and the increased flow of oxygen to the brain.(10) Other ways of entering one's "serenity zone" include tensing and releasing all one's muscles; breathing deeply for a few minutes; listening to tranquil music; soaking in a hot bubble bath; experiencing the rhythms and energies of nature; and reliving in one's imagination a peaceful experience. A misconception that often serves as an excuse for not using stress-reducing techniques is the belief that they require large blocks of time and a quiet place. I know a young minister who reports that he can enter a serene inner space while waiting for a traffic light to change. This obviously isn't the most ideal place to meditate, but his experience shows that a person who has learned methods of inner quieting can use them almost anywhere. I find that simply asking myself occasionally, "In what part of my body am I stressing myself?" increases my awareness of the need to release tensions regularly.

(5) A wholeness-oriented counselor-therapist should encourage clients to live in an ecologically sound, environmentally aware way. High-level wellness life-styles should include a concern for other people and for the whole interdependent biosphere. To live in an environmentally aware manner means living in ways that respect and protect the biosphere so that it can become more wellness-sustaining for all living things. One can help, in small ways, by "living lightly on the earth" -- e.g., by eating lower on the food chain, recycling reusable materials, conserving fossil fuel energy (and other nonrenewable re- sources), composting organic materials to enrich the soil, using solar energy, and taking part in environmental educational and political action organizations.

As Donald Ardell points out: "Living ecologically is a 'no-lose' proposition. Even if you personally do not change the world, you will find that doing well with less helps to make you feel better by giving the satisfaction that comes from doing your part."(11) It is also healthful to shape one's personal living space so that it nurtures wellness. For example, an abundance of plants has added a nurturing dimension to our home.

(6) A wholeness-oriented counselor-therapist should encourage clients to evaluate as well as energize their life-style by developing a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. One's personal values, priorities, and sense of life's meaning inevitably guide and shape one's life-style. For this reason, the continuing growth of one's spiritual and value life undergirds other aspects of high-level wellness. Having an energizing awareness of the purpose and preciousness of one's life is an invaluable resource for increasing physical as well as emotional and interpersonal wellness. A faith or philosophy of life that makes one aware of really belonging in the wider scheme of things provides a nurturing context of transpersonal meaning. There is a lively interest within holistic health circles in using the ancient heritage of spiritual healing within the context of medical and psychotherapeutic methods. This is based in part on the recognition that the self-healing, self-protective resources of one's body are somehow linked with one's faith and sense of meaning. As Hans Selye, pioneer researcher on stress, makes clear, it is our attitudes toward events in our lives that turn them into "distress" or "eustress" (good stress), not the events per se.(12) A sense of transpersonal purpose can help people cope constructively with enormous stress. The Wholistic Flealth Centers pioneered by Granger Westberg offer an innovative model of whole-person health care in which the spiritual dimension of healing is integrated with conventional medical resources. These centers are located in churches and staffed by a physician, a nurse, and a pastoral counselor. (See the book by Robert Cunningham, in the "For Further Exploration" section, for a description of these centers.)

(7) A wholeness-oriented counselor-therapist should encourage clients to laugh more, have more fun, chuckle at themselves, and enjoy life's simple pleasures. Abundant laughter apparently has the power to activate the body's own healing powers. This was the discovery that Norman Cousins made when he used old slapstick movies to help cure himself of an "irreversible" deterioration of his connective tissue.(13) The physician author of Laugh after Laugh: The Healing Power of Humor, reports that he has encountered a surprising number of persons who seemed to have laughed themselves back to health or have used humor to cope constructively with sickness.(14) A seventeenth-century British physician. Dr. Thomas Sydenham, put it well: "The arrival of one clown has more beneficial influence upon a town than 20 asses laden with drugs."(15)

When doing holistic, growth therapy with male clients, it's well to remember that men have a particularly urgent need to develop wellness life-styles. In America the life expectancy of men is about eight years less than that of women.(16) Two hypotheses have been advanced to explain the widening gap in male-female longevity. The biological explanation attributes men's shorter life expectancy to genetic factors. The psycho-social explanation attributes it to the lethal demands and pressures that men internalize as they learn the male role. After a critical evaluation of both hypotheses, James Harrison of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine concludes: "The best available evidence confirms the psychosocial perspective that sex-role socialization accounts for the larger part of men's shorter life expectancy."(17) In all patriarchal cultures, men are socialized to try to be more successful and powerful than others; to always be strong, competitive, and independent; to not show "weak," women-like feelings like dependency. But to the degree that men fulfill their socially programmed sex roles, they must deprive themselves of the satisfaction of many of their basic human needs. The significantly higher incidence among males of stress-related maladies (e.g., heart attacks, stomach ulcers, suicide, alcoholism) supports Harrison's conclusion.

Growth Resources from Biofeedback

Biofeedback is an exciting development in the contemporary biomedical field. In many parts of the world, psychologists and psychotherapists are using biofeedback to throw new light on an age-old mystery -- the relationship between the mind and the body. The evidence from this new technology affirms the deep interdependency of the physical and mental facets of human beings and the fact that whole-person healing and growth involves the harmonious, integrated

enhancement of both these dimensions. Biofeedback research also increases our awareness of the mind's remarkable power to participate in enhancing both mental and physical health. Barbara Brown, pioneer biofeed-back researcher, reports that the new technology "points straight to the greatest mystery of all: the ability of the mind to control its own and the body's sickness and health."(18)

Biofeedback utilizes various instruments that measure bodily changes such as muscular tension, blood pressure, brain wave frequencies, skin temperature, and heart rate. The instruments feed back this information, via meters, tones, or lights, to the persons whose functions are being monitored, thus making them conscious of changes in their internal states of which they are ordinarily unaware. With practice, people can learn to control the body system being monitored and to continue this control, on their own, without the instruments.  

The research on and the clinical applications of biofeedback illuminate the complexities and potentialities of the human mind. Barbara Brown declares: "I am still filled with awe and wonder when I record human brain waves in my laboratory . . . the more we probe, the more marvelous and labyrinthine the world of the mind-brain becomes."(19) Biofeedback research shows that the mind can bring under some degree of voluntary control any physiological functions of which it becomes aware. Volitional control can be established, through biofeedback learning, over processes long believed to be totally subject to the involuntary control of the autonomic nervous system.

All this is dramatic evidence that the human will is not only alive and well but that its participation in mind-body wholeness can be much more inclusive than formerly believed. All forms of hard determinism, including those of Skinner and Freud, must now be corrected in light of this evidence. In the new phase of human evolution (described by Teilhard de Chardin and others) humankind is called to take a responsible part in choosing the directions of mental-spiritual evolution. Barbara Brown points out, "Biofeedback may provide the instrument to excise the cataracts of scientific vision that so long have prevented participation of the mind of man [sic] in the survival and evolution of his own consciousness and psyche."(20)

The ability to learn to control one's physiological functions is being used to treat many types of psychosomatic stress problems, including tension and migraine headaches, cardiovascular problems such as hypertension, and gastrointestinal difficulties of various kinds. Biofeedback is being used to retrain neuromuscular functioning after strokes. It is also proving useful in anxiety states and stress-related problems such as drug abuse, insomnia, and persistent pain. Brain-wave biofeedback training involving learning to increase one's alpha waves (associated with a relaxed, tranquil feeling state) has been used with some success in treating neuroses, psychoses, and behavior problems.(21)

The applications of biofeedback to emotional, psychological, and interpersonal problems depends on what Alyce and Elmer Green, biofeedback researchers at the Menninger Foundation, call the "psychophysiological principle:" "Every change in the physiological state is accompanied by an appropriate change in the mental-emotional state, and conversely, every change in the mental-emotional state, conscious or unconscious, is accompanied by an appropriate change in the physiological state."(22) Because of this correlation, learned control of bodily functions may help increase voluntary control over the psychological-emotional correlates of these changes. To illustrate, research has discovered that changes in our skin temperature and the degree of skin conductivity of small electrical impulses (both indications of our degree of general relaxation) are correlated with emotional changes. Such messages from our skin often reflect unconscious emotional responses more accurately than what we are aware of consciously. As the various bodily states that are correlated with optimal mental health and total growth become better understood, biofeedback may be used more widely and productively in psychotherapy and life enrichment work, and in precise evaluation of these.

Most psychotherapists who use biofeedback devices regard them only as adjunctive resources within psychotherapy. Once clients learn the simple procedures of monitoring their bodily changes, they can practice controlling these changes on their own. This do-it-yourself aspect can save the therapists' time (and the clients' money). It also can help clients develop feelings of autonomy and self-esteem. To discover that one can accomplish significant changes on one's own and that one can control one's body and feelings, tends to increase feelings of competence and hope for further growth. Howard Stone reports on the use of biofeedback in a pastoral counseling center in Arizona that biofeedback is useful in helping people with stress-related problems learn how to relax deeply. The therapist simply loans an inexpensive skin temperature thermometer to such clients (after explaining and demonstrating its use), suggesting that they use it between therapy sessions. By using the machine, clients learn how it feels when they are deeply relaxed and how to achieve this state. They can then relax without dependence on the feedback devices. Stone reports: "Methods such as progressive relaxation, yoga, TM and other meditative techniques have been used to help people relax. Biofeedback does the same thing . . . and does it much more rapidly since from the first session the client is able to see how he or she is actually learning to relax."(23)

Brain-wave biofeedback is described by Elmer and Alyce Green as the "yoga of the West" because it helps people learn to change their consciousness to a state of alert quietness that is like that achieved by many meditative techniques. By learning to increase their output of alpha and theta waves, some people report meditation-like experiences of integration or centeredness.

Some researchers are exploring the relationship between the altered state of consciousness called "reverie" (produced by theta wave training) and enhancement of physical healing, problem solving, and creativity. Elmer Green reports that the gap between conscious and unconscious processes apparently is voluntarily narrowed during reverie and the creativity of the unconscious made more available to the persons.(24) As a tool for exploring the healing-growth potentials of various self-altered states of consciousness, biofeedback may help us develop resources for enriching our spiritual lives.

Biofeedback instruments simply extend the range of the natural feedback from our bodies. A fringe benefit that both biofeedback and the body therapies can help give us is increased awareness of these vital messages from our bodies. Many of us live in asphalt and concrete cities cut off from full body awareness. We tend to insulate ourselves from the healing feedback from nature and from our bodies. Our bodies try to tell us to give ourselves a mini-vacation (five to ten minutes of relaxation) from the pressures of our frantic life-styles in a technological society. The message comes in coded forms such as a tension headache or chronic insomnia. Rather than listening to the wisdom of our bodies and changing our high-pressure life-styles, we pop an aspirin, a tranquilizer, or a psychic energizer.(25)

Growth Resources from the Body Therapies

The "body therapies" are actually a constellation of therapies and growth approaches that emphasize working directly with the body as a way of increasing wholeness. These approaches differ widely among themselves in both theory and methods.(26) They include Wilhelm Reich's orgone therapy; Alexander Lowen's bioenergetics; Ira Rolf's structural integration (called "Rolfing"); Arthur Janov's primal therapy; autogenic training, a deep relaxation method; sensory awareness methods; dance and movement therapies; and such Eastern body disciplines as t’ai-chi, Aikido Zen awareness training, and hatha yoga. Gestalt therapy and some feminist therapies also include a prominent emphasis on body awareness and empowerment.

The primary thrust of these somato-therapies -- helping people increase their physical vitality -- is one important dimension of any whole person approach to counseling or psychotherapy. According to the body therapy perspective, the basic alienation that impoverishes the health of many people is an inner estrangement from their bodies. In our success-worshiping left-brain society, we overvalue rationality, cognitive knowledge, control, analysis, and work, and separate these from aspects of ourselves that we undervalue -- feelings, intuition, synthesis, body awareness, play, and other right-brain functions. To the degree that we are alienated from experiencing and affirming our bodies, our capacity for feeling deeply and for sensuousness, playfulness, and creativity is diminished.

In therapy with body-estranged people, direct work to enhance body awareness and energy is needed to help them reclaim their bodies. The goal of such body work is both to liberate the body's trapped energies and pleasure potentials, and to help awaken those intellectual, creative, and spiritual capacities which have been dulled by body rejection. Wilhelm Reich (the foreparent of many body therapies) believed that the "body armor" of chronic muscular rigidity incorporates and continues to express the constricting early life experiences that created these somato-psychic defenses. He discovered that when these chronic muscular tensions dissolved during therapy, one of three biologically based feelings emerged into awareness --anxiety, anger, or sexual excitement. Alexander Lowen has modified Reich's theory and methods in various ways.(27) He defines the main goal of therapy as freeing people from their chronic constrictions of breathing and muscular tensions so that their whole organism can experience a flow of life energy. He instructs clients in various body postures, exercises, and emotionally releasing verbalizing by which they can overcome the deadening of feelings and pleasure

resulting from blocked energy flow. Lowen reminds us that the blocks and the resources for growth are in our bodies as well as our minds: "Personality is much broader than consciousness. . . . It is an expression of the total being: of its physical vitality, of its muscular coordination, of its inner harmony and outward grace. The magnetism of a personality is . . . the radiance of an alive body in which the mental and physical aspects reflect each other."(28) A strong sense of personal identity involves an integration of the body image and the self image. In Lowen's words: "The ego depends for its sense of identity upon the perception of the body. If the body is charged and responsive, its pleasure function will be strong and meaningful, and the ego image will be grounded in body image."(29) A person with diminished awareness of bodily feeling becomes

split into a disembodied spirit and disenchanted body. The ego, divorced from the body, is vulnerable and weak. When rejected, the nonrational, body-feelings side of us becomes "demonic," breaking through in such distorted forms as destructive aggression, depression, compulsions, and feelings of schizoid detachment. Body therapies aim at helping people say yes to their bodies, joyfully and playfully. With the recovery of body-play, the capacity for greater mind-play (creativity) tends to be increased.

It is important to recognize that body alienation and deadening tend to occur in different ways for men and women in our culture. As a boy I was tall and "skinny" as well as shy, fearful, and unassertive. I was easily dominated by stronger, more aggressive boys. I grew up feeling as many men feel -- that my body was inferior because it didn't measure up to the image of the all-American male athlete. In my youth I tried various types of body-building in frantic efforts to make my body fit the image. These produced some modest "improvements." I can resonate to Sam Keen's description of his experience of body-alienation: "I had organized my body around the mirror, the opponent and the job. The body I had fabricated looked good, competed adequately and functioned efficiently, but it was tensed against the invasion of tenderness. I told it what to do, and for the most part it obeyed like a well-paid, sullen butler. It was better at work than at play."(30) During my young adult years I drove my body relentlessly, seeking to make it serve my self-esteem needs to be a "successful" competitor in my work. I continued my I-it relationship with my body until it rebelled against the chronic stress I had kept it under. In my early forties, I discovered that I had developed diabetes due in part, I now see, to the chronic stress to which I subjected my body.

Girls are conditioned by our culture to equate their self-worth with being "pretty" and attractive to boys. Their feelings of personal value tend to be limited to the degree to which they can make their bodies fit the superficial Hollywood image of beauty. They tend, as do boys, to feel that their bodies are always on trial, being judged against idealized criteria to which they can never measure up fully.

The "Playboy syndrome" reflects a special problem for women -- the tendency within a male-dominated culture for many men and women to perceive and judge women first as bodies and second, if at all, as persons. To make matters worse, to be "feminine" in our culture, women have tended to deaden the natural assertiveness of their bodies and not allow themselves to enjoy their sexuality wholeheartedly. This is why feminist therapies emphasize helping women to accept and enjoy the sensuality of their bodies and express their energies assertively. The efforts of body therapists are directed at helping people learn to experience their bodies, their feelings, their assertiveness, and their capacities for body pleasure. Lowen declares: "As long as the body remains an object of the ego, it may fulfill the ego's pride, but will never provide the joy and satisfaction that the 'alive' body offers."(31)

The quality of one's sexuality reflects the quality of one's general body awareness. Body alienation weakens one's sexuality -- the general feelings and affirmation of one's maleness or femaleness -- and diminishes one's sexual pleasuring. It also detaches sex from sexuality, making sex a performance motivated by the ego rather than by basic instinctual needs. "A decrease of sexuality leads inevitably to an increased preoccupation with sex. The attempt is made to recapture the lost feelings by exposing one's self to sexual stimulation or engaging in sexual activity. The results are disastrous."(32)

The somatic therapies aim at helping people awaken their dulled senses, recover sensuous awareness in their whole bodies, rediscover the wonder, spontaneity, and playfulness that they have lost under their load of lopsided rationality and overcontrol. When people begin to revive their aliveness, they often reclaim their "forsaken body with all the fervor of the lost child finding its loving mother."(33)

The body therapies have important implications for spiritual enrichment. These therapies see the alive body as the foundation for all other growth, including spiritual growth. Lowen points out that "as long as the ego dominates the individual he cannot have the oceanic or transcendental experiences that make life meaningful."(34) The body therapies reaffirm, by implication, the ancient Hebrew view of body-mind-spirit wholeness (as do holistic health and biofeedback). They reject the splitting apart, in the Greek and much of the Christian tradition, of body and spirit, nature and history, secular and sacred. They emphasize the crucial importance of affirming the deep "animal" roots of our humanness.(35) They call us to what Sam Keen calls an "incarnate existence" in which we affirm the sacred in the so-called secular, and thereby gain a new and profound respect for our bodies and for all living things.(36) The heart of vital religion says a resounding "yes!" to all dimensions of our lives including our bodies. Enlivening religion, as Keen makes clear, must be danced and not merely believed!

Although they provide some important growth resources, there is a significant inadequacy in some of the body therapies. This is the tendency toward body reductionism (which is most prominent in Reichian therapy) and the implicit assumption that body work constitutes the whole of therapy. From a holistic growth perspective, the main thrust of the body therapies is an essential, often neglected dimension of counseling and therapy, but it is only one dimension. The body therapy methods are used most productively when they are integrated with methods for helping people enliven themselves in all the other interdependent aspects of their psycho-social-spiritual-physical personhood.

Experiencing Body Enlivening Methods

In this section I will present several body-enlivening exercises that I have found helpful, describing them so that you can use them in self-nurture as well as with clients. The slash mark means, "Stop while you complete what has been suggested."

Body Awareness and Grounding

As you sit, become aware of your body position in relation to the force of gravity./ To feel more firmly grounded, straighten your spine and put both of your feet solidly on the floor./ Picture and feel your rear supported by the chair; your chair and your feet supported by the floor; the floor supported by the building; the building supported by its foundation; the foundation supported by the solid earth beneath it./ Let your weight sink toward the earth and be supported by it./(37)

Cross your legs and arms tightly; be aware of your feelings./ Now uncross your legs and arms in an open, free stance./ How have your feelings and your body awareness changed?/ Sit with your hands palms down on your thighs. Close your eyes and tune in on how you experience this position./ Turn your palms upward. Close your eyes again and become aware of any change in your experience of yourself. Recall and relive in your imagination an experience when you felt threatened or rejected./ Be aware of your body's response./ Now relive another experience when you felt safe, nurtured, loved./ What were the body messages you received as you relived that episode?/ During the next few days, practice being in touch with what occurs in your body, how alive or unalive it feels in different situations. Overall self-awareness can be increased by cultivating greater body-awareness.

Whole Body Aliveness

Take off your clothes and stand in front of a full-length mirror,/ Start with your head and move slowly toward your feet, looking at each area or part of your body for a while. Which parts feel energized and alive ?/ Be aware of how you feel about your body as a whole./ Which parts do you like? Which would you change if you could?/ Has this "body aliveness check" changed your awareness of your feelings in any part of your body?(38)

Shut your eyes and be aware of your center of energy -- the place in your body that feels most alive./ Imagine that your energy is radiating from this center throughout your body. Feel its warming flow thawing the parts that feel less than fully alive./ Continue this until your whole body feels energized and alive.

Breathing Exercises

Several body therapies emphasize breathing exercises as a means of freeing body awareness and energy flow. Breathing is our most fundamental means of self-nurture. As Fritz Perls pointed out, we breathe in shallow, constricted ways to block out threatening feelings. But in so doing we also diminish our feelings of excitement, sensual pleasure, and aliveness. In hatha yoga, "complete breathing" is used as a way to calm the mind, let go of stress, and increase the "life force" in the whole organism. Here is a hatha yoga exercise that can increase deep, nurturing breathing:

Exhale very deeply so that the lungs are emptied of air. Pull in your abdomen as far as possible to help the exhalation./ Begin a very slow inhalation through your nose. As you inhale, also begin to distend your abdomen. . . ./ Continue the slow inhalation. Slowly expand your chest as far as possible. Make this an exaggerated, expansion./ Continue the inhalation. Keep your chest expanded and now raise your shoulders [to create more space for air]. . . .This is the completed posture. Hold for a count of five./ Very slowly exhale completely through your nose and simultaneously allow your body to contract and relax. Exhale very deeply and, with a pause, repeat./ Perform the Complete Breath three times."(39)

Here is a way of using your breathing to reduce bodily stress and become more centered in your mind: Tense and then relax all the muscles of your body several times./ As you practice breathing, as described above, close your eyes and concentrate all of your attention on your breathing./ On each exhalation, let your body tensions and your worries flow out with the air./ Focus your whole attention on one point -- the slow, rhythmic flow of air in and out of your nostrils. If your attention wanders, gently bring it back to your breathing./ Don't try to make anything happen. Just "be" your breathing./ Let the length of each inhalation, exhalation, and the space between each breath increase as your mind and body grow quiet./ Say the word "one" gently with each exhalation, feeling your basic oneness -- within yourself, with all of life and with Spirit./ Continue this focused breathing until you experience the temporary cessation of the usual flow of thoughts, sensations, images, and feelings in your consciousness./ Stay in this clear, serene consciousness for at least ten minutes./ (This centering method is the essential method used in several Eastern approaches to meditation.)

Now, as you slowly exhale, imagine that your breath-energy is flowing out through your pelvic area, gently caressing and energizing your genitals. Let yourself enjoy this for a while./ Imagine that your breath-energy is flowing out through other areas of your body that need enlivening one area at a time./

Energizing Movement

Here is a delightful way to begin your day, described by Anne Kent Rush:

It is possible to "play" your favorite music in your imagination for a few minutes during the day to reduce stress and raise your energy level. Let the music in your mind envelop you and flow through your whole being./ If you are alone (or with understanding people) let your body do whatever it wishes, moving freely with the rhythms of the music./ When you finish, sit quietly for a few moments and savor the whole experience./

Anger-Releasing Exercises

These exercises aim at draining off accumulated anger through big muscle movement so that pent-up anger won't waste creative energy or produce chronic depression, stress, sexual diminution, or psychosomatic disorders. When you sense a build-up of frustration or anger, get a cardboard box and find a time when you can be alone in your garage or basement, wearing hard-toed shoes./ Close your eyes and picture the persons or situations which are the sources of our frustration or anger./ When you become aware of your negative feelings, open your eyes and express them by kicking the box and shouting whatever words or sounds well up in you as you kick. Let yourself go! Kick the box to shreds if you feel like it! Keep kicking until you experience a sense of release and lightness within yourself./ If you are depressed, but not aware of anger, try kicking violently anyway. You may find that this pulls the plug on repressed anger and lets it drain off harmlessly./ Another anger-releasing exercise is to pound a bed relentlessly with your fists or a tennis racket or kick the bed while lying on it.(41) Do this until the hurt and anger are drained off.

Violent hitting or kicking of inanimate objects brings into consciousness one's fear and guilt about negative feelings and aggressiveness. Expressing these negative feelings (in spite of the fear and guilt) in ways that don't hurt other people helps diminish the blocks that prevent anger from being expressed appropriately (in small installments) as it occurs, rather than building up as potentially destructive rage. Draining off repressed rage frees people to deal more constructively with reality, including changing whatever can be changed about their frustration-causing situation and relationships. The full release of supercharged negative feelings often allows positive feelings of warmth and love, strength and aliveness to flow within us again.

Healing and Nurture Through Touching

Eric Berne observed that the original interpersonal "strokes" we received as small children were the warm satisfactions of being touched. Although we gradually substitute emotional strokes such as recognition and praise as we grow older, our inner Child continues to yearn for physical contact with others. (In TA terms, such health-jeopardizing behavior as overeating and smoking are attempts to comfort oneself and to compensate for feelings of stroke-deprivation.) It is noteworthy that several thousand nurses and physicians have received training in a new technique called "Therapeutic Touch." which is reminiscent of the laying on of hands, an ancient healing practice in the Christian heritage.

To experience the healing-nurturing energies of touching, I invite you to try this exercise with your spouse or a close friend. Ask the person to sit in a chair with eyes closed./ For a few minutes, practice centering, that is, getting in touch with the center of life energy within you. You may find it helpful to form an image of a warm, gentle, healing light entering and filling your whole body./ Gently put your hands on the other person's head. See if you can sense the flow of life energy through your hands to the other person. All during the experience, visualize that person as radiantly healthy./ After ten minutes or so, gently lift your hands, suggesting that the other person sit quietly for a few minutes to stay with the experience./ After sharing what you each experienced, reverse the roles./ Ingrowth groups, a member who feels the need for nurture or healing can sit in the center while the others encircle and touch that person, surrounding her or him with life energy.

A Self-Healing Method

In their work with cancer patients, 0. Carl Simonton and Stephanie Matthews-Simonton have discovered that this exercise often helps people mobilize the self-healing forces within their bodies. (Methods like this should be used to augment, not to replace treatment by conventional medicine and psychotherapy.) The Simontons believe that this same approach can stimulate healing in many types of major or minor illness. The first six steps constitute one approach to full-body relaxation. Such relaxation methods can be taught to clients as do-it-yourself ways of coping with stress and anxiety: 1. Go to a quiet room with soft lighting. Shut the door. sit in a comfortable chair, feet flat on the floor, eyes closed./ 2. Become aware of your breathing. Take a few deep breaths, and as you let out each breath, mentally say the word "relax."/ 3. Concentrate on your face and feel any tension in the muscles of your face and around your eyes./ Make a mental picture of this tension -- it might be a rope tied in a knot or a clenched fist. Tense the muscles of your face, squeezing tightly, and then mentally picture them relaxing and becoming comfortable, like a limp rubber band./4. As the muscles of your face and eyes become relaxed, feel a wave of relaxation spreading through your body./ 5. Move slowly down your body doing the same thing -- your jaw, neck, shoulders, back, upper and lower arms, hands, chest, abdomen, thighs, calves, ankles, feet -- until every part of your body is more relaxed. For every part of your body, mentally picture the tension, then picture the tension melting away, allowing relaxation./ 6. Now picture yourself in pleasant, natural surroundings -- wherever feels comfortable for you. Mentally fill in the details of color, sound, texture, temperature. Continue to picture yourself in a very relaxed state in this tranquil place for two or three minutes./ 7. Create a mental picture of any ailment or pain that you have now, visualizing it either realistically or symbolically,/ 8. Picture any treatment you are receiving and see it either eliminating the source of the ailment or pain or strengthening your body's ability to heal itself./ 9. Picture your body's natural defenses and natural healing processes eliminating the source of the ailment or pain. Picture your body's own army of white blood cells coming into the area of pain or ailment, eliminating the infection or the source of the pain, actively bringing healing. Your white cells are strong and aggressive and very smart!/10. Picture yourself healthy and free of the ailment or pain and full of energy./ II. See yourself proceeding successfully toward meeting your goals in life, your purpose in life being fulfilled, your relationships with others becoming more meaning- ful and satisfying. Remember that having strong reasons for being well will help you get well./ 12. Give yourself a mental pat on the back for participating in your own recovery./ See yourself doing this relaxation-mental imagery exercise three times a day for five to fifteen minutes -- in the morning on rising, at noon after lunch, and at night before going to bed -- staying awake and alert as you do it./ 13. Let the muscles of your eyelids lighten up, become ready to open your eyes, and become aware of the room./14. Now let your eyes open and you are ready to resume your usual activities.(42) (I often add the following step between 9 and 10: "Picture yourself surrounded by a warm, healing light -- the light of the Spirit of love. Let this light flow through your whole body and mind.")

Experiencing Biofeedback

Experiments have shown that stress and anxiety constrict the blood vessels of the hands and thus lower hand temperature. As one becomes more relaxed, hand temperature tends to rise. Many people can learn to raise their hand temperature voluntarily by learning how to relax. To experience a simple biofeedback technique for monitoring your degree of relaxation, obtain a sensitive thermometer and hold the bulb securely in your fingertips./ Note the temperature./ Then use the following technique. Rest your hands comfortably in your lap while you repeat these words to yourself slowly and silently: "I feel quite quiet. My whole body is relaxed and comfortable. My right arm is heavy and warm. My left arm is heavy and warm. My right hand is becoming warmer. My left hand is becoming warmer. Warmth is flowing into my hands. They are warm. I can feel the warmth flowing down into my right hand. It is warm and relaxed. I can feel the warmth flowing down into my left hand. It is warm and relaxed. My hands are warm and heavy."(43) Keep repeating the last sentence to yourself every fifteen seconds. Check the thermometer periodically. Psychologists have found that "the secret of voluntary hand-warming is the development of a passive relaxed attitude."(44) If biofeedback from the thermometer is experienced as a challenge by you, it may, like other stresses, actually decrease your hand temperature by keeping you from relaxing. Discovering that you can control the "involuntary" response of the sympathetic nervous system (which regulates skin temperature) by intentionally relaxing, can enhance the awareness, "I'm in charge of me, including my body!"

For Further Exploration of Growth Resources in Holistic Health

Ardell, Donald B. High Level Wellness, An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs, and Disease. Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale Press, 1977. A discussion of how we can increase our wellness and that of society. Includes a Resource Guide to books in the field.

Benson, Herbert. The Relaxation Response. New York: William Morrow, 1975. Evaluates a variety of stress-reduction methods including transcendental meditation, autogenic training, progressive relaxation, Zen, and yoga approaches to meditation. Suggests a simplified method of meditation.

Boston Women's Health Collective. Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book by and for Women, rev. 2nd ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976. A guide to understanding and being responsible for one's own health.

Cousins, Norman. Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient. New York: W. W, Norton, 1979. A description of his self-healing.

Cunningham, Robert M., Jr. The Wholistic Health Centers: A New Direction in Health Care. Battle Creek, Mich.: W. K. Kellogg Foundation, 1977. Describes the centers developed by

Granger E. Westberg.

Gornez, Joan. How Not to Die Young. New York: Pocket Books, 1973. Shows how your life-style causes your body to obsolesce prematurely.  

Illich, Ivan. Medical Nemesis. New York: Pantheon Books, 1976. Gives evidence that some aspects of the medical establishment have become a threat to health.

Keck, L. Robert. The Spirit of Synergy. Nashville: Abingdon. 1978. Holistic approaches to religion and health, emphasizing "meditative prayer."

Kelsey, Morton. The Other Side of Silence. New York: Paulist Press, 1976. A guide to Christian meditation.

Lappe, Frances Moore. Diet for a Small Planet. New York: Ballantine, 1975. Critiques our food production, distribution, and consumption patterns from both personal and planetary health perspectives. Gives suggestions and recipes for living healthier, lower on the food chain.

Leonard, George. The Ultimate Athlete. New York: Viking Press, 1974. Explores the celebration of physical fitness and suggests new health-enabling forms of exercise.

McCamy, John, and Presley, James. Human Life Styling: Keeping Whole in the 20th Century.

New York: Harper & Row, 1975. Includes a nutritional guide and a chapter on environmental wholeness.

Pelletier, Kenneth R. Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer. New York: Delta, 1977. Preventing stress disorders by holistic approaches, including meditation, autogenic training, and biofeedback.

Sanford, John A. Healing and Wholeness. New York: Paulist Press, 1977. A Jungian analyst discusses healing resources in early Christianity, the Greek healing mysteries, C. G. Jung, and among American Indians.

Selye, Hans. Stress Without Distress. New York: Signet, 1974. Suggests ways of using stress as challenge and pleasure and avoiding stress as frustration, fear, or anger.

Shealy, C. Norman. 90 Days to Self Health. New York: Dial Press, 1977. A program of stress control, nutrition, exercise, relaxation, and freedom from overweight, alcohol, and smoking.  

Simonton, 0. Carl; Matthews-Simonton, Stephanie; and Creighton, James. Getting Well Again, A Step-by-step, Self-Help Guide to Overcoming Cancer for Patients and Their Families. Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1978. Explores personality factors in cancer and then describes ways to mobilize self-healing resources.

For Further Exploration of Growth Resources in Biofeedback

Brown, Barbara B. New Mind, New Body, Bio-Feedback: New Directions for the Mind. New York: Bantam Books, 1975. A discussion of the nature and significance of biofeedback with chapters on skin, muscle, and brain-wave applications.

---Stress and the Art of Biofeedback. New York: Harper, 1977. The therapeutic uses of biofeedback for a variety of medical and psychological problems.

Green, Elmer, and Green, Alyce. Beyond Biofeedback. New York: Delta, 1977. An exploration of volition, creativity, and a new human self-image as these are illuminated by biofeedback research.

Green, Elmer. "Biofeedback for Mind-Body Self-Regulation, Healing and Creativity," in Biofeedback and Self Control, 1972, David Shapiro, et al., eds. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1973, chap. 11. Explores physiological healing and mental creativity as they are illuminated by the findings of biofeedback.

White, John, ed. Frontiers of Consciousness. New York: Avon Books, 1975. Includes two papers on biofeedback as well as two on meditation research.

For Further Exploration of Growth Resources in Body Therapies  

Fadiman, James, and Frager, Robert. "Wilhelm Reich and the Psychology of the Body," in Personality and Personal Growth. New York: Harper, 1976, chap. 4. Discusses and evaluates Reich's major concepts as well as other body-oriented systems of growth including bioenergetics, structural integration, the Alexander technique, sensory awareness, hatha yoga, t'ai-chi, and Aikido.

Fox, Matthew. Whee! We, Wee, All the Way Home . . . A Guide to the New Sensual Spirituality. Wilmington, N.C.: Consortium Books, 1976. Explores playfully the mystical ecstasies that can be experienced in nature, the arts, friendship, sexuality, sports, and thinking. One chapter deals with the sensuality of Jesus and the Hebraic prophets.

Gunther, Bernard. Sense Relaxation. New York: Collier, 1968. Also What to Do Til the Messiah Comes. Collier, 1971. Sensory awakening exercises illustrated by beautiful photos.

Hittleman, Richard L. Yoga for Physical Fitness. New York: Warner Books, 1964. An illustrated do-it-yourself book on hatha yoga exercises. Lowen, Alexander. The Betrayal of the Body. New

York: Collier Macmillan, 1967. A discussion of bioenergetics' understanding of psychological-body problems and methods of reclaiming the body.

---The Language of the Body. New York: Macmillan, 1971. An introduction to the key concepts of bioenergetics.

--- "Sexuality, Sex and Human Potential," in Human Potentialities, the Challenge and the Promise, Herbert Otto, ed. St. Louis: Warren H. Green, 1968, chap. 10. Discusses the bioenergetic understanding of sexuality as this relates to human potentializing.

Reich, Wilhelm. The Function of the Orgasm. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1973. Includes a discussion of bioenergy and character analysis and his therapy. Rush, Anne Kent. Getting Clear: Body Work for Women. New York: Random House, 1973. Two hundred eighty-one body enlivening exercises. Useful for men as well as women. Voices: Journal of the American Academy ofPsychotherapists, issue on Psychotherapy and the Body, vol. 12, no. 2, issue 44.

.

Notes

1. "Sing the Body Electric," Psychology Today, October 1970, p. 56.

2. These principles are drawn from various sources, the most prominent of which is Ardell's High Level Wellness (Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale Press, 1977).

3. For an exploration of the six basic dimensions of wholeness see my book Growth Counseling, chap. 1.

4. High Level Wellness, p. 293.

5. For more details about the first five strategies, see Ardell's High Level Wellness, Part II, from which many of the suggestions in this section were taken.

6. Ibid., p. 98.

7. See the books by Ardell, Lappe, McCamy and Presley, and Shealy and Woodruff for

nutritional information.

8. Lionel Tiger, "My Turn: A Very Old Animal Called Man," Newsweek, September 4, 1978, p. 13.

9. See Richard L. Hittleman, Yoga for Physical Fitness (New York: Wamer Books, 1964) for a do-it-yourself approach to hatha yoga.

10. See Herbert Benson, The Relaxation Response (West Caldwell, N.J.: Morrow, 1975), pp. 70-71.

11. High Level Wellness, p. 166.

12. See Selye's Stress Without Distress (New York: Signet Books, 1974).

13. See Cousins' Anatomy of an Illness (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979).

14. See Raymond Moody, Laugh after Laugh: The Healing Power of Humor (Jacksonville, Fla.: Headwaters Press, 1978).

15. Quoted by Richard Saltus in "Holistic Health Crusaders Seek End to Illness Crisis," Santa Barbara News Press, March 6, 1978.

16. In 1977, the life expectancy for white females was 77.7, compared with 69.9 for white males; nonwhite females have an expectancy of 73.8 and nonwhite males 65.0. Information from the National Center for Health Statistics, reported in the Los Angeles Times, December 19, 1978.

17. James Harrison, "Warning: The Male Sex Role May Be Dangerous to Your Health," Journal

of Social Issues, vol. 34, no. I, p. 65.

18. New Mind, New Body (New York: Bantam Books, 1975), p. II.

19. Ibid., pp. 350-51.

20. Ibid., p. 262.

21. For a review of these applications of biofeedback, see Brown's Stress and the Art of Biofeedback (New York: Harper. 1977), pp. 162-65.

22. "Biofeedback: Research and Therapy," in New Ways to Health, Nils 0. Jacobson, ed. (Stockholm: Natur ock Kultur, 1975), p. 1.

23. Letter from Howard Stone, February 20, 1976.

24. See "Biofeedback for Mind-Body Self Regulation: Healing and Creativity," in Biofeedback 1972 (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1973), pp. 152-66.

25. Hazel Henderson emphasized this point in a talk at the School of Theology at Claremont, February 25, 1977.

26. For a summary of the key ideas of several body therapies see Robert A. Harper, The New Psychotherapies (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975), chap. 8.

27. Lowen does not believe, as Reich did, that the sexual orgasm is the only key to mental health. He also makes less use than did Reich of direct body contact by the therapist. His approach to body therapy does not fall into the body-reductionism of Reich's approach, at least to the same degree.

28. "Sexuality, Sex and the Human Potential," in Human Potentialities, Herbert Otto, ed. (St. Louis: Warren H. Green, 1968), p. 172.

29. The Betrayal of the Body (New York: Collier Macmillan, 1967), pp. 37-38.

30. "The New Carnality," Psychology Today, October, 1970, p. 59.

31. Betrayal of the Body, p. 209.

32. "Sexuality, Sex and the Human Potential," p. 178.

33. Betrayal of the Body, p. 231.

34. Ibid., p. 259.

35. It seems clear that recognizing and respecting our own animal roots is the key to respecting other animals, including the many that are on the "endangered species" list. Respecting our animal roots may even be a key to removing humankind from this list!

36. See the concluding essay of Keen's book, To a Dancing God (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), entitled "The Importance of Being Carnal -- Notes for a Visceral Theology."

37. Adapted from Rush, Getting Clear, pp. 49-50.

38. Ibid., p. 4. For detailed instructions for using this exercise in sexual therapy (and enrichment) see William Hartmann and Virginia Fifthian's Treatment of Sexual Dysfunction (Long Beach, Calif.: Center for Marital and Sexual Studies, 1972), pp. 98-138.

39. Hittleman, Yoga for Physical Fitness, pp. 94-96.

40. Rush, Getting Clear: Body Work for Women (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 281.

41. See Betrayal, p. 223, for Lowen's discussion of this exercise.

42. This exercise is condensed from 0. Carl Simonton and Matthews-Simonton, Getting Well Again (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1978), pp. 131-37.

43. Richard S. Surwit, "Warming Thoughts for a Cold Winter," Psychology Today, December, 1978, p. 115. This exercise is a form of "autogenic training," a relaxation technique developed by two German psychiatrists, J. H. Schultz and W. Luthe.

44. Ibid., p. 115.

The founder of gestalt therapy was psychiatrist Fredrick Perls. Born in Berlin, in 1893, he trained as a psychoanalyst before going to serve for a time in the South African medical corps. Peris gradually began to question and reject psychoanalysis. In 1947, he published a revision of Freud's basic theories and methods.(1) Perls came to the United States in 1952, settling in New York, where he began an institute for gestalt therapy. He moved to California in the early 1960s. By 1966 the Esalen Institute had become his primary community, his "place of being." There the charisma of his personality and his skills as a therapist impressed many persons in the human potentials movement, including many younger therapists. Perls died in 1970 while attempting to establish a gestalt-oriented therapeutic community on Vancouver Island.(2)

Throughout his life. Perls was a searcher who experienced and drew on a wide variety of philosophical and therapeutic approaches in creating gestalt therapy -- psychoanalysis, gestalt psychology, bioenergetics (he was analyzed by Wilhelm Reich), psychodrama, existential philosophy, Taoism, Zen Buddhism, and the thought of Kurt Goldstein.(3) The rapid increase in the influence of his approach since his death is evident in the development of several gestalt therapy training institutes and the burgeoning writings of creative therapists who continue to modify, amplify, and enrich his original formulation.

Gestalt therapy is one of the most innovative therapies now available. It provides significant resources for growth-oriented counselors, therapists, teachers, and group facilitators. Its underlying philosophy is existentialist, holistic, and growth-centered. The word "gestalt" is used to mean "figure formation," a holistic configuration that determines all its parts. Gestalt therapy is particularly useful in helping functional people enhance their awareness and deepen their relationships, and it can be integrated in a complementary way with other growth-oriented therapies, particularly TA and psychosynthesis. This therapy has been an important resource in my own growth struggles in recent years.(4)

Insights About the Nature of Growth

The growth-orientation is robust and wholehearted in gestalt therapy. It identifies the key problem of people in our times as inner deadness; its goal is to increase psychological aliveness by facilitating growth toward wholeness. At a training workshop for therapists, Perls stated, "We are

here to promote the growth process and develop the human potential."(5) He spoke of the increasing disillusionment of therapists, including himself, with the medical model. He described neurosis in Maslowian terms as a "growth disorder," which, he observed, shifts it from the medical to the educational or reeducational field.(6)To grow is to fulfill one's deep need to create. As one gestalt therapist puts it: "The act of creation is as basic as breathing or making love. We are driven to create."(7)

There is a radical holism in Perls' understanding of persons. The focus of therapy is on the organism-as-a-whole, on enabling persons to actualize the essential unity that transcends the sum of their parts. Perls rejected the split in much philosophy, psychology, and psychotherapy between the mind and the body, the human organism and the wider interpersonal environment. There is an organic unity in whole or healthy persons both within themselves and in their ongoing interaction with their environment. In healthy persons the ever-changing "contact boundary" between their organism and their environment is permeable and flexible. These qualities enable them to establish need-fulfilling contact with others, but also to withdraw from contact when privacy is needed. When the boundary between the organism and the interpersonal environment becomes rigid and nonpermeable, behavior becomes inflexible and stereotyped and people lose the ability to draw essential psychological nourishment from their ever- changing relationships. Awareness arises at the contact boundary with the interpersonal environment. Healthy contact is the lifeblood of growth, the means of relating to others with awareness, therefore nourishingly and growthfully. Therapy aims at increasing the quality of one's contactfulness.

Perls declared, "Every individual, every plant, every animal has only one inborn goal -- to actualize itself as it is."(8) There is a deep trust in gestalt therapy in "the wisdom of the organism." Human beings possess an inborn capacity to meet their needs and thereby to grow. The task of therapy is to "fill in the holes in personality (created by the disowned or rejected aspects of oneself), to make the person whole again.(9) By enabling persons to relive and finish the incomplete experiences that they carry from the past, the configurations or gestalts of these experiences are completed. In this way the energy that has been locked up in unfinished gestalts becomes available for use in self-awareness and relationships. This process enables persons to move from being supported and controlled by others toward increased self-support and freedom to choose to relate to others in need-satisfying ways.

There are two interdependent poles of growth -- increasing awareness of and contact with one's total mind-body organism, and increasing awareness of and contact with other people and the world (one's environment). Increased contact with others depends on increased self-awareness and self-support. My relationship with others can be only as deep and authentic as is my relationship with my own inner center. Awareness of the many polarities within oneself -- kindness-cruelty, top dog-underdog, for example -- allows a person to discover the unity of these seemingly antithetical sides of oneself.

There are three zones or dimensions of awareness: inner awareness of one's organism and its needs; awareness of the outer world as experienced by the senses; and a middle zone (Perls called this the DMZ) composed of our fantasies, imagination, memories, beliefs, interpretations, prejudices, and our total social programming by our culture. Perls criticized Freud for concentrating so much on understanding the middle zone that he virtually ignored the other two zones. In contrast to Freud's trust in learning by the exercise of reason (producing insight), Perls emphasized learning by moving from direct experiences of the environment and of one's organism to understanding.

The middle zone can function in a healthy, constructive way -- e.g., in creative activities. But often it distorts perceptions and diminishes awareness of both the organism and the world outside the organism. To illustrate, a person sees a spider, adds old memories and fallacious beliefs (that all spiders are dangerous) from the middle zone to this experience, thus becoming inappropriately frightened, without checking to discover that it is a harmless, even beneficent garden spider.

Therapy seeks to increase accurate awareness of both one's organism and the world by clarifying the middle zone, e.g., by helping the person discover the inaccurate belief about all spiders that prevents distinguishing beneficent from dangerous spiders.

The major blocks to growth in gestalt therapy all involve diminished awareness of what one is experiencing in the here-and-now. Reduced awareness prevents one from perceiving accurately, feeling alive, coping freely and responsibly with one's ever-changing situation. Perls held that there are four basic psychological mechanisms in the DMZ that reduce awareness and contact with oneself and others, and thereby constrict growth: Introjection is the "swallowing whole," in undigested form, of the attitudes, beliefs, values, oughts and shoulds, usually from parents or other authority figures. These internalized messages (Parent tapes in TA) prevent people from distinguishing what their organism really feels, needs and wants, from what others want them to feel and do. Projection involves disowning one's feelings and fantasies, impulses, and desires by putting these outside oneself and seeing them in other people. Projection distorts perception of others, deprives the individual of the power and potential resources of the rejected aspects of the self. Retroflection consists of turning inward on oneself what one would like to express to others. To illustrate, a woman feels frustrated and angry at her husband because of his disregard of her needs. But, in response to a middle zone belief -- "a good woman doesn't express anger" -- a belief produced by her sexist programming, she turns the anger on herself and gets a sick headache. Depression and many psychosomatic problems are the result of retroflexed anger. Behind every projection and retroflection is an introjection -- an internalized message that prevents one from expressing feelings and from using a potentially valuable part of oneself (such as the assertiveness in one's anger). The fourth growth-blocking mechanism, confluence, is the lack of a clear sense of the boundary between one's organism and the environment. This diffused sense of identity makes impossible the healthy rhythms of flexible contact with and withdrawal from others. By these four psychological mechanisms people reduce their awareness of themselves and others, and deprive themselves of potential strengths that would enable them to stand on their own feet and function effectively.

When children do not get the acceptance, support, and nurture they need from others and cannot yet provide adequate self-support and nurture from within themselves, they learn to manipulate others to try to get their needs met. They do this by pretending to be stupid, helpless, submissive, or weak; by pleasing and flattering, and by other phony games. They also learn to manipulate themselves to conform to other's expectations by self-improvement games (called "should-isms"). All these manipulative maneuvers reduce their awareness of and contact with themselves and their strengths. Therapy seeks to interrupt such growth-blocking, self-other manipulation.

From her therapeutic work with women, Miriam Polster describes the ways in which our sexist society alienates many women from their strengths, teaching them to retroflect their real feelings and manipulate men to try to get their needs met: "Growing up a woman in our society leaves a psychological residue that cripples and deforms all but the most exceptional woman. . . . Our society reinforces in women dependent, exploitative and defensive behaviors aimed at procuring conventional and stereotyped rewards. . . . No wonder many women give up the fight."(10)

The goals of growth in gestalt therapy are really directions of continuing change. Artist-therapist Joseph Zinker summarizes these growth directions when he states that he hopes a person in therapy moves toward greater awareness of himself -- his body, his feelings, his environment; learns to take ownership of his experiences, rather than projecting them on others: learns to be aware of his needs and to develop skills to satisfy himself without violating others: moves toward a fuller contact with his sensations, learning to smell, taste, touch, hear and see -- to savor all aspects of himself; moves toward the experience of his power and the ability to support himself, rather than relying on whining, blaming or guilt-making in order to mobilize support from the environment: becomes sensitive to his surroundings, yet at the same time wears a coat of armour for situations which are potentially destructive or poisonous: learns to take responsibility for his actions and their consequences: feels comfortable with the awareness of his fantasy life and its expressions. (11)

The Process of Growth

Perls saw choicefulness as the wellspring of all growth. There can be no creative change until persons begin to get a sense of their own power and responsibility -- that is, the ability to choose to respond to their organism's real needs by taking action to meet them. Persons are responsible for creating their own lives by the choices they make moment by moment. By helping people become more aware, therapy makes them more choiceful, more free to grow in a self-chosen direction.

The "paradoxical theory of change"(12) in gestalt therapy holds that when one really becomes aware in the "now," change unfolds in its own way. By being fully in the present, the growthful direction in which one needs to move becomes clear. The only place from which one can take a step is where one actually is. Thus, living in the future or the past prevents one from taking intentional growth steps. Miriam and Erving Polster put it well: "When a person gets a clear sense of what is happening inside him, his own directionalism will propel him into whatever experience is next for him."(13)  

Increasing awareness is both the goal and the means of growth. Awareness restores self-support by enabling one to "take back one's power, mobilizing one's 'center.'" (14) Because one's contact with others depends on inner contact (awareness) with oneself, increased self-awareness is a prerequisite to more need-satisfying relations with others. Increased awareness also empowers the growth that results from experimenting with new behavior which in turn facilitates further growth in awareness.

The methods of gestalt therapy are nonanalytic and integrative. Interpretation, the key method of analytical therapies, is rejected as a counterproductive mind-game by which therapist and client both avoid experiencing the "now" fully. The therapeutic focus is on "the what and how in the here and now." Peris rejected as an irrelevant waste of time the search (which is central in all insight-oriented therapies) for the why of behavior. All behavior has many causes, and each of these causes has many causes. Attempts to unearth past causes do nothing to stimulate growth. Such efforts lead away from full awareness in the now, the only time that growth can possibly occur.

Growth-blocked ("neurotic") people are unable to live in the present. Their energy is wasted by guilt from unfinished, past happenings and by anxiety from fantasies about catastrophic future dangers, which they strive to ward off by frantic planning and rehearsing. Such persons consequently lack energy and awareness to enjoy living in the present moment, the only time anyone can be alive and aware. As the Polsters declare: "The major problem of good living is to keep up to date with the possibilities which exist rather than being stamped on the ass for all time by experiences which were only temporary."(15) As persons in therapy try to attend to the flow of here-and-now experiencing, unfinished experiences from the past keep interrupting their awareness. By paying attention to what is experienced now from the past, and how they are blocking present awareness, past experiences can be worked through and completed and that energy made available for living now. Instead of seeking to remove resistances to growth, the therapist encourages people to enter into their resistances, exaggerate and "lean into" them and thus to get in touch with the power-for-growth that is there in their resistances.

According to Perls there are five layers through which people must move as they grow from deadness to aliveness, from trappedness to freedom: (1) The cliche layer is composed of superficial contacts with oneself and others -- e.g., "Nice day, isn't it?" Relating mainly on this level is a kind of token existence. (2) The phony, role-playing layer consists of the games by which we manipulate one another in vain attempts to get our needs met. (3) The impasse orphobic layer is the level at which one experiences the fear of emptiness or nothingness which lies behind the manipulation. This occurs in therapy when the therapist frustrates the person's manipulative games (e.g., defensive intellectualizing) by refusing to play them. (4) If persons resist the urge to flee and instead stay with the fear, they reach the implosive or death layer. The experience of losing the manipulative games by which one has survived brings the awareness of deadness and terror (called "hitting bottom" in AA), the experience of being paralyzed (imploded) by opposing inner forces. (5) By staying in touch with their deadness, persons then move to the explosive layer, in which they experience rebirth as one or more of four types of creative energy is released -- repressed anger, unfinished grief, orgasm (in sexually blocked people), and the explosion into joy and laughter which Perls called joie de vivre. On this layer of growth a more authentic person emerges, capable of experiencing tragedy and joy, pain and laughter, more able to create her or his own future. It is clear that the process of therapy involves struggle and pain and ecstasy, death and rebirth. As Perls puts it in an oft-quoted line: "To suffer one's death and to be reborn is not easy."(16)

My personal growth in a gestalt workshop group I attended several years ago followed the basic flow of this process. (17) I was confronted there with a situation where I had to relate as myself, without the protective wall of a professional title or the status of a leader or teacher. In that setting my games became painfully evident, first to the therapists and to perceptive group members and gradually to me. I became aware of the deadness of my voice and my body much of the time; the ways my "nice guy" front and my intellectualizing games both feed and sugarcoat my anger; the way I tend to lock up my energy by not breathing fully; the way I give my power away to others, seeking by manipulation to get validation from them; the way I spend energy rehearsing in my mind what I will say to get approval from others; the ways I cut myself off from my laughing, playful, don't-give-a-damn side and thus burden myself and others as a "heavy"; the way I often stay distant from my center and therefore out of deep contact with others; the way I tend to live "five miles ahead on the road" worrying and planning; the ways I postpone living and savoring the real experiences of this moment. My anxious attempts to be a "successful" gestalt therapy patient (another game) naturally led to increased frustration and eventually despair. The impasse that followed was, indeed, deathlike. I experienced an explosion of energy, and the joy of being alive (expressed as a dancing mountain stream) when I finally gave up the frantic search for "the answer" and spontaneously began to laugh at myself and my futile attempts to manipulate myself and others.

The role of the gestalt therapist in the growth process is not that of "changer," teacher, or helper. It is to provide a relationship that will be an environment of growth, within which one can confront one's deadness and experience rebirth to one's own strengths, responsibility, pain, and joy. The therapist seeks to balance contact (supportive awareness and acceptance of the here and now person) and "skillful frustration" of the person's aliveness-avoiding manipulations. Peris saw the therapeutic relationships as an authentic encounter between two human beings, not a variation on the doctor-patient relationship. The therapist seeks to be present as a real person interacting in a fluid, active way with the other. There can be a playful, joyous dimension for the therapist in this encounter. In describing the therapist as an artist involved in a creative, loving encounter, Joseph Zinker identified a parallel with the experience of Artur Rubinstein, who said that "playing the piano is like making love, it fills me completely with joy."(18)

Spiritual Growth Resources in Gestalt Therapy

Many of gestalt therapy's insights and methods can be used to help persons move from growth-blocking to growth-nurturing religious experience. The authoritarianism, moralism, and legalism of much traditional religion diminishes spiritual awareness by encouraging people to project their own spiritual powers onto deity (thus impoverishing their inner lives), introject self-punishing beliefs that diminish self-other esteem and distort relationships, and retroflex vital assertive and sexual energies, thus blunting their aliveness. Gestalt therapy challenges the "aboutism" of endless intellectualizing (in theology and philosophy) concerning the "ultimate meaning of life" which so often becomes a substitute for the direct, enlivening experiencing of spiritual reality.

Although Perls was a nontheist who rejected his Jewish heritage, there are significant affinities between the best in the Judeo-Christian tradition and gestalt therapy. Its holistic orientation is reminiscent of the whole-person understanding of human beings in the Old Testament tradition. (19) Perls' emphasis on authentic living, on encountering the "fertile void," on death and rebirth, on awakening to one's potential and powers -- all have affinities with the salugenic (wholeness-nurturing) dimension of the Judeo-Christian heritage. The influence of Eastern philosophies in Peris' thought is reflected in gestalt therapy, for example, in his Taoist-like admonition, "Don't push the river, it flows by itself,"(20) and in the paradoxical theory of change.  

Several spiritually oriented gestalt therapists have sought to develop the spiritual growth potentials inherent in this approach. Claudio Naranjo has explored the many affinities between both Eastern and Western religious traditions and gestalt therapy.(21) Joseph Zinker describes creative therapy as a relational

religious experience:

Weaknesses of Gestalt Therapy

From the Growth Counseling perspective, gestalt therapy has several significant weaknesses. It is impoverished by the reductionistic elements in Perls' thought. In reacting against growth-blocking moralism, he reduced all values to "shouldisms" and dismissed them without seeing that authentic values are essential in human wholeness. In reacting against sterile intellectualizing he seemed to reduce all intellectual activities to mind games. Reacting against the paralysis of endless analysis in therapy, he failed to see that cognitive understanding and self-insight can help mobilize one's resources for creative change. In his appropriate rejection of authoritarian religions. Perls failed to see the essential role of salugenic spirituality in human growth. There was no awareness in his thought of a transcending dimension, a higher Self in human beings. He dismissed the concept of the self, in fact, as "a relic from the time when we had a soul."(23) This deficiency points to the need for integrating a spiritually oriented approach like psychosynthesis with gestalt in developing ways to maximize whole-person growth.

In his fight against symbiotic dependencies, Perls fell into the other extreme, hyperindividualism, expressed in his much quoted "gestalt prayer": "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." (24)

This prayer, in Perls' mind, may have been only a teaching device and not a statement of a basic philosophical principle. But as a perceptive gestalt therapist observes, the emphasis on doing one's own thing can, with only minor distortions, be used to justify destructive, psychopathic behavior. (25)

The hyperindividualism in gestalt therapy seems to be particularly offset by Perls' view that a group is a microcosmic world in which people can expand their awareness and try out new behavior. However, when he worked in a group setting, he kept the entire therapeutic process centered on himself. Consequently he missed the unique power of therapy or growth groups -- the developing, through group-centered interaction, of a group climate that frees everyone in that group to grow and to become mutual growth facilitators.

A weakness in gestalt is an underemphasis on the responsibility of truly liberated persons to strive to change the oppressive structures of society. Peris was keenly aware of the social sources of diminished growth. It is from the collective psychosis of our culture that we learn our phony, deadening games. But in response to this awareness he offered only the image of the autonomous, self-directed individual standing against the insanities of society. There is little or no awareness of

the extent to which the capacity to take full responsibility for one's life presupposes a degree of freedom from social, economic, and political oppression that is not available to two-thirds of the world's peoples. There is no sense of the interdependency of individual and societal wholeness and no call for using one's therapy-developed strengths to help overcome growth-crippling institutional injustice and oppression.

It is not surprising, then, that the growth-stifling impact of institutional sexism has received little attention in gestalt therapy literature. The multiple ways in which our society cripples the full becoming of women and, in different ways, of men, is almost ignored. A refreshing exception to this near silence is an insightful statement by Miriam Polster on "Women in Therapy: A Gestalt Therapist's View." Gestalt therapy can help women repair the damage of sexism in their lives by enabling them to stop giving their power away to men and to sexist institutional practices. But even valuable self-powering and self-responsibility techniques can be used against women to excuse our male-dominated social systems. The authors of Feminism as Therapy report:

The near vacuum of social responsibility in gestalt therapy's philosophy is highlighted by this version of the gestalt prayer in a radical therapy journal: "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 our brothers and sisters enslaved, and the world under fascist rule, because we are doing our thing -- it can't be helped."(27)

Perls' hyperindividualism and lack of systemic awareness was counterbalanced, to some degree, by developments of his thought in his later life and by others since his death. Just before his death, he declared that therapy could only be done fully in a community that supported growth. His collaboration in establishing a kind of gestalt commune or kibbutz on Vancouver Island (which disintegrated after his death) is an example of his growing sense of need for community. The relational awareness of Joseph Zinker and the Polsters, who write of going beyond cure and growth to the development of a new communal climate,(28) is an example of more systems- oriented gestalt therapists. They show that gestalt has the potential of becoming a more systemic and political therapy.

Growth Methods from Gestalt Therapy

Gestalt therapy offers a rich variety of methods for growth work. All gestalt methods are ways of enhancing awareness. In what follows, I'll describe a few gestalt approaches that I have found useful, presenting them so that you can try them yourself before you attempt to use them with others. Before proceeding, it's important to emphasize a danger that gestalt shares with some other therapies -- its vulnerability to the abuse of its powerful techniques by inadequately trained therapists. At its heart, gestalt therapy is an orientation, a philosophy of how persons change and grow. It is not a set of therapeutic gimmicks. Particular techniques emerge from the therapist's flowing awareness of the growth needs of a particular person. The choice of techniques results from the therapist's understanding of the gestalt philosophy and principles. To be aware of the person's unfolding needs, the therapist's mind must be clear of pre-selected techniques.

Attending lo the Whole Person (Beginning with Yourself): Because of our organic oneness, everything we do reflects our here-and-now being. Our awareness of body messages in ourselves and others -- posture and movement, voice quality, breathing, muscular tension, and so forth -- often reveals more than words about growth blocks. To experience this, close your eyes and be aware of any part of your body that feels up tight right now./ Carry on a dialogue with that part of you, speaking out loud for the part and then for "yourself." Let your words flow, and see what emerges./ Close your eyes again and be aware of some motion you feel like making with your body,/ Now, do it, repeating the motion several times, exaggerating it more each time./ Let sounds that express how you feel come out as you do this./ Be aware of the message to yourself in what you have been expressing with your body./

A man is sitting in a growth group with crossed legs making small repetitive kicking motions with one foot. When it seems appropriate, I ask if he is aware of what his foot is saying to him. Or I may invite him to "be your foot and carry on a dialogue with the rest of yourself." What emerges into his awareness is the frustration, anger, and aggressive feelings that he has been retroflexing and expressing covertly through body language.

From the Here-and-Now to the Then-and-There: To increase your awareness of the here-and-now, try this experiment. Become aware of how you are experiencing yourself in your present situation with its surroundings, relationships, happenings, smells, temperature./ Now, if you're feeling tired or bored, think of another situation that you've enjoyed in the past, a setting where you'd prefer to be right now./ Go there in your imagination./ How have your feelings and your energy level changed?/ In your mind, go back and forth several times between your present situation and the other one, savoring the differences in the two./ Now, see if you can bring some of the energy and feelings from the other situation into the present one to enliven your experience now./ Go back and forth until you feel more comfortable and "present" in the here-and-now.(29)

Increasing Awareness by Enactment: This approach uses dramatization of some aspect of a person's life, within a counseling session or growth group. Here is how the Polsters use the method:

This method can be used in a variety of forms -- e.g., to enact and work through an unfinished, energy-wasting experience from the past or to enact a polarity in one's life -- being devilish or angelic -- to help one "own" and integrate both sides.

To get inside this approach, close your eyes and image some animal that you would like to be./ Now, open your eyes and be that animal for several minutes. Let yourself go, making the appropriate sounds and movements. Do this until it feels finished./What feelings did you experience? Did you discover any new aspects of yourself?/ Share your experience with a friend./

Take Back Your Power and Response-ability: Gestalt therapy uses a variety of methods to help people become aware of and interrupt the process of giving their power away to other people and to circumstances. For example, the next time you're anxious about something you have to do in the future, try completing the sentence as many times as possible, "Right now I'm frightening myself with the fantasy that . ." You'll probably discover catastrophic fantasies and expectations to which you are giving your power (to do your best) away. By separating your fantasies from whatever is real in your fears, you can use your energy to prepare to handle the reality situation effectively./ Make a series of statements beginning with the words, "I'd like to do the following, but I can't . . ."/ Repeat the statements changing all the "can'ts" to "won'ts."/ Be aware of how you feel when you make the change./

Here is another power-responsibility reclaiming approach. Close your eyes and imagine that you are a client in therapy wrestling with a difficult personal problem. The therapist says to you: "I'd like to use you as a consultant. What advice would be helpful to you in this situation?"(31) Be aware of your feelings as the therapist affirms your potential wisdom and gives responsibility for your therapy back to you./

The Empty Chair Dialogue: This approach has a wide variety of uses in counseling and growth groups. The method is invaluable in helping those experiencing painful losses to do their "grief work" by bringing into the open and perhaps finishing the energy-depleting inner dialogue (usually of guilt and anger) with the lost person. The individual, in fantasy, puts the person with whom he or she has unfinished feelings, in an empty chair and then alternately speaks to and for that person, moving back and forth from one chair to the other in the process. It is important to encourage the person to continue this dialogue until some resolution has occurred, as shown by the person's experience of inner quiet and increased energy. Many of us are carrying around "ghosts" of powerful unfinished feelings about long-past relationships. The increased flow of creative energy, when these feelings are worked through, often is dramatic.

It is possible to use the dialogue method as a self-help technique. After my father's death, I went alone to the cemetery and carried on an extended dialogue with the dad I carry in my memory, expressing some of the unfinished feelings of sadness and anger, guilt and love and gratitude about our relationship. The empty chair method can also help in working through feelings about people who are still alive but with whom direct confrontation is either impossible or probably unproductive -- e.g., a rigid boss on a job you still want to keep, an aged parent with whom an open confrontation would be destructive, or an ex-spouse toward whom one has energy-wasting resentments.

Empty chair work can help people re-own rejected, "alien" parts of themselves. It can also help resolve conflicts between aspects of one's personality. We waste enormous quantities of life and energy in the civil wars among potentially complementary parts of ourselves. Here is an awareness exercise to let you experiment with such a dialogue: Close your eyes and picture a chair in your imagination./ Put the part of yourself that feels weak, inadequate, and one-down in the chair./ Be aware of how that person in the chair feels./ Now. picture another part of yourself -- the part that feels strong, effective, competent -- standing so as to look down on the person in the chair./

Be the standing person now, and give the sitting one a lecture to get that person to shape up. Put your feelings into what you're saying!/ How does the one in the chair feel and respond?/ Carry on a dialogue between the two for a while, first being one and then the other./ Be aware of the feelings stirred up in each person by the dialogue, the power in each position, the energy consumed by the conflict, the increasing polarization that occurs./ Now, see if you can change the dialogue so that it leads to reconciliation between these two sides of yourself (which Perls calls the "underdog" and the "top dog")./

Dream Work: According to gestalt theory, dreams are messages about the holes in one's personality gestalt. Each person or thing in a dream is a disowned part of the dreamer. The person is invited to tell the dream or act it out, not as a story from the past, but in the present tense, and then finish the dream in fantasy. Here is how Fritz Perls described the use of dreams in one's own growth work:

"In Gestalt Therapy we don't interpret dreams. We do something more interesting with them. Instead of analyzing and further cutting up the dream, we want to bring it back to life. . to re-live the dream as if it were happening now.

You can do a tremendous lot for yourself on your own. Just take any old dream or dream fragment, it doesn't matter. As long-as a dream is remembered, it is still alive and available, and it still contains an unfinished, unassimilated situation.

So, if you want to work on your own, I suggest you write the dream down and make a list of all the details in the dream. Get every person, every thing, every mood, and then work on these to become each of them. Ham it up. . . . Really become that thing. . . Turn into that ugly frog or whatever is there -- the dead thing, the live thing, the demon -- and stop thinking. Lose your mind and come to your senses. Every little bit is a piece of the jigsaw puzzle which together will make up a much larger whole -- a much stronger, happier, more complete real personality."

Then the person has the different parts of the dream dialogue with one another. "As the process of encounter goes on, there is mutual learning until we come to a oneness and integration. . . . Then the civil war is finished, and your energies are ready for your struggles with the world."(32)

For Further Exploration of Growth Resources in Gestalt Therapy

Fagan, Joen, and Shepherd, lrma, eds. Gestalt Therapy Now: Theory, Techniques, Applications. Palo Alto, Calif.: Science and Behavior Books, 1970.Twenty-five papers by gestalt therapists including Fritz and Laura Perls. Dedicated to "Fritz . . . a profound and disturbing teacher."

Hatcher, Chris, and Himelstein, Philip, eds. The Handbook of Gestalt Therapy. New York: Jason Aronson, 1976. Twenty-five chapters on various techniques, and a section on the relation of gestalt therapy to other therapies -- TA, bioenergetics, biofeedback, and art therapy.

Perls, Fredericks. Ego, Hunger and Aggression. New York: Random House, 1947. Explains the theory of gestalt therapy as it developed from psychoanalysis and gestalt psychology.

---The Gestalt Approach: Eyewitness lo Therapy. Ben Lomond, Calif.: Science and Behavior Books, 1973. The manuscript on which Perls was working when he died. A theoretical exposition of gestalt therapy and a transcript of a series of filmed therapy sessions with Perls as therapist.

--- Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. Lafayette, Calif.: Real People Press, 1969. A discussion of the principles of GT, including transcripts of several sessions.

---In and Out the Garbage Pail. Lafayette, Calif.: Real People Press, 1969. Perls' candid, humorous, anecdotal autobiography. Communicates the flavor of his colorful personality. Describes the beginnings and development of GT.

Polster, Erving, and Polster, Miriam. Gestalt Therapy Integrated: Contours of Theory and Practice. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1973. An exploration of key concepts of GT.

Schiffman, Muriel. Gestall Self-Therapy. Menio Park, Calif.: Self Therapy Press, 1971. Techniques for self-growth using GT.

Smith, Edward W. L., ed. The Growing Edge of Gestalt Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1976. Explores the relation of GT to other therapies -- Jungian, Existentialism, Zen, TM, and Taoism.

Stevens, John 0. Awareness: Exploring, Experimenting, Experiencing. Lafayette, Calif.: Real

People Press, 1971. Awareness and communication exercises focusing on inner communication, fantasy journeys, pair communication, art, and movement.

Zinker, Joseph. Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1977. Shows how the therapist is really an artist.

Also see the books combining TA and GT by Lessor and James/Jongeward in bibliography at end of TA chapter.

NOTES

1. See Ego, Hunger and Aggression (New York: Random House, 1947).

2. See In and Out the Garbage Pail (Lafayette, Calif.: Real People Press, 1969) for further information about his life.

3. See "The Roots of Gestalt Therapy" by Edward W. L. Smith in The Growing Edge of Gestalt Therapy (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1976), chap. 1.

4. See my book Growth Counseling, pp. 21-25.

5. Gestalt Therapy Verbatim (GTV) (Lafayette, Calif.: Real People Press, 1969), p. 2.

6. Ibid., p. 28.

7. Zinker, Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1977), p. 9.

8. GTV, p. 31.

9. Ibid., p. 2.

10. Polster, "Women in Therapy: A Gestalt Therapist's View," in Chris Hatcher and Philip Himelstein, eds., Handbook of Gestalt Therapy (New York: Jason Aronson, 1976), pp. 557 ff.

11. Zinker, Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy, pp. 96-97.

12. See Amold Beisser, "The Paradoxical Theory of Change," in Joen Fagan and lrma Shepherd, eds., Gestalt Therapy Now (Palo Alto, Calif.: Science and Behavior Books, 1970), chap. 6.

13. Gestalt Therapy integrated (GTI) (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1973), p. 17.

14. GTV, p. 63.

15. GTI, p. 85.

16. GTV, flyleaf.

17. For a fuller description of this experience, see Growth Counseling, pp. 21-25.

18. Zinker, Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy, p. 5.

19. Lynn Walker, Body and Soul (Lafayette, Calif.: Real People Press, 1969).

20. In and Out the Garbage Pail, p. 22.

21. See "Present-Centeredness" in Gestalt Therapy Now, pp. 47ff.

22. Zinker, Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy, p. 17.

23. GTV, p. 76.

24, Ibid., p. 4.

25. Robert Resnick, Gestalt Therapy Workshop, May, 1978.

26. Anica Vesel Mander and Anne Kent Rush, Feminism as Therapy (New York: Random House, 1974), p. 48.

27. Reprinted from Rough Times by Journal of Humanistic Psychology, vol. 17, no. 3, p. 78.

28. Polster and Polster, GTI, p. 24.

29. This is adapted from an exercise by Fritz Perls in GTV, p. 61.

30. Polster and Polster, GTI, pp. 239-40.

31. Paraphrased from a statement by Bob Martin in a gestalt therapy workshop, May, 1978. 32. GTV, pp. 68-70.