Touching the Soul in Gestalt Therapy: Stories & More

Photo by Horst ter Haar

Erhard Doubrawa has worked as a Gestalt therapist for many years. He is the founder and director of the Gestalt Therapy Institutes of Cologne and Kassel (Germany), where he is also active as a trainer. He publishes the German Gestalt Therapy Magazine Gestaltkritik. In addition he has edited a series of books about the theory and practice of Gestalt therapy. Own books (among others): Einladung zur Gestalttherapie: Eine Einführung mit Beispielen (Invitation to Gestalt Therapy: An Introduction with Examples) and Lexikon der Gestalttherapie (Dictionary of Gestalt Therapy) – both together with Stefan Blankertz.

In this book the author has collected stories, which he has often told in his therapeutic work – during individual therapy sessions with clients as well as in group trainings. These stories have already often contributed to helping people open themselves again and be deeply touched by others.

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— for further details see the last page of the book —

CONTENTS

Crying in the Face of Beauty

Healing by Storytelling-Introductory Comments

What is Gestalt Therapy?

The Work of the Clients

I Was Also Once a Client

Touching the Soul

Two Couples

All Things Between Heaven and Earth

My Father’s Moccasins

The Work of the Therapists

My Inner Experience – The Source of My Work

The Male Therapist

Protecting the Client

Protecting the Therapist

Finding th Right Therapist

Autobiographical Sketches

How I Came To Gestalt

Spirituality

Political Gestalt Therapy

Gestalt Becomes Clear

Appendix

The Art of Gestalt Intervention

The Gestalt Attitude

In memory of my father, with gratitude

Praise for the German edition of Touching the Soul in Gestalt Therapy

"Thank you for your new book. Your honesty and openness touched me very much. After I had begun reading, I could not put the book down. You have explained the flesh and blood of Gestalt therapy to me, not only the bare bones."

Herbert Greif, Nideggen, Germany

"During an extremely difficult time for me your narratives have touched me to the depths of my soul. While I was reading I could already feel the hardness of my ‘diagnostic psycho-analytical view’ in my therapeutic work begin to dissolve and I was again able to approach my patients openly and uninhibitedly (with laughter and tears)."

Elke Geser-Schellkopf, Gestalt therapist, Bayreuth, Germany

"Dear Erhard, Thanks for your marvellous new book. It truly reached my depths. I could not stop reading it. I have just emerged from a time in my life in which I felt I had closed myself down. It was as if I had developed a protective shield, because so many situations around me had been occupying and moving me. Then your book arrived and I felt my heart opening up … my tears starting to flow … and that the protective shield was no longer needed!"

Carina Gadebusch, Remscheid, Germany

"Once again you have sent me a very beautiful book. One, which really is touching on many points, and which reveals so many alive facets of Gestalt therapeutic work as well as your Gestalt therapeutic work and you as a person. Here are a few examples,

all the different ‘messages’ that can be found in crying and in tears,

the significance of ‘attitude’ in the work, as against its reduction to techniques,

the importance of humility: it can protect both the client and the therapist.

This fits with what you describe later about becoming aware of the ‘sacredness’ of practicing therapy."

Detlev Kranz, Gestalt therapist, Hamburg, Germany

"I really enjoyed reading your new book and have been very impressed by its aliveness. As I was reading, I often had the feeling that you were there explaining everything to me in person. In my opinion you could not have explained it better or made it more understandable for those who are not so particularly familiar with the special terminology of Gestalt therapy or this subject matter."

Gabriele Önal, Tübingen, Germany

"I liked your book very much. I was often touched and close to tears. The story about your father has encouraged me once again to see my mother differently and to find new ways of coming into contact with her. I have already passed my copy of the book on and also have recommended it to other people – their resonance was totally similar to mine."

Martina Feldmayer-Ott, Cologne, Germany

"A profound respect for humanity, openness, honesty, warmth, tenderness, tears and joy, are only a few of the words that spontaneously occur to me about this book. With his stories, Mr. Doubrawa has also touched my soul and opened my heart. I can recommend this book to everyone who wants to come in touch with their feelings and thus find healing for themselves. This book is a great help for both therapists and clients."

Karin Soukup, psychotherapist

"An appropriate title – this book touched my soul and I felt spoken to and understood. Everything in the book is pure personal experience, sometimes with an astonishing openness. Mr. Doubrawa answers many of the questions and problems that often present themselves to future as well as currently practicing Gestalt therapists. I myself am in training to become a Gestalt therapist and can highly recommend this book."

Francisca Benz, Oberkirch, Austria

CRYING IN THE FACE OF BEAUTY

About six years ago, my wife Anke and I visited our American colleague John Reis and his wife Linda. Together with their two children, a five year old daughter and an eight year old son, we were sitting on that Sunday morning at breakfast and were talking about this and that. Together we were enjoying the wonderful view from their living room window over the Pacific coastline, north of San Diego. The conversation was filled with an easiness, mostly due to the straightforward and cordial nature of our hosts.

Eventually Linda said that the previous week she had taken her daughter to the opera for the first time. Unfortunately I cannot remember any more which one. But what I do remember, touched me even at that time – and it touches me again now, whenever I think of it.

Linda loves music and she loves the opera. She waited patiently until her daughter was five years old. Only then did she take her to a live performance. She had the idea that her daughter would not be so bored or become too restless. What did happen however, she could never have imagined in her wildest dreams.

Her daughter sat beside her completely still for nearly two and a half hours and listened attentively. Spellbound she followed the events on stage. Afterwards she said to her mother, as she wiped tears out of her eyes with her hand and spread them all over her face, Mummy, I don’t understand. It was sooo beautiful, but I still had to cry anyway.

Linda took her little daughter in her arms and explained, These aren’t tears of sadness. Sometimes you have to cry, when you experience something very, very beautiful, because it has touched you so much.

I do not know a more beautiful and more comprehensible explanation of being touched, and certainly, not one which has touched me so deeply.

HEALING BY STORYTELLING: INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS

A rabbi, whose grandfather had been a disciple of the Baal Shem, was asked to tell a story. A story, he said, must be told in such a way that it constitutes help in itself. And he told: My grandfather was lame. Once they asked him to tell a story about his teacher. And he related how the holy Baal Shem used to hop and dance while he prayed. My grandfather rose as he spoke, and he was so swept away by his story that he himself began to hop and dance to show how the master had done it. From that hour on he was cured of his lameness. That‘s the way to tell a story!

Martin Buber

In this book, my intention is to present Gestalt therapy in such a way, dear readers, that you can experience it. What I mean by this is best explained by the introductory anecdote above, which I found in the preface to Martin Buber’s book Tales of the Hasidim.

The first time I read it was when I was a student of Catholic theology. At that time we were interested in the question of how experiences of faith could be conveyed to others. We discovered that this could only be done narratively – in other words by telling stories.

I am pleased that I have come back to a similar place now – more than 25 years later. Today I ask myself how Gestalt therapeutic experiences can be further passed on. Again I have discovered that this is only possible by telling stories. So I would like to begin now to relate from my Gestalt therapeutic experiences: from my experiences as a client, from my experiences in Gestalt therapeutic training, but above all from the experiences, which I was allowed to make as a Gestalt therapist and later as a teacher of Gestalt therapy.

I like to summarize the goal of Gestalt therapy as opening oneself up again. All too often we have had to close down. In order to protect ourselves and to survive, we have shielded ourselves with a polished, non-transparent outer layer. In such a way that encapsulated inflammations develop – the remains of earlier losses and wounds.

Gestalt therapy invites us to gently open up again so that what requires healing can be brought to the surface and finally completed. In this way we can open again to the interpersonal, to the other, to the Thou. And so finally meetings and contacts can happen again and relationships and deep connections be entered into.

So let yourself be carried along as I relate my stories. Stories, which touch the soul:

Stories about clients which, in the first place, had touched my soul, the soul of the therapist.

Stories about clients who opened themselves during the therapeutic work and allowed themselves be touched deeply by me, the therapist.

Stories, finally, that hopefully will also touch you in your soul, because that is the best circumstance for healing to happen.

These are stories, which I have often told in my therapeutic practice – to individual clients, in therapy groups and also in trainings. They have already often contributed to making it possible for people to open themselves up again and to be deeply touched by others.

Let your soul run freely as you read. Only it knows the way. Trust it. And (please!) do not try to understand everything at once. The first step is always the experience. Understanding is only the second, just as important in its own way, but still just the step that follows.

The place, which I would like to reach with my stories, is your soul. Listen to them, go with them, sympathise with them and give yourself space. Then later in the next step you can safely relate with your mind to your experience. From time to time there will be some explanations and I will add some comments from my card index box, but above all as you read I would like to try to give you a direct experience of how Gestalt therapy works.

You will surely notice in this book how often I mention that the clients cry, that the group participants have tears in their eyes and that exactly the same is happening to me as the therapist. Does Gestalt therapy absolutely have to deal with crying? It does not have to. But it often does. That is because crying simply happens, when we give up our frozenness, and start to move and flow again.

When we experience existential moments, it is seen that crying is a part of them – a kind of meeting takes place, the spirit of which the Jewish religious philosopher (and indirectly an important intellectual father of Gestalt therapy), Martin Buber called I-Thou moments, moments of meeting, in which we know we are being spoken to in our being.

The term existential moment comes from the American psychotherapist Len Bergantino. What he calls those life endowing moments of real life, which are not simply a question of survival. Bergantino describes this existential moment as a meeting from being to being, as the temporary transcending of roles, as a healing touch, which releases deep emotions – not only in the client, but also in the therapist. Often it is accompanied by tears and also not infrequently by the way with an almost existential shame, which shows, how close we are to our being, our centre, our soul.

Len Bergantino points out in this connection that these existential moments are a part of a spiritual dimension. The humanistic psychologist Abraham A. Maslow said something similar, when he was dealing with what he called particularly healthy people. These people, who often do not see themselves as religious, know about the experience of spiritual moments, ending separation: peak experiences – moments of connection and belonging, moments of healing, of totality.

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