Jay Earley, Ph.D.

This article is written specifically for Gestalt therapists. It was published in B. Feder & R. Ronall, Ed. A Living Legacy of Fritz and Laura Perls: Contemporary Case Studies, 1996.

Increasingly Gestalt therapists are using approaches to group therapy that go beyond individual work in the group to focus on the interpersonal interactions or the group-as-a-whole (Feder & Ronall 1980; Harman 1984; Melnick 1980; Zinker 1977, Chap. 7). I believe that the most important therapeutic potential in any group therapy situation is the interpersonal learning and healing which takes place in the interactions between the group members. Therefore my approach to Gestalt group work focuses on the feelings and the relationships between members.

I started developing this approach in 1978 when a group of therapists in California formed a group practice for the purpose of leading groups for our clients. We all had training in Gestalt and also in encounter groups, and therefore we combined these two modalities. After moving to Long Island in 1988 I continued developing the method on my own. I then began to offer training in leading Interactive Groups, which led to the formation of the Group Therapy Center of Long Island.

Interactive Gestalt Groups are designed to intensify and maximize the interpersonal contact and the work that emerges from this. I work with a group member individually only when he or she brings up an issue with the group in the here and now. Otherwise the work tends to be in pairs, as people explore their relationships with each other, expand their awareness, and experiment with new ways of relating. This approach embodies Gestalt Therapy in its emphasis on contact, awareness, and experimentation, though it uses very little in the way of conventional Gestalt techniques.

The groups meet for two hours once a week. In addition, I hold weekend retreats for each group, usually twice a year, as a way of deepening the work and people's connections with each other. For any group member who is not in individual therapy with me, I require occasional individual consultations with me which are focused on enhancing the person's use of the group.

In this chapter I will describe the work of Sharon, from the time she started as one of the original members of her group, until now, a year and a half later. Sharon is a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for over a decade with the help of AA and much therapy. In that time she has worked through enough deep issues in therapy to get to the point where she is generally not in emotional pain and feels pretty satisfied with her life. She is a successful management consultant, has some close friends and an active social life when she wants it.

Her two major unresolved problems are other addictions and lack of intimacy. She is still struggling with an addiction to smoking and a tendency to work compulsively. She tends to keep people at a subtle distance in her life and stays away from a committed love relationship. Since her marriage ended many years ago, she hasn’t allowed a man close enough to her to become a new love relationship. She thinks she may now be ready to tackle these problems.

Judgment as a Defense

We all want to be liked; we all want closeness with others. To express these desires directly to other people puts us in a vulnerable position. They might not reciprocate. They might even reject us or put us down. Therefore we develop various defenses against our own wanting and the accompanying vulnerability. In an Interactive Group, people are encouraged to reach out to connect with those group members they want contact with. They are encouraged to take the risk to make themselves vulnerable in a situation where we are dealing with people’s real relationships with each other.

We also help people to become aware of their defenses against vulnerability and risk. If they defend by being nonchalant, it will be pointed out. If they defend by being judgmental and arrogant or by being distant and cold, they will probably get feedback about it. This gives people a chance to realize that they are defending against their needs and desires, and to try out different behavior.

When Sharon joined the group, she had a tendency to defend against her softness and openness. She didn’t feel safe to show her desires for other people for fear of being rejected or shamed. Instead she adopted one of two attitudes. One was an internal stance of arrogance and judgment. "There's something wrong with you. I'm not sure I'll let you in." She was not aware of this and rarely expressed it, but it would leak out in little ways. It was a way for her to feel better about herself. The second attitude was a pretense of not desiring the other person. "I don’t care. I don’t need you." This was also not conscious or expressed, but it succeeded in keeping her away from people.

As the group developed, Sharon got feedback from time to time when her judgmental style would leak out. She is very aware and dedicated to growing, and she has an especially courageous way of acknowledging difficult things about herself in an undefensive way. So when she got this feedback, she was not only willing to acknowledge that she had been judgmental but also to explore what she was defending against. She would often discover that hidden underneath the judgment was a desire to make contact with the person.

For example, in one early group, Jill was telling the group about her anger and desire to pull away from a friend. When Sharon pushed Jill very hard not to do that, I encouraged Sharon to explore why she was doing this. She realized that she saw Jill as doing something similar in group, and she didn’t want Jill to pull away from her. When she told Jill this, Jill took in the feedback, but then Jill also told Sharon that Sharon had told her in an aggressive manner that made Jill pull back.

Knowing that she feels good about Jill, Sharon was surprised to hear this, but she took it seriously and became interested in changing this way of relating. I then encouraged Sharon to show her positive feelings directly to Jill, and she was able to express some affection in a soft, open way. This then enabled the two of them to make warm contact.

Sharon also worked on her fear of confronting people. Before joining the group she tended to avoid bringing up difficulties with her friends, and then she would withdraw from them because the negative feelings festered. This was directly tied to her fear of vulnerability. As long as she was holding back negative feelings toward someone, it didn’t make sense to reach out or be vulnerable. She felt justified in keeping the person at a distance or even writing them off. She was also afraid of the person’s reactions if she confronted them.

When she brought this up in group, I suggested that she work on confronting people in group directly, and this terrified her. She was afraid that they would be hurt, abandon her, or get angry at her. I encouraged her to get feedback from the group members about this, and only one person expressed fear of Sharon’s confrontations. The rest of the group welcomed them.

After this, she began to bring out her negative feelings and to confront people, and in the process she learned more about how her judgments were a defense against wanting contact. This also got the judgments out in the open so that they didn’t fester inside. Even in the cases where Sharon wasn’t defending against her needs and felt genuinely annoyed at someone, if she didn’t express the annoyance, there wasn’t much chance for her to move past it and connect with the person. Sharon also found that when she did confront someone in a soft way, the person would often reveal the reason behind their behavior and would open to her and change. This then encouraged Sharon’s own openness. Confrontation became a way of becoming closer to someone.

For example, Melissa joined the group about 9 months after it started and Sharon didn’t feel very receptive to her. Sharon describes it as follows:

I had an internal attitude of "I’m in the in-crowd and I've got something that you don't. You can’t come in." I feel this way toward some people. They have to prove that they're willing to be open and loving, that they're scared and vulnerable, and they have to appreciate me and let me know that. Once they do that, then I can trust them. I originally felt that way toward another woman in group, and Jay and I worked on it in a consultation, but she left the group before I was ready to do it. I was much too scared and couldn't have done it then.

I was very scared to confront Melissa, especially because it was something that was part of her character and couldn't be changed. When I mentioned that in a consultation, Jay encouraged me to work on it with her because both of us could benefit from it. That gave me the idea that my response to someone could be appropriate and helpful to them. So he gave me the courage to do it.

Even though at first Sharon didn’t say anything about her judgmental response, Melissa sensed it, and after a couple of months she questioned Sharon about it. This gave Sharon an opening to do the work. She acknowledged that she had a tendency to make people prove themselves before she would accept them, and that she was feeling that way toward Melissa. Melissa asked her why, and Sharon said it was because she didn’t sense warmth from Melissa toward herself or toward other people in the group.

This was very scary. If I would ever talk back or challenge my mother in any way she would be so wounded. She could dish it out but she couldn't take it. The guilt I would feel at hurting her the way I did! In my family, I had all this training that you can't disagree, or argue, or confront in any way. People get so hurt! I had already worked on that in individual therapy, so in the group I was ready to try it out and break old habits.

Melissa felt hurt by Sharon's statement, but she also acknowledged that she had a tendency to be guarded at first with people for fear of not being accepted. Melissa was feeling shaky about not being accepted in the group, and I encouraged her to explore this rather than defending herself. It was naturally very difficult for Melissa to make herself this vulnerable, but with encouragement and reassurance from me and from the group, she was able to do some very courageous work. As she explored this issue it led back to some deep pain about not being accepted in her family of origin, and Melissa opened herself and expressed the pain in a vulnerable, appealing way.

Sharon’s attitude toward Melissa changed right in the moment. She melted and felt genuine caring and respect for her. She realized that Melissa had warmth, but that she had some blocks to accessing it and that she expressed it in a different way than Sharon. Thus because Sharon had confronted Melissa and Melissa had responded so well, she was able to see past Melissa’s defenses and connect with her. They continued to work on this issue and other differences between them as the group progressed. In addition, because of this work Sharon saw the possibility of being more receptive to other new people whose style might be different from hers.

Desire and Vulnerability

In an Interactive Group we encourage people to be honest with each other about their responses, so if people reach out to others in group, they could get hurt. However, if they are strong enough to handle this, it can be an opportunity for growth. They can learn how to deal with the hurt. They can learn that it need not be devastating; it need not be proof that they are worthless.

What is more important, as people learn to reach out in a vulnerable way for contact, they are likely to be received positively. Vulnerability is very appealing, as is the direct expression of positive feelings. The more people learn to express themselves in such a healthy way, the more it is reinforced in group.

In an early group, as part of some work Harry was doing, I encouraged him to pick someone he wanted to connect with. He chose one woman and indicated a couple of others as alternate choices. Sharon was later able to tell Harry that she was hurt that she wasn’t even on his list of second choices. Harry explained that he didn’t choose her because he felt intimidated by her, that she was so sharp and perceptive that she would see right through him. I encouraged Sharon not to get caught up in responding to his explanation, but instead to stay with her feeling of hurt. This allowed her to soften, and her previous front of appearing nonchalant disappeared. In an open and appealing way she let Harry know that she liked him and wanted him to like her, too, and that she felt hurt.

This had three effects. (1) She discovered that nothing terrible happened when she felt vulnerable and showed it. She didn’t get rejected or ridiculed. (2) She also found that she was strong enough inside to tolerate the hurt feeling, and that she didn’t feel bad about herself because of it. As she did this kind of work in group over time, she developed a sense of inner support so that she could be open and vulnerable without fear. (3) Harry began to appreciate Sharon’s openness and softness (along with the earthiness and spontaneity that he had always liked in her). He was increasingly drawn to her. She was nicely rewarded for her vulnerability, and as time went on it became more and more her natural response.

This interaction was a key, a turning point for me. I used to think that I was warm, but other people experienced me as hard. It was with Harry that I began the process of recognizing that I present an imposing or intimidating presence. I remembered people being afraid of me in my life, but I was surprised that was the way people saw me, because that wasn't what I felt inside. Inside I felt warm and open. It was a surprise to learn that my defenses were so hardened that people didn't see me. It was a real surprise that someone like Harry should be intimidated by me.

In one group, Sharon had made a comment about how "the universe moved" when Harry said something to another member. Then later she confessed that she had really meant that the universe had moved when he’d said something special to her. At another point she told him that she had a crush on him (but she wasn’t coming on to him). She expressed these very vulnerable feelings in an open and contactful way, and Harry responded in kind. He was very moved by this reaching out and deep vulnerability on her part and grew very fond of her. As the group continued, Harry and Sharon developed a deep connection. Thus she continued to receive emotional support for her healthy behavior, and that made it possible for her to assimilate it, to make it her own at a deep level. There was no longer any chance of Harry ignoring Sharon. "I liked Harry very much and once he began to appreciate me more, it had a strong impact. His recognition of me liberated me."

Sharon also did some important work on reaching out to another man in the group, John. In one group he let us know that it was very hard for him to feel a desire to connect with people. He got scared and closed down and couldn’t even feel that he wanted anything. Sharon then told him that she hoped at some point he would want to connect with her. He wanted to know why. Why anyone would want to work this out with him? She let him know, in a vulnerable way, that she really liked him and wanted to connect with him, and that she wanted him to want her in the same way.

In a subsequent group, when I was working with John on his fear of reaching out, I suggested he choose someone to work with, and he chose Sharon. We decided to try doing this work non-verbally, and when that came up, Sharon got quite scared. In exploring her fear, she realized that she was afraid that if she really opened up and liked him and became happy, she would be happier than he was. That would mean that he was more important to her than she was to him, and she would feel rejected and humiliated.

She decided to risk doing the non-verbal work, and I suggested that they sit next to each other and just notice their feelings. To her surprise, her fear seemed to leave, and she felt aliveness and energy in her body, though she had to work not to sexualize it. On the other hand, John got quite scared. With John closing down out of fear, it could have been a replay of Sharon’s worst fears, namely that she was more involved than he. However she discovered to her delight that she didn’t feel rejected or humiliated. She was able to stay with her good feelings and let him struggle with his fear and shame. He did some very important work on his own issues, and she experienced her strength and ability to stay open even when she didn’t get exactly the response she wanted.

All of these changes transferred directly into Sharon’s life outside group. She was able to confront people in her life as a way of clearing away obstacles to being closer. She has largely dropped her old defenses of subtle arrogance and withdrawal. She feels more comfortable with people and finds it easier to be open and to reach out. When someone doesn’t respond to her overtures, she doesn’t feel rejected or attacked, just disappointed. She feels that she is "clearing away the obstacles to feeling love and union with people."

Need and Commitment

People deal not only with their relationships with the other members of the group, but also with the group as a whole. One of the issues that comes up for many group members is how much they are committed to the group and how much it matters to them. This is often a reflection of how easy it is for them to commit to a love relationship and let people really matter to them in the their lives.

Through the group work described so far, Sharon progressed to the point where she was ready to deal with the deeper issue of how she hasn’t allowed permanent, committed relationships in her life. It became apparent that even though Sharon could express desire in a vulnerable way, she didn’t allow herself to need the group or the people in it. In one group Jill was talking about who she thought would miss her if she left the group, and she didn’t include Sharon even though Sharon had expressed positive feelings toward her many times. When Sharon challenged her on this, Jill said that she didn’t feel as connected to Sharon because Sharon didn’t seem to need anything from her, that Sharon seemed independent and always able to assertively ask for what she wanted.

Sharon thought about Jill’s feedback, and a couple of weeks later told us that she had come to the understanding that she uses her independence as a defense. She doesn’t really let people close to her in deep ways, and she doesn’t let them know when she needs them. Even though she is satisfied with her life in many ways, she is lonely, and she usually hides this from people and often even from herself. She talked about her loneliness and how it was affecting her currently and allowed herself to cry in a vulnerable way. She also shared her struggle to stop smoking and ease up on her workaholism, and she talked about the pain associated with that. This was very important work; she opened up to the group and let us in at a new level. The next week she told us how much she valued the acceptance she received in that group and how much it had helped her to be able to reach out to people in her life during the week.

For the next few months, however, Sharon’s work seemed to retreat from this kind of depth. Then the group members challenged her on this, and she explored it. She realized that she was doing with the group what she tends to do in her life. She was subtly pulling back so as not to let the group members and the group really matter to her. One way she was doing this was to avoid really needing things from people in the group.

As a result of this realization, she began to tell us about a major crisis in her life. Her sister had recently been diagnosed with cancer and was due for surgery. She is very close to her sister, and she shared with us the pain this brought up for her. After allowing her to cry deeply about this, I helped her to become aware of what she needed from us then. She realized she needed to be held, and Marla volunteered to hold her. Marla had been in the group for about six months at this time, and Sharon and Marla had been developing a warm relationship. Sharon moved over next to Marla, and Marla held her like a child and let Sharon cry very deeply. Sharon let herself relax fully into the situation and take in the love and nurturing she was receiving. Marla told Sharon how much she liked holding her, and they made a wonderful connection.

Thus Sharon took a very important step toward letting herself need from us. After this she began to share with the group more of the pain and difficulties she was experiencing in her life and to take in the caring and nurturing she received, from Marla and from all of us.

It is interesting to look at the development of Sharon’s feelings towards the group as a whole, especially how much she allowed it to matter to her. She joined the group with the intention of not staying very long, just getting what she needed and leaving. After a few months she became connected to some of the people and realized how much she was getting from the work, so she decided to stay indefinitely. However, she still wasn’t that attached to the group. After about six months, when I first brought up the idea of doing a weekend retreat, she wasn’t interested because she didn’t want to give up "a precious weekend" of her time. This was really an avoidance of connecting with the people in the group. "In fact, I generally spent my weekends completely alone. Except when I have to be with people, I covet the time alone. I was clearly dismissing the weekend."

Harry told her that he felt hurt by this response, and this had an impact on her because of her connection with him. When the idea of a weekend came up again five months later, she was very enthusiastic. This was partly because of hearing about Harry’s experience with weekends in another group of mine, and partly because of her deeper involvement with the group. The weekend couldn’t be scheduled until four months after that, in the group’s 15th month, so by then she had begun to do the work just described on allowing herself to need us at a deeper level.

It turned out that her sister’s surgery was scheduled a week before the weekend retreat, and she felt the need to be there at the hospital for her sister as much as possible. However, she had allowed the group to become important to her, so she went to a great deal of trouble to come to the second half of the weekend. When she arrived, the group welcomed her with caring and concern, and she shared with us all the fear and pain she was going through.

Then she took an even bigger step and told us directly how important we were to her. She was wide open and vulnerable in a wonderful way. She told us that it felt very shameful to her to need us so much and to let us know, but compared to facing the possibility of her sister’s death it didn’t seem like such a big deal, so she was willing to take the risk. "It was really very profound. Recognizing how sick she was and that she might die, I thought, 'So it's embarrassing and shameful that I need you. Who cares. I can handle that.' It was wonderful, a breakthrough."

Harry was so moved that he wanted to hold her, and she let him cradle her like a baby. Then the whole group gathered around her and touched her and nourished her. Once Sharon lets herself feel and express a need, she has a great capacity to receive fully what is given to her, so it was a very satisfying experience, for her and for all of us.

Sharon has continued to bring her pain and her needs to the group and to allow us to matter to her. She also has become able to tell people in her life about her needs and to let them care for her, especially around her sister’s continuing battle with cancer. This will probably help her to develop the deeper friendships she wants.

Already Sharon has grown enormously in her 18 months in group and is seeing the effect in many ways in her life. She isn’t yet ready to deal with her remaining addictions, and it’s too soon yet to see what affect this work will have on her openness to a committed love relationship. I have confidence that as she continues her current work on need and intimacy, her friendships will deepen and eventually she will find a successful love relationship.

Summary of the Approach

In many ways this approach to group work is similar to the interpersonal approach popularized by Irvin Yalom (1995) in his classic book on group psychotherapy. However, Yalom’s leadership style is to sit back and make interpretations from time to time, while as a Gestalt Therapist, I more actively direct the group toward interpersonal contact. I aim to minimize the usual discussion and advice-giving and talking about outside issues, and go right to the heart of the matter. I also direct members toward awareness of their emotional reactions in the here and now and toward experimenting with new behavior. Group members are encouraged to interact with me when they have feelings toward me, but otherwise I remain in the role of facilitator.

This method works by encouraging group members to live out their interpersonal patterns directly in group. This gives them a chance to become aware of those patterns that are problematical for them and the feelings and motivations that underlie those patterns. They then have an opportunity to experiment with new behavior right in the moment. While trying something new, they learn from their own awareness and from feedback from the group. Group members are also encouraged to become aware of their successful patterns so they can validate and expand on them. These are long term groups which foster a deep level of intimacy, so members can enact and then work through primary character patterns from their families of origin.

There are four ways in which an Interactive Gestalt Group differs from the traditional hot seat group. (1) Real relationships. In a hot seat group, when members do interact, it is usually because the person working is doing an experiment where he or she is using the other group members as projection screens. In an Interactive Group, the emphasis is on the real relationships between members. Of course, people can’t help using projection and transference with each other, but we start with people expressing their real feelings toward each other and deal with the defense mechanisms when they arise. The therapeutic healing often comes from the real relationship as the person works through their defenses and develops a meaningful connection in the present.

(2) Peer dialogue. In traditional Gestalt work, the significant contact and dialogue happen between the client and therapist. In an Interactive Group, it also happens between group members. In fact, the primary contact is between group members, and people only work directly with the therapist when they have feelings toward the therapist specifically or when they have authority issues that cannot be worked on with anyone else. Dialogue with peers has a different quality than dialogue with the therapist. A group member encounters real reactions from people who are not in a helping role and not primarily focused on his or her experience. There is a richness and challenge to this dialogue, and many important issues emerge which can’t come up in the more protected situation of dialogue with a therapist. On the other hand, peer dialogue is admittedly harder to control, and you can’t guarantee that the responses are always therapeutic.

(3) Relationship with the Group. In an on-going therapy group, each member has an important relationship with the group-as-a-whole as well as with other members and the leader. In an Interactive Group, this is an important focus of work. This allows people to work on issues of acceptance, attention, inclusion/exclusion, belonging, autonomy, and commitment. It brings up many issues from the family of origin, and provides an opportunity for healing by creating a healthy family-like situation.

(4) Intimacy. In a long-term Interactive Group, people eventually develop relationships that have meaning for them beyond the normal boundaries of the therapy group. I hold occasional weekend retreats for the group, and I encourage people to have relationships with each other outside of group (with the understanding that they bring pertinent issues into group). This extra level of involvement allows people to engage in and work through deep intimacy issues, and it also fosters transfer of learning from the group to a person’s outside life.

Bibliography

Feder, B. and R. Ronall, Beyond the Hot Seat: Gestalt Approaches to Group. 1980, New York: Brunner/Mazel.

Harman, R., Recent Developments in Gestalt Group Therapy. International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 1984. 34(3): p. 473-483.

Melnick, J., Gestalt Group Process Therapy. The Gestalt Journal, 1980. 3: p. 86-96.

Zinker, J., Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy. 1977, New York: Brunner/Mazel.

Yalom, I., The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy. Fourth ed. 1995, New York: Basic Books.

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