June

20 Years of Gestalt in Argentina

Marcela Miguens

Laura Perls used to say there were as many Gestalts as there were Gestalt Practitioners. So when I talk about Gestalt in Argentina, I am speaking

about my experience in Gestalt in the last 20 years here. And especially from my sociological stance.

I would like to begin this talk by telling you about my experience in the International Congress of Gestalt held in New York City 15 days ago. The aim of the Congress was to build a bridge with our diversities to expand our vision. People from 21 countries from around the world participated, including: Russia, The Czech Republic, Mexico, Australia, France, England, and the main Gestalt centers in the US: Cleveland, New York, and California. The main idea was to build a community from our differences.

Actually the plan was that there was no systematic plan. Instead, everything was organized so that we could get together and create an open process, a group process. There were forums where we could all work in small groups, but we could also work with the group as a whole. The emphasis was on our differences and on the appreciation of our differences, our different points of view, and styles. Our different countries and our political and economic regimes, how we felt about them, the kinds of problems we had, in the personal, professional and institutional aspects. Our angers, and fears.

The participants' different nationalities, races and points of view led way to cherish our diversity. Then and only then could we begin to build a community, which is to say, we could begin to recognized our similarities and recognize the spirit of Gestalt, its theory and practice.

This was a very moving and rich experience; it felt as an invitation to enter the new millennium and we, the Gestalt Practitioners, embraced it as an invitation to travel uncharted territories, but as a community, as an integrated and integrating community.

Esalen's spirit, with its definition of Contact, was among us: its valuation of differences and its recognition of similarities.

This gathering of the world Gestalt family triggered many things in me and made me rethink Gestalt in Argentina in the last 20 years. We have undergone difficult situations in our history. Unfortunately we had a pre-humanistic stage. We went through 40 years of militaries and militarism before and after we set up the first independent centers of personal development and growth which promoted an individualistic humanism.

I founded a center, Educational Gestalt Center, in 1978. This center had an ultra-individualistic, humanistic, and pacifist aim, which contradicted one of Che Guevara's motto: One Vietnam, two, Vietnams, a hundred Vietnams and we'll change the world. Instead, we would say: One Growth Center, two Growth Centers, a hundred Growth Centers and we'll change Argentina. Our idea of development and growth was very individualistic.

Inspired in an article written by Gordon Wheeler, A Gestalt Developmental Model, which was published in the British Gestalt Journal, I have reflected on the development of Gestalt and Argentina this last few years.

Wheeler states that the models that have worked up to now are mainly individualistic, such as the classic Freudian model, and, to a lesser degree, Erickson's, Piaget's and Kolhber's. To Wheeler these models regard the Self as something which exists beyond the interaction with other significant people. Hence, they leave out "the domain that constitutes the I with others". The domain is "the whole situation in which the person in immersed".

Based on a series of clinical studies of children and teenagers, Wheeler asserts "the true capacity to get to know myself arises concurrently with my capacity to get know you." This perspective of Gestalt includes the interaction and interrelation in the development of each of us. As beings, we relate and interact. The Self develops rather than as an individual self as a result of a coherent process which integrates and unifies the totality of the domain.

We are unique but we are not isolated. We are part of each other. In the sense of belonging to every "other" and to the global domain, which we share, lies not only our whole humanity, but also the most complete development of our own being.

I can honestly say that in these last 20 years in Argentina, we began to do Gestalt with an ultra-individualistic point of view in reaction to the homogeneousness, to the uniformity of militarism in which we were immersed. Little by little, step by step, we have unfolded a communitaristic and transpersonal stance.

In Argentina we have gone through three stages that conditioned the way in which have done Gestalt. The first stage: The military regime or the hatred of diversity. The second stage: The egress of militarism or the search for diversity The third stage: The construction of a democratic order or the construction out of diversity.

The first stage: The military regime.

Gestalt was born in the middle of a militaristic era. The representatives of this stage were the small groups that want to learn Gestalt and to express themselves. They wanted to express their emotions, contact their bodies and release what is repressed inside, their anger, fear, pain, they want to cry together. There was room for everybody, the ones who were discriminated against and the ones who felt marginal. In the background there was a nondeclared war, the "desaparecidos" (the "disappeared ones, missing ones"), there was right-wing and left-wing violence were thousands of deaths. In my groups there were people who were mourning relatives who had died in this war, some had been the victims of left-wing violence while others had been victims of right-wing violence. The hardest part was working on the flexibility/inflexibility axis, inclusion/exclusion, isolation/belonging. Fear and hatred had been branded with fire in the hearts, bodies and minds of these people. We worked very hard to demilitarize the groups. Our work consisted in creating experiments to perceive hues, to refine Awareness, the categorical judgments as in "either you are on my side or you are against me".

Militarism was everywhere and inside everyone. It is a hierarchical and disciplinary view of the world. It affected people, groups, leaders, and organizations. It implied a way of social relation which was based on alienation or estrangement from differences. It left out "the other" emphasizing the differences, abasing the one who is different. Those were the times in which you could lose your job because you were homosexual, divorced, or a "lefty". In the militaristic jargon they were the enemies of the "National Being" The "National Being" was equivalent to the "Honest Man" of Rousseau in its Argentine militaristic version. This "Man" fitted in the belief that there were secret and powerful groups that pulled the strings and ruled the world and against which we had to defend ourselves, . This "National Being" was the official version of what a man should be and was defined in the document, "Doctrinary Bases", which begins like this: Now citizenship has the bases to coincide and the limits to dissent". The values and principles of this "National Being" were taken in general from the social Catholic philosophy in its more fundamentalist version.

What I recall most is an image that represents those times very clearly. I remember a workshop at home. The name of the workshop was "Gestalt and the body". George King from Esalem was going to conduct the workshop. Half an hour before the workshop began, we were panic-stricken and decided to call it off because a man who seemed to be a CIA agent showed up and wanted to participate in the workshop. We feared we would all be arrested. In the end, we carried out the workshop, the guy was not a CIA agent, but this is how we felt and the atmosphere we lived in.

During this first stage of Gestalt in Argentina, we lived in a bellicose and hierarchical society in which a central command centralized the decisions that were made. In this militaristic universe, getting together to do Gestalt was a subversive activity.

The second stage: The egress of militarism.

As the previous stage was characterized by the homogeneousness and hatred of everything different, this stage showed an increasing interest in what was different and was marked by an extreme expressionistic individualism.

Books about the Human Potential movement were allowed into the country. Almost all the published books on Gestalt were translated into Spanish. This was a "pasotista" stage. There was little interest in politics and there was a disclosure of every individual expression, as in Spain after the times of Franco.

As if coming out of a pressure cooker, the New Age moved forward with ten thousand shapes as in a flea market. There are healing, artistic, and magic derivatives, and others for every taste.

We opened up to the world. We could start traveling abroad and the Masters of all the disciplines visited us. The exiles came back. Within groups there were fierce confrontations in search of their own space. In the name of honesty, the truth was told without thinking about whether we were hurting our neighbor. Workshops on identity abound. There is work on being independent, in expressing oneself. Responsibility was defined as being able to respond to oneself. Actually this is a definition Perls used in the first groups when they worked on dreams and it corresponds to a stage in Gestalt that was marked by an extreme individualism in the US. This is no coincidence if we take into consideration that they too were leaving McCarthyism behind.

I have two recollections of this stage of egress of militarism and the search for what is different. First I remember an old phrase which was recited in Gestalt groups as if it were the Gospel. That phrase went like this: "I am me, you are you. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations. You are not in this world to live up to mine. I do my things and you do yours. If we get together, fine; if we don't, there's nothing we

can do about it".

The other reminiscence I have is a rather funny anecdote that was told in Buenos Aires as something we were supposed to imitate. It seems Fritz was treating a patient. The sessions was very boring and he fell asleep. When the patient realized his therapist was asleep, he shook his therapist's arm woke him up and told him, "I paid twenty dollars for this session and you are sleeping." Fritz returned his patient the twenty dollars and told him, "Take your money back and let me sleep because I am tired and you are very boring." Be it true or not, this anecdote depicts a period.

The third stage: The construction of a democratic order or the construction from diversity.

We are entering this stage. We haven't yet realized it. We are fully dedicated to creating a community from our diversity. There are symptoms in our society which show that it is beginning to accept and value diversity, among people and groups. There is also an increase in horizontal communication and a greater interest in other cultures. At this stage of our civil life, our liberal economy has reached peak levels of insecurity, unemployment, corruption and poverty. On the other hand, our young democracy contributes to the human growth of its members who participate in the arts, literature, and political parties. This diversity enriches the social capital with varied skills, attitudes, and life styles.

The acceptance of human rights and our shared suffering during so many years of military violence which were revealed in a documents called "Nunca Más" have been taken in as an integral part of every Argentinian who abhors violence nowadays.

No longer is there an "official spirituality". The new spirituality materializes in a diversity of offers. This change of the mindset towards the acceptance of change and the broadmindedness have become apparent in the warm welcome His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been given. His Holiness has already been to Argentina twice; the first time he met leaders of all the religious groups, Judaism, Catholicism, Evangelism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. All the religious representatives worked together in order to construct a strong spirituality based on respect for diversity.

In this transition from individualism to communistarism, I should also mention the appearance of thousands of organizations and foundations that have been working to help people and groups in need. These organizations which stem from churches, neighborhoods and communities work parallel to the government and politicians and try to build a solidarity network. Their action is rediscovering community service; service for the sake of service itself, as a need for participation and exchange with others.

Many young people are participating, helping somehow to contribute to the progress in this tendency towards communitarism. In doing so, they are leaving behind not only their political individualism, but also the exasperation of the isolated individual who has no roots . Both of these factors, which are so common in totalitarian states, contribute to dilute the person as such.

At this stage we ought to go back to an exchange of ideas and opinions. We all have to participate as equals and, bearing in mind our differences, reconstruct our group, our neighborhood, our town and our region.

Besides the new technologies in our hands makes horizontal communication very powerful. Satellite communication is an example of the use of this technology. For instance, we are conducting a Gestalt course which is broadcast directly from Buenos Aires to universities and medical centers in the country. All in all, there are thirty six satellite dishes spread all over the country. Internet is another example. We can now be in touch with all the Gestalt Centers around the world. We feel interconnected and close to each other.

At present our Gestalt Centers prove to promote solidarity and communitarism. The people who have experienced a process of growth with us feel that they have in turn to do community service. As they pass on the values and attitudes of Gestalt, these people are reinforcing what they have learned. They strive to become creative authors of their own experiences and co-creators of the life in their communities.

Gestalt has greatly helped us to deconstruct our perceptions and to see the hidden relationships between things. It nurtured a new mental mode which is open to new levels of consciousness that allows us to discover open-ended situations.

Our becoming of age coincides with the new millennium. We feel that we share this time of global crisis. These are times of great unheard-of changes in our country and around the world. We can seize this crisis with an optimistic stance: it is a crisis and it is an opportunity; as in I-Ching: Crisis/Opportunity.

There is great anxiety over the suffering produced by unemployment, the problems with drugs, diseases like AIDS. There is distress caused by the fanatism of certain cults, and the violence of terrorism and war. We have also seen great technological and scientific breakthroughs. There has been a great advancement in human rights, and women's rights. More young people have access to higher education. What's more, there are more Holistic Health Centers and Human Development Centers which help expand mental capacities, emotional development, and communication. These centers also amplify our capacity to feel empathy and to explore our inner world, both symbolically and metaphorically.

We have also seen a deep interest in the investigation of consciousness through multiple methods, practices and experiments in order to expand it. This expansion of our consciousness allows us to face the insecurities and the existential challenges we have to undergo. This undertaking of growth of Gestalt which some of us have come to call TRANSPERSONAL GESTALT propounds that we become agents of our lives and our communities at the same time. By developing higher levels of consciousness, it projects freedom, more complex epistemologies, greater abilities to establish deep and dynamic relationships. It suggests that one stop being the victim to become co-creators of one's own experience. But above all, Gestalt at the end of this century is looking for new theory and therapy practice to help overcome the suffering provoked by the many changes of the end of this millennium. These changes are removing us from our familiar sources of healing and growth and are challenging us to find new ways of dealing with this situation.

What are we headed for?

In a recent article published in the American Gestalt Review, Maureen O'Hara tells us that for this era we are living in, the idea of a sense of identity with strong limits doesn't seem viable and complete. She is the Dean of Saybrook in San Francisco and is investigating what kind of psyche would be most adequate to face the new millennium with less suffering. At this stage, in which we are leaving behind individualism and moving towards transpersonal communitarism, it seems that "a new kind of person emerges by interaction with multiple contexts of life which forces this new person to develop new and multiple sources of identity" according to O'Hara. She also presents us with an approximation to this model of Psyche.

1) It should be innovative, but at the same time it should stick to myths, signs, and symbols.

2) It should be capable of embarking on new spiritual voyages.

3) It should be able to think and act both locally and globally.

4) It should tolerate ambiguity and create from our differences.

5) It should have a reflexive and contextual knowledge simultaneously.

6) It should give evidence of an ethic of the "good deed" with no set principles.

7) It should think holistically.

8) It should be both a generalist and a specialist.

9) It should trust the body and disregard the fragmentation between body and mind.

10) It should respect the non-rational modes of knowledge, but it should also be capable of rationalizing and abstracting.

11) It should empathize with others.

12) It should be able to experience Unity in which all consciousness is interconnected.

To round up this summary of 20 years of Gestalt in Argentina, I would like to add some ideas to the points Maureen O'Hara mentions. The mature and integrated person we all want to become in this age we are living should:

1) learn how to live in insecurity, without maps and in continuos process of change.

2) build a community from our diversity, our dreams and the celebration of life.

3) be able to develop the Self and the Community reinforcing each other and in mutual interaction. Self and Community, reinforcing and complementing each other to expand his/her vision of the new millennium.

Bibliography

Miguens, J. E. . Honor Militar, Conciencia Moral y Violencia Politica.Ed .Sudamericana/ Planeta

Perls, Fritz. Sueños y Existencias. Ed. Cuatro Vientos

Wheeler, G. Gestalt Reconsidered. A new approch to Contact and Resistance. Ed. Garner Press

Wheeler, G. A Gestalt developmental Model in British Gestalt Journal Vol 7 n2

Levy, N. El camino de la Autoasistencia Psicologica. Ed. Planeta

Slemenson, M. Gestalt Psychoterapy in Argentina: Revolution, Evolution, and Contribution in Gestalt Review Vol.2 n 2

Miguens, M. Gestalt Transpersonal. Un viaje hacia la Unidad. Ed. Era/Errepar

O'Hara M. Gestalt Therapy as an Emancipatory Psychology for the Transmodern World in Gestalt Review Vol.2 n.2