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Waking Up from the Nightmare - John EnrightObnoxious Genius: An Appreciation by John Enright Anyone who has ever wondered, "What makes people tick?" will understand why I was attracted to psychology as my field of work. (I realize now that the "people" whose ticking most interested this frightened adolescent was me!) "Psych. 1A" was reasonably interesting so I was hopeful my choice would lead me to a life a little less clouded in mystery and a worthy occupation. As I got into the advanced courses I was increasingly appalled. The behaviorists--who ruled the roost at that time--studied only external behavior (usually of rats,) not inner feelings of humans, which is what I was waiting for. To the behaviorist, feelings are trivial accidents of no scientific interest. All they studied was the external surface behavior of others. (A joke I heard later illustrates this. Two behaviorists met in the hall. One said "You're fine; how am I?") In graduate school, I ran into psychoanalysis, and got hopeful again. Freud?! Dreams?! Crazy behavior?! Now we're talking. I certainly had plenty of dreams and behavior that seemed crazy to me! Because superficially the analysts talked about feelings, it took me a long time to realize that they, too, had a limited view of human reality. Instead of behavior being controlled by the environment, they said it was determined by an unconscious past, by long-gone child-hood events, and the best we could hope for was intellectual insight, and a weary resignation to our fate. (Two analysts met in the hall. One said "Good Morning!" The other mused all the way to his office. "Hmmm, I wonder what he meant by that?") Something terribly important was missing from both world-views, and I didn't know what. But by now I had spent several years chasing my dream. Psychology increasingly seemed like a dead end but it was hard to clean the slate and start over, so I endured and began the resignation process. My first post-degree job was in Hawaii, where the physical beauty of the environment at least helped distract me from my sense of loss. But even paradise could not hold me. I knew someplace there had to be someone who knew what was missing and I had to keep looking. So it was back to the mainland and the search. My job in Los Angeles was at a hopelessly traditional hospital; no teacher there. I found a man at a hospital about thirty miles away who was doing psychodrama and invited me to come weekly as assistant/observer/gofer. Every now and then, this man would do something brilliant, that stood out like a diamond in the gravel. I couldn't see the essence of these steps at first, but I knew this was a direction I wanted go. Every time I asked "Where did you get that idea,?" he would answer "Fritz Perls." After hearing this name about 3 times, I asked, "Where is he? Around here?" It turned out he was in Japan looking into Zen. But a few weeks later he was back, and I joined his training group to learn "Gestalt Therapy"--whatever that was--and I had found my teacher. Already 73 when we met, Fritz was a maverick psychoanalyst who'd quarreled with Freud. He'd escaped the Nazi horror, and lived in many countries before he found his way here, where he was wandering around the country teaching something he called "Gestalt Therapy" to anyone who would listen. I had expected a "teacher" was someone who would teach me "some-thing"--some techniques and concepts--and indeed, Fritz did teach me a lot of specifics. But much more important, being in Fritz's presence, a whole worldview was revealed. It was a world I felt at home in, like I already knew it, but didn't know I knew it until meeting him. He didn't "teach" me Gestalt Therapy; he woke me up to something I already knew. It would have been great if Fritz had also been a kindly, admirable gentleman and role model, but no. Though a genius, he was also arrogant and obnoxious; a lonely, and not particularly happy man. As I learned skill and wisdom from him I had to be constantly careful not to learn his way of being. There was a kind and helpful side to him, but most people lived life at such an automatic and unconscious level that they usually brought forth the harsh Fritz by the way they approached him. Actions speak louder than words, so let me introduce Fritz to you through some vignettes--scenes of him in action. SCENE I: By now, Fritz was well known; sometimes as many as a thousand people would attend one of his sessions. He was taking a break in his Gestalt Therapy workshop at his new home at Esalen, overlooking the Big Sur Mountains and the Pacific. He was sitting under the "no smoking" sign, smoking a cigarette. Two of the workshop attendees, sounding both a little envious and resentful, asked him "What gives you the right to smoke when we can't, Fritz?" After taking a long drag on his cigarette, smoke pouring from his mouth as he spoke, he replied: "I neither have the right to smoke or not have the right..."(Pause while he takes another long drag,)..."I just smoke." SCENE II: Fritz was doing "dream-work," working on a long dream with a man in the workshop. I noticed I was losing interest in the dream; I remember thinking I wasn't surprised the man had slept through his dream, it was so boring! Apparently Fritz was reacting in a similar way, because a gentle snore emerged from him; he was obviously asleep. The man walked over, shook Fritz lightly, saying "Fritz, I paid a lot of money for this workshop; I wish you'd pay attention." Without opening his eyes, Fritz reached in his pocket for his billfold, and gave the man a $20.00 bill. In both these vignettes, Fritz's obnoxious side is certainly evident, and we feel a little sorry for his victims--especially the dreamer. In the smoking scene, I have no idea what the askers made of his answer. Perhaps they were too caught up in their envy and resentment to hear the deeper meaning in his answer. But I was liberated by it. I was instantly clear that we are not directly controlled by rules and social convention. We have no choice about obeying physical laws, such as gravity, but we can and do choose to obey or ignore the social rules, like no-smoking signs. Of course, many of these social rules are valuable and useful--traffic lights come to mind--and I strongly recommend following them closely, including no-smoking signs. But CHOOSE to follow them! Right/not right do not exist in the world of action. We don't "have to" do any of those. I can choose to do or not do anything, as long as I responsibly accept the consequences. Many people forget they choose, and live their lives as victims of obligations and rules, never realizing they're free to act as they wish--if they're willing to accept the consequences of their actions. Perhaps the sign should say "Gentlemen will not smoke here; others must not!" Inevitably, those who live by the rules unconsciously soon start trying to organize other peoples' lives by the rules also, and the manipulation and control games start! Thus a weak mother controls her children by guilt, or most of us attempt to control others through demands or expectations. If you approached Fritz from a life of rules and unconscious expectations, you got Mr. Obnoxious; if you approached him authentically, just as yourself, you got the genius. The dreamer's situation illustrates this poignantly. He phrased his request as if attention was something he was owed by Fritz according to some rule, something he "should" do. The man seemed to view life as a series of business contracts; no wonder people were turned off by him. If he had said something like this, the response might have been very different: "Fritz, please help me. What's happening now is exactly the problem; I drive people away feeling bored! Please help me understand this and get better." Fritz would have been happy to respond to such a genuine and vulnerable plea. Ask for what you want directly; don't hide it behind an obligation! Even more profoundly, this incident helped me see the crucial difference between behavior that is moral and that which is ethical. To do the right, "moral" thing because it is a rule is a much shallower way to live than doing the right thing ethically, because you want to and choose to. SCENE III: Fritz had been videotaped doing a counselling session, and the man producing the series asked during an interview, "What is the fundamental purpose of Gestalt Therapy?" I can still hear Fritz's answer in his thick German accent, "The purpose of Gestalt Therapy is to vake up from the nightmare." "Problems" don't exist in the real world, only situations. Only the way we think about situations makes them problems. Difficulties are in the mind; not the external conditions. Much of the time, we are simply reacting to our own imagined catastrophes. A problem cannot be solved in the world, until it has been dissolved in the mind. I've spent years trying to see and say clearly just what was Fritz's essential message. What was it that both behaviorism and psychoanalysis missed, that I wanted so badly to hear? They are both correct up to a point of course. Much of our behavior is driven by the environment (smokers, no matter how addicted, don't smoke in church), and much of the rest of our behavior is determined by events in early childhood--now unconscious. But buried somewhere in that unconscious machine there is a tiny willing, choosing self--and no matter how tiny it begins, it grows if acknowledged and honored. That conscious, willing self is what I missed in behaviorism and psychoanalysis, and that is what I sensed and responded to in Fritz. We are largely unconscious machines, but we do have an essential core that is capable of awareness and responsibility. And if those abilities--to know your life (awareness) and own it (responsibility)--are recognized and practiced, much is possible that the behaviorists and analysts cannot imagine. Fritz had a slogan--a "mantra:" "I and Thou, Here and Now." If two people can meet just as they are right now without their images and expectations, without a lot of baggage of past regrets and future fears, real personal contact is possible instead of the programmed and pre-determined pseudo-meeting of two images we usually settle for. He lived that way himself as best he could--which didn't look very good if you valued automatic politeness. He was perhaps cursed by his ability to see too clearly what people were up to in their blindness--or perhaps I should say his inability to not-see! He could not "suffer fools gladly." He was also cursed by being too-much "half-followed." His ideas were often appropriated, misunderstood, and misused by the "me generation" who heard and lived the "You don't 'have to' do anything," part of his message, but missed the part about "accepting the consequences responsibly." Fritz remained Fritz to the very end. In a hospital in Chicago, in a medical emergency, his last words to a nurse caring for him before he died were reported to be: "You can't tell me what to do!" Fritz, for all your many faults, I am grateful you were here, could see the world the way you did, and opened some doors for me and so many others. |
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