THE WHOLE THING

The whole thing is what Gestalt is about. As well as our psyches, it is society, economics, politics, the whole cosmos, that have significance. This page on our website is about the environment, both as the word is used currently, and in the way Perls Hefferline and Goodman meant it, as that in which the organism is inextricably embedded. The way I wrote that, it sounds like a description of a fly in a honey jar. It does indeed look as if the global environment is in imminent danger of becoming that drowning honey jar, unless we can convert it back, atom by tiny atom, to flower nectar, to simplicity.

The glaciers in Chile have retreated five miles in seven years. The sea is rising. Money is melting as fast as the glaciers, and wreaking a different havoc. And on. And what are we doing about it, organism by organism? A couple of years ago, my little sister was asked to research food in Scotland, for some Scottish museums. She did this by spending an entire year living in a one room bothy as if in the year 1790. She grew most of her food, made her own candles and ink and tinderbox, suffered horrendously cold nights in a box bed, lost weight, and never had a day’s illness. No car, no electricity, no supermarkets, no plastic. Her legs were her transport. No way am I suggesting that we all copy her. But her example has I know inspired thousands of people to simplify how they live.

For conference or course

Go on foot or use a horse

For shopping , work and sport

Public be thy transport

Email, the web, chat rooms, the telephone, are ways of communicating that will never have the excitement of face to face or arm in arm contact. And they can arguably be more rewarding at times than many meetings of bodies and voices, without fullness of heart. This is just one website that can, if we want it to, allow us to economise on travelling to meet each other and so help slow global warming.

A Gestalt view of war is that it is strongly related to our individual retroflections of hostility, anger and conflict. Red anger in this theory is to do with frustrated harmony and intimacy, and strives towards them. White anger has moved on to hate and annihilation, devaluing the other and therefore the self. Chapters Eight and Nine of Perls Hefferline and Goodman contain challenging theories of conflict, competition, aggression, and neurotic needs for victory. The lessons in them for politicians are also lessons for us.

At the inaugural conference in February 2008 of what will probably be named the United Kingdom Association for Gestalt Practitioners, UKAGP, there was some exemplary enactment of our theories. People were spontaneous, assertive, inventive, communicative, co-operative. A lively session on how to develop the organisation needed more time than scheduled; rooms were instantly re-arranged so the most useful conversation could go on until the time of the final plenary. This was only fifteen minutes long. In that time an amazing amount was achieved.

At micro-level, what can I do to make this organisation into a model of awareness, contact and response-ability? At macro-level, what can I do to reduce carbon emissions, consume less, make more reward for more people for longer than our headlong plastic-bagged, convenience-fed, couch-potatoed cheap flight into perdition presently predicts? Now there’s a piece of Anglo-Saxon alliteration to get us going.

A central assumption of Gestalt is that heightened awareness leads to ever more appropriate behaviour, behaviour which takes care of organism and environment. Without the environment there will be no organism to be taken care of. And when I say organism, idiot word, I mean I and you, as we take our myriad tiny and large decisions and actions all day and every day.

This page of our web site is for that awareness raising, by everyone.

Do please send your ideas, your worries, your inspiration, your inventions or whatever on this topic, to:

Gaie Houston 2008

The Communitas Project

Gaie Houston is one of the founders of the recently launched Communitas Project, which offers ground-breaking leadership training events, based on leading-edge 21st-century psychology in an innovative learning and group format. Self-organising Open Space learning communities provide an ideal environment for intense social learning, whatever your role and organisational context. Visit www.communitas.co.uk for more information.