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| In Defence of the Gestalt Contact-Withdrawal Cycle by John Bernard Harris In various articles, my colleague Peter Philippson has consistently attacked one of the central theoretical models of Gestalt therapy theory, the contact-withdrawal cycle (CWC) as 'incompatible with Gestalt theory' [e.g. Philippson 1995, p. 16]. Though Peter is right in implying that the importance of the CWC has sometimes been overestimated and that some of its many formulations are not coherent or consistent with other aspects of Gestalt therapy, I believe that he overstates the case. For me the CWC remains a useful teaching aid, and in this article I wish to take up at least one cudgel on its behalf and explain why and how I use it. Before looking at the specific criticisms that Peter and other writers have made of the CWC, I would like to review its history as part of Gestalt therapy theory. How did it come to play such a central role? The CWC is usually attributed to Joseph Zinker and his book Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy [Zinker 1978]. However, before we get to Zinker's familiar formulation, some of its historical antecedents are worth examining. Ego, Hunger and Aggression Fritz (and Laura's) early work [Perls 1969] represents a transition from orthodox psychoanalysis to the Gestalt approach. It introduces many of the ideas around which Gestalt therapy was developed: the importance of working in the here-and-now, the idea of the organism-as-a-whole and the dominance of the most urgent need. Perls develops the idea that the organism is not self-sufficient, but requires the world for the gratification of its needs: "There is always an inter-dependency of the organism and its environment." bid. p.38] He also makes the crucial link between perception and motivation. He points out that specific organismic needs create interests which in turn lead to a particular outlook on 'reality'. If I am hungry, the smell of bread is delicious. If I am on a diet, it becomes torture. Perls adds to this the idea of an equilibrium between organism and environment, which he derives from the idea of 'creative indifference'bid. Chapter One]. From all these ideas he arrives at a formulation of "the cycle of the interdependency of organism and environment." bid: p.44-5] The stages of this are: (1) The organism at rest. (2) The disturbing factor, which may be an external demand or an internal desire. (3) The creation of an image of reality, a lively figure against an indifferent background. (4) The answer to the situation aiming at (5) A decrease of tension - achievement of gratification or compliance with the demands, resulting in (6) The return of the organismic balance. He gives two examples involving inner and outer disturbances: a man feels a desire to read, goes out and buys a book and reads it until he has had enough, and a man lies on a couch, becomes aware of a fly crawling over his face, gets up and swats it, then returns to the couch. Perls' aim here is clearly to show how organism and environment are interdependent. His cycle is meant to illustrate the important principle of organismic self-regulation. Here we have an embryo CWC. Gestalt Therapy The next place where a possible ancestor of the CWC appears is in Perls, Hefferline & Goodman [1951]. In Chapter Five of Part Two, Goodman distinguishes a number of different stages in the process by which the organism contacts the environment. He continues: "The process of contact is a single whole, but we may conveniently divide the sequence of grounds and figures as follows: 1. Fore Contact: the body is the ground, the appetite or environmental stimulus is the figure. This is what is aware as the 'given' or Id of the situation, dissolving into its possibilities. 2. Contacting: (a) the excitement of appetite becomes the ground and some 'object' or set of possibilities is the figure. The body diminishes...There is an emotion. 3. Final Contact: against a background of unconcernful environment and body, the lively goal is the figure and is in touch. All deliberateness is relaxed and there is a spontaneous unitary action of perception, motion and feeling. The awareness is at its brightest, in the figure of the You. 4. Post-contact: There is a flowing organism/environment interaction that is not a figure/background: the self diminishes." bid: p. 459-60] It is clear that Goodman sees these stages as essentially relating to the development of the figure-background process in contacting. They illustrate "a sequence of grounds and figures", and the point of Goodman's model seems to be to clarify their nature more precisely. Because of this strong theoretical and methodological focus on awareness he has less interest in other aspects of organism-environment interaction. Zinker's Cycle In Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy [Zinker 1978] we finally meet the familiar CWC. Before we look at it, it is worth recording that Zinker makes no claim to have invented this model himself. I have (thanks to Peter Philippson) found a record of a conversation between Bob Harman and Zinker on this subject [Harman 1990]. Harman asks Zinker about the origins of the famous model. Zinker replies that it was the Cleveland Gestalt Institute model, and tells how the model was formed: "Well, as you know in Perls' book Gestalt Therapy, as well as in his previous book, Ego, Hunger and Aggression, he talks about excitement. He talks about awareness. He talks about energy. He talks about the figure...bright formation of a really brilliant figure, a clearly differentiated figure. But he talks about those concepts as if they were satellites in the sky...Having asked around at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, I was told that Miriam Polster and Bill Warner...put it together in some talk during a faculty meeting. They put together that particular order of those phenomena and, therefore, made a kind of phenomenological model of the progression of these events." [ ibid. p.42 ] How does Zinker formulate the cycle? He says: "A psychophysiological cycle goes on in every person. It is related to the satisfaction of needs and is sometimes referred to as the cycle of organismic self-regulation." He lists the familiar stages using the example of eating: sensation (e.g. a dry mouth, nausea), awareness ("the naming and describing of sensory mechanisms"), mobilization (visualising and energising), action (using muscles, moving), contact (the psychological process of engagement with food), satisfaction (feeling full) and withdrawal. "This movement from sensation to contact to withdrawal and back to sensation is typical of every organism. In its healthy state, the cycle is smooth, uninterrupted and graceful." bid. p. 92]. Zinker also draws the cycle as a wave. This shows where energy is highest (mobilisation) and how the stages are related as a sequence over time. Zinker's language suggests clearly that (in contrast to earlier formulations by Perls and Goodman) he intends this to be an empirical model of human experience. As he says to Harmon, it is a phenomenological model of the progression of these events. He also strengthens the normative tone saying, in effect, 'this is what we are aiming for, a Gestalt model of healthy functioning'. Examining the Model Zinker's model has been taken on board by many (most?) writers in Gestalt therapy. The cycle has been given different names - the awareness cycle, the contact cycle, the cycle of experience. The stages have been renamed or recharacterised by different authors. It has been used as a diagnostic tool [Delisle 1991] and described recently in fulsome terms as "a natural blueprint for birth, action fulfilment, satisfaction and death whether it is that of an oak tree, a painting, a life." [Kressin 1996] Some writers - such as Petrushka Clarkson - have used it as a framework for describing the whole process of Gestalt counselling [Clarkson 1989]. In some ways, the cycle has become central to Gestalt therapy theory and practice. And why not? It seems a simple, intuitive model of human interaction. So what's wrong with it? I want to look at a number of criticisms in turn. The Cycle as Phenomenological Description Does the CWC record my actual experiences and action as I go thorough a 'contact episode'? Here is one critic of this idea: "I think it's an arbitrary model. It helps to think of mobilization of energy as coming just before action. What it leaves out is that you need mobilization of energy before a clear figure is formed at the awareness level...So it's artificial in the sense that, at every level, we have energy. And, at every level we have awareness - and so on. But it's a nice little model and we like it" This criticism (which incidentally comes from Zinker himself [Harman p.42-3]) indicates that the model is not accurate if taken as a phenomenological description of organism-environment contact. And Zinker indicates that this was the original intention of its first formulators. I have,however, met few people who have tried to defend it as such. Its deficiencies as phenomenology are far too obvious, and it seems to lead quickly to a kind of circularity - each cycle, is in reality a series of shorter cycles taking place at each stage, each smaller cycle presumably being made up of smaller cycles ad infinitum. The Cycle as 'unGestalt' Peter Philippson offers a similar criticism of the cycle, claiming that "it is incompatible with Gestalt theory", by which he means Perls, Hefferline and Goodman [Philippson 1995]. He quotes Goodman as saying that, "in act, in contact there is given a single whole of perception initiating movement tinged with feeling", and adds: "That is, there is no necessary separation between sensation, awareness, mobilization of energy action and contact." bid. p. 16] Now if the model were meant to say how things must proceed phenomenologically in any act of contact, this would be a damning criticism. Patently we are seldom aware of going through the stages outlined in the cycle in our everyday lives. Indeed, Philippson argues plausibly that to so would often be egotistical, in the PHG sense of "a slowing down of spontaneity". Again, the model as a description of actual phenomenological process does not to hold water. We could, of course argue that it describes processes which go on too quickly for us to register, but we would then have to move away from our actual experience to talking about 'brain functioning', and that is not a step which interests me here, simply because it moves us away from our direct experience. The Cycle as Individualistic In his 1992 article 'From the Perspective of the Environment', Jon Frew points out an inconsistency in Gestalt writing. One the one hand, we attempt to stress the interdependency between organism and environment. On the other, much of the way in which we talk about persons reinforces an individualistic viewpoint. The CWC is, he believes, an example of this and "plots the route of a contact episode from the individual's initial sensation through awareness, excitement, action, contact and "home again" after withdrawal." [Frew 1992 p. 40] Frew's point is a valid one. The contact cycle does individualise organism-environment contact, in that it tells the story of a particular contact episode from an individual point of view. But this is only mistaken if in the way we present the cycle we forget and ignore the fact that all my experience is takes place in, is part of, is inseparable from, the organism-environment field. Of course, the reason we talk about 'individuals' is because that is a real part of how we experience ourselves and others. As Frew himself says: "Admittedly it is extremely difficult to write, teach and learn from "the between" or to demonstrate, using Friedman's (1985) language, the "sphere of the between as the central source of healing." It is our nature to adapt the perspective of the individual to understand and describe our own process and the processes of others." bid. p. 40] Individuating and joining processes are both aspects of the field, and each will be heightened in certain contexts. It is a matter of fact that there is often more in the social and cultural contexts in which Gestalt therapy operates which stress individuality and separateness than communality and relatedness [Saner 1989], and this is something that we must always bear in mind as a problem for a field theory. But unless we are going to say that holding a relational theory of self means that we cannot speak of (or to) individuals about their experiences, the CWC as a putative description of them can still have a place. Its primary use is still as a tool for exploring person-environment interaction, and I believe that is how most Gestaltists see it. It is also worth pointing out that the CWC has not only been used to describe individual process. It has been usefully adapted as a way of exploring relationships [Nevis 1987], and also used to describe group process [Philippson & Harris 1992]. These are, I believe, the main criticisms that have be made of the CWC. From them I conclude first that we cannot regard it as a description, in any simple sense, of the phenomenology of organism-environment contact. Second, we need to be comntinually wary of the individualistic focus of its formulation. It must always be explained in the context of the organism-environment field. Other lesser criticisms have also been made, in effect wishing to revise the CWC rather than dismiss it. As I want to do this myself, I now turn to the more positive task of trying to see what the CWC is and can be, rather than what it is not. Reworking the Cycle At best the cycle, seen as a model of organism-environment interaction, is oversimplified and idealised. In this it is like a thousand other useful models. Consider, for instance, models of group process, which I have myself often criticised [Harris 1995]. It is true that few groups go through clearly separable stages of forming, norming, storming and mourning. Even if they do, it may not be in that exact order. But that does not make the process of trying to identify stages a waste of time. Such models - both the contact cycle and the group model - retain their interest precisely because despite their crudity they do still seem descriptive of our experience in some group situations. I have always taught the CWC as an idealisation of an enormously complex natural process, and almost always found that people find it intuitively attractive. It's worth asking why this is. First, the idea of a cyclical movement is incredibly powerful. Much of our life takes place in such cycles: night to day, birth to death, breathing in and out. Almost regardless of how we choose to describe the stages, the CWC would still seem natural. The intuitive attraction of the CWC must rests on more than this, however. The description of the stages, and their order must feel right, if the model is to be more than a vague hymn to nature. It is a Gestalt model if it is anything. So let's look more closely at the stages. What the model attempts to do is to generalise about at the way in which an individual (or couple or group) makes contact with the environment, from a Gestalt perspective which highlights certain aspects. (This and any similar 'descriptive' model is, after all, propaganda for a particular theoretical perspective.) I call this model 'idealised' because in reality things do not usually happen in this way. The 'stages' cannot easily be separated, and they will not always occur in this particular sequence. It is also a reflective model, one which stands back from what is going on and comments on it. Mostly, I do not (unless I am a chronic egoist) function at this level of self-awareness. The model starts from what is called 'withdrawal', often taken as a 'rest' position (relative to a particular cycle). It is more accurate to see it as the stage of 'creative indifference', and Perls talks about it in detail in his early work. He says there, "Creative indifference is full of interest, extending towards both sides of the differentiation. It is by no means identical with an absolute zero point, but will always have an aspect of balance." [Perls 1969 p. 19] The differentiation is into polar opposites which relate to an interest of mine and the possibilities contained in the environment. The next stage is 'sensation'. I personally do not like this name. It has for me associations with a discredited philosophical theories about sensations as the raw data of refined perception. Consider the example often given to illustrate the CWC. I notice a dry mouth (sensation) and then realise I am thirsty (perception/awareness). Now, what is called sensation here is in fact a gradually differentiating awareness - noticing a dry mouth is as much a perception as realising I am thirsty. So what is the difference between what goes on at 'sensation' and 'awareness'? What I prefer is to regard this 'sensation' stage as a stage of taking in sensory information about myself, the environment and the current relationship between them. What do I currently see, hear, feel? And how does it relate to my current organismic state? We can then see that it is the processing of this sense data in or out of awareness - noticing, realising and connecting (a kind of gestalting) - which eventually leads to the formation of 'a clear figure' in awareness. I then ask myself what this 'clear figure' means for me - what do I need or want to do? This leads naturally to the 'mobilisation' stage, which involves both cerebral (planning) and bodily (energising) functions running in parallel. The next stage is traditionally called 'action'. Again, in my version of the CWC I have recharacterised it as the stage of preparation for the coming contact. This involves trying things out, experimenting, making choices which will enhance contact. The penultimate stage is the (final) contact stage, which is teleologically the whole point of this particular cycle. Here is the culmination of the whole series of organism-environment interactions which make up the cycle. I express my anger and listen to your response; I eat and enjoy a fine meal with friends; I savour a moment of peaceful silence and togetherness in a group. The final stage before the 'rest' stage is called 'satisfaction'. Again, I dislike this name. For me this is the stage where we get ready to move on. As Peter Philippson says: "Old ways of being die and are organismically mourned." [Philippson 1995] It involves a whole range of processes: assessment (including feeling satisfied or dissatisfied with the cycle), integration, completion, grieving, and leave-taking. My way of using this version of the CWC is not primarily as phenomenological description, though it is sometimes useful in this regard, as a way of helping me to separate some of the different experiences I have. I see it instead as indicating a series of human tasks which need to be done in an ideal world. Ideally, I enter any situation in the 'here and now', getting as much sensory information as possible about my circumstances. This leads, hopefully, to a clear awareness of what I want and what needs to be done, and so on. In reality, what we do will usually only roughly approximate to this. And it is here that the idea of 'interruptions to contact' comes in. 'Interrupting contact' with regard to a particular cycle is about something not happening which might have enhanced the overall and final contact. This may be something missing in the environment, or something I fail to do. There is no 'ought' here for me - I do what I do, it has the consequences it has, what happens, happens and the totality is my current creative adjustment in the field. The CWC can be a tool to greater awareness of what I habitually do and fail to do - my personal strengths and weaknesses in terms of the 'tasks' indicated by the cycle, as long as my behaviour is seen as part of the overall field. Conclusion My conclusion is that the CWC should not be scrapped. It does have its uses, which are, for me, primarily as a teaching aid. It provides a simple and intuitive model of organism-environment interaction, which also helps us to explain and understand other important ideas, such as that of 'interruptions to contact'. We should not take it uncritically however, and recognise that it does have important weaknesses. It is not an accurate or even approximate description of human experience in contacting, and it has, in the way it is formulated, a tendency towards the individualistic which runs counter to a field-theoretical approach. It has been accepted at face value for far too long, and it is in need of further critical appraisal. My recommendation is that those who use it in teaching and therapy need to be clear exactly how they are using it, and should strive to present it in ways that are consistent with fundamental Gestalt theory. John Bernard Harris 1996 References P. Clarkson (1989), Gestalt Counselling in Action (Sage Publications) G. Delisle (1991) 'A Gestalt Perspective of Personality Disorders', British Gestalt Journal, Vol 1 No. 1. J. Frew (1992) 'From the Perspective of the Environment', The Gestalt Journal XIV(1). R. Harman (ed.) (1990) Conversations with the Masters, Charles C. Thomas. J. Kressin (1996) 'So What's New?', GPTI News & Views. E. Nevis (1987) Organisational Consulting: A Gestalt Approach, University of Cleveland Press. F. Perls (1969) Ego, Hunger and Aggression, Vintage Books. F. Perls, Hefferline R. & Goodman P. Gestalt Therapy (Penguin Books 1969) P. Philippson (1995) 'Gestalt in Britain: A Polemic', Topics in Gestalt Therpay Vol 3 No. 3, Manchester Gestalt Centre. Click here to link Philippson P. & Harris J.B. (1992), Gestalt: Working with Groups, (Manchester Gestalt Centre) R. Saner (1989) 'Cultural Biases of Gestalt Therapy: Made-in-the USA', The Gestalt Journal XII(2). J. Zinker (1978) Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy, Vintage Books. |
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