GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY IS BAD

GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY IS BAD

1. GESTALT THEORY’S FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS ARE VAGUE

Gaetano Kanzizsa, psychology professor in Milano Italy, PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY, 1994. p. 149.

Gestalt theory has been the object of many misinterpretations and its theses have been often oversimplified or trivialized. The largest part of these misinterpretations can be attributed partly to superficial knowledge of the theory, often diffused only indirectly in simplified works or in synthetic chapters of larger handbooks, and partly to preconceived hostility, sometimes elicited by the aggressive self-presentation of the Gestaltists, who defended ideas that contradicted widely-accepted theoretical and methodological doctrines of those times. However, part of the responsibility must be attributed to the Gestaltists themselves, who left vague some of their fundamental concepts. Consider the notion of Pragnanz, never defined unambiguously by the Gestaltists. The Gestaltists also took simple hypotheses for empirically-founded facts, as in the cases of the tendency to singularity and of the primacy of the "law of the whole" in perceptual organization. As I have discussed above, these hypotheses have been falsified experimentally several times.
2. UNLIKE THE PSYCHOANALYTIC TECHNIQUE, GESTALT THERAPY DISEMPOWERS THE PATIENT

Judy Robinson. “Towards a State of Being Able to Play.” BRITISH JOURNAL OF GUIDANCE & COUNSELING. January 1991. p. 44.

An irony ensued. By his directiveness and charisma, Perls (and many Gestalt therapists who followed him) tended to be extremely powerful people, and in this to create the very aura of expertise he attacked in psychoanalysts. Furthermore, through the rule of free association and the value allowed to silence in psychoanalytic technique, the patient does in fact retain considerable power in psychodynamic work: the material she or he brings effectively controls the session. Similarly, the value put on the secure frame and boundaries do to a considerable extent protect the client within the `therapeutic space' (Noonan, 1983). By the lack of secure frame, Gestalt clients can be left subject to the moods and whims of the therapist, in relation to length of session, regularity of meetings, etc. Gestaltists such as Yontev (1988) are now pleading the need for change in this area.
3. GESTALT PSYCHOLOGISTS REJECT GOODMAN AND PERLS IDEAS

Janie Rhyne, therapist and prof of nonverbal communication and art therapy, AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ART THERAPY, August 1990. p. 2.

The troublesome issue of either Gestalt psychology or Gestalt therapy originated in 1951 with the publication of Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, co-authored by Frederick Perls, Ralph F. Hefferline, and Paul Goodman. None of these men claimed to be experimental research psychologists; Perls was a psychoanalyst, Hefferline was an experimental clinical psychologist, and Paul Goodman was a writer. They did, however, claim the name of an established and illustrious school of research psychology. In a recent interview (Rosenfeld, 1978a), Laura Perls says that she had thought in 1950 when the book was in process that by using the word Gestalt "we could get into difficulties. They (the Gestalt psychologists) felt that 'Gestalt' was in their domain and that it was mainly confined to perceptual psychology" (p. 20). That criticism was rejected by Peals, Hefferline, and Goodman, but Laura was right. Gestalt psychologists completely rejected the Gestalt therapists on a number of counts. They didn't consider the authors to be respectable academicians; they felt that Perls's and Goodman's application of Gestalt psychology was a misuse of their concepts; they didn't believe in psychoanalysis and Perls was an analyst, and, to top it off, Goodman wrote a scathing critique of the Gestalt psychologists, was an anarchist, and both he and Perls were in therapy with Wilhelm Reich.

ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA

MARXIST REVOLUTIONARY AND ECONOMIST (1928- 1967)

If history’s best leaders are often those who were reluctant at first to become leaders, and who, as leaders, fought valiantly to close the gap between leaders and the led, Che Guevara must stand as one of the Twentieth Century’s most impressive political figures. Although the Cuban Revolution and its subsequent fruits are mired in controversy, even those who despise Fidel Castro and question more recent Cuban policies have a silent admiration for the man known most often as simply “Che.”

Life And Work

Not a Cuban by birth, Ernesto Guevara was born in Argentina in 1928. Little is known of his upbringing or youth, and most written history about him begins upon his graduation from medical school in 1953. Che’s intelligence allowed him to get through rigorous medical training, but his spirit of adventure would delay medical practice indefinitely as he set out to travel the Americas.

Latin America after World War II was a hotbed of mass politics. Previously disenfranchised masses, both urban working class and rural indigenous people, were beginning to challenge the undemocratic and economically despotic regimes of the day. While in school, Che probably learned radical politics from other students. After graduation, Che would witness the most brutal of political battles first hand.
In 1954, Che was living in Guatemala. Pro-democracy forces had succeeded in electing Jacobo Arbenz as Guatemala’s first democratically elected president. But Arbenz’s views and the masses with which he chose to ally himself earned him the wrath not only of totalitarians in that country, but also of the American Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA engineered a coup which overthrew the democratic government. Involved in the heat of that struggle, the young Che witnessed American “democracy promotion” in the form of covert brutality. Himself a target, Che fled to Mexico. While in Mexico, he met a small group of Cuban exiles led by Fidel Castro.
Castro’s band had been gathering support to re-enter the battle against the U.S-puppet government in Cuba led by Fulgencio Batista, who had made the mistake of granting amnesty to the Cuban revolutionaries, releasing them from prison in an effort to demonstrate his good nature to the world. In December of 1956, on board the yacht Granma, the Cubans returned to their homeland, this time with a troop doctor, Guevara. He would eventually become a commander of the Rebel Army.
Batista’s regime fell on January 1, 1959, and the first successful anti-capitalist revolution in the Western Hemisphere had succeeded. Over the next seven years, Che Guevara held whatever post he was asked by his friend Fidel Castro to fill, including president of the National Bank, Minister of Industry, and United Nations representative. During this time, he began to plan out an economic transition to socialism, which would eventually become the official economic system of the island in 1965. As part of this transition, Che wrote many pamphlets and books, and also made speeches across Cuba encouraging adoption of his views on volunteer work, the replacement of material incentives with work as a social duty, measures designed to decrease bureaucracy, and programs of literacy and youth participation. These struggles made it possible for Cuba to achieve a standard of living unparalleled in Latin America. They also made Che begin to feel the old wanderlust, filling him with a desire to travel across the Americas again, promoting democratic socialism. He resigned all his posts in 1965 and left Cuba to participate in other struggles.
After first spending some time in Africa, in the Congo, Che went to Bolivia. There, fate caught up with him, and in October of 1967, the same CIA he’d witnessed usurping democracy in Guatemala engineered his own capture, torture and execution by the Bolivian Army. Fidel Castro once observed that the Bolivians hid Che’s body after they murdered him, so that people would not make journeys to his grave in order to pay homage to his revolutionary legacy. So, said Castro, “the people instead pay homage to him everywhere.”

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