Читать книгу Fritz Perls in Berlin 1893 - 1933 - Bernd Bocian - Страница 21

One factor that influenced Perls’s rebelliousness was certainly the early unmasking of that which was mysterious and impressive as a farce and mere semblance. He apparently lost respect for the mighty and their aura of power at an early age. The ritual ceremonies at the Jewish synagogue »did not produce any awe« (Perls 1977, 249) in him, and when his father deemed him worthy of acceptance into his Freemason Lodge at about age 18, Perls found the process ludicrous. Even his entry into his father’s »secret room« (ibid., 251) had proven a disappointment. And now something similar was happening. »I was curious to penetrate the veil of that mystery and ready to go through that ordeal. What a shame and disappointment!« (ibid., 250). Perhaps the disappointment also represented the de-idealization of his father once and for all, »with the broad blue ribbon across his chest, a long impressive beard, a powerful figure« (ibid.).

Just as in the fairy tale of »The Emperor’s New Clothes,« authority is »naked«; the child is not impressed and does not allow itself to be intimidated, hypnotized, or deceived. It takes a look and trusts its own senses. Perls identified with the message of this fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen and put the following words into the mouth of the child who was to be dissuaded from what it saw: »How can I trust my senses? They love me not if I can’t see! I need their love more than the truth. It’s hard to swallow, but I take my lesson in adjustment« (ibid., 25).²⁴ This was a lesson Perls refused to learn as a child, and he continued to refuse until the end of his days. Over the course of his life, he himself appeared »naked,« and he »undressed« others, which garnered him both rejection and fame. In a certain sense, he was disrespectful; he was interested in reality and not in appearances, and he exposed matters correspondingly. That was a help to those who were strong enough to find themselves, while others were injured and deeply hurt. In therapy, he often looked for what he called contact and genuine feelings. Then he was touched and would become soft and very close to the other person.

The concept of contact, which is so central to Gestalt therapy, has one of its sources here. Within the context of the childhood memories mentioned above, Perls defined a relationship structure as a confluence when the child is »good« in a manner that corresponds to the will of its parents, as opposed to the isolation of the child when its behavior does not match its parents’ expectations, and they then experience and define it as »bad.« In Perls’s view, no contact existed between the people involved in either confluence or isolation, »for contact is the appreciation of differences« (ibid., 261).

Perls had this painful, formative father conflict in common with Karen Horney as well, one of the other psychoanalytic dissidents. Horney became his first training analyst, and later his control analyst. They enjoyed a good personal relationship, and Horney’s revisions of Freud later inspired Perls and showed many parallels to revisions of his own (see Bocian 1992). Horney was plagued by her strict Christian father and entered in her diary at age fourteen: »It must be marvelous to have a father one can love and respect. The Fourth Commandment with its »Thou shalt« looms before me like a ghost. I cannot honor a person who makes all of us unhappy with his hypocrisy, egotism, crudeness, and poor manners« (in Stephan 1992, 236).

The early experience of a repressive »Thou shalt,« which was classified within the system of Freudian theory as the »super-ego« and which Perls called an unacceptable introjection,²⁵ played a significant role in the theory formation of virtually all Berlin character analysts.