Interview with Christine Jacobsgaard. Some aspects of the training at SGT part 1 & 2

We have met Christine Jacobsgaard twice, in December 2016 with Mariano Pizzimenti and in May 2017 without him. Our intention was to ask her some questions the whole editorial committee of Figure Emergenti prepared for her. The questions were about the specific way we work with groups in the Gestalt School of Turin. We looked at experience of the self, group dynamic starting from some Gestalt theory.
Christine is a Hamburg based Psychotherapist and a prominent figure in the German gestalt therapy community for over 40 years. She has been Senior Trainer at the SGT School of Psychotherapy since 1984 and was one of the founders of the international Gestalt Training Service.
In the interview Christine and Mariano trace back some aspect of our current teaching style to the origin of the Italian (and European) movement of Gestalt Therapy, especially to the practice of Ischa Larry Bloomberg. Both Mariano and Christine, along with the late Hilda Courtney and many of our current trainers, trained with him at Vignalino Fonteruoli (SI).
Christine didn’t really like the questions we have prepared for her and didn’t make a mystery of it! She questioned the questions and choose to get involved with us in two discussions that turned out to be exciting and illuminating. Our communication -which took off in a disjoint and tentative way – became gradually more attuned: it was the co-creation of a shared boundary. This was in itself a learning experience.
Christine raised some of the issues that are most relevant to her practice of gestalt therapy training. The first interview looks at the legacy of Ischa in group work. Christine and Mariano exchange some opinions on the practice of supporting trainees to confront leaders. Subsequently she talks about work on individual and group level.

In the second interview she brings some vivid examples from a training group that she recently led. She gave us material on how the training work develops over time, phenomenology, working in the here and now, interruption and modulation of contact.

Question: The first question looks at the roots of our school. Christine, what you remember of your training with Isha Bloomberg? What are the tools he gave you?
Christine: the scope of the first question is too wide, answering it would require an entire book! Ischa was my first trainer and I learnt from him to be in the “here and now” with all my interest and with my all “inter”, what is inside me and what is between us. I look at what happens inside and I see you, to work with both these dimensions of experience: looking at you and paying attention to my feelings. And after this I have learnt to recognize contact interruptions.
Ischa was very special in teaching this way of working, some of that came with confronting aspects of people he did not agree with, and some of it was confronting people he agreed with. There were these two sides of him…
What I have got out of all this is that I have learnt to be with my interest even if it is against Ischa’s interest; and he accepted that. When I wanted to take our training institute under a german umbrella organistation for gestalt institutes he did not want us to be in there: he was against any kind of institutionializierung. He was really and viscerally against that move, he shouted at me “that is terrible! This [move] is against my work”. I said: “this is important for me, it is important that we join this umbrella organization”, he answered me angrily: ”do it, if you want to do it!”. I learnt to stay with my interest: I am not non-ok if I stay with what I think and experience.
Mariano: may I add a point? For me there is another aspect of Ischa that was special. It took much time for me to realize this: he supported the field, and trusted the field. In those days we didn’t use the field word too much. He had faith that what it was good for him and his family was also good for the group members. And the other way round too. What it was good for the group, it was good for himself and his family. I remember discussion with Hilda about this. We were talking about the fact that Ischa wanted to work in residential settings. Hilda said that Ischa choose to work like that because this was good for himself and his family. He thought that if there is something good for the family that must be good for the group too.
Christine: I agree, totally. And there is also another part: “it depends on me”. It depends on me Ischa Bloomberg. “If it is god for me, then it is good for all”. Ischa had a very big personality.
Mariano: I understand what you mean. What is you describe now, it’s similar to what happened in Turin. What is good for Fiat is good for Italy [the headquarters of the car company is in Turin]. That is a different thing. Because we did not verify this, there was only a way of thinking: it is good for Italy to do what Fiat wants. With Ischa the group was taken into consideration, I have never experienced Ischa as someone who imposed things to the group.
Christine: it is difficult to speak about Ischa now, after all this time. I would like to go back to group dynamics. When we speak about Ischa and our roots we have to take in consideration that things have changed, now it’s a different time. Gestalt is growing and therapists are learning. I would like to go back to the roots without going backwards, we moved on, the gestalt community faced and integrated the criticism [that emerged from within the community]. Perls never did group dynamics work, he worked one-to-one. This is an old fashioned way to work. Even psychoanalists learnt how to be more in contact nowadays!
Mariano: in Italy several schools still work one-to-one, the group is simply a background, like in Quattrini’s school.
Christine: terribile! This goes against what we know about field, influence. Why is the group there, then?
Mariano: Quattrini treats the group like the Greek Chorus, a resonating instrument that supports individual work.
Christine: yes, there is always something that resonates in the group. And people are present there too, they affect the person who is working. Different people influence in different ways.
Mariano: that is the way we work…
Christine: no! This is the way like life is! And we use that, and you can also choose not to use that. But still yo have to figure out how the group is influencing the person that is working; the influence is there. 70 years passed, things have moved on.
Mariano: I find it difficult to discuss with you if you start saying that “nature goes that way”. I agree with you, but I also know that if Paolo Quattrini was here, he could say something about it. I agree with you, but still that there are people who work differently!
Christine: I started to be interested in gestalt therapy because of the holistic outlook, everything is there in the group, everything has an influence. If you want to breathe you haver to open the window [she laughs]. The whole exceeds the sum of its parts.

Q: In what ways your style of work is different from other types of gestalt you have seen and experienced.
Christine: I don’t like this question. I can’t say that I am special compared to all the others. I can say what is important to me…
Mariano: before you said a couple of things about Ischa I did not remember. After you said those things I recognized some aspects of our way of working. We allow students and clients to criticize us, “to put us in a crisis…”. I refer to the moment when Ischa said “go on” to you about joining the german umbrella organization.
I think we took something of that, and we develop on it. For instance we support people to confront us and to be critical of us. We support people to take the responsibility and the strength to say I disagree with you.
Christine: being critical is different from confronting, criticism is “I don’t like what you do”…
Mariano: we do not support power games… we support people to bring themselves in the field. It is something that we accept and support people doing it. I do not find this very often in our field of work.
Christine: all I know is that I support patients and trainees to say what they like. I don’t know about other schools.
Q: You work both with the individual and with the group. How do you work on both levels?
Christine: I keep two levels of presence, together. I don’t really know how I do it! I stay with my curiosity. There is something that goes on in the group that attracts me, that makes me curious: “what is going on here?”. There is a sign, always, something that captures my attention. And with the group is the same, for instance people look like they are sleepy, so that affects me [as an individual]. It’s a whole at work. If someone decides that it is time for him to work with me it is because he trusts the group, the whole allow it.
I don’t like doing comparisons between institutes. I remember an assistant who came from another institute. She was sitting there, still, neutral. She was trained to be like that in a group. That has an influence! There is a statue in the group! She was so happy when I allowed her to be as she wanted to be in the group.

Experience and knowledge is what allows me to stay with both group and individual. It’s difficult to say in theoretical terms. You learn it as you do to learn cycling. You try and try and after a while you just do it, without thinking about it. Tries and errors. The more I cycle the more I learn. There is no way to learn to cycle by studying how to do it.
Again on working with group or individuals. If the group is foreground I work with the group. For instance; if they avoid something I work with them on the problem they are avoiding. It all depends on what is on the foreground… Or if someone is always in the background for the whole weekend, that becomes figural [laughs loudly], the fact that someone has been in the background.
Lidia: How do you know if a group is avoiding something?
C. It’s like cycling… it’s difficult to explain it. I have learnt how to do it.
Q: Are there signs of it?
C. They go around the focus…
M. Go on… Christine, we can see the interruption of contact!
C. It’s not how I choose to look at something. It’s not all up to me. I am the more experienced, I can teach, it is true, but it is not only me, it’s the group choosing what is the next thing. If I go into a group and someone says “I want to work”. I may answer, “let’s look a little bit more into it and then let choose together”.

Q (Piergiulio): Lately I have met many experienced trainers, and I have noticed that I feel much freer with them. A good trainer, very experience, makes me feel free to do and say what I want.
C. Yeah, it’s not the individual on his own, it is the combination of an experienced trainer and a certain group. I have that experience of feeling free, for instance when I watch a very touching movie. I come out of the cinema and I say to myself “my god, this film director knows how to make good movies!”, and I feel wow! I don’t know how do they make the movie. They made good choices, a good story, good actors that fit well together. It’s the whole that works: you go to see a movie and you enter a situation where we feel well, and we all know how it is a good movie. Its wow, this makes me feel good, richer and free. There are other situations that are completely different: you are there waiting for the movie to end! It is a gift of the situation, of the moment, culture…
M. You don’t like us to put all the attention on the leader, isn’t it…

C. I think it is important to look at what the leader does. But there are not rules for the magic to happen! Of course the leader is important. A leader with no experience anxious of just being good enough, doesn’t work. When I led my first group I was so afraid of not being good enough! I was involved with this “I hope I am good enough! I Hope I am good enough! I Hope I am good enough!” more than anything else [big laugh]. Hilda helped me by saying to me “the only problem, the only theme is that you have to survive, that’s all. Just survive!”. It was a relief hearing that, I just had to survive [laugh].
M. The point is the level of the fear of the trainer…
C. Yes, level of experience, level of fear…
M. Narcissistic desire to perform…
C. Yes, expectation of being there and everyone telling you “you are so wonderful, you are so good”

Lidia: To what extent the group is a resource or a hindrance for the development of an individual?
C. Sometimes the group can be bad for an individual. In the training group we can work with transfertphenomen much more easily than in individual sessions. In Gestalt we train within groups, never one to one. You can have individual therapy, but training happens in groups. The training is relational and you are not alone, that’s important. You are not alone, and you are not alone doing the work. All my problems, are problems being with you, so you can work on them. Other people are an opportunity.
M. Sometimes the group is not a great place if they get into strong narcissistic fears. The group could be too much for them.
C. But we are speaking of training groups and sometimes it happens there too.
Q: What is the difference between working in therapy groups and training groups?
C. In training group I can talk about theory, I can speak about the narcissistic wound for instance. In the selection of candidates I need to realize if a person is able to bear to talking about his narcissism in the group, theoretically. This is a criteria for selecting people: if people can’t cope to theoretically discuss their issues in a group they need to be referred to a therapy group. There must be a ground in yourself that allows you to stand there, if that ground is not there you can’t join a training group.
M. After a bit of work a trainee needs t one able to reflect with the group about his “case”. Someone might not to be able to do that. This is one of the criteria that we use.

PART II, May 11, 2017

Piergiulio and Lidia met Christine in May 2017 in a rainy day. We know that Christine enjoys good food and good wine. We planned then to bring forward our interview in more comfortable settings, an old restaurant in Turin. Christine took the plunge and answered some more questions. We enjoyed spending time together.

Q: What are the most important theoretical concepts you use in working with groups?

Christine: It is difficult for me to answer this question. I think I have digested most of the concepts I use in my work. I choose to become a gestalt therapist because I like to stay in the here and now, I come from the here-and-now, from the foreground and the background, I like the concept of holism that is so relevant to gestalt therapy.
All of this touched me from the very first time I have met gestalt. All of this is so important to me that I digested it now.
The most important aspect of our work is just to be in the group to look what is in the foreground and to ask the trainees what is in there-and-now for you in the foreground. Very simple, nothing more. This is what I do. And the next step is to let the trainees speaking about what is in the foreground. For Italian people it is difficult…
Question: why is that?
Italians start off “what is in the foreground is that I do non feel well but I am happy to be here”… they go on with introducing the matter. Take what happened the last Training weekend. At the beginning of a group a trainee started by saying “I had such a terrible week, I was in a big black hole for many days, I had the feeling I wouldn’t come out of this hole, It was horrible. The worst time in my life. In the last few days I got a little bit better, so I could come here, and I am happy to be here now, to get more support”. While she was speaking I asked about the hole she was referring to, and she said “yes, the hole was dark and very deep, very deep”. I asked “what happened at the beginning of the week?”; “Yes, it was horrible! I can’t explain how horrible it was! Really terrible, I was a in a dark hole, no ways out!”. So I kept asking what happened before that, and after 15 minutes or more the trainee said “I had my separation, my divorce. I knew I was about to get divorce, but I didn’t expect this to bring me down like this!!”.
There is something very Italian in taking their time to say things. A German would say “last week I got divorce, and I got very down, I didn’t expect to go down like this!”. Italians provide a lot of details beforehand, they don’t get t the point quickly. Getting so immediately close to the relevant issue is difficult for Italians. For Germans is quite different: they are different kind of beings, they behave differently: they have fears, but they do not have the fear of getting close too quickly. Germans have their interruptions and their neuroses too, of course!

Lidia: You always say “abstract, abstract, abstract!” in the groups, people get lost in words.?PG: While a figure starts to emerge, slowly like in this case, do you read what is happening as interruption of contact?
C: after a while, I do, of course. I just work with the interruption that I see. Let’s take introjects for instance. Introjects is having a certain idea of how I need to be: “I need to be like that, otherwise I am not ok”. For instance “I have to be very nice and smily with everyone. If I am angry I am a terrible person”. I work with that, the way I work with it depends on the specific person or group I am working with.
I would like to work more on the first question, the one about theory. [she shows us a scheme and goes through it] I show you a diagram I use in training. This is the ground, existentialism and phenomenology. And then there is psychoanalysis, dialectic. This is the middle mode, creative indifference, polarities. It’s’ everything here. Self function, contact phases.
To be in the world is exciting but it scares us: when there is fear there is interruption of contact. It is important to feel the fear. This I have learnt working with handicap, sometimes patients do not feel the fear. Some patients climb up a tree and they do not realize that they are high above the ground or they run towards a busy road. Fear is important, it tells you that you’re close to something dangerous. It is important that people in training don’t judge fear as something bad. We need fear, if the situation is dangerous.
But sometimes people start to see dangers everywhere, so fear limit them or they retroflect so fast that they no longer feel any fear. This sigarette is retroflection, too [laughing].
If a father and a mother said to their child “be nice and kind and nothing will happen to you” this person will start to project on you. He will mentally say “you are a terrible person, you are so awful” so he will need to take care to keep at a distance. This is projection.
Confluence connects to every type of interruptions. You are confluent with the interruption that prevents you to feel fear.

PG: How can you have confluence and introjection at the same time for instance?
If your father and mother told you to be in a certain way, for you that is like “being”, it’s yourself. You are confluent with those introjects without knowing it. Our work is to support the Client to get out of this confluence with this introject and to make your own choice now. We are confluent with every interruption.
And there is this other confluence, that we are here together at this table, in this restaurant, and we want to be together here.

Christine is a Hamburg based Psychotherapist and a prominent figure in the German gestalt therapy community for over 40 years. She has been Senior Trainer at the SGT School of Psychotherapy since 1984 and was one of the founders of the international Gestalt Training Service.

In the interview Christine and Mariano trace back some aspect of our current teaching style to the origin of the Italian (and European) movement of Gestalt Therapy, especially to the practice of Ischa Larry Bloomberg. Both Mariano and Christine, along with the late Hilda Courtney and many of our current trainers, trained with him at Vignalino Fonteruoli (SI).

Christine didn’t really like the questions we have prepared for her and didn’t make a mystery of it! She questioned the questions and choose to get involved with us in two discussions that turned out to be exciting and illuminating. Our communication -which took off in a disjoint and tentative way – became gradually more attuned: it was the co-creation of a shared boundary. This was in itself a learning experience.

Christine raised some of the issues that are most relevant to her practice of gestalt therapy training. The first interview looks at the legacy of Ischa in group work. Christine and Mariano exchange some opinions on the practice of supporting trainees to confront leaders. Subsequently she talks about work on individual and group level.

Question: The first question looks at the roots of our school. Christine, what you remember of your training with Isha Bloomberg? What are the tools he gave you?

Christine: the scope of the first question is too wide, answering it would require an entire book! Ischa was my first trainer and I learnt from him to be in the “here and now” with all my interest and with my all “inter”, what is inside me and what is between us. I look at what happens inside and I see you, to work with both these dimensions of experience: looking at you and paying attention to my feelings. And after this I have learnt to recognize contact interruptions.

Ischa was very special in teaching this way of working, some of that came with confronting aspects of people he did not agree with, and some of it was confronting people he agreed with. There were these two sides of him…

What I have got out of all this is that I have learnt to be with my interest even if it is against Ischa’s interest; and he accepted that. When I wanted to take our training institute under a german umbrella organistation for gestalt institutes he did not want us to be in there: he was against any kind of institutionializierung. He was really and viscerally against that move, he shouted at me “that is terrible! This [move] is against my work”. I said: “this is important for me, it is important that we join this umbrella organization”, he answered me angrily: ”do it, if you want to do it!”. I learnt to stay with my interest: I am not non-ok if I stay with what I think and experience.

Mariano: may I add a point? For me there is another aspect of Ischa that was special. It took much time for me to realize this: he supported the field, and trusted the field. In those days we didn’t use the field word too much. He had faith that what it was good for him and his family was also good for the group members. And the other way round too. What it was good for the group, it was good for himself and his family. I remember discussion with Hilda about this. We were talking about the fact that Ischa wanted to work in residential settings. Hilda said that Ischa choose to work like that because this was good for himself and his family. He thought that if there is something good for the family that must be good for the group too.

Christine: I agree, totally. And there is also another part: “it depends on me”. It depends on me Ischa Bloomberg. “If it is god for me, then it is good for all”. Ischa had a very big personality.

Mariano: I understand what you mean. What is you describe now, it’s similar to what happened in Turin. What is good for Fiat is good for Italy [the headquarters of the car company is in Turin]. That is a different thing. Because we did not verify this, there was only a way of thinking: it is good for Italy to do what Fiat wants. With Ischa the group was taken into consideration, I have never experienced Ischa as someone who imposed things to the group.

Christine: it is difficult to speak about Ischa now, after all this time. I would like to go back to group dynamics. When we speak about Ischa and our roots we have to take in consideration that things have changed, now it’s a different time. Gestalt is growing and therapists are learning. I would like to go back to the roots without going backwards, we moved on, the gestalt community faced and integrated the criticism [that emerged from within the community]. Perls never did group dynamics work, he worked one-to-one. This is an old fashioned way to work. Even psychoanalists learnt how to be more in contact nowadays!

Mariano: in Italy several schools still work one-to-one, the group is simply a background, like in Quattrini’s school.

Christine: terribile! This goes against what we know about field, influence. Why is the group there, then?

Mariano: Quattrini treats the group like the Greek Chorus, a resonating instrument that supports individual work.

Christine: yes, there is always something that resonates in the group. And people are present there too, they affect the person who is working. Different people influence in different ways.

Mariano: that is the way we work…

Christine: no! This is the way like life is! And we use that, and you can also choose not to use that. But still yo have to figure out how the group is influencing the person that is working; the influence is there. 70 years passed, things have moved on.

Mariano: I find it difficult to discuss with you if you start saying that “nature goes that way”. I agree with you, but I also know that if Paolo Quattrini was here, he could say something about it. I agree with you, but still that there are people who work differently!

Christine: I started to be interested in gestalt therapy because of the holistic outlook, everything is there in the group, everything has an influence. If you want to breathe you haver to open the window [she laughs]. The whole exceeds the sum of its parts.

Q: In what ways your style of work is different from other types of gestalt you have seen and experienced.

Christine: I don’t like this question. I can’t say that I am special compared to all the others. I can say what is important to me…

Mariano: before you said a couple of things about Ischa I did not remember. After you said those things I recognized some aspects of our way of working. We allow students and clients to criticize us, “to put us in a crisis…”. I refer to the moment when Ischa said “go on” to you about joining the german umbrella organization.

I think we took something of that, and we develop on it. For instance we support people to confront us and to be critical of us. We support people to take the responsibility and the strength to say I disagree with you.

Christine: being critical is different from confronting, criticism is “I don’t like what you do”…

Mariano: we do not support power games… we support people to bring themselves in the field. It is something that we accept and support people doing it. I do not find this very often in our field of work.

Christine: all I know is that I support patients and trainees to say what they like. I don’t know about other schools.

Q: You work both with the individual and with the group. How do you work on both levels?

Christine: I keep two levels of presence, together. I don’t really know how I do it! I stay with my curiosity. There is something that goes on in the group that attracts me, that makes me curious: “what is going on here?”. There is a sign, always, something that captures my attention. And with the group is the same, for instance people look like they are sleepy, so that affects me [as an individual]. It’s a whole at work. If someone decides that it is time for him to work with me it is because he trusts the group, the whole allow it.

I don’t like doing comparisons between institutes. I remember an assistant who came from another institute. She was sitting there, still, neutral. She was trained to be like that in a group. That has an influence! There is a statue in the group! She was so happy when I allowed her to be as she wanted to be in the group.

Again on working with group or individuals. If the group is foreground I work with the group. For instance; if they avoid something I work with them on the problem they are avoiding. It all depends on what is on the foreground… Or if someone is always in the background for the whole weekend, that becomes figural [laughs loudly], the fact that someone has been in the background.

L. How do you know if a group is avoiding something?

C. It’s like cycling… it’s difficult to explain it. I have learnt how to do it.

Q: Are there signs of it?

C. They go around the focus…

M. Go on… Christine, we can see the interruption of contact!

C. It’s not how I choose to look at something. It’s not all up to me. I am the more experienced, I can teach, it is true, but it is not only me, it’s the group choosing what is the next thing. If I go into a group and someone says “I want to work”. I may answer, “let’s look a little bit more into it and then let choose together”.

Q (Piergiulio): Lately I have met many experienced trainers, and I have noticed that I feel much freer with them. A good trainer, very experience, makes me feel free to do and say what I want.

C. Yeah, it’s not the individual on his own, it is the combination of an experienced trainer and a certain group. I have that experience of feeling free, for instance when I watch a very touching movie. I come out of the cinema and I say to myself “my god, this film director knows how to make good movies!”, and I feel wow! I don’t know how do they make the movie. They made good choices, a good story, good actors that fit well together. It’s the whole that works: you go to see a movie and you enter a situation where we feel well, and we all know how it is a good movie. Its wow, this makes me feel good, richer and free. There are other situations that are completely different: you are there waiting for the movie to end! It is a gift of the situation, of the moment, culture…

M. You don’t like us to put all the attention on the leader, isn’t it…

M. The point is the level of the fear of the trainer…

C. Yes, level of experience, level of fear…

M. Narcissistic desire to perform…

C. Yes, expectation of being there and everyone telling you “you are so wonderful, you are so good”

Lidia: To what extent the group is a resource or a hindrance for the development of an individual?

C. Sometimes the group can be bad for an individual. In the training group we can work with transfertphenomen much more easily than in individual sessions. In Gestalt we train within groups, never one to one. You can have individual therapy, but training happens in groups. The training is relational and you are not alone, that’s important. You are not alone, and you are not alone doing the work. All my problems, are problems being with you, so you can work on them. Other people are an opportunity.

M. Sometimes the group is not a great place if they get into strong narcissistic fears. The group could be too much for them.

C. But we are speaking of training groups and sometimes it happens there too.

Q: What is the difference between working in therapy groups and training groups?

C. In training group I can talk about theory, I can speak about the narcissistic wound for instance. In the selection of candidates I need to realize if a person is able to bear to talking about his narcissism in the group, theoretically. This is a criteria for selecting people: if people can’t cope to theoretically discuss their issues in a group they need to be referred to a therapy group. There must be a ground in yourself that allows you to stand there, if that ground is not there you can’t join a training group.

M. After a bit of work a trainee needs t one able to reflect with the group about his “case”. Someone might not to be able to do that. This is one of the criteria that we use.

PART II, May 11, 2017

Italian translation available here

Q: What are the most important theoretical concepts you use in working with groups?

All of this touched me from the very first time I have met gestalt. All of this is so important to me that I digested it now.

The most important aspect of our work is just to be in the group to look what is in the foreground and to ask the trainees what is in there-and-now for you in the foreground. Very simple, nothing more. This is what I do. And the next step is to let the trainees speaking about what is in the foreground. For Italian people it is difficult…

Question: why is that?

Italians start off “what is in the foreground is that I do non feel well but I am happy to be here”… they go on with introducing the matter. Take what happened the last Training weekend. At the beginning of a group a trainee started by saying “I had such a terrible week, I was in a big black hole for many days, I had the feeling I wouldn’t come out of this hole, It was horrible. The worst time in my life. In the last few days I got a little bit better, so I could come here, and I am happy to be here now, to get more support”. While she was speaking I asked about the hole she was referring to, and she said “yes, the hole was dark and very deep, very deep”. I asked “what happened at the beginning of the week?”; “Yes, it was horrible! I can’t explain how horrible it was! Really terrible, I was a in a dark hole, no ways out!”. So I kept asking what happened before that, and after 15 minutes or more the trainee said “I had my separation, my divorce. I knew I was about to get divorce, but I didn’t expect this to bring me down like this!!”.

There is something very Italian in taking their time to say things. A German would say “last week I got divorce, and I got very down, I didn’t expect to go down like this!”. Italians provide a lot of details beforehand, they don’t get t the point quickly. Getting so immediately close to the relevant issue is difficult for Italians. For Germans is quite different: they are different kind of beings, they behave differently: they have fears, but they do not have the fear of getting close too quickly. Germans have their interruptions and their neuroses too, of course!

Lidia: You always say “abstract, abstract, abstract!” in the groups, people get lost in words.
PG: While a figure starts to emerge, slowly like in this case, do you read what is happening as interruption of contact?

C: after a while, I do, of course. I just work with the interruption that I see. Let’s take introjects for instance. Introjects is having a certain idea of how I need to be: “I need to be like that, otherwise I am not ok”. For instance “I have to be very nice and smily with everyone. If I am angry I am a terrible person”. I work with that, the way I work with it depends on the specific person or group I am working with.

I would like to work more on the first question, the one about theory. [she shows us a scheme and goes through it] I show you a diagram I use in training. This is the ground, existentialism and phenomenology. And then there is psychoanalysis, dialectic. This is the middle mode, creative indifference, polarities. It’s’ everything here. Self function, contact phases.

To be in the world is exciting but it scares us: when there is fear there is interruption of contact. It is important to feel the fear. This I have learnt working with handicap, sometimes patients do not feel the fear. Some patients climb up a tree and they do not realize that they are high above the ground or they run towards a busy road. Fear is important, it tells you that you’re close to something dangerous. It is important that people in training don’t judge fear as something bad. We need fear, if the situation is dangerous.

But sometimes people start to see dangers everywhere, so fear limit them or they retroflect so fast that they no longer feel any fear. This sigarette is retroflection, too [laughing].

If a father and a mother said to their child “be nice and kind and nothing will happen to you” this person will start to project on you. He will mentally say “you are a terrible person, you are so awful” so he will need to take care to keep at a distance. This is projection.

Confluence connects to every type of interruptions. You are confluent with the interruption that prevents you to feel fear.

PG: How can you have confluence and introjection at the same time for instance?

If your father and mother told you to be in a certain way, for you that is like “being”, it’s yourself. You are confluent with those introjects without knowing it. Our work is to support the Client to get out of this confluence with this introject and to make your own choice now. We are confluent with every interruption.

And there is this other confluence, that we are here together at this table, in this restaurant, and we want to be together here.

Lidia: In a relationship you can’t say everything!

C: not in every moment of course. It is important to be able to hold back and say it when it is the right time!

Some of my clients would get sick if they couldn’t come out with everything at once, they are not able to hold back, they have difficulties to hold there impulse: it is good for them to be able to learn that! That is not to learning retroflection as a interruption in the process of contact!!!

Let’s go back a moment to “good” confluence. Confluence is very important, empathy works if you have the possibility to be confluent. Mother and baby are confluent, it is important for the development of trust. Orgasm is total confluence, that creates a wonderful feeling, the end of the separation. After orgasm then you become separated again: you need the ability to be confluent,to melt and you learn that when you are a baby, close to your mother. It’s a kind of assimilation. Group rituals are confluent situations, too.

In the last few years gestalt therapists talk about modulation of contact. If your mother told you to be a certain way, you can read it as an introject or you can take it as “oh! this is important in my life, to know this thing, for instance to say hello to people when you get into a room, instead of saying nothing”. There is a gradually in things.

Lidia: without introjects society wouldn’t be there.

C: Yes, but this depends on you swallowing or digesting the rules of society. What is digested is not bad! Only what is not digested is bad for you! It’s just not you, it’s something external, an introject.

German Gestalt therapists, and in our Turin school too, some therapists started to give more importance to phenomenology. What is important to me, I don’t know if important is a good enough word, is sind (being-there). What makes my life meaningful, that’s phenomenology for me.

L: Phenomenology and the meaning of life, can you tell us more.

C: I want to be in this world not as an idea, but with the whole self.

Lidia: what is the meaning of life for you Christine?

C: what is the meaning of life for you Piergiulio?

PG: Meaning of life is experiencing and making sense of what you experience.

That sounds good. It’s good for me. I like it a lot!! For me it is nearly the same. It’s a kind of being grateful to be alive, not in the way of religion. Just grateful to be alive. And you Lidia?

L: to grow up, and finally join an infinite force, a Spirit, that comprehend us.

C: In your way of looking at it, each person has a chance to go beyond their boundaries. You do not accept your own boundaries, you want to go beyond them.

L: There are good and bad limitations. Like in the case of interruption of contact there are “good” limits and limits that you need to go beyond.

C: What I am saying is that it is important to take responsibility for your boundaries. If you are a psychopath, for instance, it is important to learn boundary. Psychopaths have no boundaries. To be in contact at your boundary it is one of the most important things in Gestalt. Having boundaries in gestalt means that we can meet, that you can open them and close them again. Going beyond your boundaries, totally, is wonderful, but it can be very dangerous too.

PG: Hilda came to my mind now, while you were speaking… the last time I translated her, we were in a training group and she worked a lot to have everyone present in the group in the morning. That has to do with boundaries, respect from the person and the group.

C:Last weekend with trainees it was very good, it was very warm and touching, but at 9.00 I was the only one there! It’s terrible if you can’t start.

L: How do the work develop over the three-four years? What do you do at the beginning and afterwards.

C: In the first one two years people have to show that they are good, they want to show their best face, so you are working all the time with this; you work in the process ,so they can start to touch each others. “At the beginning they say I am special, do not touch me, do not get closer to me”: there is a lot of shame and fear as issues to work with.

the first two years are much much much more difficult than the following ones.

P: It doesn’t flow…

C:No…of course it does sometimes, but not too much. I had my first work with a third year [she used to train people of the 1st and second year], it is so easy, it just flow, there is intimacy. In this group we spoke about life and wishes about kids or not; I was so touched. We have been with tears in our eyes all the time. I asked myself “why do I always do the first years!” [laughs].

L: I remember a time when you told us in the training group you told us “you make me feel like a teacher”

C:I was your teacher! We learn from our teachers, from our parents. We learn how to behave, we want people to like us. Some people obviously also say “I don’t do what my parents want!”. They are very busy saying no, no, no.

PG: So, the first two years is like that. And then…

C:After all this work on these dynamics, then people take the risk of making some experience on their own, experiencing themselves and the others. That’s a risk, becoming curious of yourself, in the group. That’s exciting! And scary! An they work on excitement,shame and fear. Trainees can start to look a what they feel fear for, what’s so terrible. I like gestalt because its working with the here and now, it’s not just looking at what the parents have done to me. Of course your parents are important! But we always come back to the here and now; what is happening now, here between us.

like the holism, body-soul-mind are intertwined. In the last few years science are proving that we are right. It’s the whole of you that is at work, all the time. Stuff comes out from your voice, or from your feeling, or from your words. So natural sciences are saying that what we do is true [laughs loudly]. But the academic world, at least in Germany, doesn’t acknowledge gestalt therapy. We do not do enough research…

L: Christine, I would like to ask something about Ischa.

When I was training with Ischa my English was so, so. I spoke some English, but I made mistakes.

We Germans are terrible! We tend to find out very quickly what is right or what is wrong: there is a good part of this and a bad part of course! I started to say something and I made a mistake, immediately a colleague corrected me.Ischa said: “what is that?! Go on say what you want to say”. He let me speak and then repeated what I said word by word, literally. “You [Germans] were probably taught by showing what your mistakes you make”. “That’s interesting” I said, “it touched me”. Germans, English and Americans are taught in a certain way, that shows in groups.

L: Tell us more about Ischa, his training groups

There were times he supported men, times when he supported women. This changed in time. I was lucky I met him when he was supporting women!! He was not easy, very intelligent, but difficult for a lot of people. And Ischa could be very confrontative without shouting or making a fuss.

My first confrontation, and connection with him, was about not being seen. He did not see me. He ignored what I was saying for more than one day, he simply ignored me. Totally. It came up that it was the first of time in my life I had a good experience around that.

This behavior in groups is finished, I don’t like people who do that now, in our times.

It was my first experience of being ignored like this. When I was young I was “not a ugly one”, I attracted a lot of interested, people looked at me. I was easy to get in contact with. Ischa ignored me, that never happened to me,and saw me. I went to Tuscany to meet him, he was an important trainer for me, and here he was ignoring me! He ignored me on purpose, he wanted me to have the experience of being a “normal person”, how it feels being those people who are not recognized, I had never had that feeling in my life. It was an interesting experience, and I have learnt from it, not an easy one.

Our dialogue with Christine is not finished. We want to go further, ask more questions in the near future. We invite the readers of this interview to send us their reflections and more questions.