Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 12:21:03 -0800
From: Gwynne S Mayer <GWYNNE_DEVA@prodigy.net>
Newsgroups: alt.astrology.metapsych, alt.psychology.jung,
talk.religion.newage
Subject: Gestalt and Fitting ONE throught an hourglass
Suggestions for helping and counseling others:
In the event you are called upon to help another or counsel with
another, here are some quick Gestalt tips...these will be hard to
understand unless you have a grasp on Gestalt terminology.
(When you know where you are, only then will you have
a chance to separate your projections from your awareness
of the other....and be able to getinto their space)
From: Gwynne S Mayer
<GWYNNE_DEVA@prodigy.net>
Newsgroups: alt.astrology.metapsych, alt.psychology.jung,
talk.religion.newage
Subject: Gestalt the Wild Pendulum
An individual must learn to balance and adjust to fitting
his/her boundaries into a socially acceptable gestalt. Many
disturbances in individuals arise from the inability to find and
maintain the proper balance between self and the rest of the
world, boundaries are the way in which discernment is allowed to
protect him/her against the threat of being overcrowded with
unnecessary stimulation from the rest of the world.
We have a great need to form these boundaries and a structure,
which a chart can facilitate. The ascendant/ Saturn/Mercury/Mars/
Sun can play a part in determining boundaries in an individual,
as can all the other planets. Again, it is necessary to
have insight in HOW we can retain those boundaries, but also it
is very important to see some of the defense mechanisms we use,
and how they apply to our astrological charts.
Introjections are undigested attitudes, ways of
acting, feeling and evaluating, that we swallowed whole, usually
from our primary caretakers, however anyone who was a main
character in our early lives would be a person to whom we looked
as a "rule giver". Introjects are undiscerned
pieces of the whole which we never analysed before we took
them into our psychological system; they often form the SHOULDS
and OUGHT TO's in our make-up. To be REAL and in touch with
our own integrity and morality we must digest and master what is
truly our own, truly a part of the personality. Bit if we
simply accept these rules and beliefs whole-hog and uncritically,
on someone else's say so, or because they are fashionable or safe
or traditional or unfashionable or dangerous or
revolutionary---they lie heavily on us---INTROJECTS BECOME
UNDIGESTED...They are still foreign bodies even though they may
have taken up residence in our minds. Many times, one can
see blocks of energy around the stomach area (unusual protection
of the undigested material).
In astrology, we can look at the Moon/Saturn axis as being an
introjected set of belief systems, the signs they are in and the
nature of the signs, planets, and houses, in order to get a
scenario about possible introjected beliefs. This can also
be observed in 4th/10th house placements, the fourth being more
difficult to discern as it is in the lower hemisphere and is
often kept on a subjective level.
The dangers of introjection are two fold; first of all, the man
who introjects never gets a chance to develop his own
personality, because he is so busy holding down the foreign
bodies he has swallowed whole. The more introjects he has
saddled himself with, the less room there is for him to express
or even discover what he himself is..(Sun/ Ascendant) And
in the second place, introjection contributes concepts, you may
find yourself torn to bits in the process of trying to reconcile
them. And this is a fairly common experience today.
We end up incorporating into ourselves standards, attitudes, ways
of acting and thinking, possibly coming from MOTHER AND FATHER,
which are NOT TRULY OURS. Introjection moves the boundary
between ourselves and the rest of the world so far inside
ourselves that there is almost nothing of us left.
An important note, when there is no Saturnian figure in the
family, I have noticed that individual's will develop a Spiritual
side to introject, that is often more damaging, because of the
illusions, or delusions it creates. This might be noticed
by a placement in Neptune in the 4th house or sometimes Neptune
in the 10th. There are many different ways one can look at
this, as an astrologer, remembering that they are unconscious
belief systems. I look at clients whose languaging
reflects many shoulds, trying to get permission, etc. or
one who is very angry and does not have anyway of expressing that
anger, so it lies in the stomach area. Women introject many
shoulds around HOW YOU ARE SUPPOSE TO BE A MOTHER....SHOULD,
SHOULD,..until they have had all they can take and develop a
physical ailment in the female parts of the body, breasts,
uterus, etc. The extrication of these introjects and the
examining and discernment process need to take place in order for
healing to occur. Identifying the Shoulds, and Ought to
Be's in our lives is one great step to solving the extrication.
Boundaries are very diffused when we are
confluent, as confluence indicates that the individual feels no
boundary at all between himself and his environment, when he
feels that he and it are one...he is in CONFLUENCE...Parts and
whole are indistinguishable from one another.....The person in
whom confluence is a severe state cannot tell what he is or feels
and cannot tell what other people are or feel....He feels all of
the feelings and all of the emotions and identity, without
boundaries. As he is unaware of the boundary between
himself and others, he cannot make good contact with them.
Nor can he withdraw from them. Indeed, he cannot even make
contact with himself....This has serious social consequences
too. In confluence, ONE DEMANDS LIKENESS AND REFUSES TO
TOLERATE ANY DIFFERENCES.
We find this in parents whose children become merely extensions
of themselves. Such parents lack the appreciation that
their children are bound to be unlike them in at least some
respects. Grammatically, you can pick up confluence to a
degree, by the person's over usage of the word "we",
speaking for all instead of speaking for SELF. When one is
counseling or listening to another, often there are tears on both
sides...or even when tears flow, it is a state of
confluence. Confluence is necessary for a counselor to feel
compassion, but also the counselor must have the ability to
attatch. The healer can feel and see into the body...but,
must become removed from the body to objectify the knowledge..and
do what is necessary to heal...
Neptune is the culprit in Confluence...a postive/negative
influence..diffusing of boundaries...when Neptune is on the
Ascendant, Neptune conjunct the Sun, Moon...wherever Neptune is
there is a struggle for some clarity for the house or
planet....The person could become Neptune in his/her dialogues
and find the source of the spiritual guidance on a personal
level...for that particular area. I have seen this operate
in synastry when one has Neptune on the other's ascendant, Sun or
Moon....
Reverse of introjection. As introjection is the tendency to
make the self responsible for what actually is part of the
environment, so projection is the tendency to make the
environment responsible for what originates in the
self. Clinically, we recognize that the disease of
paranoia, which is characterized by the development of highly
organized system of delusions, is the extreme case of
projection.....that is not what we are talking about..here...this
is the projections of which we are all guilty, like the highly
aggressive personality who, unable to bear the responsibility for
his own wishes, feelings, and desires, attaches them to objects
or people in the environment who will hold the projection and fit
the pattern beautifully. A person who feels he is being
persecuted unfairly, in fact may be making the statement that he
would like to persecute others.
That which you have tremendous energy to unload on others, is
often very true of SELF....In projection, then, we shift the
BOUNDARY between ourselves and the rest of the world a little too
much in our own favor---in a manner that makes it possible for us
to disavow and disown those aspects of our personalities which we
find difficult or offensive or unattractive. And this is
very important....IT IS OUR INTROJECTS THAT LEAD US TO THE
FEELINGS OF SELF-CONTEMPT AND SELF-ALIENATION THAT PRODUCE
PROJECION. The over-wary, over-cautious person, who
tells you he wants friends and wants to be loved, but who tells
you at the same time that "you can't trust anyone, they're
all out for what they can get," is a projector par
excellence.
Projection is an expressive function and has the flavor of
first/seventh house axis. People who are projective most
always have a predominant Mars, Aries, Libra, ....much of the
energy is squared to Saturn, Uranus, Pluto.....again, this is not
set in stone...When working with people listen to how many times
they talk ABOUT someone else, either positive or negative,
(positive projections are as important to OWN, as are negative
ones), they will use You...much of the time, second person in
their verbalizations.
GOSSIP is something that Fritz Perls never allowed in the Gestalt
Community...as it was about someone to someone else..instead of
face to face, projections run rampant in gossip. There are
several signs that are noted for participating in gossip and will
often disown their projections, Gemini, Sagittarius and Virgo
have a tendency to talk ABOUT..rather than first person and
directly to the person on whom the projection falls.
Gestalt work is a very hard-nosed therapy, but, it really
stresses HONESTY WITH SELF. If we clean up our own psychology,
then, it makes the world a better and more ethical place to be,
because we are essentially not going around messing on other
people with our projections. Ask yourself before you are
making a judgment of another, are you sure that it is not YOU,
THAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT?
The last of the Gestalt defense mechanisms...we use to set
boundaries... Retroflection, literally means "turning back
sharply against." The retroflector knows how to draw a
boundary line between himself and the environment, and he
draws a neat and clean one right down the middle--but he draws it
down the middle of himself. THE INTROJECTOR DOES AS OTHERS
WOULD LIKE HIM TO DO, THE PROJECTOR DOES UNTO OTHERS WHAT HE
ACCUSES THEM OF DOING TO HIM, THE CONFLUENT PERSON DOESN'T KNOW
WHO IS DOING WHAT TO WHOM, AND THE RETROFLECTOR DOES TO HIMSELF
WHAT HE WOULD LIKE TO DO TO OTHERS.
When a person retroflects behavior, he treats himself as he
originally wanted to treat other persons or objects. He
stops directing his energies outward in attempts to manipulate
and bring about changes in the environment that will satisfy his
needs; instead, he redirects his activity inwards and substitutes
himself in place of the environment as the target for behavior.
To the extent that he does this, he splits his personality into
doer and done to. He literally becomes his own worse
energy.
Again the grammatical usage
of the client can reveal which of the processes is working at any
given moment...As introjection displays itself in the use of the
pronoun "I" when the real meaning is "they;"
as projection displays itself in the use of the pronouns,
"you", "it", or "they," when
the real meaning is "I" as confluence displays
itself in the use of the pronount "we" when the real
meaning is in question; so retroflection displays itself in
the use of the reflective, "myself"...The retroflector
says, "I am ashamed of myself," or "I have to
force myself to do this job." He makes an almost endless
series of statements of this sort, all of them based on the
surprising conception that he and himself are two different
people. Astrological formations which indicate retroflection, but
not always, are Mars/Saturn, Mars/Uranus, Mars/Pluto,
Mars/Neptune...and Mars/Mercury conflicts...Another area is to
look closely at bodily retroflections which occur...this can be
seen in the above, or 6th, 12th, and ascendant influences.
I will go into greater depth on how to read the body and look at
the significators, as I go on with this strand.....