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Polster: Oh, I don't know where to begin on that.
Wyatt: What first sparked your interest in psychology itself?
Polster:
ErvingPolsterI started college as journalism major. I had no thought of psychology but several things led me there. In high school I was a doorman in a movie theater in a very tough neighborhood in Cleveland. I came from a very lower middle class neighborhood, but there was no crime, and it was scandalous to do anything against the law. These kids at the theater were juvenile delinquents, yet they were terrific kids; I just really enjoyed them, and they enjoyed me, and we had a good time together. I got this sense of how different people actually are from what we might think they are. Later, I took a course in juvenile delinquency in the sociology department as a sophomore and really liked it. I realize now that the course in juvenile delinquency tapped into that same quality of how people may be different than they appear. I switched my major from journalism to sociology. I took a course in personality theory with Calvin Hall and he just flipped me over with his ideas, particularly his views of psychoanalysis, and the incredible power of the inner experience. I then went to graduate school in Hall's psychology department... so that's how I got into psychology.
Wyatt: What then stirred your interest in Gestalt, what drew you in?
Polster: In graduate school, I was psychoanalytically oriented as was the department and Calvin Hall. As a matter of fact I wrote my dissertation on ego functioning in dreams, which was previously said to be only for super-ego and id. I got involved with a workshop with parolees in New York, and it was really eye-opening about what you can do in therapy without being the distant intellectualizer pedantic. It showed me how to get down to the basics, to the raw experience that people have. And it also introduced being open in a group. These groups were very early in the game, I'm talking about 1953, and it was long before the encounter movement was in full swing in the sixties. It was a very eye-opening group experience, hearing people's internal experience, which was unheard-of in those days, except in very intimate situations.
Wyatt: What was your initial reaction to that?
In fact, I think when I started doing psychotherapy, I sat behind a desk. Coming out from behind that desk was a big change, metaphorically and literally.
Polster: Oh, I was spellbound by the possibilities of human experience. And it happened very quickly too, because the leader was very skilled in knowing where to go. There was one patient that I'd worked with before I got involved in Gestalt therapy. He was still working with me and our worked had changed, so I asked him, "What seems different in being here?" And he said "It's not so lonely anymore." And that was really a very eye-opening feeling as well, about the importance of the connectedness between the therapist and the patient, which was then quite rare. In fact, I think when I started doing psychotherapy, I sat behind a desk. Coming out from behind that desk was a big change, metaphorically and literally.
Yalom: Was there some loneliness for you though in abandoning the bastion of psychoanalysis, and doing this on your own?
Polster: It wasn't lonely because I was joined with a group of people. I loved being with those people and so, no, quite the contrary, it expanded my community, rather than subtracting from it.
An Interview with ErvingPolster, PhD
Psychotherapist Extraordinaire
By Randall C.Wyatt, PhD and Victor Yalom, PhD
Sections in this interview:
Learning from Perls
The Contact Boundary in Therapy
What were you guys doing in the sixties?
Insight and Awareness
Punctuating Client Experience in Therapy
Beyond Technique-Driven Therapy
Wise Words for Therapists
Religion, Psychotherapy and Community
About ErvingPolster
The Interview
Yalom: We could get started by asking how you got involved in this business of psychotherapy, many years ago.Polster: Oh, I don't know where to begin on that.
Wyatt: What first sparked your interest in psychology itself?
Polster:
ErvingPolsterI started college as journalism major. I had no thought of psychology but several things led me there. In high school I was a doorman in a movie theater in a very tough neighborhood in Cleveland. I came from a very lower middle class neighborhood, but there was no crime, and it was scandalous to do anything against the law. These kids at the theater were juvenile delinquents, yet they were terrific kids; I just really enjoyed them, and they enjoyed me, and we had a good time together. I got this sense of how different people actually are from what we might think they are. Later, I took a course in juvenile delinquency in the sociology department as a sophomore and really liked it. I realize now that the course in juvenile delinquency tapped into that same quality of how people may be different than they appear. I switched my major from journalism to sociology. I took a course in personality theory with Calvin Hall and he just flipped me over with his ideas, particularly his views of psychoanalysis, and the incredible power of the inner experience. I then went to graduate school in Hall's psychology department... so that's how I got into psychology.
Wyatt: What then stirred your interest in Gestalt, what drew you in?
Polster: In graduate school, I was psychoanalytically oriented as was the department and Calvin Hall. As a matter of fact I wrote my dissertation on ego functioning in dreams, which was previously said to be only for super-ego and id. I got involved with a workshop with parolees in New York, and it was really eye-opening about what you can do in therapy without being the distant intellectualizer pedantic. It showed me how to get down to the basics, to the raw experience that people have. And it also introduced being open in a group. These groups were very early in the game, I'm talking about 1953, and it was long before the encounter movement was in full swing in the sixties. It was a very eye-opening group experience, hearing people's internal experience, which was unheard-of in those days, except in very intimate situations.
Wyatt: What was your initial reaction to that?
In fact, I think when I started doing psychotherapy, I sat behind a desk. Coming out from behind that desk was a big change, metaphorically and literally.
Polster: Oh, I was spellbound by the possibilities of human experience. And it happened very quickly too, because the leader was very skilled in knowing where to go. There was one patient that I'd worked with before I got involved in Gestalt therapy. He was still working with me and our worked had changed, so I asked him, "What seems different in being here?" And he said "It's not so lonely anymore." And that was really a very eye-opening feeling as well, about the importance of the connectedness between the therapist and the patient, which was then quite rare. In fact, I think when I started doing psychotherapy, I sat behind a desk. Coming out from behind that desk was a big change, metaphorically and literally.
Yalom: Was there some loneliness for you though in abandoning the bastion of psychoanalysis, and doing this on your own?
Polster: It wasn't lonely because I was joined with a group of people. I loved being with those people and so, no, quite the contrary, it expanded my community, rather than subtracting from it.