Working With Polarities / Gestalt Dialogue / Two-Chair' Work

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Working with Polarities / Gestalt Dialogue / ‘Two-chair’ work
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Working with Polarities / Gestalt Dialogue /
‘Two - chair’ work
by Michael Soth (michael@soth.co.uk)
1
Introduction
The technique of ‘dialogue’ (as famously used by Fritz Perls in his televised ‘hot seat’ demonstrations at Esalen,
sometimes also called ‘empty chair’ or ‘two-chair’ technique) has been taken up by a wide variety of other,
usually humanistically-oriented, therapeutic approaches2, and is often used without knowledge of its origin in
Gestalt. In writing this paper, I would like to support the use and the spread of the technique throughout the
various approaches, as I believe in certain situations it has great potential3. If used wisely, the technique can
contribute to making the therapeutic process more effective, direct and profound, and it can enliven the work in
situations where the client’s agenda has narrowed the therapeutic space.
Although it has been seen as antithetical to psychoanalytic thinking (as it is a directive, non-interpretative
technique), I even hope to show that - by the therapist being firmly grounded in an awareness of transference
and countertransference - it may occasionally be possible, allowable and positively useful to integrate it into a
psychodynamic way of working4. In principle, therefore, I am supporting the existing and continuing spread of
the technique from Gestalt into other approaches.
However, the process of picking any technique out of its embeddedness in the paradigm from within which it
originated, inevitably engenders difficulties and inconsistencies: I think the technique is best understood in the
conceptual context in which it first developed, and throughout this article I will therefore make reference to
standard terms of Gestalt theory.
In addition to presenting a ‘hands-on’ introduction to the technique (in the second part of the paper), I am here
trying to address some of the recurrent complications which arise in practice, even when used within Gestalt’s
own paradigm. I think that some of these difficulties are best elucidated by making reference to the jargon of
other approaches, so I will be presenting an integrative mixture of different therapeutic languages5. At times this
approach (which compares and juxtaposes the different therapeutic paradigms in order to bring out their
contrasts and their complementarities) makes this paper somewhat repetitive as I am trying to cater for a variety
of theoretical perspectives - I have not found an easy way around that.
Four recurrent complications
Although it is now a widely known and used ‘tool of the trade’, the ‘two-chair’ technique can present difficulties
for the practitioner. Having experimented with it, therapists often report in supervision that “it went wrong”, “it
went flat” or “it did not work”. It is not uncommon for therapists to become wary of suggesting the technique or
to be put off trying to use it again. This, I think, can be a shame and may be unnecessary. In supervision I have
found that therapists’ struggles with the technique can be grouped into four main areas:
• dialogue as a mental procedure rather than a spontaneous and relational body/mind process
• dialogue ‘going flat’ through switching of polarities
• dialogue ‘going flat’ through mixing of polarities
• dialogue ‘going flat’ through shifting into client-therapist relationship (via meta-level discussion or enactment)
Overview and outline of this paper
In this paper I am aiming to pursue two objectives:
1) I am slowly working my way towards a set of ‘instructions’ for practitioners, the ‘recipe book’ of ‘Gestalt
dialogue and 2-chair work’ - a set of practical, nitty-gritty, sequential steps to attend to, which follow the
therapist’s internal process from perceiving the dialogue, to setting it up, directing it and - should this happen -
coming to some conclusion.
2) But these ‘instructions’ may be useless, or even counterproductive, unless they are embedded in an
understanding of the bodymind aspects and transferential implications of the technique. The four problem areas
identified above regularly lead to complications in what can otherwise appear to be a fairly straightforward and
simple technique. It is only in the context of understanding how these complications - in some ways: necessarily
- arise, that we can formulate the ‘instructions’ in a way which does not just re-churn and exacerbate the inherent
pitfalls for the therapist.
In my experience the combination of addressing both the underlying complications and the practical detail can
make a lot of difference to practitioners’ confidence in using the technique to its full potential.
I will, therefore, start with a discussion of the kind of situations in which a therapist might usefully consider
using the technique. After establishing the technique’s underlying principles and rationale, I will mention some
of its counter-therapeutic uses and effects, before attempting to address more comprehensively the four
underlying problem areas mentioned above. The second, more practical, part of the paper will then consist of an
outline of sequential steps, where I will try to be as specific as possible in giving procedural hints and
‘instructions’.
© 1995 - Michael Soth – ‘Two-chair’ work / Gestalt Dialogue - Page 1

My experience tells me that nothing is more dangerous to the therapeutic process than the therapist trying to
approximate some idealised notion of ‘how it should be done’. I take it for granted, therefore, that these
‘instructions’ are primarily understood as pointers for the therapist’s awareness: what are the essential dynamics
and vicissitudes to pay attention to in suggesting and facilitating the technique ?
Throughout the paper, some basic principles are assumed and implied, and it may be useful to spell these out to
begin with:
all kinds of relationships
As we proceed, I will be repeating that we are talking about all kinds of relationships both inter-personal and intra-
psychic. That includes current or past external relationships with family members, partners, friends or work
colleagues. It also includes internal relationships: between different aspects of the client’s inner experience,
including images from dreams and fantasies, sub-personalities, habitual patterns and ‘personality traits’,
masculine and feminine aspects, parts of the body, ‘parent’ or ‘adult’ versus ‘child’ modes, etc.
relationship dynamic as process rather than content
It is one of the strengths of the technique that it helps us attend to the relationship dynamic as process, regardless
of the specific verbal content or the specific polarities involved. Getting in touch with that process depends to
some extent on the therapist’s capacity to apprehend the 93% of communication which are non-verbal, i.e.
postures, gestures, tensions, held feelings, facial expression, breathing, eye movements, autonomic nervous
system reactions (ANS - sympathetic and parasympathetic), voice tone and speed, etc.
Ideally the therapist is able to take in all of these non-verbal messages and to extract the most significant ones, in
addition to the verbal content of the interaction. Working with dialogue is only possible from an implicitly
holistic bodymind perception of process. Making use of the myriad of messages and impressions which are part
of every second of human interaction is - as Gestalt puts it - a question of attending to ‘how’ as well as ‘what’
and ‘why’.
‘parallel process’
Once we are distinguishing between ‘content’ and ‘process’, and are investigating the nature of ‘process’
through immersing ourselves in it as a relational bodymind phenomenon, we eventually discover another
important principle: ‘parallel process’. We find that - regardless of specific content - different relationships can
follow the same pattern of interaction: they involve the same stances or relational positions, the dynamic
between the positions is similar, the ‘process’ has the same structure. In this case the ‘process’ in one relationship
can be said to parallel the ‘process’ in another6.
“I relate to others as I relate to myself.”
I will keep building up and expanding the concept of ‘parallel process’ throughout this paper7; for now I would
like to focus on one particular manifestation of it: the parallel between inner and outer relationships.
If, for example, I judge myself harshly, or set myself perfectionist standards, phenomenological observation
shows that I will have a tendency to do the same thing in relation to others: at crucial points in our interaction, I
am likely to do the same thing to you, or conversely I am likely to expect you to be doing the same thing to me.
There is a parallel between my internal relationship to myself and my outer relationships (which can be said to
be enactments of that inner relationship, and vice versa).8
In Gestalt we summarise this in the simple statement: “I relate to others as I relate to myself.” 9
In what kind of situations may the technique be useful ? (indications and rationale)
Dialogue (two-chair work) is a useful technique for working experientially with those issues and conflicts which
are part of the client’s presenting problem(s). It provides a direct and effective avenue into the emotional reality
of those relationships which clients themselves report as problematic. It allows the therapist to meet the client
‘where they are’, addressing the issues the client most wants to talk about, without getting drawn into or lost in
fruitless, repetitive ‘talking about’10. It is one simple way of inviting the client beyond their ‘verbal routines’ into
immediate ‘here & now’ felt and lived experience.
In effect, it says to the client: “let’s take this difficult relationship which you are engaged in (and have been
talking about) and experiment with it right here: let’s experience it, let’s explore it and try and get some
purchase on it, if not resolve it, by making it come alive ‘here & now’.”
The idea of ‘dialogue’ will occur to the therapist if and when two polarities are constellated (in the client’s
story and/or their experience). The therapist intuits or perceives that these two polarities are co-existing with
some degree of tension or conflict between them, and that this conflict is not being addressed directly,
explicitly or ‘fully’.

Example 1:
Let us take as an example David who at age 23 had to decide on a course of study, after already delaying the
decision for two years. He wanted to study law, following his father’s admonitions, but could not bring himself
to give up on his training as a ballet dancer. David was used to reflecting on this in purely mental terms,
weighing up the respective pro’s and con’s as a life choice between two equally feasible avenues, each with
different rewards and dangers. His therapist could plainly see that these two avenues reflected and catered for
two different aspects of David’s being which were in constant conflict, and not just regarding his vocation. They
were contradictory polarities present in every moment of his life, offering him access to contradictory feelings
and responses: a practical, pragmatic, rule-bound and extrovert sensibility on the one hand, and a musical,
lyrical, somewhat dreamy and isolated, but feelingful identity on the other. Although ballet practice can
undoubtedly be structured and precise and require enormous discipline, for David it had a sensitive, introverted
connotation, corresponding to the internal state which the practice transported him into.
The most painful aspect of his conflict, between the extrovert conformist lawyer and the introvert, sensitive
loner, transparent to his therapist after the first half an hour, was that he could not ever experience the potential
gifts and blessings of either side because they were in constant conflict. Any movement on David’s part towards
either side, any train of thought following and expanding either side was predictably and systematically
interrupted and aborted after a short while by the other polarity. Neither polarity had a good word to say about
the other, each seeing and describing the other in the most denigratory terms.
Therapists in all kinds of approaches will recognise this phenomenon, and have their particular ways of working
with it. One might, for example, interpret that David’s two choices reflected two internal polarities both of which
were based on respective identifications with his parents. Because David had abruptly left home and was
determined to make his own way in life, beyond the influence of his parents, he would have experienced this
suggestion as negative and reductive at this point. His therapist, therefore, concluded that by allowing him to
explore the dialogue between those two polarities on his own terms, an insight amounting to the above
interpretation might emerge spontaneously from his own exploration, as long as he could be helped to have that
exploration experientially rather than exclusively mentally.
Example 2:
Or let us take, as a second example, Ruth, an assertive, successful, independent financial advisor in her 40’s who
came to therapy after repeating the same pattern of initiating, establishing and then ending relationships with
men more times than she could - or dared to - count. Having selected and pursued the ‘man of her dreams’, she
inevitably found that - once she had ‘got’ him - he was ‘weak’ and ‘below par’. Her therapist had no difficulty in
noticing that the man’s feelings of need and longing, which so strongly elicited her contempt, represented a part
of her which she was continuously at war with - in herself. She had no awareness that she talked about the
discarded man in the same terms (“pathetic”) in which she described herself when left feeling lonely and
despondent in her luxurious flat. However, such depressive episodes were brief because invariably she would
pull herself out of these “down states” by launching herself into the next adventure of pursuit and conquest.
Having noticed the conflict between an independent, assertive, pro-active person and a vulnerable, dependent,
shy polarity, the therapist, again, has a variety of options. The therapist is already aware that - apart from being
acted out externally with the lover - this conflict is also an internal relationship within Ruth as well as manifesting
‘here and now’ in the transference (through Ruth’s loud and fast ‘shotgun’ manner of talking which leaves the
therapist feeling rather quiet and vulnerable).
All three avenues appear equally valid, and each could be explored through the technique of dialogue or
through other techniques. However, fitting in with her style and business experience, Ruth has demanded a
time-limited, “efficient”, structured therapy with a “pro-active” therapist who works experientially rather than
wasting time on “endless talking which I can do with my girlfriends”. In response to this, the therapist decides
to take as her starting point the manifestation of the conflict between Ruth and her last lover, and sets this up as
a dialogue which Ruth is keen to engage in.11
On what grounds does the therapist select this particular avenue? If this technique is unfamiliar or even opposed
to your established way of working, you will have a variety of other techniques readily available. If all roads
lead to Rome, it does not matter which one we choose. I will argue that in some situations there are certain
advantages to this particular avenue, which hopefully will become clearer as we proceed. Whatever intervention
we choose, it ideally addresses the relational bodymind complexity of the situation which is indicated by the
following questions:
How is it possible for David to remain unaware of the fact that he is not just involved in a strategy operation
called life, but that there is an emotional war going on inside him ? This war may later turn out to be a
continuation of the mutually undermining battle of attrition between his parents’ conflicting identities. How
can he keep oscillating mentally from one to the other without noticing the inherent denigration?
How is it possible for Ruth to remain unaware that she is projecting into the man an unwanted aspect of
herself ? How can she switch between these polarities within seconds, with her whole demeanour and
expression changing from loud and imposing to tearful and whining, without really becoming aware of
either, let alone the rubber-band relationship between them ?

I will need to describe the dynamics of such repetitive patterns of polarisation in some detail, but for now I want
to draw out a particular surface feature: in both examples, the tension inherent in the polarisation continues to
remain unresolved as long as the two polarities are considered separate, unrelated entities, choices, or alternate
internal states. The client may be able to describe both polarities accurately and elegantly, but the fact that they
are continuously engaged in a mutually aggravating relationship (‘it takes two to tango!’) can escape awareness.
The statements of either polarity are seen as isolated positions, rather than communications to each other. So
although the ongoing fight between the polarities is real, aggravating and usually painful, as long as they are
both treated in isolation, there is also a pattern of habitual restriction in the communication which aborts some
form of fuller and deeper contact between them. Whether the two polarities are vaguely intuited or clearly
established, what goes on in their interaction is both a form of communication and a simultaneous lack of
communication between them.
This is the essential feature of the kind of situation in which the idea of ‘two-chair work’ will arise in the
therapist's mind. It generates the sense or intuition in the therapist that if these two relatively dissociated,
disconnected and uncommunicative polarities could begin to relate to each other more ‘completely’, something
significant would be likely to happen. The therapist perceives that there is a potentially vibrant and often
‘necessary’ dialogue to be had which is currently not happening, or at least not ‘fully’. In simple terms, the
therapist gets the sense: “These two guys need to talk to each other!”
Let me summarise that - to begin with - the idea of dialogue arises when the therapist ...
a) ... perceives an unresolved and unexplored polarisation (two polarities in ongoing conflict, but with
restricted communication between them)
b) ... perceives a degree of urgency or potential (or as I like to call it: ‘charge’) contained in a possible
dialogue between these polarities,
c) ... has a perception that this ‘charge’ is manageable and ‘ripe’ to be explored (judging by how explicit or
implicit this charge is and by how aware or unaware the client is of it, i.e. the ego’s stance towards it)12
The therapist’s agenda - a warning and a clarification
The therapist may, of course, also ...
d) ... have a fantasy that it would be useful for the client to make the polarisation inherent in the conflict more
explicit (i.e. by addressing the hitherto implicit, avoided and un-addressed aspects of the communication). In
simple terms, the therapist decides that the restriction in the communication should be overcome: “These two
guys need to do some uncomfortable truth-telling!”
However, it is one thing to recognise that a restriction in communication is in place, and another thing to assume
that it would be best for that restriction to be lifted. If the inherent polarisation is habitually unresolved,
unaddressed or hidden, then making it explicit is bound to make a difference - this much the therapist is entitled
to assume. But many therapists go beyond that and assume that making it explicit is necessarily a ‘good thing’
and use the technique to change a restricted dialogue into a fully expressed dialogue. But if that were so
obvious, why is it habitually being restricted in the first place?
As soon as it arises in the therapist’s mind, the notion of the dialogue happening ‘fully’, can of course become an
agenda on the therapist’s part. It is a common assumption that if a therapist perceives a potential for
transformation, it is therefore immediately and necessarily the therapist’s responsibility to encourage and bring
it about. This assumption arises from an understandable ‘common sense’ construction of the therapist’s role, i.e.
that it is their task to ‘help’ the client towards a ‘better’ place. In practice, however, it is an assumption which
gets therapists into all kinds of trouble. Although this is well-recognised in some quarters, I feel it’s worth
making a point of questioning this assumption right at the outset: even though there may be no doubt in the
therapist’s mind that the full expression of the intuited potential dialogue would be a healthy, productive and
worthwhile experience for the client, I am not at all suggesting that the therapist therefore automatically takes it
upon themselves to bring about or ‘achieve’ the acting out of this ‘full’ dialogue on cushions or chairs13. I do not
think of it as the therapist’s job to enlist the client’s co-operation in performing the technique of dialogue in
pursuit of any kind of transformation. If the dialogue does not happen spontaneously, or at least not ‘fully’, it is
just as valid for the therapist to wonder how come it doesn’t: what is the process or mechanism by which
vibrancy gets aborted, again and again ?
In simple terms: I am not using the technique to ‘make’ the client be more vibrant, expressive, alive (even if both
of us may agree that it would be a worthwhile outcome) - I will expand on this point later. For now let us note: it
is possible to use the technique without being possessed by a bias towards the full dialogue (i.e. towards
expression, being explicit, “telling it as it is” in the name of ‘truth’ and ‘authenticity’).

The phenomenology of dialogue
There are many stories and films which spring from the relationship between two diverse or opposite characters
- who would otherwise never meet - being brought together through circumstance. After a phase of mutual
dislike and suspicion, they confront each other and their differences, maybe the fight and hate each other , but
by sticking with it ultimately they end up as friends, appreciating and supporting each other. The final phase of
such an encounter can engender a spontaneously enriching kind of contact, which only arises if the initial
differences, polarisations and confrontations have been survived.
Within the field of psychotherapy, an illustration of this kind of contact would be the relationship between
Breuer and Nietzsche in Irvin Yalom’s novel “When Nietzsche Wept”. In the story, the prototypical
psychotherapist and the existential philosopher facilitate each other’s process through complementing each
other in a mutually enriching exchange which generates greater self-awareness for both of them. We know from
Yalom’s other writings that these two characters represent two - sometimes conflicted and polarised - aspects of
the author himself, who feels passionate about both disciplines, but also struggles with the contradictions
between them. So in imagining and writing the story, Yalom has allowed these two parts to interact in a way
which brings out their fundamental questioning of each other: each presents a challenge to the other’s raison
d’etre. The end product of this dialogue is mutual respect and learning from each other.14
Vicious and virtuous circles in relationships and communication
This is a brilliant example of the ‘virtuous circle’ of dialogue, building deeper connection and engagement
through confronting and working through difference and polarisation (with their inherent projections and
prejudices). It can serve as a blueprint for approaching any kind of conflicted relationship or polarised
interaction, intra-psychic or interpersonal.
All of us also know countless examples of the ‘vicious circle’ in which relationships increasingly break down.
Both parties feel misunderstood and hurt by each other; attempts at communication seem to exacerbate the pain
and the differences. Repeated circles of blame and accusation build up layers of grievances, self-protection and
justification. Common sense may put this down to incompatibility, but psychologically we know that in these
kinds of situation projection is rife, with both parties projecting unwanted and unacknowledged aspects of
themselves into the other person. Perceptions of self and other become more polarised, and each party gets
increasingly entrenched in its position. The inherent polarisation escalates until the relationship breaks up
altogether, or in time both parties may learn how to avoid the thorny issues by resorting to a numb, dull,
habituated compromise.
‘Dialogue’, both generally and as a Gestalt technique, depends on the ever-present possibility to re-engender a
virtuous circle of interaction in a situation where both parties have resigned themselves to an habitual stand-off
which compromises aliveness for the sake of an apparent ceasefire and temporary survival.15 When every tiny
difference or conflict becomes an escalating mutual aggravation, it may be wiser for some time to not talk, or to
restrict the communication to what sometimes with couples I call ‘Geneva talks’. However, the role of a
facilitative third and hopefully neutral person always involves the hope that enough safety can be created so the
risk of a deeper re-engagement with the thorny polarising issues can be attempted, and ultimately the two
parties can find their way back to the virtuous circle of interaction.
Gestalt provides a framework for conceptualising these habitually dulled and diluted interactions (in their intra-
psychic and/or interpersonal manifestations) and describes them as ‘low-grade emergencies’. This terminology
implies that a sense or memory of an intense ‘high-grade emergency’ underlies and threatens the more
manageable ‘low-grade’ arrangement. The implicit ‘high-grade emergency’ is being kept at bay by a variety of
mechanisms - this provides some degree of protection16, but at the expense of a chronic tension and an
incapacity to be either fully relaxed or fully energised.17 The explicit aim of many Gestalt techniques and
experiments is to attend to the phenomenological detail of both the ‘low-grade’ and the ‘emergency’ aspects of
the situation, until the implicit ‘high-grade emergency’ is available in the foreground and can complete or re-
organise itself.18 Again, Gestalt is not aiming to simply bring about the ‘positive vibrant’ state and just make it
happen - it experiments with the tension between the established compromised pattern and the potential for a
more vibrant interaction.
Applying the above Gestalt notions of vibrancy versus dullness, we can distinguish different phases and stages
in a relationship process, according to the kind of contact between the two people or ‘parties’ involved. For our
purposes here, I think it is sufficient to differentiate three kinds of contact.19
Because in relationships we can often find a progression and deepening, from an initial creative engagement {1},
into an habitual and characteristically stuck pattern {2}, into acute ‘high-grade emergency’ conflict {3}, I have
numbered the three kinds of contact in that sequence. If the pain and polarisation inherent in {3} can be
contained, it often spontaneously transforms into a deeper version of {1}. That kind of developmental process
can be illustrated by the example given above (Yalom’s book on Nietzsche and Breuer) where the solidity of the
mutual enrichment is actually dependent not on some static version of {1}, but on the whole transformative
sequence ({1} to {2} to {3} and back to {1})20.

Three kinds of contact between the polarities
In the language of Gestalt psychology, any contact - between any two entities21 - can be a vibrant ‘Gestalt’22 - a
“well-formed”, dynamic and alive ‘whole’, which has an inherently meaningful quality about it.
Or - at the other extreme - the contact can have a dull, repetitive, habitually compromised flavour - this usually
coincides with a guarded and defensive, driven and ‘automatic’ quality.
In the therapist’s subjective perception, all moments of contact can be seen as situated somewhere along this
spectrum between ‘vibrant’ and ‘dull’.23 This is a phenomenological distinction, irrespective of the particular
content of the dialogue or the specific characteristics of the two people involved. It is a distinction in terms of
‘process’, more to do with the spontaneous, relational dynamic, the ‘atmosphere’ and ‘quality’ of contact
between the two polarities than with the specifics of the content (i.e. the verbal-mental aspects) of the exchange.
Following Perls’ terms, we call a dialogue ‘vibrant’ when it has an unmistakable spontaneous charge to it - this
vibrancy could either be a function of an harmonious, satisfying ‘positive’ contact {1}, or it could be the result of
an intensely conflicted ‘negative’ interaction {3} - in both cases (positive and negative), however, the therapist
will pick up the ‘charge’ and feel spontaneously engaged.
In the case of a dull, repetitive, habitually compromised dialogue {2}, the contact will have lost its spark and will
therefore acquire a turgid quality - the dialogue has gone ‘flat’.
So, generally speaking, we can - somewhat artificially - distinguish three kinds of contact between two polarities
in dialogue: two vibrant versions (one ‘positive’ and one ‘negative’, and an intermediate compromised, dull
version).
{1} spontaneously harmonious vibrant: creative, integrative, productive ‘positive’ contact (strong charge)
When the contact between the two polarities in dialogue is spontaneously vibrant, very little is needed in terms
of therapist intervention, technique or structure, as the contact (and the emerging Gestalt) is inherently creative
and dynamic of its own accord. The contact is experienced spontaneously, subjectively as positive, enriching and
satisfying, with an inherent sense of something shifting, a movement towards deeper integration. There is a
sense of some kind of transformation occurring, just by virtue of the continuing contact rather than through any
effort on anybody’s part. Balint evocatively calls this kind of contact a “harmonious, interpenetrating mix-up”24.
The early developmental blueprint for this would be the interaction between infant and ‘good-enough’ mother
when both are in a good mood: aliveness, mirroring and containment generate a spontaneous sense of
integration in the infant (and in the mother, too)25. For some clients the simple provision of the ‘core conditions’
of the therapeutic space (Carl Rogers' empathic, accepting, non-judgemental presence) constitutes such a novel
experience, contradicting their accumulated negative life experience, that they spontaneously experience contact
with the therapist in this way.26 Depending on how the dialogue is set up or unfolds, this kind of contact,
characterised by spontaneous interest, curiosity and engagement, can develop in the interaction between any
two partners, figures or polarities, internal or external. It is possible to be ‘enchanted’ (see Bettelheim, Abrams27)
by mindful attention to any being or aspect of reality. As another manifestation of this kind of contact, ‘being in
love’ needs to be mentioned. How mature and transformative this love actually is, depends on the degree to
which it then can include and embrace the other two kinds of contact.
{3} spontaneously negative vibrant: intensely conflicted contact (strong charge)
This contact accesses the immediate, raw and full experience of the underlying tension and conflict between the
polarities. It often involves the undiluted experiencing and maybe direct expression of usually long-held
negative affect - mistrust, disappointment, betrayal, grief, anger, rage.
The charge and the expression of intense negative feelings, usually beyond the threshold of the ‘familiar’ and
‘habitual’, allows us to classify this kind of contact as what Gestalt would call ‘high-grade emergency’28. While
there is nothing beneficial or virtuous in this potentially re-traumatising contact for its own sake, it often does
give access to both the roots of relational patterns and the spontaneous forces involved in pushing for and
against possible resolution. As long as some of these spontaneous forces remain avoided, untouched and
unconscious, the relationship between the polarities resembles ‘Geneva-peace talks’ at best: superficial and
deliberate attempts at compromise and negotiation - necessary maybe, but not promising lasting resolution.
Thus transformation of the underlying conflict between the polarities is usually aborted and short-circuited
before it can even properly arise. Often, the deeper dynamics can only become influential and visible once the
full polarisation has been experienced and sustained, contained and survived. In that sense, such ‘high-grade
emergency’ contact {3} can take the two polarities into the full experience of their polarisation, and is therefore
closer to transformation than the habitual, more protected and apparently ‘safer’ ‘low-grade emergency’ {2}29.
Many people are confused about - and essentially: afraid - of the raw experience of what they call
‘destructiveness’, and therefore steer away from this kind of contact. But there is a difference between
encouraging blind, repetitive hostility and a recognition that destruction is an inexorable aspect of
transformation: the two polarities do want to destroy - at the very least - the exclusivity and rigidity with which
their opponent holds on to their position. Without accessing and owning the destructive impulse and potential
at the root of the polarisation, we cannot expect spontaneous or lasting and sustainable transformation.

The inherent negativity in this kind of encounter may well appear ‘reactive’, but in order for us to classify it
here, it has to have an alive, contactful quality (rather than a practised, broken-record quality). Let us note that
the expression of strong negative affect can become addictive: although raw and intense feelings are then
expressed, they have a ‘racket’ quality of habitual, repetitive discharge - it is this habitual quality of the
expression which would put this kind of contact, however dramatic and alive it appears, into the next category.
{2} unspontaneous, ‘low-grade emergency’, dull, repetitive, habitual contact (charge diluted)
Gestalt meta-psychology postulates that ‘contact’ (including conflicted contact) is inherently interesting, vibrant
and full of potential. So if we have stumbled into a charged, significant, ‘juicy’ polarisation (as in our examples
David and Ruth above), and the contact between the polarities acquires a dull, un-engaging quality, the
immediate question is: “how come this kind of contact, in this situation, is not inherently vibrant?” And then we
can wonder: “what dynamics and mechanisms are in place to stop it becoming so?”
The recognition of rigidly self-protective, but inherently counter-productive, self-sabotaging and essentially life-
denying patterns is a common and fundamental one across many therapeutic approaches. Many - though by no
means all - approaches think about these patterns developmentally: what may once have been a necessary and
functional self-protective response (a temporary compromise or contraction), has now become an automatic,
chronic, habitual reaction. What may have been at some time in the past a fairly appropriate and maybe even
conscious and deliberate behaviour, has now ossified into a compromised habit or survival mechanism,
insensitive to the current environment, regardless of context. An acute ‘high-grade emergency’, intense and
unbearable, has been diluted and made manageable (at the cost of awareness, sensitivity, response-ability) and
turned into a continuous ‘low-grade emergency’.
In colloquial terms, therapists refer to this kind of contact by phrases such as: “there was no energy in it” or “the
dialogue went ‘flat’. A large part of what follows in this paper is trying to address in some detail …
a) the mechanisms which make the dialogue ‘go flat’, and
b) the respective dilemmas for the therapist engendered by it ‘going flat’.
Based on a detailed awareness of these mechanisms, I am trying to formulate a therapeutic position which will
enable us to work with the tension between ‘flatness’ and transformation rather than take sides for or against
either.
When we find this kind of contact {2}, either externally or internally, it often means we have a ‘topdog’ -
‘underdog’ interaction between the polarities (to be addressed in more detail below), with both of them fairly
locked into comfortable, routine exchanges with each other, with a definite sense of power differential, conflict
and pain, but no charge.
Three kinds of contact - Conclusion / Summary of rationale30
We can use the definition of the three kinds of contact to re-formulate and summarise the criteria for the kind of
situation in which the therapist may come to think of dialogue as a useful intervention: the idea of dialogue
arises when the therapist perceives a gap between the potential vibrancy of the dialogue and the actual
expression of it in the ‘here and now’. That means, by definition, the therapist perceives the explicit dialogue to
be {2}, and suggests the technique to give space to the tension between this and the - always implicit, but always
aborted - experience of {1} or {3}.31
Gestalt meta-psychology assumes that there is a natural, inherent tendency for the dialogue to be moving
towards full expression and resolution of the constellated polarised relationship. However, this natural tendency
may be habitually thwarted, blocked, diluted by a mechanism which clients themselves are not fully aware of.
The technique of dialogue usually only makes sense in a context where the therapist intuits that diluting
mechanism. The therapist recognises that the full and explicit polarisation constitutes a high-grade emergency
for the client, which the client is afraid of and trying to avoid.
The technique is designed to invite into full awareness the conflict between the opposing tendencies mentioned
above:
• one tendency works towards sorting, differentiating and polarising the two sides clearly, in order to bring
them into ‘full’ contact within the polarisation
• the other (habitually established) tendency is to constantly dilute that emerging polarisation.
These two tendencies are the essential conflict we are confronted with, and it is the tension between these two
tendencies which the therapist is both trying to hold and to explore through the technique.
In summary, to suggest the technique of dialogue invariably implies a challenge to the client, to the habitual
pattern by which they are spontaneously caught in avoiding the ‘real’ or ‘full’ dialogue. The implicit purpose
of the technique is to invite a step from an exclusive ‘talking about’-relationship into the experience of ‘here
& now’ relating. In line with Gestalt philosophy, this can turn a chronic ‘low-grade emergency’ into an acute
‘high-grade emergency’, by juxtaposing habitual rumination, translation and reflection with the more
immediate, explicitly holistic relational experience from which it arises. It is an invitation for the client to
stretch their awareness beyond their habitual limits, routines, patterns into an area which they themselves
know to be charged and symptomatic.

Possible counter-therapeutic effects of the technique
Like any technique, dialogue can have a counter-therapeutic effect32 or acquire a counter-productive function in
the therapeutic relationship. Here are just a few examples to illustrate this general point:
• as discussed earlier, suggesting the technique of ‘dialogue’ (with chairs, cushions or in any other shape or
form) implicitly communicates the therapist’s perception that the dialogue could be more vibrant, explicit,
engaging. The client easily perceives this as an agenda on the part of the therapist: because there is the subtle
implication that the client could be different, more ‘fully themselves’, the client jumps to the conclusion that
they ‘should’ be different, or the therapist is trying to ‘make them’ different. The client can then variously
interpret the suggestion as a task, a criticism, a put-down or dismissal.
• suggesting the technique of ‘dialogue’ is, of course, a directive intervention; as such it may threaten some
clients who only feel safe as long as the therapist merges and implicitly colludes with the client controlling
the session. Suggesting any technique implies a sufficiently separate position on the part of the therapist
from which first to have and then to formulate an ‘objectifying’ overview without which no truly ‘useful’,
‘deep’ intervention can be arrived at; it conveys a degree of separateness (and possibly ‘clinicalness’) which
may be experienced as distancing and hurtful. The suggestion may then be experienced as an abandonment,
a rupture of the bond, as an invasion or it may treated as a mere technique, as artificial and contrived, or
even a trick.
• as the suggestion requires the client to go beyond merely verbal interaction (and that is one of the reasons
why it is being suggested), it can immediately generate an uncomfortable sense of ‘self-consciousness’. The
client may refuse the technique as it appears to require ‘acting’ or ‘performance’. Self-consciousness, by
definition, implies an uncomfortable internal dialogue, between some part of the ‘self’ which another part is
conscious of and judges. The client’s ‘self-conscious’ reluctance to engage in the technique then arises out of
an implicit negative self-judgement - to continue exploring through some kind of ‘acting’ is liable to make
this self-judgement more explicit and bring it out into the open. In many situations this constitutes precisely
the very dialogue which the therapist intuited in the first place. That parallel often is so obvious, that the
therapist only needs to say: “yes, that’s precisely the point of the exercise – you are judging yourself! So why
don’t you put yourself on that cushion there and express your judgements about him/her? How do you feel
about that self over there that you are you conscious of?” Although the therapist may need or want to
succumb to the client’s reluctance, in most cases it confirms that there is indeed an impulse in the client to
use language as a veil or distraction. At the very least it indicates that the therapist is onto something.
• the technique can also function as an attempt by the therapist to side-step the transference (i.e. by re-
directing intense feelings towards a target other than the therapist, i.e. away from the therapist, towards the
chair or cushion); this may not always be the therapist’s intention, but the technique can nevertheless have
that effect or acquire that function, or can at least be perceived to be having that effect or function.33
All of the above dangers have transferential implications - I will address this point in some more detail later on.
Paradigm clashes around the counter-therapeutic dangers of the technique
Having mentioned the above difficulties, I would briefly like to discuss some potential paradigm clashes arising
from them.
critiques from a reparative perspective: against implicit challenge
Some therapists (for whom transference is not a cornerstone of their work) would argue that the potential
counter-therapeutic effect of the client feeling criticised, put down or dismissed has to be avoided at all costs.
They may conceive of the therapeutic position as being an ally alongside the client and would perceive -
correctly - the suggestion of the technique as threatening an exclusively supportive position.34 Usually, however,
the client’s feelings are already constellated before the therapist even makes the suggestion. More likely than
not, these feelings may be part and parcel of the very relationship issue which the client volunteered in the first
place. In any case, for many clients, criticism, humiliation, shame are intense experiences which they live with -
in both external and internal relationships – much of the time. And - sometimes in spite of themselves - clients do
feel these feelings in relation to their therapists. The assumption that the working alliance, and the sense of the
therapist being on the client’s side, has to be maintained at all times, does not do justice to the complexity of the
client’s spontaneous experience. If we want to be on the side of the client’s wound and their potential, we need
to allow the possibility that the client may experience both in relation to us, or as inflicted by us. Otherwise - rather
than being on the client’s side, as intended - the therapist may end up being seen as needing protection from
some of the client’s reality. In other words, the attempt to have a positive alliance and be on the client’s side all
the time is likely to end up being experienced as a demand that the client be on the therapist’s side. This splits the
client into a compliant, co-operative, positive aspect and an alienated, unsupported, ‘unreasonable’ aspect which
is excluded from the therapist’s affections. This is why - from an analytic perspective - the attempt to avoid the
negative transference (e.g. avoiding at all costs to be perceived as critical or humiliating) would be seen to lead
to a lack of containment. In an urge to avoid doing further harm to the client, a too careful and too ‘positive’
therapist may be perceived as confirming the client’s worst fantasies: e.g. that their pain is indeed experienced as
unmanageable by the therapist. We could, therefore, argue that what one therapist calls ‘support’, another might
call ‘collusion’, with the concomitant function to protect the therapist.

From a Gestalt perspective, the client’s intense feelings are a necessary ingredient in a potentially transformative
situation - these feelings would be seen as belonging to the very ‘high-grade’ emergency which the client is
habitually trying to avoid. Any therapist colludes with the avoidance of these feelings at the peril of excluding
transformation from the therapy altogether.
This is not to say, of course, that I am advocating the therapist’s disregard for the client’s fear and avoidance - on
the contrary. There are many times when the challenge implicit in the technique is, indeed, not appropriate. The
therapeutic process, of its own accord, constellates feelings which the client finds unbearable and annihilating, to
the point of the therapeutic alliance breaking down. And all therapists, whatever their orientation, walk a
perpetual tightrope between trying to address the painful issues and somehow keeping them manageable. We
do not want to avoid and exclude the painful issues on the one hand, and we do not want the client to feel
overwhelmed, re-traumatised or run away. So, of course, whatever we do, the therapist monitors the degree of
working alliance and the client’s capacity to sustain the process, with this technique as any other. All I am
arguing here is that this can not be simply guaranteed by categorically excluding certain challenging techniques.
There is, of course, a kernel of validity in the argument that clients find their feelings unbearable, including their
feelings toward therapy and the therapist. But that is not at all a function of a particular technique and cannot be
guarded against by adherence to rules or abstinence from certain interventions. Depending on circumstances
any conceivable kind of therapist behaviour is liable to precipitate such an experience. Rather than over-
anxiously guarding against any possible breakdown of the alliance, the therapist may anticipate the client’s
negative transference as part and parcel of the intended immediacy invited by the technique. Inviting the client
into any kind of immediate dialogue inevitably constellates the client’s habitual internal dialogue more strongly.
Inevitably, the client gets ‘confused’ between inner and outer relationships - this is the essence of transference.
In summary: what does help regarding the risks of the alliance breaking down, and is required by the therapist
when suggesting the technique, is a differentiated perception of the client’s ‘ripeness’ and the degree of
containment which currently exists in the client-therapist relationship as a system. This is only possible through
being attuned to the client’s non-verbal, pre-verbal, vegetative process (including ANS signals). Such
perceptions may frequently lead the therapist to the conclusion that the dialogue technique is the last thing they
want to suggest at this point in time.
critiques from a transference perspective – against directiveness
Most analytically oriented therapists would argue that the suggestion of any ‘technique’ or ‘exercise’ constitutes
a directiveness on the part of the therapist which implies an investment on the therapist's part and therefore
inevitably violates the therapeutic frame – the therapist's ideas, agendas, bias impinge on the therapeutic space
and drive the process underground. This is a well-founded, serious and multi-faceted concern. Essentially, my
answer to this concern is: whether this kind of directiveness ends up being damaging does not depend on the
suggestion of techniques, nor simply on the client’s experience itself, but on the therapist’s awareness of the
client’s experience (i.e. the transferential implications whilst using the technique). Only when the therapist
blindly directs and becomes invested in the outcome of a suggestion without being aware of being seen in this
way, is the therapeutic frame actually violated.35
In clients’ minds, therapists do get transferentially constructed as directive, imposing, judging objects all the
time: clients - both consciously and more significantly unconsciously - fantasise and imagine all kinds of agendas
on the therapist’s part, whether intended or not, whether actually present or not. And this is irrespective of
technique: both a therapist’s pro-active response and absence of response lend themselves to being mis-
interpreted as agendas by the client’s unconscious.36
We could approach this debate from another angle: for the therapist to avoid making such suggestions, to
eschew proposing this kind of ‘technique’ altogether, may be perceived by some clients as the therapist not
doing their job. A client who constructs therapy as a quasi-medical intervention by an expert does, of course,
expect the therapist to provide ‘techniques’. Most clients do not at all share our relational assumptions and
labour under the impression that expert advice, instruction, direction is what they have come for and are paying
for. An absence of directiveness may be perceived - albeit unconsciously - as a manifestation of the therapist
being too weak, too fused or too incompetent to actually function in any shape or form which meets the client’s
pre-conceptions regarding being ‘helped’. For the therapist to avoid the risk of suggesting this technique (or
other, similar ones) may be experienced as the therapist ‘playing safe’37, not really seeing or connecting with the
client’s spontaneous reality, or colluding with the client’s rationalising avoidances and obsessive reflecting
mechanisms.38 In these kinds of situations, when the client’s pre-conceptions about therapy are narrowing the
therapeutic space, using a technique like ‘two-chair’ work may be a highly productive compromise which both
meets the client and at the same time maintains the analytic principle of allowing ourselves to be constructed as
an object by the client’s unconscious. In the past this principle was seen to be upheld only by the therapist's
stance of 'abstinence'. But today we can recognise that the principle does not depend on the therapist's behaviour
and use of techniques, but their awareness of enactment whether or not they are using techniques.

Dialogue goes ‘flat’: four recurrent problem areas/difficulties for the therapist
Therapist concerns about the dialogue ‘going flat’
Because of the outlined dangers and inherent pitfalls, for most therapists the first hurdle in using dialogue is
how to suggest it in the first place, and the re-enactments arising around the making of that initial suggestion.
However, the second, more profound and significant hurdle arises out of the therapist’s fear and/or previous
experience of the dialogue going ‘flat’. Having at times exerted considerable effort in seducing, coaxing or
persuading the client into ‘doing’ the dialogue39, and having gone out on a limb with it, they are rightly anxious
that the whole thing will be an anti-climactic flop. But that worry only applies if the therapist does indeed take it
upon themselves to bring about or ‘achieve’ not only the acting out of the dialogue on cushions or chairs, but
more importantly its productive and satisfying resolution40.
However, as I have emphasised repeatedly above, taking on this responsibility is not at all a necessary
implication41. When we take into account our starting point42, we realise that the tendency for the dialogue to go
‘flat’ is already inherent in the situation from the beginning: the given dialogue is always already too flat - this is
exactly why we are suggesting the technique in the first place. So for it to go ‘flat’ is not some vague possibility,
it is more than likely that it will, precisely because it already is. The going ‘flat’ has always already happened.
Rather than taking responsibility for making the dialogue explicit, keeping it going, maintaining vibrancy and
charge and bringing it to resolution, the therapist might anticipate it going ‘flat’ and then be interested in how it
does. There are a few basic possibilities of how the dialogue may go ‘flat’, but invariably the fruitless repetition
and perpetuation of a ‘flat’ dialogue depends on certain elements of the dynamic systematically escaping the
client’s awareness.
Let us look at David’s example. After describing his situation earlier, I posed the question: how is it possible for
him to remain unaware of the fact that he is not just involved in a strategy operation called life, but that there is
an emotional war going on inside him? How can he keep oscillating from one to the other without noticing the
inherent mutual denigration between the polarities?
It would be true to say that David’s awareness is taken up with the content of the opposing possibilities, and that
he has little awareness of the repetitiveness of the process. But what does the process consist of, and what are the
elements of the dynamic which systematically escape his awareness?
One way of approaching that question would be to ask ourselves: what would be the opposite of a ‘flat’
dialogue, in his case?
I have already mentioned that the dialogue which he was trying his best not to have, was a continuation of the
mutually undermining battle of attrition between his parent’s conflicting identities, themselves a lawyer and an
artist. David’s struggle in making a decision, as pragmatic as it seemed, had all the atmosphere of the parents’
relationship about it, continually interrupting each other with contempt and bitterness. A ‘full’ dialogue, in
David’s case, might have involved making that parental war explicit, including the shouting, the belittling, the
pride and humiliation. He was understandably loathe to get into all this because he preferred to think that he
had “left all that behind” when he moved away from home.
Features and characteristics of the ‘full’ dialogue
In general terms: the ‘full’ or ‘vibrant’ dialogue (or what we might call the dialogue ‘taking off’) involves two43
embodied, emotionally connected, ‘whole’ people making direct, spontaneous and congruent ‘I’-statements
towards each other.44
Let us look at each of these features in turn:
- whole body-emotion-mind: when I speak of “two embodied, emotionally connected, ‘whole’ people”, I am
thinking of each polarity as a body-emotion-mind entity in relationship in the ‘here and now’. Whatever
bodymind or feeling state each polarity is currently experiencing, in the ‘full’ dialogue this is brought to
awareness and owned. The state itself can be full of negative, hateful, destructive impulses, but in the ‘full’
dialogue these become explicit. By definition, we are implying an internal state where reflective self-
awareness is in touch with spontaneous experience - Body Psychotherapy calls the subjective experience of
connection between awareness and experience ‘embodiment’: mind and body not necessarily in harmony,
but connected, in mutual contact. However disconnected, fragmented or conflicted the actual 'felt sense' itself
may be, the dialogue can be described as ‘full’ only if this is no longer disowned or denied. As long as it
remains outside awareness, the dialogue is not 'full'.
- spontaneity and congruence: these features of the ‘full’ dialogue are - strictly speaking - already implied in
the wholeness of body-emotion-mind: each polarity’s communications are congruent precisely because they
express their current spontaneous experience. Spontaneously feeling one thing, but consciously or
unconsciously communicating another, what sometimes are called: double messages, mitigates against ‘full’
dialogue.
- direct relating in the ‘here and now’: this feature implies that - whilst being grounded in an awareness and
‘inhabiting’ of their spontaneous experience - each polarity conveys that experience to the other, whilst being
aware of the other. This corresponds to the instruction in couple work to phrase communications according
to the simple formula: “when you say X, I perceive Y and I feel Z.” Following this formula is designed to
encourage the kind of relating which I call the ‘full’ dialogue. This amounts to a phenomenological
description of ‘I - Thou’ relating.

In a ‘flat’ dialogue, the client is systematically unaware of some of these ingredients necessary for ‘full’ dialogue.
When the therapist’s perception leaves little doubt that a dialogue is indeed ‘flat’, although some of the above
features may be very much present, we invariably find that others - at least one - are missing. We can therefore
formulate the general principle: the essential feature of a ‘flat’ dialogue in terms of the above list of features is
that they do not all come together at the same time.
To all intents and purposes, the client is unconscious in at least one of the following four respects. And each of
these - in turn - constitutes an area of difficulty for the therapist.
1. Mental disconnection = polarities as abstract positions rather than people
Like David, the client may be aware that both polarities are ‘him’, but is somewhat emotionally disconnected
from both of them: he has lost the link between his conscious dilemma and the full extent of the emotional and
psychological conflict from which it arises in his spontaneous experience . The client abstracts, rationalises, mis-
translates and implicitly denies his spontaneous feeling reality. This results in him treating the dialogue as a
mental procedure: reflecting, philosophising, weighing up options, considering pro’s and con’s. For the therapist
the client’s overly deliberate, rationalising, disconnected attitude constitutes the first problem area which I will
address: the dialogue as a mental procedure rather than a spontaneous relational bodymind process.
When this relative numbing or disconnection fails, another mechanism of dilution is required to abort the threat
of the ‘full’ dialogue and its inherent ‘charge’.
2. Internal split = switching of polarities
Like Ruth, the client may be strongly identified and emotionally connected with one polarity, but projects the
other (i.e. she has lost awareness that the “pathetic” one is also her). A minute later, she may switch into the
“pathetic” polarity herself. Then she is berating herself, anticipating that the therapist will judge her in the same
way in which she judges her ex-lover. Now she is identified with the ‘needy’ polarity and projects the
contemptuous judge onto the therapist.
The client’s ‘switching’ between polarities can be understood as a process of selectively identifying and dis-
identifying, in varying proportions, with conflicting, mutually exclusive aspects of their experience. The image
that comes to mind is of a Swiss barometer: a little weather-house with two figures - one for sun, one for rain.
The more one comes out, the more the other goes in. Both are there, but only one can be fully out at any point in
time: this is ‘switching’ in its purest form. When Ruth’s assertive side is ‘fully out’, the so-called “pathetic” side
is denied and hidden from her awareness. When she feels lonely and needy, she projects strength, assertion and
contempt onto whomever she is with, which means that temporarily she has no access to her usual ‘strength’.
For the therapist, this ‘switching between polarities’ constitutes the second problem area which I will address.
When this switching can be made explicit and the two polarities are brought in relation with each other (as the
technique of dialogue inherently does), there is the possibility that the dialogue may ‘take off’. This depends on
the polarities coming into contact, but as distinct, separate and congruent entities. However, at this next stage
another mechanism of dilution often comes into operation which I call ‘mixing of polarities’. Whilst ‘switching
between polarities’ implies a separation and distinctness of the polarities to the point of their mutual
exclusiveness in the client’s awareness (i.e. an over-distinctness), this differentiation of the polarities usually
breaks down when they are brought into contact.
3. Internal confusion = mixing of polarities
When the client’s denial inherent in ‘switching polarities’ breaks down or becomes untenable, the realisation that
they have both polarities within themselves is inescapable. We then find that the differentiation of the polarities
(i.e. the neat separation which is characteristic of ‘switching’) also gets lost, and we are then confronted with the
opposite problem: whereas before one of the polarities was permanently not present enough, we now find that
both of them are too ever-present in an inseparable mixture: now neither of them can ever be expressed as
distinct without getting mixed up with the other. Each polarity thus gets diluted, and the dialogue goes ‘flat’.
Within the Gestalt tradition the well-known expressions ‘topdog’ and ‘underdog’ are referring to this kind of
dynamic, where an apparently domineering, imposing polarity is dominated by an apparently powerless
‘victim’ polarity in endless, fruitless cycles of bickering. In this scenario, Perls used to say, the underdog always
wins, implying that the underdog is employing a hidden power strategy and that the topdog is dependent and
susceptible to being controlled by it. Clearly, power is not as unilaterally distributed as it appears, but both sides
are constituted by a mixing of polarities.
Neither David nor Ruth are good illustrations of this kind of ‘mixing’. Some brief examples might be of an
otherwise bullying topdog sitting on his cushion with a caved-in, resigned, empty chest; or an underdog
whining from a generally submissive position, but throwing looks with daggers in them. Or a judgemental,
verbally attacking polarity with a frightened neck. Or a needy, apparently feeble polarity whose reaching-out is
grasping, possessive and domineering. Neither polarity can be felt, accessed or expressed in a full, congruent
way without getting mixed up with the other.
The principle underlying this mixing of polarities is that - although there are clearly two opposing polarities in
operation, in terms of their interaction within the client they are fragmented, mixed up and diluted, and thus
blocking each other. As long as the polarities continue to get mixed up in this way, the double-message (e.g.
bullying, but caved-in chest) inherent in each polarity’s communication is unconscious and not at all obvious to
the client.
For the therapist this mixing of polarities constitutes the third problem area which I will address.

4. Avoidance of dialogue by re-direction and projection (i.e. external enactment) = dialogue jumps into
client-therapist relationship
Gestalt meta-psychology assumes that there is a natural, inherent tendency for the dialogue to be moving
towards full expression of the constellated polarised relationship (i.e. for the polarities to be differentiated or
‘sorted’, see Bandler/Grinder ‘The Structure of Magic’, Vol. 2). But there is also a well-established habit of
blocking, aborting and diluting this tendency, specifically via ‘switching’ and ‘mixing’ of polarities.
These two opposed tendencies are the essential conflict we are confronted with, in a multitude of ever-shifting
permutations. In the natural process of moving toward differentiation and expression, each polarity is habitually
inhibited as well as both mutually blocking each other. This keeps the dialogue circling in repetitive, constantly
provoked and aborted cycles, thus keeping the full polarisation at bay. This is contact {2} in its quintessential
manifestation, and it is equivalent with the fragmented and conflicted state of affairs which over time
perpetuates a compromised ‘mixing of polarities’.
By using the technique of dialogue we invite full awareness of the conflict between the opposing tendencies
mentioned above:
- one tendency works towards sorting, differentiating and polarising the two sides clearly, in order to bring
them into ‘full’ contact within the polarisation
- the other (habitually established) tendency is to constantly dilute that emerging polarisation through the
above mechanisms of rationalising, switching or mixing polarities.
So if the experience of the polarisation is constantly aborted whilst the technique also generates detailed
awareness of the polarisation, the natural tendency for the dialogue to be moving towards full expression
may eventually manifest in the dialogue ‘taking off’ (resulting in contact {1} or {3}).
If it does not ‘take off’, but we are effectively continuing to close down the escape routes, the ‘charge’ of the
polarisation has only one other route to go: into the client-therapist relationship. The client may be driven
towards some sort of last-ditch jump which manifests the internally provoked relationship outwardly, by
‘dumping’ half of it onto the only other person available in the room: the therapist. The dialogue then ‘jumps’
into the client-therapist relationship, or we might say: it gets ‘acted out’ between client and therapist. This
constitutes the fourth of the problem areas which I will now address in turn, mainly descriptively and
theoretically. At the end of each section there will be a short paragraph on the practical implications, which will
be dealt with in more detail in the second part of the paper.
The four recurring problem areas/difficulties in facilitating two-chair work/dialogue
Problem/difficulty 1: dialogue as a mental procedure rather than a spontaneous relational
bodymind process
The first problem area concerns the dialogue as a spontaneous bodymind process rather than a purely mental
exchange. Depending on whom we put on the ‘empty chair’, dialogue can be used to explore a wide variety of
situations, including problem-solving and decision-making. In this case the two chairs or cushions might
represent two options, two alternative choices or courses of action which the client is trying to decide between.
Compared to its potential, this may appear as a rather banal use of the technique. But the dilemma for the
practitioner in these situations is not so much the application of the technique to practical problem-solving, but
the overly practical, rational, reflective way in which the client approaches it. The technique is designed to access
and include the emotional, irrational, spontaneous realities underlying conflicts and polarisations. This can be -
very usefully - applied to practical problem-solving, but the object of the exercise is defeated if all we do is re-
stating and re-churning the well-rehearsed mental opinions which constitute the superficial froth of the bubbling
cauldron. A dialogue may well become a vibrant philosophical discussion (which will delight those amongst us
of an existentialists persuasion, and should be of interest and concern also to the rest of us). I can think of no
good reason why this kind of discussion should be excluded from therapy45. However, there is a kind of
thinking which explores, opens things out, discovers and reveals. And there is a kind of thinking and reflection
which occludes, denies, avoids. Perls coined the term ‘aboutism’ to distinguish vibrant philosophising from
distracting, superficial and inconsequential ‘mind-fucking’46. In order to make this distinction, it is useful to
remember that all philosophy occurs on the basis of an implicit emotional underworld, an underlying archetypal
stance; the most sophisticated and complex philosophical edifice was developed over time by a real person on
the basis of their often conflicted and painful, always subjective, human experience, and is a constructed version
of reality, a perspective, a ‘map’ rather than ‘the territory’, let alone ‘the truth’ itself.
Thus any belief system - whatever its ‘truth’ content - also has an emotional function; it constitutes itself as a
translation, rationalisation and elaboration of an underlying psychological reality. In the extreme, it can function
as an idealised, manic or defensive reaction against an unbearable emotional wound, and a way of splitting off
from it. In this case, although the client’s philosophy may appear as an convincing, homogenous, watertight,
coherent system, therapeutically we need to watch for the inconsistencies, the fault lines, the inherent
contradictions which constitute a mixing of polarities (see below).
Philosophy may reveal or occlude, and usually enacts and perpetuates the underlying conflicts present in the
psyche. It is essential that the therapist has a way of apprehending the differences between emotional and
philosophical reality, and is able to get the ‘feel’ of the philosophy, not just the ideas. This includes especially
paying attention to how the client’s belief system relates to pain and suffering: does it embrace it, run away from
it, try to conquer it?47

Problem/difficulty 1 - practicalities
Practically, then, the technique already offers us all the features for dealing with this difficulty: by drawing
attention to the non-verbal relationship process, which goes on during a philosophical exchange, we invite the
philosophies to become ‘human’, to become embodied people in relation to each other. We can draw attention to
the non-verbal messages accompanying philosophical statements which convey the emotional stance of the
polarities towards each other. By including body and mind in the communication, and attending to non-verbal
as well as verbal messages, the illusion that the dialogue is only an exchange of neutral - purely mental –
considerations and opinions breaks down.
Problem/difficulty 2: switching polarities
Earlier, I looked at Ruth’s communication as an example of the dialogue manifesting in this way and asked: how
is it possible that she can ‘switch’ between polarities within seconds, with her whole demeanour and expression
changing from loud and imposing to tearful and whining, without really becoming aware of either, nor of the
fact that these polarities are locked into a continual internal relationship inside her ?
The etiology of this kind of internal dynamic cannot be a simple, purely cognitive affair. After all, she is
variously conscious and unconscious, with her awareness shifting between varying fragments of her total
experience. Different theories have suggested different explanations, emphasising diverse aspects of what is a
complex bodymind process.
Within a developmental perspective, the two polarities can be thought of as representations of an internalised
object relation - remnants of a painful ‘not good-enough’ childhood experience. The internal dialogue is the
manifestation of a relational wound which was absorbed, internalised and fixated, and became embedded in the
very foundation of the person’s identity, the very structure of their physical-emotional-cognitive being-in-the-
world. Essential to this view - from an holistic perspective - is the sense of self as arising out of the relation
between spontaneous and reflective processes in the person’s bodymind.48
In his book ‘Character Styles’, Stephen Johnson’s summarises a comprehensive developmental theory (based on
the traditional Reichian model and integrating object relations, ego-psychology and self-psychology), outlining
the ‘steps of character formation’ which lead to the internalisation of what was originally an external
relationship. An understanding of this internalisation process - and therefore the connection between internal
relationships and outer relationships - is, of course, invaluable in facilitating two-chair work/dialogue, but a
detailed exploration would stretch beyond the theme of this paper. What is relevant here is that this theory goes
some way towards explaining how both polarities can be dominant features of the client’s conscious approach to
the world, yet at the same time both be unconscious in significant ways. Any theory which conceives of the
unconscious in purely mental terms is insufficient. Gestalt dialogue helps us in apprehending and making
visible this complex, shifting matrix of awareness and unawareness in bodymind terms.
In Ruth’s case, whenever she was identified with one polarity (e.g. the ‘contemptuous’ one), she was
unconscious of the ‘pathetic’ one, and vice versa. The painful heart of the conflict – constituted by the
relationship between the two poles - was systematically being kept at bay through Ruth oscillating and switching
between the polarities.
The precious characteristic inherent in the mechanism of ‘switching’ is that the polarities are distinct, separate
and fully differentiated, and that - at any one point in time - at least one of the polarities is fully ‘inhabited’. The
problem is that the other polarity is then experienced as alien, and cannot be felt, owned or accessed. The
technique of dialogue aims at bringing both polarities into awareness and into contact - something which by
definition is avoided through ‘switching’. There is no difficulty in identifying with the currently dominant
polarity and accessing its feelings and thoughts which are usually expressed quite congruently. But when the
client sits in the place representing the alien and denied polarity, there is no spontaneous ‘felt sense’ of it which
can easily be accessed in terms of feelings and thoughts. At best, the client has a mental image of that polarity,
accompanied by an immediate negative reaction against it. How to access the habitually denied polarity and let it
enter the dialogue experientially is one of the key technical problems for the therapist. It is a point in the process
where the therapist may be sorely tempted to coax, persuade or push.49 How to work with and around this, is
more a practical question which I will attempt to address later.
Problem/difficulty 3: mixing of polarities
Problem/difficulty 3a: ‘topdog’ - ‘underdog’:
The topdog-underdog dynamic is one of the notions which Gestalt is famous for. These expressions have entered
general parlance, where they are understood to simply refer to a power dynamic between two polarities.
However, in the Gestalt tradition these terms have a more precise meaning: they do not simply refer to any kind
of oppressive relationship with a power differential, but specifically to one where the contact between the
polarities is of the variety {2}.
The contact is characterised by routine exchanges, well-rehearsed and predictable cycles of accusation and reply,
which are aggravating, but familiar and comfortable. The topdog polarity is in the apparent power position, but
Perls was well known for demonstrating that ultimately the underdog always wins in this scenario.

The interaction is a habitual, repetitive, ‘low-grade emergency’ version of another, more acute and polarised
dialogue - a threatening possibility which is actively avoided by both parties. The mutual bickering - as
conflicted and antagonistic as it appears - maintains a shared dynamic which can be shown to have the function
of actually defending against and distracting from a deeper polarisation which neither side is willing to
experience fully, but feels, of course, trapped in nevertheless.
One stereotype for this kind of contact would be a bitter old couple who have had the same aggravating,
vaguely controversial and polarised conversation for the last thirty years, and have never allowed or
experienced anything but the veiled versions of their shared hurt and mutual attack and blame. But the same is
possible as an internal dynamic: the topdog, also known as internal critic, judge, super-ego, critical parent, is an
internalised version of some disciplinarian authority who appears to have the person’s best interests at heart, but
is harsh, unempathic and often dismissive, contemptuous and invested in their own superiority.
What often confuses the client is that the internal judge can subscribe to an entirely wholesome and convincing
philosophy which is completely opposite to the one espoused by the original external judge-figure. But what
matters in this context is not the philosophy, rationale or logic, but the judge’s relational position, their attitude
as expressed via energetic and non-verbal communication. If the external judge was originally a Victorian prude,
the internal judge can believe in sexual liberation, but they can be every bit as rigid in the application of their
belief as the original Victorian one. What matters is not the content, but the process, i.e. the relational dynamic
between the judge and the judged, as expressed also via non-verbal communication and its energetic-emotional
effect. As long as that energetic dynamic and the interaction between the two polarities continues, the topdog-
underdog polarisation maintains its unproductive character even when there are major changes in mental
outlook. Under the guise of ever new issues, theories and formulations, the two polarities can keep going at it
(and each other) for decades without any fundamental process of meeting or transformation.
Because it is so well-known, I am mentioning the ‘topdog - underdog’ dynamic as a separate phenomenon.
Actually, it is only a specific instance of the kind of mechanism which typically generates and underlies contact
{2}. It would be misleading to expect contact {2} to only ever manifest as a ‘topdog - underdog’ dynamic, so I will
now try to describe it in more generally applicable terms.
Problem/difficulty 3: mixing of polarities
I stated above that mixing of polarities is the essence of and equivalent with contact {2}. What can we say in phe-
nomenological detail about contact {2}? How does the inherent blocking/diluting mechanism operate and work?
What obstructs clear perception of this universal mechanism is the - common sense - impulse to ease the conflict
between the polarities. However, if we do not get lost in ‘trying’ to find a ‘resolution’ through reducing the inher-
ent polarisation (usually through taking sides, compromises and superficial ‘deals’), we often quickly get a sense
that - actually - the dialogue is not polarised enough, i.e. the polarities are not sufficiently distinguished and sepa-
rated. Specifically, we find that both polarities are sitting on both cushions, only in slightly different proportions
(e.g. the topdog secretly has the underdog within it, and vice versa). The client is usually unaware of this mixing
of polarities. As I stated above: the essential feature of a ‘flat’ dialogue is that bodymind process, spontaneity
and direct ‘here & now’ relating do not all come together at the same time. Therefore, as a client caught in this
dynamic, I am only ever partially aware of the full dialogue - shifting fragments come to my attention, but a felt
sense of the whole dynamic of the wound and its avoidance eludes me, the more the polarities are mixed up. As
long as I can - at any point in time - project one of my polarities onto or even evacuate it into another person, I
become aware of it only in them and not in me50. The more complete the projection/evacuation onto or into the
other, the more congruent is the polarity which I am left with and identified with. If I manage to become entirely
unconscious of the projected polarity in myself, I am ‘switching’. If I cannot quite completely get rid of it that
way, I am left with mixing of polarities. This is bound to manifest and become visible as soon as I try to exter-
nalise the interaction onto two chairs/cushions in a dialogue. Consciously, then, I am perceiving and noticing a
particular trait over there on the other cushion, but unconsciously the dynamic force of that trait is still unex-
pressed within me (and my body) over here on this cushion: the polarities are mixed, because experiential frag-
ments of each are distributed over both cushions. If I continue to experience them in this mixed fashion simulta-
neously (even whilst moving forwards and backwards between the two positions), they never get separated and
differentiated sufficiently for the charge contained in either polarity to build up and - as Gestalt would say - for a
‘contact boundary’ to arise. Although both polarities are present and are being felt and accessed, the mixing of
polarities avoids the full differentiation and polarisation and therefore interferes with the congruent expression
of each polarity required for a ‘full’ dialogue. The emotional function of this mixing becomes apparent as soon as
it stops: when there are clear, congruent messages from each cushion towards the other, the two sides become
more differentiated; the more separated and distinct they are, the clearer the ‘contact boundary’ which arises,
with an inherent charge tending towards vibrant dialogue (i.e. contact {1} or {3}). This - as we saw above -
involves a more unified, congruent bodymind experience of all the fragments and levels of each polarity at any
one time. If one polarity is moving in the direction of such differentiation, however, there is escalating pressure
for the full expression to be averted, precisely by switching or mixing polarities before it gets there. The inherent
tendency for the dialogue to move towards polarisation and possible resolution is opposed by the established
habit to block and dilute the feared interaction. Left to its own devices, the dialogue is likely to have the
tendency to go ‘flat’, i.e. for the mixing of polarities to outweigh the process of differentiation and thus to
interfere with congruent, vibrant contact and the ‘full’ dialogue. However, should the client’s whole system be
‘ripe’ for transformation, this will be tangibly present in the room as the dialogue unfolds.51

The mixing of polarities gets us deeply into the client’s wound and their habitual ways of dealing with it. With
both polarities being more owned rather than exclusively projected, the sense of internal conflict is inescapable.
The concomitant stuckness can feel unbearable. Here, the Gestalt principle concerning the paradoxical nature of
change - change happens when we accept ‘what is’ - becomes more important than ever. If we recognise the
wisdom of this principle and want to do justice to it as therapists, we need to attend to it especially when ‘what
is’ is stuck, counter-therapeutic, habitually dulled and ‘flat’. Far from being a ‘waste of time’ (as some Gestalt
therapists would maintain), entering the client’s habitual normality - without short-circuiting it, however ‘flat’ it
is - is entirely necessary, and consistent with the deep principles of Gestalt.
At the very least the joint experience of the concomitant stuckness is an essential preparation of the client-
therapist system for real and lasting and spontaneous transformation to occur. But entering and accepting the
habitual ‘flatness’ of ‘what is’ is not a tactical manoeuvre or a trick or a gimmick. Even if transformation is never
going to happen, the therapist’s surrender to the paradox is in itself a significant relational experience for the
client. The impulse towards profound spontaneous transformation exists in a paradoxical antithesis to its
opposite: painful, fragmented, stuck, habitual ‘flatness’.52
It is important, therefore, that the therapist does not simply act on the multitude of perceptions and impulses
which effortlessly arise to counteract the mixing of polarities. Faced with continuously mixing polarities, the
therapist will often readily perceive how this gets in the way of the transformative potential inherent in the ‘full’
dialogue. And they will intuitively know what would be required to counteract the mixing and access the urge
towards transformation. But according to the paradoxical principle of change, the therapist must not unilaterally
take the side of that transformative urge and champion it regardless.
Rather, the therapist’s task is to walk that knife edge between succumbing to being trapped in habitual
repetitiveness on the one hand and the emergence of a possibly radical shift on the other, holding the tension
between the two possibilities until spontaneous re-organisation occurs. The therapist needs to be alert to the
danger of being drawn unconsciously into taking categorical sides towards transformation for reasons we shall
soon explore.
With this proviso in mind, the therapist is free to make all kinds of suggestions which do counteract the mixing
and invite a congruent expression of each polarity on its cushion. If in spite of these suggestions the dialogue
continues to go ‘flat’, we are entitled to assume that we are, indeed, getting a comprehensive and detailed
experience of the client’s habitual ‘flatness’ and a ‘here and now’ insight into this stuckness as a relationship
process53. At this point the client will often spontaneously begin to reflect on the habitual nature of their
dilemma and experience. This can be used as an explicit intervention which I will describe in more detail later
on: stepping into third position.
The practical guidelines for counteracting the mixing of polarities rely on what Bandler/Grinder call ‘spatial
sorting’ - each polarity is offered a different chair/cushion. Ideally all characteristics and messages (all
experiential fragments) belonging to each polarity get spatially differentiated and sorted, by allocating them to
one or the other cushion (see Bandler/Grinder ‘The Structure of Magic’, Vol. 2).
First three problems/difficulties - Summary
Depending on how the therapist responds to the three problem areas outlined so far - as and when they manifest
- the dialogue can potentially ‘take off’ at any point. If it does not, if the ‘full’ dialogue is constantly being
aborted although it is constellated and being focussed upon through the technique, the ‘charge’ of the
polarisation has only one other route to go: into the client-therapist relationship. In the traditional application of
the technique, it was almost axiomatic that a successful dialogue depends on the therapist staying ‘out’ of it. By
remaining the neutral ‘director’ of the dialogue, supporting both, but siding with neither polarity, the therapist
was supposed to keep the charge and the focus with the client’s conflict. This was based on the correct intuition
that if the therapist were to be ‘drawn in’, the dialogue would go ‘flat’. This is why, for example, in the
framework of voice dialogue, a simple and powerful technique, therapists are taught explicitly to stay ‘out’ of
the dialogue.
However, the therapist’s insistence on such rules (staying out of it, keeping the dialogue going, refusing to get
embroiled, resisting the tendency towards ‘flatness’, having to bring the dialogue towards resolution) becomes
itself a rigid position which inevitably relies on coaxing, persuading, bullying or educating the client into
persisting with the ‘exercise’. When the therapist tries to maintain such rules and guidelines - over and against
the client’s spontaneous tendencies towards ‘flatness’ - the neutral director position is always already lost.
Phenomenological observation then shows that the dialogue ‘jumps’ into the client-therapist relationship after
all, under the guise of the therapist being invested in continuing and the client behaving like a donkey being
dragged up a steep hill.
However, if we are embracing ‘flatness’ and ‘fullness’ of the dialogue as two sides of the same coin as suggested
above54, we may want to extend that same principle also to this fourth difficulty for the therapist. The therapist
being allowed to function as the ‘neutral director’ and the therapist being drawn in and getting embroiled in the
dialogue also are two sides of the same coin which we can both work with. We then do not need to insist on
keeping ourselves ‘out’ of it55, but use the fact that we are being drawn in as further information about the
underground avenues which the continuing dialogue takes when it is being kept at bay.

Problem/difficulty 4: dialogue shifts into client-therapist relationship:
When the constellated, but unresolved dialogue moves away from the chairs or cushions, and ‘jumps’ into the
client-therapist relationship, we enter a phenomenological domain which has been conceptualised in
psychoanalysis as transference. What started out and appeared to be a conflict/dialogue in the client (or in one
of their ‘outer’ relationships), is now getting enacted in the transference between client and therapist56.
As an example from David’s process: as a man of the law, his father strongly communicated a sense of ‘right’
and ‘wrong’, an impatience with any ambiguity or “dithering”. So when David inhabited the ballet dancer
polarity, he would usually become hesitant and uncertain, expecting the father’s judgement, anticipating being
accused of “wasting time”. This anticipation automatically ‘jumped’ into the client-therapist relationship, by
David expecting the same accusation from the therapist: sitting on the ballet dancer cushion, he would turn to
his therapist apologetically and say: “I’m sorry I am taking a long time over this - I’m afraid I am not doing this
very well.” In simple terms: a feeling and statement which belongs into the dialogue is being treated as a
statement about it. A meta-level statement regarding the ‘exercise’ really is the manifestation of an expression
which the client finds too difficult to make directly within the dialogue.57
The most common way in which this ‘jump’ of the dialogue into the client-therapist relationship manifests is,
indeed, under the guise of meta-level communication. The client may talk about the process of the two-chair
work/dialogue (e.g. how artificial it is, how it’s not getting anywhere, how they are inclined towards taking
sides with one polarity or expect the therapist to, etc., etc.). From the therapist’s point of view, this kind of meta-
level communication does require a response, but it usually is recognised also an avoidance, a stepping out of
the explicit dialogue. It is easy for the therapist to get drawn into and lost in abstract meta-level considerations
(which no doubt are relevant and contain a good portion of ‘truth’, but nevertheless have a diluting and
distracting function)58. As long as our focus is exclusively on the dialogue which we have set up between the
two polarities on the two chairs, we may only notice at this point that it has lost its urgency or vibrancy. From a
wider perspective this makes sense: the ‘charge’ has jumped from the dialogue into the client-therapist
relationship. It has all but disappeared ‘out there’, and it is now implicit in the way in which client and therapist
are negotiating the ‘exercise’ (which increasingly feels like ‘flogging a dead horse’). When we formulate the
dynamic abstractly, it seems very obvious and straightforward, but in practice it becomes the subtle downfall of
many a perfectly valid attempt at using the technique.
The shift into the client-therapist relationship as ‘parallel process’
When we realise that a dynamic in one relationship is being repeated in another relationship, we can make use
of the notion of ‘parallel process’. Strictly speaking it refers to the phenomenon that when a therapist takes a
particular case to supervision, the dynamic between therapist and supervisor often starts to resemble that
between client and therapist: similar feelings, responses, interactions take place, a similar atmosphere prevails,
supervisor and therapist find themselves taking relational positions which ‘parallel’ those taken by client and
therapist.59 The dialogue ‘jumping’ into the client-therapist relationship bears sufficient resemblance to this
phenomenon to warrant the same term: a relational dynamic in one relationship (i.e. within the dialogue) is
being repeated (i.e. paralleled) in another relationship (i.e. the client-therapist relationship). All therapeutic
approaches which put relationship at the centre of the work will encounter ‘parallel process’ in a myriad of
forms. I find this way of thinking about it useful because ‘parallel process’ then becomes an integrative notion
which may be used across various theories and therapeutic schools. If we are thinking about countertransference
in holistic terms, significant aspects of it can be formulated as ‘parallel process’. This is a specific point where
psychoanalytic understanding and Gestalt phenomenology can mutually enrich each other. 60
Anticipating the possibility of this ‘jump’ of the dialogue into the client-therapist relationship and noticing it
when it happens, is often sufficient for the therapist to have all kinds of practical ideas how to re-integrate the
jump back into the dialogue. Usually there is no way around the recognition that the ‘jump’ is not just an
arbitrary shift of focus. Rather, it reflects a threshold of ‘charge’ or pain which the client is coming up against in
the dialogue, what Mindell calls 'an edge'; therefore, it reflects the existence of an impulse in the client to avoid
that threshold. The therapist may decide it is not a good idea to let the client get away with such avoidance (as
the avoidance of such a threshold in a dialogue confirms its emotional significance), and try to direct the client
back onto the cushions and back into the dialogue. Sometimes this conveys the therapist’s faith or
encouragement that the client can face and confront the threshold, and is sufficient to reverse the jump away
from it. But often such encouragement to get back into the dialogue and continue it turns into pushy exhortation.
After all, the ‘jump’ happened for a reason: there was a difficulty there which the client felt inclined to avoid.
Simple encouragement or exhortation may not be enough. The therapist may be in danger of being perceived as
invested in ‘completing the exercise’ or as educating the client about doing the exercise ‘properly’. Somehow, the
therapist needs to find a way of embracing and accepting that the ‘jump’ did happen, and follow it further and
work with it. The most obvious therapeutic response is a straightforward interpretation of the ‘parallel process’61,
but even this may not always be sufficient. After all, the ‘jump’ is designed to draw the therapist into the
dialogue, out of the position as director of the dialogue: rather than standing aside and commenting on it, the
client now experiences the therapist as struggling within it. A possible response which should not be excluded
from consideration out of hand is for the therapist to explicitly step into the dialogue by sitting on one of the
chairs or cushions.62

A variety of other interventions may come to mind, which may shift or extend the set-up of the dialogue, and
will usually deepen it. From the perspective I am proposing, such interventions do not at all need to come across
as the therapist correcting the client or telling them off.63 Rather, the ‘jump’ is used as a further illustration of just
how pervasive and ever-present the dialogue’s inherent dynamic is, that it gets replicated or even evacuated
with significant others, making it obvious that the client is not ‘in control’ of it.
Summary: the four recurrent problem areas
Having outlined these four basic avenues for the dialogue to go ‘flat’, let’s repeat: rather than taking
responsibility for making the dialogue explicit, keeping it going, maintaining vibrancy and charge and bringing
it to resolution, the therapist might anticipate it going ‘flat’ and then be interested in how it does64. Formulating
this as a general principle, we might say: once a dialogue is constellated, it never disappears; it may go into
hiding, it may seek expression through a variety of avenues, but it does not just disappear; it is still continuing
within the very mechanism which apparently aborts it, in the ‘how’ of how it goes ‘flat’.
The more a therapist recognises this, the more it helps ease their sense that the onus is on them, having
suggested the technique, to make sure it gets somewhere, generates an outcome, bears fruit. If we can anticipate
and remain alert to how we may get drawn into the ‘flatness’ of the dialogue and if we can embrace this
possibility, we are less identified with the initial suggestion being ours and with it having to produce a ‘result’.
The more we ‘know’ that the dialogue does not ever disappear, the more we can relax into knowing that any
expression of it, whatever the degree of its vibrancy/charge, whatever avenue it takes, can be tracked and
followed. If the therapist is alert to the problems outlined above, especially to the dialogue ‘jumping’ into the
client-therapist relationship, almost nothing can ‘go wrong’.

Conclusion / practical applications from four recurrent problem areas
If the dialogue ‘takes off’ ...
If the client takes up the suggestion and ‘gets into’ the dialogue, the interaction may acquire a spontaneously
meaningful quality (contact {1} or {3} as defined above) - this may happen in steadily increasing fashion, or
suddenly at any point. In this case, the dialogue ‘takes off’ and the therapist’s initial intuition is confirmed: this
dialogue was indeed waiting to happen.
From then on the therapist’s main task is to minimise interference with the spontaneously developing
interaction, and to only intervene if necessary. The charge is in the dialogue and the therapist merely functions
as a director and a catalyst, supporting each polarity in owning, inhabiting, developing and unfolding their
position. The step-by-step guidelines which follow later give specific ideas and principles for facilitating and
directing the dialogue, once it is underway. Helping each polarity ‘unfold’ their position is largely a question of
allowing congruent expression of their spontaneous experience in relationship. The therapist’s facilitative
interventions follow the same principles which apply to authentic, intimate relating between partners and in
couples (e.g. “I’m OK, you’re OK”, talking in “I”-statements, avoiding blaming and ‘mind-reading’65, etc.).
When the dialogue ‘takes off’, the crucial flavour - in the therapist’s experience - is that things are flowing and
that it is ‘easy’ - it may not all be simply downhill from here, but some kind of transformation has already
happened. This does not mean that the dialogue is immune against ever going ‘flat’ again. On the contrary:
interventions may become necessary because as the dialogue deepens, the therapist may notice certain further
thresholds occurring.
In anticipation of the dialogue getting stuck at these thresholds, the therapist can usefully hold in mind
questions such as:
- how is this current contact attempting to become even more vibrant, fulfilling, spontaneous (although it is
already outside familiar territory and inherently productive)?
- is there any emerging process towards even greater depth ? and what are the mechanisms and processes
which oppose this ‘emergent process’ ?
But apart from holding these questions in mind, the therapist simply functions as a director, maybe indicating
when to switch positions, at most helping each polarity connect with their spontaneous experience and find their
own congruent expression.
How to ‘interfere’ with the dialogue: ‘taking sides’ as a manifestation of ‘parallel process’
What do I mean above by saying that “the therapist’s main task is to minimise interference”?
The single most significant, tempting and simple way for the therapist to ‘interfere’ in a dialogue is to take sides
with one or the other polarity, for or against one of the polarities, explicitly or by implication or attitude. What is
decisive in this regard is not the therapist’s intention or their own subjective reality (as to whether they are
actually taking sides or not), but the client’s - sometimes unconscious - experience and perception of this possible
dynamic. As any couple therapist can confirm, one of the worst ‘crimes’ to commit, and for which the bill is
usually presented rather swiftly, is to be drawn into a biased position. There is no quicker way to lose the
working alliance with a couple than to take sides with one or the other party in an unexamined, automatic
fashion. Of course, the therapist will have feelings and will find themselves internally resonating more with one
person than the other - this is inevitably and is the case more often than not. But for the therapist to translate that
bias into an actual way of working, into a rationale for intervention (which without fail does communicate itself
to the couple, at least subliminally), is equivalent with the therapist losing their therapeutic position and failing
the brief which the couple has - at least implicitly - given the therapist. This is true even if within the actual
dynamic the two people do actively vie for the therapist’s endorsement of each of their positions. Unless the
dynamic of the therapist taking sides is addressed as part of the dynamic itself (between the couple), there are
usually fairly disastrous consequences for the working alliance. The same applies to the use of dialogue as a
technique and the two polarities in an internal dialogue.
Generally speaking, for the therapist to unconsciously get drawn into agreeing and colluding with one polarity,
siding with it over and against the other, is usually disastrous and ruins the transformative potential of the
‘exercise’. The emphasis in the formulation of this principle is on the term ‘unconsciously’: as we saw above,
when a parallel process occurs by which the dialogue ‘jumps’ from the cushions into the client-therapist
relationship, this is tantamount to the therapist not just taking sides, but ‘becoming’ one of the polarities. And I
suggested that rather than rigidly holding out against this - according to the received wisdom concerning the
handling of the technique, the therapist can allow and embrace this ‘jump’ in a way which eventually deepens
the dialogue even whilst it is being avoided. As long as the therapist monitors the overlap and parallels between
the relationship of the two polarities on the one hand and the client-therapist relationship on the other,
everything is ‘allowed’.
There are, for example, many instances where the therapist needs to support one polarity in ‘unfolding’ its
position. To the client this may become indistinguishable from supporting that polarity - ‘full stop’. It is
important for the therapist to become aware of this as soon as it seems to happen (for example, through the
response of the other polarity which may in this case react defensively, as it now experiences itself as up against
two people: the other polarity and the therapist).

Whilst it is essential to establish the principle that the therapist siding with one or the polarity has disastrous
consequences, in practice, however, we inevitably find that feelings and thoughts arise within the therapist
which resonate more with one than the other polarity. So what to do ?
In terms of the language developed above, we can think of ‘taking sides’ as a ‘jumping’ of the dialogue into the
client-therapist relationship, but this time initiated (or ‘perpetrated’) by the therapist. But, obviously, who
initiates this ‘jump’ and how precisely it comes about, is just about as relevant as a couple fighting about who
started the fight. The main thing to track and pay attention to is the continuing dialogue, nevermind where it
manifests (remembering that it never just disappears). As I said above, the danger, then, is not simply for the
therapist to take sides, but for the therapist to be unconsciously and consistently drawn into taking sides.
It typically happens, for example, that the therapist identifies with the polarity which is ‘under-represented’, and
then begins to ‘carry’ the feelings and reality of that polarity on behalf of the client who - by definition - does not
identify with it ‘sufficiently’. It is usually a moot question whether this identification on the part of the therapist
is largely the therapist’s ‘doing’, or whether it is a process of ‘projective identification’ - the main thing is to
recognise that it is occurring. This is, of course, a dynamic which is not at all specific to this technique, but a
pervasive countertransference phenomenon which happens in all kinds of therapeutic contexts. But the
technique of dialogue can intensify the likelihood of it occurring, as well as making it more transparent and
fairly easy to recognise it when it does. Nevertheless, many a therapist will remember times when they got
caught in supporting the apparent victim/underdog, only to find that they were ‘barking up the wrong tree’,
and ended up feeling foiled, frustrated, humiliated, i.e. the underdog themselves.
I will later consider more practically how to deal with the dialogue ‘jumping’ into the client-therapist
relationship (i.e. how the therapist can extricate themselves or usefully succumb to being pulled into the
dialogue and whether and how it is advisable for the therapist to explicitly step into one of the polarities/
chairs)66, but for now it is important to characterise the parallel process ‘jump’ as one of the major ways in which
the technique can ‘fail’: the dialogue apparently disappears and goes ‘flat’, when all that has actually happened
is that it has changed its route of manfestation.
How to perceive the dynamic / parallel process ?
As mentioned earlier, one of the essential skills the therapist needs in order to trace the avenues which the
dialogue takes whilst it is being avoided, is to distinguish between content and process, between intended and
involuntary expression, between verbal and non-verbal communication. Apart from their verbal statements and
their implied philosophies, each polarity has a bodily posture and corresponding emotional-relational stance or
attitude, a way or style of expressing itself or not (i.e. the matrix of underlying feelings and to what extent they
are owned and communicated, or not) and accompanying physical mannerisms, behaviours and movements (i.e.
the matrix of embodiment, disconnection or dissociation). In terms of the therapist’s awareness, both left-brain
verbal-rational and right-brain non-verbal perception and understanding are required, i.e. a holistic
perceptiveness.
The next thing we notice is that a multitude of messages (what Grinder/Bandler call a variety of paramessages)
are being communicated, not all of which are congruent with each other. On the contrary: some clearly conflict
with others, constituting what’s traditionally called a ‘double-message’67. The more I am aware of the mixing of
polarities, the less I can take for granted that the messages communicated from each cushion actually belong to
the polarity on that cushion. It then becomes important that I have my own perception of which polarity each of
the multitude of messages belongs to. This boils down to a skill in perceiving which paramessages are congruent
with others and can therefore be considered to belong to the same polarity, and involves a largely intuitive
process of ‘sorting’ paramessages into polarities. Grinder/Bandler use a typology developed by Virginia Satir to
simplify this sorting process and categorise and allocate messages to polarities.
More specifically, this means that as the therapist I try to get a sense where and how each polarity is - as NLP
calls it - ‘anchored’, i.e. in which feelings and sensations it appears to be spontaneously rooted. There are usually
two or three outstanding and charged spontaneous processes which constitute essential features of each polarity.
I may go through a process similar to that of a caricaturist who tries to capture the essence of a person’s
expression and appearance with the minimum number of brush strokes, emphasising just a few of the most
characteristic features. In the most basic terms, I try to get an ‘empathic feel’ of each polarity’s inner complexity,
based on a detailed perception of their emotional-psychological bodymind process. This perception may be
deepened by the spontaneous emergence of certain visual metaphors, fantasies or images of figures in the field,
which characterise each polarity and the relationship between them.
The more attuned I am to the dynamic process (rather than the content and appearance of the dialogue) and to
the real struggle and polarisation at the heart of the dialogue, the more prepared I am for recognising as and
when it ‘jumps’ into the client-therapist relationship.
The first and most important thing, therefore, is to trace and monitor the ‘charge’ of the dialogue and the nature
of the relationship dynamic. By the time the ‘jump’ into meta-communication or into the client-therapist
relationship happens, the therapist has hopefully gained some bodymind understanding of the two polarities
and their relationship during the build-up of the dialogue: how is the same relationship dynamic being enacted
in the transference, and how am I ‘becoming’ (or may be perceived by the client as ‘becoming’) one of these
polarities?

Difficulties around making the initial suggestion to use the technique
I hope I have made it clear that the use of dialogue as a technique may get the therapist into some deep waters
and into very real difficulty. Often I hear therapists say how difficult they find it to even make the initial
suggestion, and they tend to put this down to inexperience or lack of technical know-how. I prefer to think that
it is precisely because therapists intuit not only the likelihood, but to some extent the inevitability of these
difficulties arising, that they feel hesitant about suggesting the technique. Therefore, by appreciating these
difficulties and embracing them, including the inherent risks and dangers, as necessary concomitants of the
technique’s potential, we may gain faith and confidence to engage with these risks (rather than seeing them as a
function of our own incompetence). By being interested in how the dialogue is almost guaranteed to ‘go flat’ and
anticipating that rather than struggling to avert it at all costs, therapists can become less anxious and driven.
Having said that, some common misgivings around making the initial suggestion to use ‘dialogue’ are based on
some real technical intricacies which are worth mentioning.
Because of the possible countertherapeutic implications of the technique mentioned earlier, or the client not
being ready for the implicit challenge, suggesting the technique is a delicate matter of timing and ‘delivery’. The
inherent threat and challenge need to be balanced with the inherent potential for exploration and possible
resolution. The invitation into the dialogue needs to ‘meet’ the client, and can be phrased in a way which
reduces the likely hurdles and obstacles.
If the therapist’s invitation into the dialogue ‘goes wrong’, and the client declines, resists or distracts, it is often
more to do with the initial delivery of that invitation than with a fundamental rejection of the idea. However, if
the client does not immediately take it up, many a therapist easily gives up on what was in principle a valid and
valuable therapeutic impulse.
Common client responses are: “Oh, I couldn’t do that, I’d feel stupid / self-conscious!” As suggested above, this
could be seen as confirmation of the validity of the technique, and usually this kind of response should not be
sufficient to fob the therapist off.
In this context it is useful to remember that the technique is only meant to invite a more explicit version of a
dialogue which is going on anyway. Ultimately, then, the question is not whether to ‘have’ the dialogue or not,
but in what form (implicitly or explicitly). The other possibility arising from this recognition is that we can avoid
artificiality and inhibiting self-consciousness by letting the technique arise out of a spontaneous interaction
(rather than: “please imagine that your boyfriend is sitting on this cushion and could you please try and talk to
him as if he were here.” ... something like: “you raise your voice as if you are actually talking to your boyfriend
right now - what are you saying to him ?” - i.e. we’re not doing anything new or different (which I as the
therapist from within my role have determined as a ‘good idea’ and something to try) - we’re only making more
explicit a process which is going on already for the purposes of detailed exploration. One specific thing to avoid
is asking the client meta-level questions as to whether they would or would not like to “try” it. In many cases it’s
better not to dither in the initial suggestion, but for the therapist to go out on a limb and make it; if the client
really does not want to do it, they then have to refuse explicitly. In any case, if the client complies and gets into
‘doing it’ only superficially, pursuing the dialogue will then increasingly feel like pulling a donkey up a steep
hill, in which case the charge will shift to the client-therapist relationship.
Considerations regarding the therapist taking one of the chairs/cushions
The way I have tried to formulate the pitfalls of the technique also helps with one specific question which often
arises: how - as the therapist - do I decide whether or not to step into the dialogue, by taking one of the
chairs/cushions ?
As discussed above, one traditional answer, based on an implicit recognition of the dangers and possible
confusions, is to never be drawn out of the therapist-as-director position, and to never be drawn into the
dialogue. But once we recognise how often the therapist is perceived as slipping into (or seen as holding) one of
the polarities, anyway, we can allow ourselves a more differentiated and flexible response. The crucial aspect to
monitor is not the therapist’s introspection into their own intention, but the perception of the therapist in the
client’s experience68: is the therapist actually being experienced as the (neutral) director of the dialogue, or is the
therapist - even if only unconsciously, as maybe betrayed by a look or a gesture - being identified with one of the
polarities?
Sometimes this latter dynamic can be so strong, and so much outside the client’s awareness, that the idea of the
therapist explicitly stepping into the dialogue becomes the most congruent and productive, and least confusing,
option. In summary: it is a useful guideline to stay the director as much as possible. But if in spite of your efforts,
the client - consciously or unconsciously - identifies you with one of the polarities, then do step in. If you do it
wholeheartedly and gracefully, it may often be possible to also step out again quite quickly. So one of the
situations in which the therapist may take one of the cushions is when the dialogue ‘jumps’ into the client-
therapist relationship, anyway.
But there are other situations where the same move can become appropriate for different reasons. As mentioned
above in the section on switching polarities, many times the client can quite easily identify the idea/existence of
one of the polarities, but its felt and embodied experience, its lived emotional reality can be so alien to the
client’s consciousness, that it becomes impossible to inhabit that polarity with any sense of detail, conviction or
authenticity. This may, for example, happen through setting up a dialogue based on a dream (where figures at
times do appear which the client cannot access or even approximate consciously), or, for example, a dialogue
with a physical symptom.

Although it can be risky for the therapist to ‘help out’ by stepping into that experientially inaccessible polarity,
there are many situations where this can work69. In this case the therapist steps into the inaccessible polarity
(typically some form of underdog, but not always) and acts it. The therapist can first attempt to gather more
information regarding how to be and model this underdog polarity, by asking the topdog about their perception
of it. This can be important as the therapist does not want to end up playing their own version of this under-
represented and inaccessible polarity, but wants to approximate the one that is actually being seen and
experienced by the other polarity. These kinds of interventions can be fine-tuned by helping each polarity to be
‘anchored’ in particular sensations or spontaneous behaviours, and getting a visual image of the other polarity,
as we will see in the next, more practical section of this paper.
References
Perls, F. & Hefferline, R. & Goodman, P. (1951) Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality.
Souvenir Press.
1 This article is based on a handout which I give to students during their third year of training at the Chiron Centre for Body
Psychotherapy. Broadly speaking, it aims at bringing a modern Body Psychotherapy and Object Relations perspective to this
established Gestalt technique. As well as being rooted in Gestalt philosophy and thinking, it tries to integrate the sensibilities
of other therapeutic approaches and may therefore be useful to a range of practitioners. It is a didactic paper for students and
practitioners, oriented towards usefulness in practice, so I have reserved the exploration and elaboration of theoretical tangents
for the copious footnotes.
2 The technique is used, for example, in Body Psychotherapy, psychosynthesis, TA, and many humanistic hybrid approaches as
well as in NLP, and in similar form as ‘voice dialogue’.
3 I do not believe that therapeutic potential or dangers inhere in techniques themselves, but that the effect of any technique is a
function of the relationship and its dynamic. In my view, any technique is only as ‘good’ as the therapist using it, and - like any
other technique - ‘dialogue’ can have counter-therapeutic uses and effects, some of which I would like to address as we go
along.
4 On the contrary, I hope to show that far from being antithetical to a psychoanalytic sensibility, through being grounded in a
phenomenological holistic context and field theory, Gestalt dialogue can be seen to enhance our detailed understanding of any
relationship dynamic - internal and external, and especially the parallels between them - and can therefore add important
dimensions to our perception of the transference-countertransference relationship as ‘parallel process’, see below.
5 An important point to clarify in this context right away is that the technique of ‘dialogue’ is to be distinguished from the
‘dialogic principle’ now widely considered essential to the Gestalt approach. In her article on modern Gestalt (Counselling
Vol. 5, No.2 pp 105 - 108, 1994), Jennifer Mackewn is at pains to differentiate ‘Perls-ism’ from the wider field of Gestalt, and
explicitly warns against identifying Gestalt with Perls’ way of working in his large demonstration workshops at Esalen. These
workshops were filmed and widely publicised, leading to common misconceptions and over-simplifications. Specifically, she
says: “The single biggest misconception of Gestalt is that it means doing ‘2-chair’ work.” In order to minimise confusion
between the ‘dialogic principle’ and ‘Gestalt dialogue’ as a technique, the term ‘two-chair’ work seems preferable. However,
for reasons beyond the scope of this paper, I must confess some attachment to the term ‘Gestalt dialogue’, so I will continue to
use it, with the above duly and explicitly noted.
The ‘dialogic principle’ can be most simply formulated through Martin Buber’s notion of the ‘I-Thou’ relationship: do I
recognise the other as an other with their own subjectivity, or am I using them in some fashion as an object without a sense of
their own subjectivity? Do I treat them as an ‘I’ or an ‘it’? Modern Gestalt recognises and tries to integrate both ‘I-it’ relating
and ‘I-Thou’ relating as possible modes of contact between client and therapist (see “Developing Gestalt Counselling” by
Jennifer Mackewn). According to Buber, I-Thou relating is the essence of dialogue as it depends on an understanding of the
other without objectification (which dissolves the status of the other as subject) or identification (which dissolves the otherness
of the other through merging). He talks about the “bold swinging” between the two subjectivities in dialogue, one’s own and
the reality of the other (which one can “make present” through “imagining the real”).
6 The established meaning of the term ‘parallel process’ refers to the specific phenomenon that the dynamic in the client-
therapist relationship can be replicated and paralleled between therapist and supervisor. The supervisor can gather important
information about the relationship between client and therapist if they can be aware of and attend to such parallel processes,
because they give an immediate ‘felt sense’ of a dynamic which is otherwise only accessible indirectly through the therapist’s
verbal report. Although the phenomenon of ‘parallel process’ was discovered and named in the context of supervision, I have
proposed elsewhere (Soth, M. (2005) Embodied Countertransference. in: Totton, N. (2005) New Dimensions in Body
Psychotherapy. Maidenhead: OUP) that the notion of parallel process can usefully be expanded into a basic principle of all
holistic and relational perspectives.
7 It will become clear that I am using the concept of ‘parallel process’ in a fashion which extends beyond its common and
established meaning (which refers to the phenomenon that the relationship dynamic between a client and a therapist can often
found to be enacted when the therapist discusses that relationship in supervision: the therapist-supervisor dynamic parallels
that between client and therapist). I first came across that revolutionary concept as a tutor on the self-directed counselling
course at South-West London College in the late 1980’s where we had a group of four or five tutors working with a large
student group of up to 60 to 80 students. In this case we found that the dynamic between the tutors (in our staff meetings) often
paralleled that in the large group. With the help of an external consultant, this gave us an avenue into the group’s unspoken and
unconscious dynamics and constituted the essential factor in helping us facilitate and contain the group (which - because of its
size and multicultural composition, in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, etc - was a mini-society and reflected

8 Appreciation of this principle requires, of course, a prior recognition of the existence of an internal relationship, i.e. the fact
that frequently, to all intents and purposes: “I am two, not one.” A phenomenological clue to this - for some people threatening
- realisation is the simple existence of reflexive grammatical forms in language, like “I say to myself ...”, or “I hate myself”, or
“I gave myself a pat on the back.” These are not empty, semantic phrases, but they reflect processes which can operate
habitually without ever coming into full awareness. Recognition of this kind of inner dialogue is a central pillar of ‘two-chair’
work. Most difficulties in a person’s outer relationships are unresolvable in any fundamental way without addressing those
aspects which parallel the dynamic of the person’s relationship to themselves.
9 This sounds a bit like Jesus’ saying: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you!” The Gestalt version, however is
not an injunction or admonition, but a phenomenological recognition: this is - we observe – what actually happens.
10 One difficulty in working with and interpreting the transference is that the client may not see the point of it, if their focus - and
priority for therapy - is external or internal conflict in their lives. Why waste any time on contemplating how they are relating
to the therapist who - according to this kind of client - is supposed to help them sort out all these ‘real’ relationships and
conflicts everywhere else (rather than adding another problematic and ‘artificial’ relationship to them)? The client may not see
the significance of reflecting on their relationship to the therapist, who in this case is likely to be seen mainly as a professional
expert, advisor, quasi-medical consultant. The client’s commitment may be primarily to working on conflicts which are
immediately apparent to them. They may not see the connection between what brings them to therapy and their feelings and/or
unconscious reactions in relation to the therapist. Rather than helping the client recognise the significance of the transference
(if that’s our theoretical position - it is part of mine) and educating the client into the ‘right’ theoretical frame, why not work
experientially with what they want to work on ?
For therapists who appreciate the power of the transference, the technique of ‘dialogue’ can nevertheless be embraced and used
to meet such a client ‘where they are’. The technique may be thought of as a creative compromise between the therapist’s
(more analytic) assumptions / paradigm and the (more directive, problem-solving) expectations / paradigm of the client’s
‘internal therapist’; ‘Gestalt dialogue’ is a useful and very potent half-way house between ‘talking about’ and direct ‘here &
now’ relating. I will try to address the potentially counter-therapeutic implications of the technique (in terms of directiveness,
avoidance of transference) later on.
11 This constitutes an explicit collusion with the client’s pre-conceptions regarding therapy. Some approaches and practitioners
would argue that the client’s construction of the therapeutic space is in itself a therapeutic issue (I agree). They conclude that
for the therapist to collude with the client’s preconception can only ever be counter-therapeutic, and should therefore be
avoided (I do not agree). What options do we have? Short of educating the client about her misunderstanding (which tends to
be even less productive), why not meet the client where they are and let their own exploration and engagement lead them into
the issue ? On a more general level, I would argue that all therapy hovers in an uncomfortable tension between colluding with
the client and objectifying them. It is more important to me to understand my collusive or objectifying responses as part of the
process (i.e. as parallel process) rather than thinking of them as opposed to the process or destructive of it.
12 This condition fits in with the parameters for Gestalt experiments as described by Perls (“Gestalt Therapy” p338): “But the
point is for the patient to feel the behaviour in its very emergency use and at the same time to feel that he is safe because he
can cope with the situation. This is to heighten the chronic low-grade emergency to a safe high-grade emergency, attended by
anxiety yet controllable by the active patient.”
13 If I did, all the analytic criticisms of therapist directiveness would apply and be valid (i.e. it would communicate the therapist’s
agenda and investment in the client’s process, it would convey the therapist’s anxiety about and non-acceptance of where the
client is now, and therefore contradict ‘neutrality’ or ‘unconditional positive regard’, etc.). It would constitute an ‘acting-into’
the countertransference, or an ‘acting-out’ of countertransference pressures. In strict Gestalt terms, the therapist’s suggestion is
not an agenda, a solution, an exhortation, but an invitation to a phenomenological inquiry. It is intended to get the client to
explore ‘what is’ rather than produce or manufacture a particular outcome (however wished-for by client or therapist). In their
seminal book on “Gestalt Therapy”, Perls, Hefferline and Goodman are already clear and unequivocal on this point regarding
the therapist’s intention. They argue against a therapeutic attitude which tries to achieve an outcome by undercutting or
overriding the ‘resistance’. They argue that what other approaches call ‘resistance’, is a functional adaptation which has
become automatic and habitual. They therefore want to bring the organising impulse within the ‘resistance’ back into full
awareness, which may then allow its transformation and re-organisation. But the Gestalt experiment itself is not intended to
create that transformation over and against the ‘resistance’ - it is intended as a phenomenological inquiry into the conflict
between the underlying emergency and the ‘resistance’. A complication we will need to address (and not explicated by Gestalt
theory to the same extent) is whether the client actually receives the suggestion in the exploratory spirit in which it was
intended by the therapist (and the answer is: sometimes largely yes, and sometimes decidedly not).
14 and it comes across throughout the book that this dialogue involves all of the following at the same time ...
a) ... an inner, emotional dialogue within the author’s psyche,
b) ... a commitment to sustaining the ongoing conflict (rather than short-circuiting it into superficial ‘solutions’ or
compromising arrangements),
c) ... a creative act of imagination and ...
d) ... a mental-philosophical integration of the author’s beliefs and values.
15 However, every trivial disagreement can then constellate the fundamentally unresolved issues, and superficial exchanges can
carry symbolic significance which evokes and points to the accumulated hurt and mutual hostility. With the wounds constantly
being re-opened, even if unintentionally, it is understandable that the two people involved take refuge in the assumption that
the only way of dealing with the unresolvable differences then appears to be to a ‘silent compromise’. Both parties bring to the

relationship their previous wounds which they both try to avoid and heal at the same time. Layers of previously unfinished and
incomplete relationship dynamics and cycles are already present in trying to avoid the repetition of the wounding.
16 “In both these cases, of excess of danger and frustration, there are temporary functions that healthily meet the emergency with
the function of protecting the sensitive surface. These reactions may be observed throughout the animal kingdom, and are of
two kinds: ... deliberately blotting out and undeliberate hyperactivity.” The first operates through desensitising the contact
boundary / surface (“shock and anaesthesis, fainting, playing dead, blotting out”), the second “through agitation of the
boundary itself (obsessive thought, brooding, and with these motor restlessness).”
17 “.... there exists a chronic low-tension disequilibrium, a continual irk of danger and frustration, interspersed with occasional
acute crises, and never fully relaxed. This is a dismal hypothesis, but is unfortunately historical fact for most of us. ... By
desensitising themselves and inhibiting their beautiful human powers, most persons seem to persuade themselves, or allow
themselves to be persuaded, that it is tolerable, or even well enough. But that standard of happiness is too low, it is
contemptibly too low; one is ashamed of our humanity. ... The case is that, by and large, we exist in a chronic emergency and
that most of our forces of love and wit, anger and indignation, are repressed or dulled.”
18 “If the neurotic’s state is the response to a non-existent chronic low-grade emergency, with medium tonus and dull and fixed
alertness instead of either relaxation or galvanic tone and sharp flexible alertness: then the aim is to concentrate on an existing
high-grade emergency with which the patient can actually cope and thereby grow.”
19 If we can manage to not use these categories as normative agendas, but as tools of perception, they can inform and guide the
therapist in the perception and facilitating of the dialogue - see below. Again, I am not saying that just because a kind of
contact is experienced as ‘harmonious’ and ‘therapeutic’, that it therefore necessarily has to become normative for the therapist
as an objective to be achieved. Here, I am only phenomenologically distinguishing the different kinds of contact which can
occur: I am proposing that they exist and can be attended to, without any implication that one or another of them should be
‘made to happen’.
20 This matches, of course, any conceptualisation of developmental process through various successive layers, stages or depths,
for example Wilber’s notion of development as shifts in the sense of self. Phases of relative stability (translation) alternate with
phases where - through a process of breakdown and transformation - an old sense of self dies and is embraced by a wider and
more embracing new sense of self which both transcends and includes the previous one.
21 The ‘entities’ in dialogue could be two actual people (me and my partner), two inner images (me and the teapot in my dream),
two sub-personalities (the ‘wise man’ and the ‘child’), two spontaneous gestures (my jutting index finger and my hunched
shoulders) or the left and the right side of my body.
22 The German word ‘Gestalt’ is difficult to translate to English: as a noun its meaning is close to ‘form, structure, shape’
(“configuration, structure, theme, structural relationship”), but it refers to more than outward characteristics; it is often linked
with the English notion of a ‘whole’, and a close equivalent to the German term ‘Gestalt’ would be Wilber’s use of the term
‘holon’; as a verb ‘gestalten’ means ‘creating, shaping’ and carries connotations of a prolonged and sustained, deliberate and
intentional process of creating, forming, shaping. “As a linguistic example, pal and her lap contain the same elements, but the
meaning is dependent upon the order of the letters within their Gestalt. Again, bridge has the meaning of the game of cards or
structure joining to river banks. This time the meaning depends upon the context in which 'bridge' appears. The colour lilac
looks bluish against a red background, red against a blue background . The context in which an element appears is called in
Gestalt psychology the ‘ground’ against which the ‘figure’ stands out.”
23 NLP would usefully point out that these are visual terms of reference, and that all other “representational systems” (auditory,
kinaesthetic) can be equally involved in perceiving and gauging the ‘charge’ of the contact.
24 Michael Balint: “The Basic Fault”
25 see also Christopher Bollas’ notion of the mother as the ‘transformative object’ in “The Shadow of the Object”
26 Major meta-psychological debates could be pursued regarding the relative separateness or mergedness of the two people
involved in what we take to be a ‘healthy’ form of this kind of contact. One end of the spectrum (traditional Gestalt) would
argue that ‘real’ contact is only possible when there is a ‘contact boundary’, i.e. separation, otherwise we would have to call
this contact ‘confluence’. The other end of the spectrum would maintain that this is an individualistic notion of contact,
implying an ‘unhealthy’ obsession with autonomy, and would point to the subtle processes of empathy, identification, even
fusion which are required for ‘real’ contact to be possible. As quoted above, Buber’s notion of a “bold swinging” between
identification and differentiation tries to do justice to both ends of the spectrum.
27 Spell of the Sensuous
28 reference Perls, Hefferline, Goodman “”
29 Gestalt as a tradition has a particular expertise, both theoretically and technically, in linking awareness / reflection with
immediacy / spontaneity. Its emphasis on phenomenological enquiry, immediate ‘here and now’ experience, response-ability
and the inclusion of sensory channels can bridge the gap which exists in some other therapeutic approaches between the
predominantly verbal mode of communication between client and therapist on the one hand and the client’s non-verbal and
pre-verbal experience on the other. Even though the client’s spontaneous experience (affective, cognitive, relational) may be
considered and theorised about as a significant therapeutic factor, this can be difficult to access or allow directly, if the focus of
attention is largely on the verbal interaction between client and therapist. Verbal interaction tends to generate a bias towards
reflectiveness over and against spontaneity - this is a problem which Gestalt has successfully tried to counter and bridge.

31 By distinguishing these three kinds of contact, I am, of course, in no way implying some absolute categorisation. We can think
of the three kinds of contact as a spectrum between contact {1} and contact {3}, with contact {2} occupying a wide range in
between, about 85% of the whole spectrum. The ‘flatness’ of contact {2}, therefore, covers vastly different terrains in between
the peaks of {1} and {3}.
32 Any technique or model, including interpretation, can constitute an ‘acting-into’ the countertransference and can, therefore,
become the vehicle for re-enactment of one of the client’s negative relational scenarios. Gestalt has paved the way for
therapists to embrace rather than try to overcome re-enactment as part and parcel of the therapeutic process, but because it
refuted the stale and formulaic use of transference, initially found it difficult to fully embrace the insights of modern
psychoanalysis (e.g. what Andrew Samuels calls the ‘countertransference revolution’) into its phenomenological attitude. This
has been changing over recent years, see Hycner & Jacobs.
33 The fact that the technique of dialogue can indeed be used to deflect transference onto another target, taking the therapist out of
the heat of the encounter, can be used deliberately in employing it as a psychotherapy training exercise: students can observe
relational dynamics occurring in the dialogue from a less involved position, allowing them to attend to the details of the
interaction as an energetic and body/mind process. This can be useful in preparing students for attending in the same way to the
equivalent dynamics occuring in the transference / countertransference.
34 Gomez, L. “Introduction to Object Relations”
35 The analytic rule of abstaining from directiveness originally arose in response to the apparent failure of therapists who were
deliberately experimenting with changing the therapeutic frame: analysts like Ferenczi were pro-actively trying to direct the
patient towards ‘health’. The reasons for their failure, I believe, do not lie in their use of ‘techniques’, but in the therapist’s
omnipotent belief: therapist can get into actually believing that they can make a particular direction or therapeutic outcome
happen, and that it is, indeed, a good idea to do so. In this case, the therapist is and remains unaware of the transferential
implications. The therapist becomes convinced that suggesting and carrying out the technique is more important and
therapeutic than attention to the relational dynamics between client and therapist whilst suggesting and carrying out the
technique. First, the therapist is unaware that the client is experiencing the therapist as directive. Second, the therapist is
unaware that - to some extent at least - the client’s co-operation is actually compliance rather than engagement. Third, the
therapist, therefore, cannot and does not work with the compliance, but instead becomes that object in the client’s inner world
whom the client is required to be compliant with. The therapeutic relationship then becomes an outward enactment of (i.e. a
parallel process to) that inner relationship (some form of what Transactional Analysis calls ‘the adapted child’). Such a
transference enactment is damaging and violates the therapeutic frame only when the therapist persistently falls into it and
remains unconscious of it (as I believe Ferenczi did, and - following in his footsteps - so does a large section of humanistic
therapists who do use directiveness and techniques). The failure then does not inhere in the use of the technique itself, but in
the therapist’s belief that they can use the technique outside the transference. It is the therapist’s omnipotent assumption that
they can, indeed, direct the client’s subjective, spontaneous experience which violates the frame, as if the therapist was free to
choose to circumvent transference complications, and help the client ‘more directly’. The therapeutic frame, I believe, cannot
be safe-guarded by adherence to - or abstinence from - particular techniques. It is maintained by staying aware of parallel
processes (transference and countertransference enactments) whilst we are engaged - or are abstaining from being engaged - in
any technique whatsoever.
36 As an extreme example, exploring the client’s aggression within a two-chair exercise is no more or less a validation of the
client’s violence than discussing it verbally. We could imagine a client coming back the following session and saying to the
therapist: “when I talked last week about exploding at my boss, you did not argue with me or dissuade me. So I took that as
permission and went and did it.” Did the therapist necessarily ‘encourage’ the client to explode by entertaining the fantasy and
talking about it in the session ? Not really. On the contrary: if the therapist had protested or expressed anxiety, the client might
have taken that as a directive injunction not to explode. In short: there is no way out of the therapist being (mis-)perceived as
directive. And it is perfectly possible for a therapist to make very specific exploratory suggestions without any kind of
investment in a particular direction, agenda or outcome. It is impossible, however, to legislate for how the client receives such
a suggestion, or whether they take it as directiveness or not. This is not itself an unsurmountable problem if the therapist is
grounded in suggesting the technique as a form of phenomenological inquiry (in simple terms, by asking: what is the conflict
like ? what is wanting to happen ? what is stopping this from happening ?). If the client construes this invitation as a task or
agenda, we can assume that the client has added an unconscious, usually habitual, assumption. We usually find that this
assumption is a ‘parallel process’ to the client’s internal dialogue, anyway, and can be worked with as such (i.e. what looks
like the client’s assumption about the dialogue actually belongs into the dialogue and is part of it).
37 In terms of concerns about therapist directiveness I am reminded of a similar statement by Jung regarding therapists giving
advice: he talks about the admonition in therapeutic circles to guard against giving advice, and goes on to say that it doesn’t
matter that much whether the therapist gives good or bad advice as both are entirely harmless because they have no effect
whatsoever.
38 To be clear: the term ‘obsessive reflectiveness’ is not meant in the spirit of Perls’ traditional side-swipe against psychoanalysis:
“Lose your head and come to your senses!” I am not dismissing the power of reflection per se or that of interpretation and
insight. As long as both spontaneity and reflectiveness are valued equally, as interdependent and reciprocal body/mind
processes, we can formulate an holistic notion of containment which appreciates and incorporates, but does not privilege
verbalisation, symbolisation and cognition as the only route towards therapeutic transformation. We can then distinguish
creative and ‘organic’ reflection from defensive and obsessive reflectiveness.

39 I am not particularly advocating this kind of seducing, coaxing or persuading, but I recognise that it happens. I am thinking of
therapists who have experienced the power of the technique for themselves, and are keen to share its potential benefit with
their clients. But even experienced therapists can get into this kind of dynamic which obviously constitutes an acting out of
countertransferential pressures. For an evocative illustration, see Yalom’s “Love’s Executioner”
40 As is often the case, if an approach develops a particular expertise, its benefits come packaged with shadow aspects,
manifesting as one-sidedness, investments and attachments to a particular therapeutic stance and meta-psychology. Gestalt has
a history of practitioners being rather attached to self-actualisation, process, change, expression, vibrancy. The necessary and
hidden treasures inherent in the respective opposites (e.g. stuckness, hesitation, inhibition, flatness, compromise, containment)
have not always been given equal weight. Although theoretically realised in the principle concerning the paradoxical nature of
change (“Change happens when we accept ‘what is’.”), Gestalt, in practice, has traditionally had difficulties in staying with
and accepting situations when ‘what is’ is ‘flat’.
41 Although, of course, the therapist has to some extent, if only subtly, implicated themselves in the possible perception of an
agenda by making that initial suggestion: “why suggest anything unless you want something to happen ?”, the client may well
ask.
42 i.e. the idea of dialogue as a technique arose initially in the therapist because contact is {2}, and we are inviting awareness of
the conflict between that and either {1} or {3}
43 In some situations, the best we can hope for may be that one party in the relationship gets to a place where they - unilaterally -
exhibit the qualities of a ‘full’ dialogue. That may already be experienced as sufficient to constitute a profoundly
transformative event. Later on in the process, for example, David had a dialogue with his father who - true to life - denied that
he had any belittling attitude towards David’s ballet dancing, and that he only wanted “the best for him”. David found a way of
expressing his reality, by stating that he felt humiliated and ignored with regard to his achievements in dance. He cried and -
without any sense of blame - owned that this had sabotaged both his motivation and his persistence. After that unilateral
declaration, his attitude towards himself as a dancer changed, and eventually he developed some pride and increasingly
received and enjoyed public recognition. The (external) father’s attitude remained unchanged, but - from an object relations
perspective - the internalised one, of course, had transformed.
44 As with David’s parents, this may not be pleasant, nice and harmonious, but at least provides the foundation for relating to
each other with authenticity in the present moment. David had no doubt about the passion his parents felt for each other, and
“although it was not always very good for me and I got ignored and neglected, at least they had a relationship rather than a
dead compromise like some of my friends.”
45 On the contrary: some people would convincingly argue that Socratic dialogue was an early ‘pure’ form of therapy.
46 Excuse the language, but that is Perls’ meta-psychological terminology for hiding in verbal interaction whilst avoiding
experiential engagement.
47 James Hillman has developed the language and perspective of archetypal psychology which would want to inquire into the
underlying fantasies at work in each philosophical position, and see through to the archetypal figures active within a
philosophical stance: what basic human truths and values are being ‘championed’ through a particular philosophy ? Or, as
Hillman would say (reminding us of the origin of Western thought in Greek and Roman polytheistic mythology): who are the
gods and goddesses which are being paid homage through this philosophy ? As a therapist, I do not want to hesitate to let the
client’s philosophies become ‘embodied’ and ‘personified’, allowing them to be imagined as ‘whole people’ in dialogue rather
than leaving them as merely mental, abstract, theoretical opinions.
48 A non-dualistic (body/mind) account of how relational wounds become internalised was initiated by Wilhelm Reich in the
1930’s and was developed further by Gestalt, but is only now beginning to be more comprehensively formulated with the help
of modern neuroscience (Allan Schore). The interdependence and interweaving of external relationships and subjective inner
world, including physical, emotional and cognitive experience is now being recognised in terms of physiology, anatomy,
biochemistry (hormones and neuro-peptides), immunology - the various systems throughout the body. “Molecules of Emotion”
- Candace Pert. This prepares the ground for psychotherapy developing ways of working which address the whole spectrum
(from cellular, biochemical through vegetative processes and the autonomous nervous system, right through emotion,
breathing and imagery to cognitive and reflexive processes), without necessarily falling into ‘biologism’ and objectification.
49 This usually constitutes an enactment of one of the polarities, i.e. the therapist slides into taking sides, becoming a champion or
ally of the denied polarity. In this case the therapist is precipitating a shift of the dialogue into the client-therapist relationship
(which is disastrous if the therapist is not aware of this, and managable if s/he is - see below problem area 4)
50 This basic defensive function of projection has been recognised for millenia (i.e. Jesus’ statement: “you notice the splinter in
the other’s eye, but do not notice the beam in your own” -reference Bible). Whilst the two chairs or cushions are inviting a
separation of the polarities, in practice the client’s expression in either position still contains strong elements of both polarities.
So when the therapist invites a congruent expression of either polarity, what happens experientially is still an incongruent
mixture of messages. Although each cushion is meant to be an expression of only one polarity, the therapist perceives that the
actual expression has fragments of both polarities in it, in varying proportions and with varying degrees of awareness.
51 It is next to impossible to catch up with this mixing and switching without an holistic awareness of the client’s body/mind
system from moment-to-moment. In the step-by-step guidelines which follow later on, I make specific suggestions for dealing
with this difficulty regarding the mixing of polarities.

52 Entering into the client’s phenomenological universe (‘what is’) is not only the sine qua non of therapeutic attunement
(Rogers’ unconditional positive regard or acceptance), according to C.G. Jung it is in the nature of the transformative process
to move between such extremes of ‘flatness’ and transformation. The process by which, at the extreme of the polarisation, a
polarity shifts into its opposite Jung called entantiodromia. If we intuit an urge and a potential for transformation, unless we
can fully surrender to stuckness, any change that is achieved will have a forced quality and carry the flavour of our avoidance.
If and when transformation occurs, its authenticity will depend on the extent to which we were able to prepare for it by
surrendering to the stuckness from which it emerged.
53 i.e. the initial stuckness which the client reports as a state, as a thing, as a constant - as a static problem - reveals itself as a
complex relational dynamic body/mind process of opposing forces which mutually negate each other in a deadlock. That sense
of deadlock - on balance - may indeed generate the impression of a steadily ‘stuck state’. And typically, that is the client’s
initial mapping of their problem (which is in itself part of the problem and helps to perpetuate it). But even in an entirely ‘flat’
dialogue, both versions (dynamically deadlocked process and static stuck problem) can be seen to contain a degree of ‘truth’.
However, as soon as we have both versions out in the open, the client’s self-defeating and limited mapping is already
irretrievably expanded.
54 i.e. if we are considering the previously outlined mechanisms for dilution (rationalising, switching and mixing polarities) as
part and parcel of the dialogue
55 As we will see, on the level of meta-psychology this requires the integration of two antagonistic views of dialogue and
transference into two mutually enhancing polarities contained within a paradoxical position. These two opposing views are:
dialogue as a technique operating ‘outside’ the transference versus dialogue as a technique which is incompatible with
transference work. I clearly disagree with the absolutism implied in either, and see both of them as valid, but partial truths.
Nothing the therapist thinks, feels, does can ever be assumed to be ‘outside’ the transference, but if we follow this
understanding through consequently, no technique can be - in and of itself - declared as impermissible a priori. If the
transference is considered as pervasive, no technique is outside or beyond it or immune against it, including
interpretation.Without the benefit of such an integration between the contradictory assumptions implied in Gestalt and
psychoanalysis, it is preferabe for the therapist to remain the ‘neutral’ director. With such an integrated perspective, I propose,
we do not at all need to insist on keeping ourselves ‘out’ of it.
56 This is a tricky area where Gestalt and psychoanalysis have developed concepts and techniques which refer to the same
relational experience, but clash strongly in values, outlook and emphasis. The two discourses sensitise us to different aspects of
the same territory. I therefore believe that there is a fruitful dialogue to be had between these two disciplines which can
enhance our understanding: there are mutually enriching elements in both perspectives. To be more precise about this:
transference is, of course, a multi-layered process, and the deeper, more unconscious levels of the transference are well in
place, irrespective of the specifics of the current conscious interaction (and the use of specific techniques such as dialogue).
However, in the ‘here and now’ interaction arising from the technique, an additional layer gets temporarily enacted which is a
function of the constellated dialogue, rather than the long-term transferential process only. This, of course, implies that the
transference is complex and consists of various layers which can get superimposed, linked and condensed into each other - a
complication which distinguishes it from the more simple notion of ‘projection’. Whilst I think it is useful to keep the two
notions theoretically distinct, in practice it is extremely difficult to neatly separate ‘transference’ from ‘projection’: if we
reserve ‘transference’ for the systematic layering of a whole complex web of related projections as they unfold within the
container of a deepening attachment, then we could talk about the client perceiving the therapist as one of the polarities in the
dialogue as a simple (temporary) projection. However, when we enquire into the phenomenological detail of a particular
client-therapist interaction, projection and transference become indistinguishable: they both involve the mis-perception of an
external figure through the lens of an internal ‘object’ - a process which is inevitably affect-laden and embodied.
Some people would like to simplify the distinction between transference and projection by emphasising the perceptive and
visual aspects of projection, as opposed to the affective nature of the transference. I cannot go along with these distinctions - I
see them as artificial and obfuscating. I see both projection and transference as complex body/mind experiences, both
involving deep, and often primitive, feelings. Every projection immediately constellates a relational scenario, with associated
sensations, feelings and mental states. And when we investigate transference phenomenologically, we find that, in most cases,
we have a confusing, multi-layered and very fluid situation, anyway (which involves projections that can shift as quickly as the
client’s focus of attention). I am suggesting that the postulated theoretical distinction between the terms ‘projection’ and
‘transference’ is not as clear-cut as is often assumed. Such a theoretical distinction can generate an apparent sense of solidity /
stability which protects the therapist from the mercurial nature of the transference process moment-to-moment.
Phenomenological attention to both transference and countertransference as body/mind processes does not suggest such
stability other than on a fairly abstracted, theoretical level.
As an illustration, let’s imagine a male client who has developed a tentative and submissive personality, based on the
experience of being humiliated and bullied by his father. This may well be the dominant feature of how he approaches therapy
and the therapist: as the father. Let’s further imagine that he had a younger sister of whom he was deeply protective (which is,
of course, not unrelated to his experience of his father: maybe he wanted to compensate through giving to his sister the
protection he himself longed for). After a dream about rescuing the sister, he comes to the session, reports the dream and gets
into a dialogue with the sister. In the moment of suggesting the technique, the therapist may well be perceived as the father,
and that may well continue to be operating in the background. However, phenomenological observation shows that it is
perfectly possible for the interrupted dialogue between the client and his sister to shift into the client-therapist relationship,
with the therapist now being related to as the sister. How is this possible ? How can the therapist be ‘constructed’ both as the
sister and the father at the same time ? How can the therapist be perceived simultaneously as two people who are clear

opposites in the client’s mind ? I am suggesting that this is the nature of the transference, anyway: fluidly moving - sometimes
from minute to minute - between more temporary and superficial manifestations to deeper, more persistent and fundamental
patterns. And psychodynamic practitioners are used to distinguishing - if not deliberately and consciously, then at least
implicitly - these various levels and their relative significance, and make decisions as to where to pitch their attention and
interpretation. With awareness of these processes, a technique such as dialogue can be used in a way that - at the very least -
reveals as much as it can complicate and occlude.
57 This is obviously a general principle which does not just apply to this particular technique: often the dynamic of a relationship
continues and is enacted precisely through and how and whilst it is being discussed. Far from providing a true overview (meta
meaning ‘above’, ‘over’), the rush towards an apparent meta-position perpetuates an unbearable dynamic precisely through
such avoidant meta-level discussion.
58 One way of working with this tricky conundrum is ‘stepping into third position’; this is an established intervention in the
‘toolbox’ of ‘two-chair’-work. I will try to cover its uses later on in the ‘steps and instructions’. Its relevance in the context of
meta-communication is that here the client has already, spontaneously, stepped out of the dialogue into some sort of ‘third
position’. They have abandoned the dialogue and are attempting to talk about it: the attempted move to the meta-position here
is usually a defensive manoeuvre, but it nevertheless mimicks the ‘step into third position’ (where - as we will see - similar
complications may arise, e.g. the question is: how can we distinguish a ‘true’ third position from a ‘defensive’ one).
59 Dialogue as a technique is, of course, pervaded by the implicit recognition of the parallel between outer and inner
relationships. My Gestalt teacher, Rainer Pervoeltz, used to summarise this as: “we relate to others as we relate to ourselves”.
This is reminiscent of Jesus’ statement: “treat others as you would like to be treated yourself!”, but is not meant as a guideline
or injunction, but simply as a recognition of a psychological fact: ‘that’s just how it is: I do relate to others in the same way I
relate to myself’. A recognition of the parallel between outer and inner relationships is intrinsic to Reich, to Gestalt and to
Object Relations (which sees internal relationships as internalised versions of outer ones). It is, therefore, possible to envisage
a more comprehensive integration of the overlapping ideas of these approaches through an extended notion of ‘parallel
process’ (see Soth 2005). This would embrace a recognition of the originally wounding scenario, the internalised relationship
and the re-externalised one, ideally in a holistic, body/mind perspective. Whilst such a formulation can be extremely useful to
facilitating the technique, it is beyond the scope of this paper. A useful introduction to the notion of ‘parallel process’ in its
established, more limited meaning is Hawkins/Shohet “Supervision in the Helping Professions”.
60 The details of this formulation are beyond the scope of this paper
61 in David’s example: “you see, you are now apologising to me as if I was as impatient and contemptuous of your uncertainty as
your father.”
62 I will consider the vicissitudes of this response in a separate paragraph later on.
63 unless, of course, the theme of the dialogue is about correcting or telling off - in which case it may be unavoidable.
64 The ‘flatness’ is precisely an indication that we are not just involved in a mental exercise, but that we are riding emotionally
charged waves - their coming and their going has an emotional-relational function and meaning.
65 Grinder/Bandler formulate the NLP version of the conditions pertaining to a “well-formed”, congruent communication in “The
Structure of Magic”, Vols 1 and 2. In their definition, ‘mind-reading’ constitutes a violation of these conditions. Although this
is arguable, I consider it a useful idea.
66 For the sake of clarity, I have described these two possibilities as distinct: either the therapist is perceived as ‘outside’ the
dialogue, as the director (and this can be useful), or the dynamic ‘jumps’ into the client-therapist relationship and the therapist
is being drawn into the dialogue and is, therefore, to all intents and purposes ‘inside’ it (and this can be made useful, too). But
rather than thinking of these two scenarios as discrete, it is more realistic to consider them as co-existing in varying
proportions. We can work with them and hold them in mind as a question of degree: as long as the client is largely and
predominantly engaged in the dialogue as a spontaneous process ‘out there’ (i.e. on the cushions), it may be preferable to ‘run
with it’, even though there may be minor indications that the therapist is also being perceived as identified with one polarity
more than the other.
67 in the humanistic field there has been traditionally a tendency to counteract the cultural dominance of the mind by prioritising
the body and the non-verbal (“the body never lies”) over the verbal message. There is a useful discussion in Grinder/Bandler
regarding the relative weight we give to verbal and non-verbal messages: if there are many disparate messages (what in simple
terms we might call a double-message), we do not have to categorise them hierarchically (i.e. giving more weight or value to
the non-verbal communication as the ‘real’ message, a la Bateson), but can think of them as parallel messages conveying
different meanings, some conflicting, some congruent with others (p. ).
68 remembering that the client’s experience is not one homogenous reality, but consists of conscious and unconscious aspects
which may be in conflict with each other; at times the therapist may want to rely more on the client’s spontaneous and maybe
unconscious expressions (which indicate and imply a particular perception of the therapist) than on the client’s conscious and
expressed perception of the therapist may not be our main criterion ....; if, for example, the client looks hunched, retreating and
scared of the therapist (even though the client has no awareness of this), the therapist may want to work on the assumption that
they are being perceived as the bullying, intimidating polarity
69 especially when the therapist realises that they are not just ‘playing a part’ (like an actor) on behalf of the client, but that in
inhabiting that polarity the therapist is drawing on prior relational experience with this client as the recipient of the client’s
‘projective identifications’; the more the therapist is aware of the fact that in explicitly modelling a part of the client’s inner
world they are often playing a part which they have previously been given by the client’s unconscious, anyway, the more such

a move is implicitly grounded in the relationship. This does not necessarily need to be made explicit verbally, but when it
conveys itself to the client, the ‘exercise’ loses any - otherwise easily presumed - artificial quality.
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Working with Polarities / Gestalt Dialogue / ‘Two-chair’ work

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