Untitled Document

ich und du

Martin Buber’s Ich und Du (I and Thou) relationship forms the heart of the patient-therapist relationship in gestalt therapy.

Buber’s concept of I and Thou emphasizes symmetry, giving, mutuality, phenomenology, relationship, context. It is organic, moving, flowing, and relational. It leaves us with the feeling – what is reality – can we really see it objectively at all? – or only through the lenses of experience, relationship, and context? The limitation of this is an inability to see Reality, for those who would like to. We are limited by our sense lenses (mind being included as a sense, in the Buddhist tradition) and that which we happen to (or choose to) interact with. The freedom lies in our ability to create our reality, to shape what we focus on and who we form relationships with – to create our fairy tale fantasy or our nightmare through our attention.

There is beauty in this Ich und Du – the beauty of connection, deepened further by empathy, presence, and service – valuing the other through sharing the self, itself relational. Connected and opened by the expansiveness of transparency and honesty. Open to possibility for significant growth through surrender of control. No longer trying to cram our future into limiting logical labyrinths which we don’t even really understand.

Instead, authentic and open, gestalt therapy allows mutual embracing of this moment, this experience, this fabric of relation that forms our Reality, in the vast creativity and potential of “now,” and in the essence of service.

It is active, engaged, responsible, whole,
and in these elements, liberating.

And I have to ask, how could life NOT be relational? Look at the extreme pain that arises in our lives when we feel isolated. Even this reaction is relational. We do not end at our skin. When our spiritual eyes are fully open in surrender and trust, we see that we are All That Is.

We are not, as Stanislav Grof terms it, “ ‘skin-encapsulated egos’ in a world of separate beings and objects (91, The Holotropic Mind). Rather, we continue. We blend. We exist in our relation, a self made of a whole. We are one that is made of all, all that is made of one. Boundaries are illusions of the mind. They serve us, sometimes. And sometimes, they limit. In the places of limitation, it makes sense to let them go. Expand, wild flowers.

From I and Thou, p.31-33:
To man the world is twofold, in accordance with his twofold attitude. He perceives what exists round about him - simply things, and beings as things; and what happens round about him - simply events, and actions as events; things consisting of qualifies, events of moments; things entered in the graph of place, events in that of time; things and events bounded by other things and events, measured by them, comparable with them: he perceives an ordered and detached world. It is to some extent a reliable world, having density and duration. Its organization can be surveyed and brought out again and again; gone over with closed eyes, and verified with open eyes. It is always there, next to your skin, if you look on it that way, cowering in your soul, if you prefer it so. It is your object, remains it as long as you wish, and remains a total stranger, within you and without. You perceive it, take it to yourself as the "truth," and it lets itself be taken; but it does not give itself to you. Only concerning it may you make yourself "understood" with others; it is ready, though attached to everyone in a different way, to be an object common to you all. But you cannot meet others in it. You cannot hold on to life without it, its reliability sustains you; but should you die in it, your grave would be in nothingness.
Or on the other hand, man meets what exists and becomes as what is over against him, always simply a single being and each thing simply as being. What exists is opened to him in happenings, and what happens affects him as what is. Nothing is present for him except this one being, but it implicates the whole world. Measure and comparison have disappeared; it lies with yourself how much of the immeasurable becomes reality for you. These meetings are not organized to make the world, but each is a sign of the world-order. They are not linked up with one another, but each assures you of your solidarity with the world. The world which appears to you in this way is unreliable, for it takes on a continually new appearance; you cannot hold it to its word. It has no density, for everything in it penetrates everything else; no duration, for it comes even when it is not summoned, and vanishes even when it is tightly held. It cannot be surveyed, and if you wish to make it capable of survey you lose it. It comes, and comes to bring you out; if it does not reach you, meet you, then it vanishes; but it comes back in another form. It is not outside you, it stirs in the depth of you; if you say "Soul of my soul" you have not said too much. But guard against wishing to remove it into your soul - for then you annihilate it. It is your present; only while you have it do you have the present. You can make it into an object for yourself, to experience and to use; you must continually do this - and as you do it you have no more present. Between you and it there is mutual giving: you say Thou to it and give yourself to it, it says Thou to you and gives itself to you. You cannot make yourself understood with others concerning it, you are alone with it. But it teaches you to meet others, and to hold your ground when you meet them. Through the graciousness of its comings and the solemn sadness of its goings it leads you away to the Thou in which the parallel lines of relations meet.