Leslie: So, you had asked me what is this experiential label. And let me give you a sort of anecdotal answer. I went recently to this Gestalt writers' conference, and basically I put the following question to them, "Given that both Client-Centered and Gestalt therapy (and the humanistic therapies in general) have died in academia - I'm trying to revive them under the global title of experiential - and given that psychodynamic has many different sub-schools within it, how would people at this conference feel about being one of the schools under a broader label of experiential?" We had a discussion of that. I had a chapter I'd written, and at the time it was called "Experiential Psychotherapy: The Essence of Client-Centered, Gestalt, and Existential Approaches." In the discussion, people influenced me to call it "Experience-Centered Therapies: Gestalt, Client-Centered, and Existential."
Laura Rice introduced me to Gestalt psychotherapy theoretically. And I often joke that I'm one of the few people who probably learned about Gestalt therapy theoretically first. I read Perls, Hefferlein, and Goodman in a theories class, and I thought this was really interesting. I read Perls, and then I tried to seek out Gestalt trainers. So I really was introduced to it through books.
Then I found out there was a person in town by the name of Harvey Freedman, who was a psychiatrist, and he was running Gestalt therapy groups. I joined with Harvey Freedman; he worked in the Toronto General Hospital, and he ran groups, and I went into these groups for two or three years.
I was also in encounter groups at York University where people were coming up from Berkeley and doing things like that. I was training meanwhile as a counseling psychologist, seeing my own clients and so on.
Then Harvey Freedman was picked by Perls to run the Gestalt Institute of Canada on Vancouver Island. Harvey was getting ready to uproot here and go out there, and then Fritz died. The fallout of that was that Harvey Freedman started the Gestalt Institute of Toronto. He stayed there, and then I was part of the first group, the first-year training group, and I trained here for three years in a formalized training program. Different people came in: Laura Perls was one of the people, and a variety of others. So, I was exposed to a West Coast style of Gestalt Therapy, and I got my training there, but I always felt that they lacked a theory of relationship or any kind of view of empathy and therapeutic relationship. Meanwhile, I was getting a lot of that at my university training from a Rogerian perspective, and I remember like a critical thing at one point saying to Harvey, "You know you don't take the relationship and group process into account," and he said, "Show me where the relationship or group is." It was sort of a radical, phenomenological view, which was very "I" centered, and not "We" centered in any way. And so I always had this sort of theoretical divergence; I mean I was still very young, and it was all mixed up in my still trying to be recognized, but I always had this view that somehow this was a weakness in the practice of Gestalt therapy, and although the "I-Thou" relationship was said to be one of the legs, it wasn't really used or practiced in very strong terms. So I always saw it as a strong theoretical problem. Then I went to Vancouver eventually, because I got an academic job, otherwise I would have stayed here with the Gestalt Institute of Toronto.
I was always unhappy with the Perlsianism aspect of Gestalt therapy.
Leslie: 你刚才问我“体验”是什么，我先说一件轶事。最近我去参加完形作家会议，问了他们一个问题：“既然在学术界人本治疗和完形治疗（以及所有人本主义取向的疗法）都已消亡，我打算让它们在“体验”的名字下复活；既然心理动力学有许多不同的小学派，那么在座诸位对归属于一个叫“体验派”之大类门派下会有何感受？”我们做了讨论。以前我有本书的一章叫“体验：人本、完形与存在主义治疗法的本质”。讨论之后，他们影响了我，标题改成了“体验中心治疗：完形、人本与存在主义”。
是Laura Rice引领我学了完形心理治疗理论。我经常开玩笑说我可能是少数先从理论上学习完形治疗的人之一。我在理论课上读了Perls, Hefferlein, 和Goodman，觉得很有趣。我是通过书籍进入完形治疗的。而后我发现镇上有位叫Harvey Freedman的精神病学家在做完形团体治疗；我就加入了。他在多伦多综合医院带团体，我跟了两三年。
我在约克大学也遇到来自Berkeley的人带领的类似的团体。那时我做为咨询心理学家接受训练，也看我自己的来访者。
之后Perls选中Harvey Freedman来掌管位于Vancouver岛的加拿大完形学院；Freedman都准备要去的时候，Perls死了。结果Harvey Freedman创立了多伦多完形学院；他留在了那里，我是第一年的训练团体——最早的团体的参与者之一，在那儿受了三年的正规训练。很多人到过那儿，包括Laura Perls还有其他人。这样我接触了完形治疗的西海岸风格；虽然在那儿接受训练，但我一直觉得他们缺少有关关系的理论或任何关于共情和治疗关系的见解。其间我在我大学的训练中从Rogerian的观点中学到了很多；我印象中一个关键事件是我对Harvey说：“你没有考虑关系和团体作用。”他的回答是： “告诉我关系或者团体在哪儿？”这是一种激进的现象学观点，非常以“我”为中心，而绝非以“我们”为中心。这样我总是与他们有一种理念分歧；当时我还非常年轻，试图被认可，但我一直有一种观点：这是完形治疗实践的薄弱处，尽管“我－你”关系被称为完形治疗的基柱之一，却没有真正应用。我一直把这看成重大的理念问题。最后我去了北美的Vancouver，因为在那里谋到一份学院工作，不然我会在多伦多完形学院待下去。
我总是对Perls式的完型疗法有种不满。
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