Making The Rounds

Gestalt! ISSN 1091-1766
Volume 7 ; Number 1, Spring, 2003
Victor Daniels
Sonoma State University

 ABSTRACT

When Gestalt   work is done in a small group setting, a practice called “making the rounds” or the “go-around” is sometimes used. In this process the client gets up, walks to each other member of the group, and says or does something related to what he or she is working on. It can be useful in discovering how the person makes contact, in deepening personal and interpersonal awareness, in learning to make contact in new ways, in testing questionable attributions about others’ thoughts and feelings, and in grounding a person after an emotionally taxing working session. Questions addressed here include the circumstances, timing, goals, and specific methodology involved in the use of this procedure.

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In Gestalt group work, a session may include a practice called “making the rounds” or a “go-around,” in which the person who is working walks slowly around the circle, stops in front of each group member, and says or does something suggested by the facilitator. (Obviously this cannot be done in a one-to-one private session.) Questions I often hear include, “Under what circumstances do you use this method?” “At what point in the work do you use it?” “What do you hope to accomplish?” and “How do you decide what to suggest that the person might do?”

Each of these questions has several possible answers, depending on what’s occurring in the session.

Sometimes it’s useful to use a go-around early in a session, in order to get a better sense of a person’s habitual mental and emotional responses when encountering others, or to learn something about the character and quality of the person’s encounters. In the former case, an open-ended response tends to be most useful. For example, “Please go over to Jill and tell her, ‘With you I can . . . . ‘ (or ‘I’d like to. . . ‘). As you stand in front of each person, don’t try to ‘figure out’ what to say–just allow yourself to say whatever spontaneously pops into your mind, even if it seems completely nonsensical.” After the person has spoken to Jill, “Now continue on around the room and do the same thing with each person. If you wish, when you’re in front of each person you might even close your eyes for an instant, and then open them and say the first thing that pops into your mind.”

As the client moves around the room, a pretty good sense of what he or she wants, characteristically does, or is and isn’t willing to ask for is likely to emerge.

The line, “I can make contact with you by. . . ” is often useful in revealing the kind of contact a person does and doesn’t make. Someone might say to successive people, “. . . by talking with you;” “. . . by having an interesting conversation with you;” and “by discussing a good book with you.” As he moves to each person, I notice that his hands never leave his pockets and he stands about four feet away from each person, looks at the ground or the ceiling while speaking, and mumbles. What’s obvious is that he makes the most minimal possible contact with each person and that little is largely limited to verbal dialogue. After doing this with half a dozen people, he might be asked to exaggerate it in order to develop awareness of the pattern: “Please stand even farther back, hold your hands behind your back so there’s no chance at all that they can reach out toward people, on no account look at the person, and speak so quietly that they probably won’t be able to hear you.”

If such a go-around takes place later in the working session, and the person has already formed a clear awareness of her pattern of avoidance, she might be asked to stand closer to each person and reach out and physically touch each person who is willing to be touched, at least fingertip to fingertip or hand to hand. There’s a good chance that at least one group member will refuse to be touched and at least one will invite a hug–which the contact-starved client is likely to accept gladly.

The most appropriate next step, after the discovery of a person’s contact style, will emerge from what that style is. Someone who meets others with chin out and shoulders up, for example, might be asked to exaggerate that, and then after exploring and developing an awareness of it, move into finding a softer place within himself or herself, and contact others from that place. A go-around early in the session that leads to increased awareness of a contact style often leads to an empty-chair dialogue in which the origins of that contact style are explored.

Making the rounds may be appropriate in the middle of a working session for a quite different reason. Someone may be engaged in an empty-chair dialogue related to a present existential dilemma or a past source of a frustrating personal pattern and reach an impasse where she stops herself from moving farther. In some cases the facilitator will probably conclude that working with the pattern of blocking and stopping is apt to be most helpful, following Wilhelm Reich’s dictum that “the resistance becomes the center of the work.” In other cases the facilitator may intuitively feel that the person is right on the brink of being ready to move past the stopping point. In that case, a go-around can be a way of stepping back from the block and doing something else, which allows the person to relax her defenses. Then after the encounter with other group members, she may be willing to move right into dealing with the situation or pattern she avoided before the go-around. Metaphorically, this is a way of addressing an emotionally-loaded situation by going around to the back door when walking right in through the front door feels too threatening.

Another reason for a go-around at any point in the work is to test questionable attributions. It’s common for someone who is working to imagine that everyone else in the group disapproves and thinks she’s wasting their time or in some other way “not doing it right.” In this case she might physically make the rounds or might speak to each person in the room from where she sits, saying to each one in turn something like, “I imagine that you think what I’m doing is stupid. Is that right? Inevitably the group members reply with highly diverse, individual responses that range from “I was admiring how brave you are for what you’re doing” to “The same kind of thing happened in my family. You opened up a whole spectrum of memories and feelings for me. Thanks so much!” Informed by this feedback, the person working tends to let go of her self-consciousness and go more deeply into her process. (Often this can be done by speaking in turn to each person from where she sits, and listening to their reply from across the room, rather than by walking around the circle.)

Later in a working situation, after a process of inner exploration or enactive exaggeration, making the rounds can be a way to practice a new way of relating that is different from a self-defeating old pattern. In this case the person is typically asked to use the same phrase with each group member. A compliant person who is struggling to find her power might be asked to say, “I can do what I choose to do instead of what you want me to!” to each person, perhaps also adopting a posture or using a gesture that emphasizes her verbal statement. There is an obvious parallel here with such cognitive-behavioral interventions as systematic desensitization and assertiveness training. Indeed, an enactive desensitization procedure can even be explicitly used. A woman who has trouble standing up to male authority figures might be asked to go first to the male in the group whom she finds least threatening and say “No, I won’t do that,” and then go to the one whom she finds next least threatening and so on, finally ending up with the group member whom she finds most intimidating. Saying “No!” to him can be a powerful experience that she might have found too difficult had she gone to him first.

Occasionally during a go-around I notice what feels like an unusual energy in the encounter with one of the group members. Last week I felt this when Diane was doing nonverbal hand-to-hand pushing with each group member. With Alice something felt different and unusual. It took me a moment to notice it–Diane had already gone on to Tom. When she finished with him, I asked her to go back to Alice and suggested that they push again and then move into the center of the room and push and respond in various different ways. In so doing, Diane discovered that pushing didn’t have to be a simple opposition, but that she could find many ways to move with it. It’s useful to be attentive to sensing unusual moments of emotional energy during a go-around, because often they turn out to be one of Erving Polster’s “neon arrows” that points to some important possibility that can be developed.

In the service of encouraging autonomy, usually I explicitly state that the person has the choice of making the rounds as I suggest or of not doing so. “If you’re willing, I think it would be valuable for you to. . . . ” Sometimes they refuse. That’s fine. Their sense of personal agency is strengthened just a little and we take another direction.

Frequently when a person makes the rounds, especially in larger groups, at some point they switch onto “automatic,” just going through the motions. At that point I may stop the go-around, “That’s enough, thank you.” Or I may ask them to take a breath before speaking and say something that is uniquely triggered by the person they’re with at that instant. Or they may have “worn out” the line—that is, grasped its message fully—and I suggest that they change it in a particular way. Or they themselves may change it—may, for example, realize that what they started out saying or asking for was a little “off the mark” and change their statement so that it fits better. Or I may ask them to explicitly notice their process of “going on automatic” and losing their sense of present awareness.

When I suggest a line to use, in most instances I invite them to change it into something else if a different line seems to fit better.

At the very end of a working session, a go-around may be a way of moving out of an intense and perhaps even raw emotional space by making grounded contact with others in the group. This helps bring closure and helps the person get ready to go back out “onto the street.” It might be a simple line like “I can have fun with you,” or making some kind of nonverbal contact like shaking hands and saying, “Thanks for being here.” With some people this turns into hugging every person. How delicious!

Brief comments about making the rounds from members of one group include these:

“I felt awkward going around the room and speaking with different people. It did, however, have a strong “aha!” effect for me.”

“My discomfort was magnified through my interaction with others. That helped   me become aware of something I was doing that otherwise probably would have been impossible for me to see.”.”

“Hank seemed to have a resistance that flared up and his nonverbal interaction with other members helped him move through it.”

“Going around the group gave me a sense of not being alone. I appreciated that. It also helped me feel more connected when I was a group member on the receiving end, because I had a chance to show genuine concern toward a person who was ‘in process.'”

“I was amazed with the amount of creativity and self-expression I felt in the go-arounds.”

Like almost any method, this one is not appropriate with everyone, or in every working session. When it fits, however, it can be very useful.

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