Remembering Carl Hodges
Carl Hodges, Athens 2007 – received care of Piotr Mierkowski
I met Carl in New York, once when I was asked there to do a workshop. His ideas and his large friendly astute presence prompted me to ask if he would make first visit to the UK and do a return workshop for the Gestalt Centre. It did not cross my mind that he would become a fixture, a frequent and welcome visiting tutor for many years after that. The tributes here are testimony to the great value he added to so many people’s understanding and skill in using Gestalt methodology. It is very sad to know he has gone.
Gaie Houston
Dear Carl,
Thank you is such a small expression. Maybe a metaphor? But I cannot think of one to describe how you impacted me. Wait, it’s coming to me. You are a magician.
You have been explaining utterly abstract and complex ideas such as 'conciousness' and 'field' and 'group process' in simple ways that it appears as if we, the learner knew these things all along....you just reminded us, gently, like a tap on the shoulder.
Really Carl? Race is more than this horrid thing with people having to take sides and never forget their agony and anger? it is a fluid process? How is my culture, heritage, race superior?? Well, nobody asked me THAT question, definitely not in London. Silks, sandalwood, philosophy, classical music, dance the list goes on....you say that sounds very rich. Thank you. It is.
How you marvelled over a skirt....my healing can be directly measured by my reaction over the years to your remark of how high the slit was in Lore Perls' tight skirt. The first few years, I was scandalised, and sat squirming. Next, the discomfort had gone and was replaced by a curiosity- why were you so interested in this? The final few years, I thoroughly enjoyed how you described exactly how high the slit went. You brought a fresh innocence with your masculine sexuality. These are words I would not normally associate- 'innocent', 'masculine' and 'sexuality'. And you are a magician, so you did bring all these together in you. With your gentle, musical soft accent. And so, the pain of betrayal of my contact with masculine sexuality was transformed simply by your presence. Can healing be magically effortless and soothing? Yes, with you it was.
I will not go into the stone or the avocado. These things have been celebrated by other students of yours. But if I may have your permission, I'd like to mention one particular incident which took place during my penultimate year of training. A student, seemingly out of the blue, asked to listen to your heartbeat. I wondered if this was a metaphor, like 'I want to know what makes you tick' but no... you invited her to sit by you and listen to your heart beat! I thought how bizzare. Is this a challenge? A joke? You could be funny at times, we laughed often and your weekends for me were the most lighthearted. Then she got up, walked across the room, sat next to you and bending down, placed the side of her head against your chest. Then I felt jealous. I wanted to hear your heartbeat too. I can now see what a lesson this was in the immediacy and primacy of the here and now, of interpersonal work, of the presence of the group facilitator, and the fearless compassion you brought which made such an interaction seem effortless and mundane. And I know that I've listened to your heartbeat (this is a metaphor) over the years, giving me solace, assurance and confidence.
And so, good bye and safe onward journey. You showed me what it looks like to be alive, vibrant, gentle and scholarly and absolutely unique and authentic. So my only real tribute to you is to be all of this. No matter what others might think of me (yesss Carl, I continue to stereotype others and myself), I know you would look on with approval, joy and kindness.
My bedrock statement? I am loved.
Raksha
Raksha is a UKCP registered psychotherapist, studying philosophies, with a specialist interest in race in the UK
rakshasidhu1@gmail.com
Remembering Carl Hodges (26th October 1945 − 15th November 2023)
Carl Hodges of Brooklyn, NY, passed away on November 15, 2023. He was 78 years old.
I learned about Carl’s death on a cold morning in mid-November from one of my Polish supervisees, who knew how much I respected him and loved as my former teacher and supervisor. Carl was a person who inspired me to study PHG line-by-line and make a better use of our foundational book when teaching Gestalt therapy to psychotherapy trainees and supervisees, and eventually translate it into the Polish language, my mother tongue. I wrote about Carl in my “Introduction” to the Polish edition of Gestalt Therapy Excitement and Growth in The Human Personality (1951) that was published for the first time in December 2022 when he was very ill but still alive and now, in his memory, I feel compelled to share some reminiscences about Carl with the UKAGP colleagues.
Carl was born and raised in Queens, New York to a middle class African-American family. He was a New Yorker through and through. This is in New York, where he graduated with a BA in Political Science and earned his Master’s in Social Work, attended courses at the New School for Social Research, and this is where in NYIGT, the first Gestalt therapy institute in the world, he trained as a Gestalt therapist with Laura Perls, Richard Kitzler, and Isadore From, amongst others. This is in New York that he worked in the private practice, supervised and taught new generations of therapists. Even if based mostly in New York, he has become hugely important to the international Gestalt community spreading the word of Gestalt therapy around different countries like Italy and the UK and regularly teaching group facilitation and field theory in the various European Gestalt training organisations.
Carl was the first elected president of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy (NYIGT) taking over from Laura Perls. He was also one of the founding members of AAGT (presently IAAGT) in 1989 and its second president (1995-1997). Carl also contributed to many international institutes, acting as their external consultant and collaborating as visiting trainer, amongst them the Gestalt Centre London (UK) and the Istituto di Gestalt in Italy. His contribution to the advancement of Gestalt therapy theory and practice, in particular a contemporary Gestalt group therapy cannot be overstated.
Personally, I was terribly saddened to hear that Carl is dead as he was one of my most important teachers and mentors. I had a good luck of meeting Carl in the mid-1990s and had him as one of my tutors when I was a trainee in the Gestalt Centre London. He used to travel regularly from NY to run his weekend groups with us. On the very first occasion, in 1994, as I recall, he introduced us to the basics of Gestalt psychology and he did it so skilfully and effortlessly that I continue to hold on to all the notes from this particular seminar and dip into them now and again when I teach my own students.
I recall that it was Carl who never parted with his already much-worn copy of the first edition of PHG, held together only by adhesive tape, with copious amounts of scribbled notes sticking out of it. I remember when, some of us – trainees made at times fun of his palpable fascination with this book, when struggling to get through its pages ourselves. At the same time, deep down I felt I simply envied Carl; envied his knowledge, his skills, and indeed his passion. During Carl’s classes, one could expect that sooner or later he would undoubtedly refer to what PH & G said on a specific subject, not at all to make us introject it, but rather to offer a basis for further discussion, a springboard and a necessary catalyst that inevitably triggered new insights, revisions of concepts, our novel ideas – “variations on the same theme”. His classes were exciting, unlocked independent thinking, supported intuition.
Subsequently, I was attending training groups and seminars with Carl on numerous occasions throughout my studies for MA in Gestalt Psychotherapy. Thanks to the extended length of my studies (well over the required five years), I was lucky to learn from him extensively. After I graduated, he also supervised my practice for a while. Later, I had a chance to participate in some of his workshops he run while in London and at the AAGT conferences. As at the time, I attended numerous international conferences, often 2 or 3 in one year, he used to tease me and called me a “conference junky”.
Thinking back, I imagine Carl saw himself and his role as a facilitator of an individual’s commitment to a better functioning society. At times, I had the impression that he continued to teach and work in the vein of Paul Goodman – most certainly the leading author of the theoretical part of Gestalt Therapy. Excitement and Growth (1951), who was driven by a genuine belief that creating a good enough community, which embraces and supports the differences of all its individual members is possible and beneficial to overall health and well-being.
Carl had a keen interest in field theory and its practical application to groups, organisations and, more generally, in society at large and within diverse settings in particular, to better understand and deal with social phenomena that tend to be polarised on the basis of racial, political or class differences, as well as institutions that hinder the realisation of human potential. His teachings of field theory during my training had a great impact on us the trainees, but also on other trainers in the Gestalt Centre London – his seminars acted as an eye opener for all of us to a novel exciting way of experiencing human behaviour and world events. Carl referred to “man-ing” and “race-ing”, rather than people being men or being black. By this, he intended to emphasise that everything, including all human beings, is constantly in flux, in process. Individuals who could be labelled of having certain characteristics were described by him as relating to others in these particular ways here and now rather than being defined by their behaviour as being this or that, or having a certain personality or character. The implications of this choice of perception and language are firstly that people are not defined by one aspect of their behaviour and experience; secondly that change is possible. How one is defined depends on the perspective and philosophy of the definer and often rests on the definer wielding social and political power. “Labelling is always a political act.” (Carl Hodges, personal communication) A Gestalt therapist remains interested in the phenomenology of each client, that is, the unique way of how he experiences the world and himself. How, in the consulting room, does he experience the therapist, who, for the duration of his therapy, could be thought of as representing the other, the rest of the (human) world? The perspective presented and lived by Carl was for me refreshing and revolutionary.
In groups, he always took time to consider the meaning of discussions and to uncover the ground of fixed feelings and hardened attitudes, values, opinions and beliefs that limited our seeing what was possible for how to move forward together. He always emphasised that the contact/boundary is not between people, like some sort of a barrier or space, but rather the contacting boundary is a boundary of meeting and connecting, a boundary of relationship (no space between). Novelty – difference – is inherent in contacting, and all contacting is here and now. Therefore, the group exists only here and now. For Carl, a group is “three or more people in here-and-now interaction (verbal or nonverbal) who perceive themselves to have a common fate, history, and purpose”; Hodges, C.W. (2006). Commentary V: Gestalt with Groups: A Cross-Cultural Comparison “Gestalt Review” 10(3): 229–230.
Carl also introduced the theme of race and diversity at one of our residentials at the Gestalt Centre London − a powerful and challenging experience, which in the 1990s was a very neglected area. As an African-American he thought from his own life experience. In fact, all his seminars and workshops were never dry abstract affairs, but experiences characterised by freshness and engagement, when participants had an opportunity to discover themselves anew. It doesn’t surprise as Carl was as skilled a practitioner as an academic. He studied with the famous Gestalt psychologist Mary Henley at the New School for Social Research – a world-renowned university founded in 1930s in New York by Charles Beard and John Dewey, which for many years acted as exile for scholars fleeing the persecutions of the Nazi regime, like Erich Fromm, Max Wertheimer, and Hannah Arendt, amongst many others. Carl brought his serious understanding of Gestalt psychology into the Gestalt Centre London. What is also worth a mention is that Carl also studied with Yvonne Agazarian, the principal architect of systems-centred therapy, based on a theory of Living Human Systems that she also developed. He made innovative attempts to integrate her ideas into Gestalt therapy theory and was extremely generous by sharing those with his students.
Unfortunately, as many other great Gestalt therapy practitioners his writing is sparse, and his ways of thinking and style survive mostly in the oral form, like for instance his 1990 presentation “Field Theory and Group Process” at The Gestalt Journal’s 12th Annual Conference in Boston, Massachusetts or transcripts from his workshops. Carl contributed a chapter entitled “Creative Processes in Gestalt Group Therapy” to the book edited by Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb and Nancy Amendt-Lyon, Creative License: The Art of Gestalt Therapy (2003) and an anthology, The New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy in the 21St Century (2014) edited by Dan Bloom and Brian O’Neil. There is also a short video clip available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/uuZ_gpS6I4M?feature=shared.
Meeting Carl was a significant event in my professional life, but also personally. He taught me group facilitation based on the field-emergent interactional dynamics and to see all behaviour, individual or collective, all symptoms and situations as processes. He taught me humility and patience, and having faith that was described by Paul Goodman as ‘knowing, beyond awareness, that if one takes a step there will be ground underfoot: one gives oneself unhesitatingly to the act, one has faith that the background will produce the means’ (PHG, 1951, p. 343). I felt equally supported and challenged by Carl. Most importantly I always felt heard by him and accepted as I was, and…, yes, loved, which had never happened to me before, especially by a man. I recall one particular meeting with Carl, that took place at the AAGT Conference in Manchester in 2008 that had a transformational effect on me, which continues to work in me till this day. This was during this important encounter with Carl that I got an idea of translating PHG into Polish. Without Carl’s confidence in me and his encouragement I doubt I could ever embark on this project. Thank you, Carl, your legacy lives on.
Carl is missed by many. His obituary written by Mountcastle Turch Funeral Home & Crematory − Dale City, Virginia, 7th December 2023 can be found on Legacy.com: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/carl-hodges-obituary?id=53779852#obituary, also the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy website has In Memoriam written by Dan Bloom, current NYIGT President: https://newyorkgestalt.org/news/.
Rest in peace, Carl.
Piotr
Piotr Mierkowski MA Dip Psych is a UKCP Reg. psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer with over thirty years of clinical experience in the NHS, voluntary sector and private practice in London, Poland and online.
Unfortunately, I did not have the pleasure of meeting and working with Carl. Pity. I am moved by the farewell written by Piotr Mierkowski. Carl must have been a wonderful man and a very good psychotherapy practitioner. I’m sorry he left. Sincere condolences to the family and everyone to whom Carl was close.
Jolanta Cieplinska from Poland
