In Gestalt therapy, self-change seems paradoxical. As long as inner conflicts continue, you try _not to be_ the person you are; you cannot be genuine and are divided against yourself. Change, the Gestalt therapist claims, is possible only when you give up, at least for a time, trying not to be the person you are. There must be a firm place to stand from which to initiate change, and that place can only be the person you are right now. WHAT GESTALT THERAPY IS LIKE Gestalt therapy as it was developed by Perls is individual therapy done in a group setting. Gestalt therapists since Perls most commonly continue to practice therapy this way: individual members of a group are asked to volunteer to take the "hot seat"; the volunteer then becomes the focus of attention. This is not group therapy where relationships among members of the group are most important (see Chapter 13). In Gestalt therapy, emphasis is on the individual, who is pushed to drop his or her masks and pretensions. Other members of the group form an {130} audience and try to learn by example until it is time to occupy the hot seat themselves. Perls would ask for someone in the group to sit in a chair, facing him and the audience. Then Perls would launch an attack on the client's defenses. At times, he could be almost merciless. He did not believe in mothering clients; this served only to keep their defenses intact. Perls would notice nonverbal clues to the client's feelings. If the client was an inhibited woman, he would comment about her thighs, which were pressed firmly together. If the client was shy, he would remark about how the client held one hand in the other: Did he feel a need to have his hand held by Mother? If the client burst into tears, Perls would make no attempt to stop the tears with reassurance but would try to make the client aware of his motivation in crying: Was it to elicit pity? Were the tears a way of hiding from self-responsibility? Were the tears another mask, standing in the way of self-acceptance, authenticity, and growth? The objective of Gestalt therapists is to tear away clients' defensive masks and roles that usually keep them from real, sometimes painful or frightening, feelings. In this, the therapists' main technique is to _frustrate_ the clients' attempts to hide behind their masks and roles and to _block_ their attempts to control their therapist. Clients often do this by trying to make the therapist feel sorry for them, give them parental warmth, respond to their inadequacies, and so on. Instead, Gestalt therapy is comparatively _tough_. Perls used these instructions in beginning a workshop: