Miriam Polster

Miriam Polster earned her PhD is clinical psychology in 1967 and was trained by the pioneers in Gestalt Therapy, whose approach is to enable the client to become more fully and creatively alive, and free from the blocks and unfinished issues which may diminish optimum satisfaction, fulfillment, and growth.  Growth occurs through gradual assimilation of experience in a natural way, rather than by accepting the interpretations of the analyst; thus, the therapist should not interpret, but lead the client to discover for him or herself.  Miriam was an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at University of California San Diego School of Medicine.  She also co-founded and co-directed the Gestalt Training Center in San Diego with her husband.  Their individual and joint service to psychotherapy has been honored at an international gathering of their peers.  Miriam Polster was also awarded congressional recognition for her outstanding and invaluable contribution to her field.

The passages and questions below are offered as a starting point for discussion, and are simply listed in sequential order as they appear in the book.

• Page 39 "I don't think in terms of an entity called 'God' but rather of an orderliness to the universe, a certain evolutionary, energetic motivation that moves things along in the world." [Wolff] Do you have a relationship with or to that energy? "I'm included in it, one manifestation of it, one of millions and millions of manifestations. I have a feeling of immersion in, rather than connection to the energy. It's a very humbling experience." [Wolff] How so? "Because I realize that there are millions of people in this universe, each of us, like me, a little entity with wishes and hopes and dreams. I walk in my shoes, but everyone else walks in their shoes as well. Each of us is as valid as the other. I find that humbling."
  • What is your perspective of spirituality as it relates to God?
  • Miriam Polster prefers to use the word immersion" rather than "connection", as it relates to her spiritual perspective. Do you consider yourself immersed or connected? What would be different for you if you were to move towards "immersion"?
• Page 41 "No matter what role she plays, if a woman has no sense of her own possibilities, of her own worth, she lives between despair and resignation. A woman doesn't need to become like a man in order to feel good about herself, but she must find a way to validate her own wisdom and experience. Whether she chooses to operate on the more private scale of one-to-one or the larger scale of one-to-five hundred, it's critical she sees herself as an agent of change, as someone who has an original perspective, as someone who has the guts and willingness to do what she believes is important."
  • Miriam Polster's interview is full of references to the importance of validating your own wisdom and experience. As women, we often spend our lives struggling with self-esteem. Do you perceive yourself as someone who has an "original perspective"? If yes, how does that show up in your life? If no, how would your life be different if you shifted your paradigm?
• Page 43 "I approach looking for those answers in terms of function and relationship. I'm a very important person in our family: a very important wife and a very important mother. I'm learning how to be a very important grandmother. I then expand this definition by substituting verbs for the nouns I used to describe myself. Saying 'I mother', rather than 'I am a mother', takes me beyond the caretaking of my own children and denotes an active connection to the world. It also puts me in touch with the whole range of who I am."
  • Sometimes the language we use limits us and how we interact with the world. What simple changes can you make in your languaging that better reflects how you want to connect with the world?
    
• Page 47 [the author] Do you have a spiritual practice? "Every once in a while, when I have time, I meditate to quiet down. But for me, spiritual practice is making the bed, defrosting dinner, and so on. It's not magical or removed; it's about how I discover and reveal myself as I do things that are ordinary."
  • In contrast to the two previous interviewees, Miriam Polster's profession as teacher and therapist can be considered 'main-stream'. So often, boundaries are created between our spiritual life, our professional life, and our family life. And yet, she has found a way to remove those boundaries, so her spirituality pervades what most of us would perceive as routine. Do you believe that there should be a distinction between these aspects of yourself? Why?
    
• Was there a particular passage that made you stop and either consider or appreciate?