“The idea of Gestalt therapy is to change paper people to real people. To make the whole man of our time come to life and to teach him to use his inborn potential to be … a leader without being a rebel, having a center, instead of living lopsided.
Fritz Perls (Eyewitness to Therapy, p. 120)
While it may seem that the quotation above is about Gestalt Therapy, it actually appears in the first NLP book. This book, which Bandler transcribed and partially edited, contains many of the presuppositions and themes that later became central to NLP. In it, you can read Perls’ passionate arguments about why it’s better to ask ‘how’ rather than ‘why.’ The material in this book laid the foundation for the Gestalt class that Bandler and Frank Pucelik began at their college, which eventually developed into what we now call “The Meta-Model.”
The quotation also highlights a hidden theme in NLP that the field has never fully developed: the self-actualization of authenticity. It wasn’t until 2005 that I discovered NLP’s close ties to the Human Potential Movement (HPM), stemming from influential figures like Perls, Satir, and Bateson, who were second-generation leaders in HPM.
In an audio recording that Bandler heard, Perls remarked, “The idea of Gestalt therapy is to change paper people to real people.” This was Perls’ way of discussing self-actualization, a theme Maslow and Rogers addressed more directly. For Maslow, becoming one’s authentic self-meant shedding one’s mask and becoming real.
In the book Future Visions, Maslow wrote in the section “After Self-Actualization, What?”:
“In the intrapsychic realm, the first great task is to search for one’s identity. Each person must find his or her true, active self, and after that task is accomplished, then life’s real problems lie ahead. Clearly, this task is related to finding one’s vocation, or calling, or biological destiny. … The person who has acquired a sense of self, direction, and vocation can use all of these tools simply as tools. The tools serve rather than boss their user. … Essentially, if you know who you are, where you are going, and what you want, then it is not hard to deal with inane bureaucratic details, trivialities, and constraints. You can simply disarm them and make them disappear by a simple shrug of your shoulders….”
Maslow emphasized becoming authentic by focusing on self-awareness, self-knowledge, and living from the inside out:
“… authentic persons are those who have discovered and accepted their own, biological, temperamental, and constitutional cues, the signals from within. In a sense, this description relates to intuition … if you achieve this ability to hear your own impulse voices, then you have attained an inner ‘supreme court’ from which come virtually infallible suggestions and even commands. Such people know what is good and what is bad for them and what they like and dislike.”
In the next paragraph, Maslow discusses how one becomes real, attributing it to personal development and self-actualization:
“How does one become an identity, a sure person, one who has authentic inner voices and who hears them and has courage to act on them? … Some people have good intuitions because they have achieved a self. Others have lousy intuitions because they have not attained a self, and therefore, cannot distinguish between the inner voices of authenticity from those of neurosis.”
Maslow concluded that very few people attain this kind of authenticity:
“… the human species is composed of perhaps 1% to 3% of people who have achieved personhood and that the vast majority have not done so …” (Future Visions, p. 179)
In writing about leaders, especially paranoid political leaders, Maslow observed:
“Most people lack a strong sense of self. They do not know what they want or what they are looking for in life. As a result, they are extremely suggestible and will follow a self-confident leader rather than determine their own destinies.” (Future Visions, p. 175)
As coaches, we aim to help people become authentic and real. This process is neither easy nor quick. It involves penetrating through the personas, superficial identities, and defenses people use to avoid confronting their true selves. This is why challenging individuals to step out of their comfort zones and stretch towards becoming their best selves is crucial in coaching.
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Meta-Coaches] 2024 Morpheus #26 COACHING FOR AUTHENTICITY by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
