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Sonia March Nevis, PhD: A Remembrance

2018; Penn State University Press; Volume: 22; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/gestaltreview.22.1.0107

1945-4023

Joseph L. Melnick,

Medicine and Dermatology Studies History

If we have the opportunity in our lifetime to meet an extraordinary person, we are very fortunate. One such person was Sonia March Nevis. Fritz Perls himself called her “the original.” She was an extraordinary therapist, teacher, mentor, wife, mother, and friend. She embraced and embodied the philosophy and practice of Gestalt therapy, always staying present in the moment, facilitating contact and teaching the rest of us how to do the same.Sonia, if you were still alive and I were staying at your Wellfleet home, I would awaken and wash up, go upstairs into your family room and find you curled up, sitting in your favorite chair close to the window. I would give you a kiss on the cheek and we would take each other in. You would smile, not just with your mouth but with your entire face, your entire body. We would begin to speak, what we had come to call “small talk,” as we gradually got connected to each other once again. It would be the same routine whether we had been with each other just yesterday or three months ago. In terms of what would come next, it was never the same, never a specific routine. We might talk about your children or mine, happenings at the Gestalt International Study Center (GISC), or local or national politics. Soon we would be engaged–in contact. I do not know how we moved from randomness to deep connection so quickly, but I had seen you do it with many others, a million times, effortlessly.You always reminded me of the old boxing quotation attributed to Sugar Ray Robinson, the great welterweight and middleweight champion. When he was asked about the key to his success he said “You don't think. It's all instinct. If you stop to think, you're gone.” And in your work, you were much like him, living and responding fully in the moment, not lagging even a microsecond behind experience.I began to guess that something was going wrong with you medically some five years ago. Eventually you were diagnosed with a form of dementia. It was not just that you were gradually becoming less patient and more forgetful; you were becoming more like the rest of us, separating thinking and feeling from simply being. And you intuitively knew when the dementia had begun to emerge, resulting in your losing your edge, your ability to be fully in the moment. You gracefully moved out of your primary leadership role at GISC into lesser ones, always willing to help in any way you could. And you always did help, because there was something about you, about your presence, that created safety. Putting all your skills aside, at your core you were ever a healer. As your illness progressed, your daughters Amy and Melanie, and your son-in-law Matt, took incredibly good care of you, ensuring that your days continued to be filled with friends and joyful connections.We talked about your background many times. Your mother died in childbirth when you were five. Your father, left bereft, was unable to care for both you and your brother, and you were shuttled off to a series of relatives where you were largely invisible, living on the edge of those families; never quite “out,” but never quite “in.” This was also true with school as you moved from classroom to classroom, often more connected to the teachers than the students (Nevis and Melnick 2011). Because of these loose connections, nobody told you what to do. No one said, “I love you.” But neither did they say, “You are doing this wrong,” or “I am angry with you.” I believe that experience contributed to your willingness to be present and to connect.While a teenager in high school, you met your husband, Edwin, in 1942. You were fifteen, and he was sixteen. As you related to me years ago, you each hung out in different groups and your relationship brought them together, forming a community of friends that would bike, listen to music, and help each other out; gradually, this became your surrogate family (Nevis and Melnick 2011). Over time the group grew apart but reunited in your later years, meeting for long weekends, often at Cape Cod and sometimes in Florida. Bringing people together—this yearning and love of community—has been a constant theme throughout your life.You married in 1948 and moved to Cleveland where Edwin received his PhD. After a short stint in Chicago you returned to Cleveland, where you received your PhD in Clinical Psychology from Case Western Reserve University, writing your dissertation on attachment in children, proving that babies are not born with “blooming confusion” but, in fact, organize from the first moment of birth, preferring certain patterns (Nevis and Melnick 2011). Most of us “love children,” but you really loved them. You talked often about how this love of innocence is rooted in your loss of much of your childhood. In the many years I knew you, I rarely saw you get angry; but nearly all of the times you did, it was because you saw children being mistreated. You could tolerate much but not innocents being shamed, shunned, or excluded. I never saw you dismiss or leave anyone out, no matter who they were or what they had done.After returning to Cleveland, you encountered Fritz Perls, discovered the Gestalt approach, and met your future colleagues at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland. You, yourself, put it this way: I have been thinking about how I answer when someone says to me, “What is Gestalt?” It happens often, and I think I answer differently each time. Is it about awareness, connection, contact, being present in the moment? I have never settled on a single response. Thinking upon this question leads me back to my first experience with Fritz Perls. This experience bonded me to Gestalt therapy, to learning it, to articulating it so that I could teach it, to exploring its concepts in every which way. I had lived in Cleveland for a few years and then left to live in Chicago. When I returned, I found that my friends had heard about an interesting workshop in New York that one of them had attended. It was about Gestalt therapy. They then invited the leader to give a workshop in Cleveland, and they were very excited about what they were learning. The leader's name was Fritz Perls. At that time, I had two daughters, a three-year-old and a one-year-old, and no thoughts about what I would do with the rest of my life. But I went to Fritz's next workshop, and my life suddenly had direction. That was over sixty years ago. I have visual memories of that workshop, which are startlingly clear. I also have strong bodily memories of those few days that I can still call on to this day. I have almost no memories of the content of that workshop. What I know is that a fog had lifted from me. Suddenly, I could see what was happening between myself and other people. I could name some of the feelings I was having. I realized that it was the first time I felt seen, and the first time I could see. Now here is where it gets hard. How do I articulate what I mean by such a statement? I think I have been struggling for a long time, as I am doing now, to articulate an experience that perhaps only poets should try to do. All I know is that the fog was lifting. From that time on, my energy was focused. We formed a study group from that workshop and helped each other grow. Fritz came back several times a year, and Isadore From started coming in between Fritz's sessions. Then Paul Goodman, Laura Perls, Paul Weiss, and Elliot Shapiro came. The nucleus of the Ohio Institute for Gestalt Therapy was formed in 1955, eventually becoming the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, with a core faculty of Marjorie Creelman, Ranette Fantz, Isabel Fredericson, Cynthia Harris, Elaine Kepner, Edwin and Sonia Nevis, Ervng and Miriam Polster, Bill Warner, and Joseph Zinker. (Melnick and Nevis, forthcoming 2018)This group stayed together for many years, with many of you living together, after Edwin and you converted a lovely estate into the first condominium association in Ohio, with shared grounds, a swimming pool, and even a ballroom.While at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland (GIC), you formed the Center for Intimate Systems with Bill Warner. After Bill's sudden and untimely death, you withdrew for a year as you mourned and then returned, inviting Joseph Zinker to become the core faculty. As the program enjoyed increasing success, Penny Backman and I joined the two of you, rounding out the faculty for many years.Because Joseph, Penny, and you all had homes in Wellfleet, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, we eventually began conducting all our programs there. As our physical separation from Cleveland became a reality, you and Edwin decided to build a separate center in South Wellfleet, about a two-hour drive from Boston, which was eventually named the Edwin C. and Sonia March Nevis Meeting House. I am still filled with awe at how the two of you, in your seventies, could commit much of your retirement savings to such an endeavor. When I asked you why you would do such a thing, you replied that you knew that Edwin needed to be “doing something large,” to be “in action.” And, of course, you supported him.In terms of you and me, let me recall that I first met you as I was pursuing training in Gestalt therapy right after finishing graduate school. I was in awe of the faculty at GIC. Why did I choose you? I could revert to the usual; I felt safe, seen, and heard. This is all true. But I need to add that I never realized that, until I met you, I had not had the sense of truly being seen, truly listened to and safe. What a surprise!We worked together as therapist/patient for a number of years while I was teaching at The University of Kentucky. I would drive to Cleveland once a month and we would spend two hours on Friday and two hours on Saturday together. I would record the sessions and play them back during my four-hour drive home. I still have the recordings. Despite my good intentions, I wonder if I will ever listen to them.In time, my wife Gloria joined us. You would sometimes work with her, sometimes with me, and often with the two of us. Over the years I referred many people to you, not only my clients but especially my family and friends. They all returned with a similar experience: “I am different.” What was it about you that created these experiences, these “Sonia moments?”Over the years, and later with the help of Carol Brockman, Stuart Simon, and Sharona Halpern, who joined our faculty, we created what came to be known as the Cape Cod Model, a specific philosophy and method of working with small systems: couples, families, work and leadership teams, and groups. To say that we created this model is not quite right. What we were really trying to do was to capture who you are; to articulate how you see, experience and speak, and live in the world. It has been our attempt to put into words your ability to create and live the good moment, the good meeting, the good relationship, and the good life.Your impact had much to do with your presence. Your interventions were simple yet profound. Barely five-feet tall you would initially appear in your later life as a sweet, grandmotherly type. But it would not take long for that simple image to disappear.Your interventions were sharp and penetrating, and often surprising. They quickly found their way into our hearts and souls, for as sharp as they were, they were usually wrapped in softness and compassion.You were able over and over again to find the right degree of energy, connection, impact, and love. You were a master of saying the ordinary, with comments often surrounded by a pause. I remember you once saying to me with soft annoyance, “Joe you are the most resistant person I ever met.” Then you smiled, took a breath, and said, “Except for me.” Here is one of your recollections on the subject of presence: One of the things that made a huge difference in my being able to be present occurred while watching video tapes of therapy sessions. It was at Esalen; Fritz would work in the morning with people, and we would go over the film in the evening sessions. As I was watching one of the films, I saw myself a lot from the back. That was so startling to me that it made a shift. I absolutely gave up. I realized that I was powerless to influence what you are going to see about me, and what you are going to like and not like. In that moment—I can still remember the sensation—I thought, “It does not matter what I want; I cannot control what you see. It is useless. I just have to do what I do, and I have to like what I like, and I have to be what I am.” If you are trying to hide parts of yourself, you will be tight and your presence will be diminished. And if we can become friendly with all parts of ourselves, we have presence for whatever is required in the moment. (Melnick and Nevis, forthcoming 2018)You embraced uncertainty, knowing that it was a fact of life. Maybe this was in response to your early losses. I know that you were a master at knowing how to be, even thrive, in the not knowing. You could manage in the in-between, whether between self and others, or between present, past, and future.You spent much of your life in a relaxed stance that allowed you to see emerging patterns and forms. Your soft eyes and fluidity were not just with people but also with feelings and thoughts resulting in an amazing creativity. In fact, almost to the end of your life, I never heard you say the same thing twice! It was that loose, fluid connection between figure and ground that allowed you to let go of the past and future, to see the obvious, and to be in the present.You were realistically optimistic. As you so often said, optimism, at its core, is a willingness to try something new, to approach the future with a curiosity, with the question, “What would happen if …?” and a knowledge that whatever happened, you would find a way to manage it. You believed that, by actions (often small), we can change our relationships and ourselves, and the world.You always respected and appreciated differences, for everyone knows pieces of things that everybody's wants and experiences are unique. These differences are what create energy. Here are some of your thoughts: If not for differences, life would be boring. I focus on differences a lot when I am teaching. When people resist them, we teach our students to move toward the resistant people. It changes things. Once a good conversation gets going, people who do not like to talk find themselves talking. And we welcome their criticism as well as their praise. There is always a piece of truth in every criticism. This is because we see one thing, and they another. We cannot say that we are accurate and they are not. We cannot know everything, so we are open to learning from them. We are learning together. We teach them and they teach us. It is what keeps the world moving. It is about being open to another's experience. The world is wide. (Melnick and Nevis, forthcoming 2018)You published, rarely, and mostly with others. Toward the end of your life you found a form that fit more of who you were. You would write seasonal, one-page newsletters, eliciting responses from friends, colleagues, and students, and people who did not know you. And you responded to every one! Here are some of your thoughts on writing: I was an avid reader when I was growing up in Brooklyn. It never occurred to me to write seriously. But when I was in high school, I had an English teacher who liked my writing and had ambitions for me—which I did not. The American Legion had a citywide contest that had to do with writing an essay on “Why I Love America.” My school supported this event, so we were given it as an assignment. I wrote an essay and quickly forgot about it. It was just an assignment. And, lo and behold, I won the contest! The prize was a $25.00 war bond, and the bank on the main street of town posted my essay in their window. I did not know it had done that. I passed the bank one day. I looked in the window, saw my essay, and reread it. I could not believe I had written it. It was pure dribble and embarrassing. I had never felt such shame. Now you need to understand that I came from a liberal, communistic family. To add to my embarrassment, I also received medals. After disposing of the medals in the nearest garbage can, I promised myself that I would never write again. Of course, I continued to write, and my writing was well received—but it was not for public consumption. I still struggle with writing something that others will see. I still have difficulty with writing anything that will become a public thing. (Nevis and Melnick 2011, 79–80)Your daughter Amy believes that what surprised you about that experience, Sonia, was the permanency of your writing. Like Fritz, you were always creating in the moment, but you began to realize that many hold on to the written word as if it were truth.We have written many articles together. Some we published, whereas many are still in my files, incomplete. I would often come to you with experiences: surprise, jealousy, desire, contempt, intimacy, and many more. We would talk and talk as I would record and write down our conversations. Sometimes, if I had energy and sustained interest, I would write a draft and send it to you, and we would talk some more, eventually turning some of those drafts into articles. But to you, writing and publishing were secondary, for you prized a good conversation more than anything. As you said: “Most people write because they say that, by writing, they get to know what they think. For me, papers do not evoke new thoughts. The new thoughts come from the conversations I have” (Nevis and Melnick 2011, 82).I have one more story to tell. It is about loss and ending, told to me by one of your psychotherapy clients: Your office was filled with glass figurines that were fragile and beautiful, usually of animals. I know that most of them were gifts. As the two of you were working through your last session, you told her to select her favorite figurine. You both admired it. You then told her to drop it. She responded with surprise and puzzlement, asking if you really meant it. She asked you if it meant anything to you. You responded that it was also one of your favorites, and that you remembered who had given it to you. And then you asked her again to drop it. She did, remembering how it shattered. You told her that an important task in life is to learn to bear sensations, not just the pleasant ones like love, appetite, and joy, but the more difficult ones like jealousy, anger, contempt, and, above all, loss, a sensation that you, Sonia, learned to bear early in life.And I have one more memory. We both loved dark, bittersweet chocolate. Your freezer was usually filled with it, and when I visited you, just as many did, I would bring some and we would share it. As I finish writing this remembrance, I am slowly eating a piece. For those of you who have been touched by Sonia, I would invite you slowly to share a piece with others. I know that if Sonia were still here, she would smile at my experiment. Nothing lasts forever, and now that you are gone I, as well as many others, must bear our loss of you. I hope this remembrance allows us to bear it together. It has been hard writing these pages. You are in my heart, my mind, and my body, and I, like all those you have touched, must now go on without you.As I was writing, I found myself going through your seasonal newsletters, so simple, so focused, and so profound. Reading them stirs a wish in me to publish the collection. But you have taught me the importance of being in balance, and that there is a cost to everything. So, I will conclude with just one, entitled “A Delayed Spring,” from 2004: Flowers here are just breaking through the earth, and I always forget how joyful I feel when the first colors begin to show. But I think it has been a long wait this year. The winter kept lingering. This morning I went to the dump. Since I am a city person I had heard about dumps but had never been at one while growing up. For all of you who do not know what a dump is, it is a place to bring your garbage and your material to be recycled, and a place to leave things that you no longer want in the hope that someone else will be able to use them. Here in Wellfleet, the dump has the fancy name of Transfer Station. It is a clean dump but still a dump. I love going there and am willing to live with the fact that my family and friends laugh at me, since it makes no sense at all that I would love it so much. The laughter set me to thinking about the joy I get whenever I go. This morning I figured it out. The sensation of disencumbering myself. Everything that I have no use for is gone, and gone to a good place—a garbage heaven. I feel free, and that feeling is delicious. For so many reasons in my life, freedom is a passionate hunger of mine. To have a minimum of encumbrances has been my goal. I went through my teenage years with two skirts, one pair of shoes, and a few blouses. I owned no books, using the library instead, and cherished the fact that I could move anywhere with a few minutes notice. I have many of these habits still, a minimalist wherever I can be. The sensation of freedom is still precious to me, and I never take it for granted. As I was thinking about it this morning, I also had to ask myself why I have taken on so much that encumbers me. To paraphrase Kazantzakis, I have taken on the whole catastrophe: husband, children, grandchildren, important friends, a house (in the past, two houses), and now a thriving Center. My attachments are strong, my freedom diminished. Why did I do that? I think that freedom lets me feel that I am flying, that I can live at the edge of danger and survive by my own wits. My attachments give me the feeling of being well grounded. They hold me firmly and give me the feeling of safety, surrounded by people who know me, love me, and will protect me. Only as I write do I remember that everybody wants both safety and freedom. We are always making compromises to get one, and then to get the other. Too much freedom is scary, and too much safety stifles the spirit. As we watch ourselves becoming frightened in the world today and looking anxiously for safety, let us hope we can find a way to balance freedom and safety and are able to emerge from these scary times unharmed.Thanks to my wife, Gloria Melnick, for helping me to write this remembrance.