The Paradoxical Theory of Change
“Change occurs when one becomes what he is, not when he tries to become what he is not.” That sentence is the whole of it, and it tends to sound either obvious or wrong on first reading.
It comes from a short paper written in 1970 by Arnold Beisser, and it explains something people often find puzzling about this kind of therapy: why so little time is spent on plans to fix yourself.
The paradox
Most people arrive in therapy wanting to be different. Less anxious, less angry, less like themselves in some specific way. The reasonable assumption is that we will identify the flaw and set about correcting it.
What tends to happen instead is that the effort to be rid of a part of yourself keeps it firmly in place. Energy goes into the struggle rather than into living. The change people are after usually arrives by the other road: seeing clearly and without argument what you actually do, feel, and want — at which point something moves, often without being pushed.
The complete text, hosted by The Gestalt Journal Press on their Gestalt Therapy Page.
Why pushing does not work
When you set out to force yourself into being someone better, you split in two. One part issues instructions and criticism; the other resists, drags its feet, or complies for a fortnight and then stops.
Anyone who has made the same resolution five years running knows this shape. The critic is loud and the resistance is quiet, so it looks as though more discipline is the answer. But the harder the demand, the more determined the resistance, and the argument can continue for years without either side winning.
Notice that both sides are you. That is why the struggle cannot be won: you are fighting on both sides of it.
Acceptance is not resignation
This is the part most worth getting straight. Becoming what you are does not mean approving of everything you do, abandoning the wish for things to be different, or shrugging at behaviour that is harming you or someone else.
It means stopping the argument long enough to see the thing plainly. Not “I should not be angry,” but “I am angry, and here is what happens in me when I am.” From there, choice becomes possible. While the anger is being denied, there is nothing to choose about — you cannot decide what to do with something you will not admit is there.
Paradoxically, people usually find they have more room to change once they stop demanding it of themselves.
What this means in a session
It means I am not going to take the job of talking you into being different. If I did, I would simply be another voice on the critical side of a fight you are already having, and you would resist me exactly as you resist yourself. That is a well-worn way for therapy to stall.
So instead we go toward what is actually here. If you notice you change the subject whenever your father comes up, we get curious about the changing of the subject rather than trying to stop it. If some part of you does not want to be in the room, that part is welcome and worth hearing from.
This is why awareness does so much of the work. It is not preparation for the change; it is the ground the change grows out of.
Where it comes from
Arnold Beisser set the idea out in “The Paradoxical Theory of Change,” published in Joen Fagan and Irma Lee Shepherd's collection Gestalt Therapy Now in 1970. It runs a few pages and is written plainly, without jargon.
Beisser was a physician and a nationally ranked tennis player who contracted polio in his twenties and was left largely paralysed. He wrote about change as someone who had faced the hardest version of the question: what is left when you cannot alter the facts of your situation. That background is worth knowing when you read it.
Beisser, A. (1970). “The Paradoxical Theory of Change,” in Fagan, J. & Shepherd, I. (eds.), Gestalt Therapy Now. Widely reprinted, and short enough to read in one sitting.
