Fritz

by Martin Shepard

  “Again surgery and recuperation were going nicely and again Fritz would demand to know what I was doing. And I was seeing Peter and talking to Peter. We visited Fritz sometimes separately, sometimes together. One day I got a call. It really sounded like he was dying. Essentially, the call was, ‘Make a choice. You can have me or Peter but you can’t have both of us.’

  “Of course I knew that there was no choice. We were a very strange triangle. There was never any doubt in my mind as to who was doing what to whom and what the priorities were. Peter wanted Fritz, Fritz wanted me, and I wanted Peter. Those were foreground for each of us. I wanted Peter as a life raft. It was either him or I’d have nothing again except my husband and that whole shit family scene and I’d be totally isolated and alone again. Peter had come over five thousand miles to work with a therapist and it was too bad that the therapist chose to spend two weeks in a hospital. But he was. Just biding his time until Fritz was well enough to work again. Sure, I was bright and interesting and nice to have around. But that wasn’t why he was in Miami. So, I said to Fritz, ‘Okay, I choose you. I’m not going to be left without anyone. Because Peter wants you.’ I wasn’t going to be left without an outlet because I still didn’t have a friend.

  “We really had to start from scratch—like the beginning of something—because something else had ended. And we still wanted each other. So, Fritz’s ‘suicide attempts’ that he refers to in his letter to me in Garbage Pail were his viewing the hemorrhoidectomy and prostatectomy as things he did to himself. But when you’re nearly seventy years old, those things happen.

  “Shortly after, Fritz left for California. Wilson Van Dusen had invited him out. California was again a place where he might be able to get back into the professional community. Another of his fantasies in going was starting a Los Angeles Gestalt Institute with Jim Simkin. Going to California meant ending his professional isolation in Miami.

  “But we never really left each other. We always managed to see each other after he left Miami. At least once a year he’d come to Miami or I’d go to the West Coast or we’d meet in New York. He always called occasionally. So, we were always in contact, even when the intensity lessened. I always felt that if the chips were down and I really needed a person, Fritz would be there for me. We left each other by plan.

  “We ended up on very good terms. Because Fritz’s final gift to me was that last summer in Europe. We had five marvelous weeks together, as marvelous as the previous winter had been horrid. We ended up so close and loving and attuned and sexually alive with each other that parting from him in New York was at a very high point in our relationship. He stayed in New York at Laura’s to prepare to return to California and I caught a flight to Miami.

  “Fritz was a very good therapist for me in the beginning. He was helpful to me with my daughter, with my relationship with women generally, with turning me on to sex, with providing me with clues that there was another way to live that was totally different from what I was used to. And that was easy and nice. I knew that his message was real though I didn’t know if I’d ever get there. Because he certainly wasn’t a model. So, what I created of myself is me. And Goddamn it, I did that alone.”

  7. California

  Wilson Van Dusen, author of The Natural Depth in Man, is a large, affable, unpretentious man in his early fifties. There is a softness, earnestness, and appreciation of simplicity both in his tone of voice and in the things he speaks of. One is more likely to see him as the proverbial Dutch Uncle, to mistake him for a friendly neighborhood pharmacist, than to recognize him as the influential phenomenologist that he is.

  In the late 1950s, Wilson and his family were living in Ukiah, California. He was the chief psychologist at Mendocino State Hospital, a psychiatric facility located in redwood forest country, some hundred miles north of San Francisco. Fritz and he were to meet, by accident, at The American Psychological Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco in 1958, where Fritz was a minor participant on a psychodrama panel. Minor or not, Wilson says Fritz’s comments at that meeting “struck me like a thunderbolt.”

  Fritz was preceded at the conference by a young psychiatrist active in the peace movement who talked both publicly and privately about saving the world for peace. Being a Californian, he was known to many of those in attendance. Fritz, who was living at the time in Florida, had no knowledge of this man’s personal affairs. Yet, he began to talk about what he noticed in this young doctor’s voice, about the desperate wailing that he heard.

  “I was terribly impressed,” said Wilson, “because Fritz was seeing well beyond what everyone else had seen. Suddenly, the whole course of the conference turned. For this man happened to be in the midst of a divorce, his family was breaking up, he was in difficult straits economically, and there was a wail there. The whole peace argument of the man was undercut by Fritz’s pointing to the emotional basis underneath it. Fritz did several things like this and in a way took over the conference.”

  Wilson approached Fritz after the panel ended and talked of his desire to learn what Fritz had to teach, for what Fritz was practicing related to the existential life-is-lived-NOW philosophy Wilson was interested in.

  “I talked to him about what he was doing. He said that he knew he could do it well but that he considered it a kind of trivia. I had to argue with him. ‘Fritz. Your trivia is very enlightening to people. Could you show us more of this trivia?’ He didn’t think much of it at all.”

  Fritz always had doubts about his personal worth, doubts that would clearly manifest themselves by his believing that he was not entitled to the love of a beautiful woman, that his memory was faulty, or that his penis was inadequate. Indeed, using one of the principles of Gestalt Therapy, his paranoia might also be seen as a reflection of his own low self-esteem projected onto the world at large. “You’re not worth much,” he could hear his fellow professionals whisper. “You’re nothing but an undisciplined, cantankerous, and lecherous old man.” The fact that part of the world might actually have mirrored his inner view of himself in no way detracts from the idiosyncrasy of his low self-image, for Fritz, had he respected himself more, might have chosen to look in a different mirror.

  Before going to Florida, Fritz had never doubted the validity of Gestalt Therapy. This was, in fact, the one thing he could believe in. It was only after his beginning to experiment with lysergic acid that the usefulness of his work began to come into question. The flood of thoughts and images that LSD released made Fritz cognizant of the lower functioning of his ordinary mentality. It brought him close to the awareness of cosmic consciousness—that oceanic feeling of being part of every bit of universal energy—although he never seemed to have fully entered that state of being. Approaching such revelation, his earthly task of being a “psychotherapist” must have seemed petty and relatively insignificant. How could he, afterward, take his work so seriously? What justification was there for his two voluminous books, Ego, Hunger and Aggression and Gestalt Therapy, when his drug experiences made him realize that all his thinking could be more simply stated in a seventeen-syllable haiku?

  Still, Wilson Van Dusen was impressed and, upon returning to Mendocino State, talked the hospital administration into having Fritz up as a consultant on a fairly long-term basis. The offer, coming after Fritz’s surgery and in the midst of his despondency regarding his hopeless and helpless involvement with Marty, was gratefully accepted. In early 1959, Fritz left for California. He lived with Wilson and his wife, Marjorie, for nearly six weeks.

  Fritz was now tripping on Sandoz acid several times a week, an unsettling experience for anyone, let alone a sixty-seven-year-old man. The result was deeper despair and deeper suspiciousness. Having separated from Marty, he was also looking for a sense of connectedness and of family. These twin elements often opposed one another, keeping him in his private limbo. His loneliness drew him to others, but his paranoia—his fear of getting hurt should he love too dearly—made hi
m keep these others at a safe distance.

  Fritz, for example, had a justly deserved reputation for being indifferent, at best, to children and was a failure as a father. But during the nearly two months that he lived in Ukiah with the Van Dusens, he established very affectionate relationships with their daughters, Cathy and Joanne. Marjorie recalls them clambering up on his lap, where he would patiently play with them and indulge them with gifts.

  “He was like Santa Claus in person,” recalls Cathy, a spirited nineteen-year-old who was five at the time. “I remember his taking me to buy a dollhouse and furniture. Parents can’t get their kids everything and he was saying, ‘Pick out anything you want. Any furniture.’ And I thought that was really neat.”

  During Fritz’s stay, Wilson witnessed first-hand Fritz’s contradictory nature. There was, for example, Fritz’s unwillingness to accept his fading sexual energies in spite of teaching people to accept themselves as they are.

  “I was alone with him one evening,” remembers Wilson. “I was sitting in the living room. We were both very conscious of the fact that we were alone because usually my family was around. And he came in with his pulse beating very fast. He was very excited. I had this strong feeling that he wanted me to do something sexual with him. I knew it. He knew it. It was not said and I just couldn’t. It was not my cup of tea.

  “I think he had been trying to masturbate and couldn’t make it. He couldn’t get a climax or a hard-on, I don’t remember which, or both. This really bothered him. It meant he was kind of finished. He told me that one of the things that bothered him was that he couldn’t masturbate anymore. I said, ‘My God, man. You’re nearly seventy.’

  “He once described himself as a cross between a prophet and a bum. It came from Laura Perls. He felt that it was correct and I feel it is correct.

  “That prophet side was his mastery in observation of the Here and Now. That’s where he was a prophet and the greatest I have ever known, and that was his major contribution. The bum was a very sensuous man who was somewhat lost and alienated in his own inner life and desperate in his own way. Grabbing and wanting reputation. Wanting me to do a book for him. Wanting me to start a Gestalt Institute. And I sat back and thought to myself, ‘Why? For Fritz? I’m not interested in spending my life decorating Fritz’s name.’

  “I saw him as a brilliant person, very intelligent, somewhat detached, and unable to bridge the gap with others. He was very clever about the gap. He could use it, work with it, illustrate it, make you feel it, but was not well able to bridge it at all.

  “If I could have given Fritz one thing it would have been to be content with the Here and Now himself. He was terribly well off. He never needed to work again, which has been a problem in my life. He had so much money stashed away in stamps and other kinds of things. He eventually came to have plenty of reputation with his books and his Institute and yet he was so unhappy.”

  During his stay, Fritz grew fond of Wilson and valued his kindness and independent thinking. He would ride off to work on the pillion seat of the younger man’s motorcycle, learning to trust Wilson’s handling of the machine. Wilson, in his turn, valued Fritz’s unique ability to describe the obvious in both professional and social situations, his ability to capture the significance and implications of surface behavior.

  “I recall very well the first session at Mendocino State. I had gathered together the principal administrators of the hospital. There were between twelve and twenty-four of us in the big room. We were all sitting in a circle, all professionals, mostly psychiatrists. Fritz came in. Someone started talking. Fritz raised his hand as if to say, ‘No one is to say anything.’ And then he went around the room describing what he could see in each person. It was shocking, really shocking. While I knew everyone there, I had not told him anything about these people. Yet, his descriptions of what he saw accurately reflected each person’s life and character. Each member of the group in turn. Bang. It just shook each one of them.

  “On another occasion, Fritz and I were at a restaurant with my wife and kids. I don’t know if Fritz was paying for the meal or not. Likely not, if I know Fritz, for he was a taker. He would take as much as he could from you, absorb your support, your time, your energy, and anything else, and the reward was that you were in the presence of a great man. Anyway, we were sitting and eating and I was very much involved in trying to be as good as Fritz—to catch up to Fritz, learn from Fritz, even show him that I was cleverer in a few things. So, while he was deep in the midst of a bowl of soup, which I knew would capture his whole attention, I carefully observed the waitress.

  “Later, when the waitress came to the table, I described what I could see in her. I was very clever and perceptive. Fritz never even stopped slopping up his soup, but he said, ‘Ah, yes. But what you missed was this, that, and the other thing.’ And I think he was right. So, I permanently considered him to be a great observer. This I saw as his greatest skill and it partly came from his utter detachment.”

  Marjorie Van Dusen did not have the same ability to detach herself from her observations of Fritz. She had certain expectations of guests in her home, among which was cleanliness, thank yous, and the other social amenities. These Fritz was either unable or unwilling to fulfill. By failing to display sensitivity to her needs, Fritz eventually lost the nurturance that the Van Dusens provided him.

  There was, for instance, Fritz’s eating ritual. He wrote, in both Ego, Hunger and Aggression and Gestalt Therapy, of the symbolic importance of thoroughly chewing and digesting one’s food and of how this served as a model for the way one chews, assimilates, and integrates other knowledge and information from the world. He himself practiced this with a religious vengeance. Wilson Van Dusen witnessed Fritz’s mealtime rites regularly during the weeks that Fritz lived with him.

  “We had to learn that his eating style was somewhat unusual. Eating was a very sacred ritual for him, and we didn’t bother him with any chitchat or anything else. He was going to chew away. He could be quite cruel at the table until he finally conditioned you to behave the way he expected you to behave. And that was that you don’t bother him with anything, for he was engaged in a very gustatory, concentrated thing.

  “Over and above all that, he lived sort of like a pig. In his room, he just dropped everything. It got dirtier and dirtier and dirtier. The bed was never made, just messed up. You either took care of him or you let it go to rack and ruin. That was his style. He didn’t believe in social graces. He felt that they were phony.”

  “He was completely lacking in social graces,” added Marjorie, a thin, animated woman who believes in the old-fashioned virtues. “This came somewhat as a shock to me. I had preconceived notions about people and I expected him to react as a guest and he did not. I expected kindness and consideration and certainly didn’t get anything like it. So, I heartily disliked him.

  “My feeling now was that the way he acted was just as phony as the way I expected him to act. You can break your neck to be a slob—which he did, I believe—to make a point.”

  Fritz antagonized Marjorie still further with unsolicited Gestalt Therapy feedback whenever she reacted in ways he disapproved of. Like April O’Connell, Fritz’s hostess in Ohio, Marjorie tired of Gestalt Therapy “morning, noon, and night.” Nonetheless, Fritz persisted in trying to enlighten her. During one of his gratuitous feedbacks, Marjorie got so mad at him that she picked up the sugar bowl and threw it at him.

  “He threw up his hand,” said Wilson, “and she managed to hit his watch with it, which knocked the workings out of the watch. Exit Fritz. Later, he mailed the watch back—all those pieces in a box—as though I’m supposed to pay for it and repair it. And I’d been supporting him for over a month. I sent the watch back to him with no note, because I expected him to repair his own damn watch.”

  In In and Out the Garbage Pail, Fritz tells us:

  “I took an apartment in San Francisco. Two of my hang
ers-on followed me; otherwise, I had not much of a practice. I did my thing in the hospital and did not mind driving a hundred miles through the beautiful redwood country. There I became fond of Paul, a psychiatrist who loved farming and rearing children. I believe he has eleven of them by now. We played quite a number of exciting chess games.”

  “Paul” is Paul Frey, who, along with Fritz and Wilson, worked at Mendocino State. I doubt whether three more brilliant minds ever worked alongside one another in the field of human understanding.

  If relationships are to be measured in terms of mutual respect, harmonious interactions, intellectual stimulation, and empathic vibrations, then Paul Frey had to be considered one of Fritz’s closest friends in spite of the limited amount of time they spent with one another. The fact that Paul, at thirty-four, was half Fritz’s age. imposed no barrier to the synchronicity that existed between them, for they both seemed to vibrate to the same iron string.

  An unassuming, red-headed, bearded, plain-spoken man, Paul today is a psychiatric dropout. In 1959, the year Wilson brought Fritz to California, Paul had just completed residencies in pathology, internal medicine, and psychiatry at Dartmouth before heading out west to work at Mendocino State Hospital. In addition to his rich educational background, his familiarity with the fields of philosophy and psychiatry (he is an authority on Freud, having an encyclopedic recall of all Freud’s works and many of those written about him), Paul possesses uncommonly common sense. Refusing to speak the language of the “intellectuals,” he nonetheless remains one, as he succinctly describes Fritz’s approach in his own pop idiom: “His bag, essentially, was to introduce people to existential experience. Gestalt means the sudden awareness of the Here and Now as a real thing, which you can experience with LSD in a more far-out sense.