VSOF Newsletter – November 2021

Violet Oaklander died aged 94 in Los Angeles on 21st September this year.

She was born in Massachusetts  in 1927, the youngest of three children, to parents Joseph and Mollie Solomon, Jewish immigrants from Russia[1].  Though  Violet grew up in a loving family her early life was marked by traumatic events. A home accident at age 5 resulted in her receiving multiple severe burns  which necessitated her spending several months in hospital. She was kept in isolation, allowed few visitors and was not permitted any diversional activities with which to relieve her loneliness and boredom. The changing of her dressings proved excruciatingly painful ; when she cried out  the medical staff rebuked her, insisting she ‘be a good girl’ and stay silent. Violet later attributed her mission to help children find  support and comfort when facing adversity to the traumatic experience she endured in hospital.

As a person Violet exuded authenticity. She was lively, shrewd, warm and engaging with incredible presence. She could also be grumpy and ordinary. A  lover of nature and a fan of  art house movies, she seemed, to borrow an old expression, ‘without side’. A passionate and fearless defender of human rights, Violet spoke as she found, especially where the welfare of children was concerned.

She married Harold Oaklander, a social worker and Gestalt therapist and they raised three children, Mha Atma Khalsa  (Arthur), Michael and Sara. She faced a tragic loss with the death of her son Michael, 14, after a long struggle with an autoimmune disease. This was compounded by the death of her parents around this time. After meeting a few therapists without success Violet found an effective safe container at Esalen in Jim Simkin, with whom she was able to explore her grief. This helped her become a person of even greater compassion, depth and resilience.

Qualifications and work history

Violet obtained a Masters degree in Marriage, Family and Child Counselling and another  Masters in Special Education. She taught children with additional needs in Long Beach, California for six years, served as Director of the Center for Child and Adolescent Therapy  nearby in Hermosa Beach, for eight years and maintained a private practice in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. Later she taught at the Gestalt Therapy Institute of Los Angeles.

 Violet’s psychology doctorate provided the content for her first book- Windows to our Children, published  by Gestalt Journal Press in 1978.  Following its runaway success she founded the Violet Oaklander Institute, dedicated to the supervision and training of people who work  with children.  She was devoted to her work, often writing and travelling alternate weekends during the 1980’s. For twenty- seven years  Violet led an annual fortnightly summer intensive training in California, often assisted by psychologist Peter Mortola[2].

These hands- on trainings combined her theory teaching with ‘live’ demonstrations and skills practice, drawing participants from all over the world. I joined the course  in 2000 and, like  so many others, found the experience personally and professionally life-changing.

Method  

Drawing on the  work of  Carl Rogers and Martin Buber’s “I-Thou’ Violet placed relationship at the heart of her work, stating that “Without the thread of a relationship  nothing of much significance is likely to take place in therapy.” She found the process-oriented embodied approach of Gestalt Therapy a natural and effective vehicle for helping  children and adolescents explore  concerns, helping them discover through awareness healthy ways of managing  troublesome thoughts and feelings and the ability to make richer life choices.  Children often presented in therapy with difficulty in using one or more contact functions; others showed a fragmented  sense of self or a combination of both deficits.

Violet believed strongly in demystifying therapy for children and families alike. She sought wherever possible to meet young people together with their parents at the outset, modelling transparency and an atmosphere of ‘no secrets’. Her famous ‘I Don’t Fix Kids!’ speech, delivered at this initial consultation, was designed to dispel fantasies of her providing an ‘expert cure’. Rather, Violet explained that she would endeavour to help the child feel better about himself, stronger and happier inside with a clearer sense of self, able to make better contact with his environment and the people in his life.  Moreover she would work to help the child express deep feelings, especially anger, in safe appropriate ways and to learn skills for healthy emotional expression . A variety of creative arts experiences and activities provided  the  means for these  dialogic explorations.

Violet considered children to be born with the potential for a good sense of self  that continues to grow and develop given appropriate nurture. To achieve a strong, integrated sense of self  she believed the following need consolidating: use of the senses (contact functions), body, intellect, power and control, boundaries and limits, playfulness, imagination ,humour, examination of  negative introjects, aggressive energy and trust in intuition.

She met young clients where they were energetically, emotionally, linguistically and cognitively, noting creative adjustments and respecting  defences. Like Fritz Perls’, she  tended to view ‘resistance’ as  ‘assistance ‘, a cue to the therapist that the child was becoming overwhelmed and needed time to process present experience.

During an initial consultation, after the usual  welcome Violet would ask the young person – ‘Do you know why you’re here?’ If they were unsure, Violet would ask a parent to explain the concern in age -appropriate  language. She sought throughout to maintain a balance between including the child in discussions about their circumstances whilst not focussing on them in ways that could be shaming. Violet would seek the views of  all participants before co- constructing a help plan with them. Therapy involved a partnership: parents were asked  to remain involved ,for example by participating in joint reviews. Meeting together in this way avoided duplicating communications and enabled boundaries, responsibilities and logistics of therapy to be clarified swiftly.

Violet was particularly keen on sensory process work using arts materials to explore   situations, fostering  awareness and choicefulness in her young clients , thereby  strengthening  their sense of agency and competence. The arts  can offer a window into the world of emotions, an  ‘experience  near’ way of contacting the self  especially  when words fail or seem insufficient. Violet advocated a graded approach to introducing different arts modalities, often  starting with  (two- dimensional) drawing or painting.  Rather than plunging in to ‘full immersion’ she advised that clients ‘go gently’, feeling their way into the work and building necessary support.  Early on in therapy she encouraged children to visualise and then draw their Safe Place – a real or imaginary  space which could be explored in a dialogue, bringing a grounding ‘anchor’ to recall when needing to bolster their sense of security.

 Later on in therapy a child or adolescent might be encouraged to explore working with clay. Clay is a wonderfully versatile, tactile medium capable of harnessing expression and of containing both creative and destructive impulses.  Once familiar with this material a scene could be set up using the clay to explore  real- life anxieties, frustrations  and  areas of ‘unfinished business’ experienced by the child. Violet  maintained an active, attuned and supportive presence  throughout.  When necessary she functioned as a resource, offering to fashion in the clay aspects missing from the scenario; at other times she  might comment or offer a line of dialogue for  the client to explore, amend or reject.

Using the sand tray  often took personal work  to a deeper place. A sculpt could be made in the sand using miniatures  to portray an experience, a conundrum, a memory, powerful narratives depicted in the sand. Unlike in Jungian sand play where the focus is  on symbolic expression, Violet emphasised the completion  of unfinished gestalts, encouraging a dialogue between  protagonists- the figurines that the young person had positioned in the sand.  After the session was over the miniatures were dusted off and returned  to  containers whilst the sand’s surface was smoothed over, ready for the next encounter. Violet encouraged her clients to photograph their sand tray scene using her Polaroid camera, enabling them to  retain  a record of their work if they wished.

Anger: most misunderstood of the emotions?

Violet developed an interest in helping young people experience, understand and find ways of managing strong feelings, particularly anger through a mix of direct and private expression.  She was aware that anger tends to receive ’ a bad press’-  being often regarded as dangerous and wrongly conflated with violence. She invited young clients who retroflected rage to explore the cause of their fury whilst she acted simultaneously as a safe container and  a cheerleader.  Violet elicited direct expression rather than catharsis, slowing responses where necessary and encouraging expression of  words or sounds that  accompanied the experience. Equally she encouraged healthy retroflection of strong feelings when the field conditions didn’t support expression, helping children and adolescents find safer, creative ways of privately discharging the ‘top layer’ of their fury, enough to feel back in control.  Later, psychoeducational aspects of this work could be explored, considering ways of managing future provocation or frustration, reviewing the likely availability of support in the field and possible consequences to actions.

Meeting Violet back in 2000 on her training course was a joy; she was original and creative in so many ways. We discovered some shared  ancestry: both of us came from Russian families who in their time had fled pogroms and rising anti-Semitism.  We grew closer  many years ago, exchanging news of travails with our respective heart problems. Meeting up with Violet and her family again, taking part in and presenting at the Foundation’s Malibu conferences,  reconnecting with old friends and colleagues felt incredibly precious and important.

Music

Music was very  important to  Violet as it has been for me.  She was deeply influenced by  the  eco-music making  of celebrated composer and band leader Paul Winter. In her summer trainings Violet introduced participants to improvised music- making for which neither musical skill nor prior experience was  required. This involved us sitting  in a circle, eyes closed, adding sequentially sounds  from ‘instant access’ percussion instruments. We listened and responded as the sounds  moved around and mingled, washing over and encircling us- the first of several musical experiments. Throughout  Violet  encouraged  spontaneous musical dialogues for fun and self -expression, performances that involved playing without ego. This approach to musicking (sic) seemed liberating and  had  great appeal .Activities of this kind foster attentive listening, attunement and flexible response- useful skills for children and for psychotherapists to acquire! In her former teaching career Violet had often taught  pupils songs, accompanying them on her guitar. She encouraged therapists to consider adding music , live or recorded, to accompany exploratory arts work, with the client’s  consent. Violet also encouraged young people, especially adolescents  to bring their own music and lyrics in to sessions enabling exploration of key  themes: personal identity, developing independence, love and loss, finding a moral code.

Violet devoted much time to training professionals, giving workshops and presentations to institutes and organisations in many countries across the globe. She was invited to speak at many conferences including Play Therapy UK ‘s  (2001) First National Play Conference in Chichester. During the 2007 Evolution of Gestalt conference at Esalen, California Violet was a guest of honour alongside fellow luminaries Peter Levine and Daniel Siegel. She earned a lifetime achievement award from the Association of Play Therapy, U.S. and received numerous other awards for her contribution to the mental health field. In 2009 Felicia Carroll published a festschrift edition of The International Gestalt Journal highlighting many examples of contemporary child therapy that drew inspiration from the Oaklander approach. It concludes with an excerpt taken from Christiane Elsbree’s in-depth interview with  Violet.

Legacy

‘Windows’ became a ‘go-to’ resource for child counsellors and psychotherapists in many English- speaking countries. It was crammed with accounts of dialogic, arts-based work with children and adolescents, interwoven with young people’s artwork, verbatim extracts, even  a recipe for play dough. Violet’s deep respect for young people and their families and her Buberian approach to therapy  is very much in evidence here.  At that time her publishers urged her to jettison the theoretical aspects of the Oaklander model fearing this might otherwise hinder its marketability. The highly accessible ‘Windows’  became an international best seller and has since been translated in 17 languages.

Violet reinstated the theoretical ideas underpinning  her work  in her second book: Hidden Treasure: A Map to the Child’s Inner Self. Published by Karnac in 2006 the book is available now in 8 languages. Appropriately named, ‘Treasure’ offers a trove of vignettes and ideas for child therapy practitioners, teachers and parents. As accessible as its predecessor, it picks up where ‘Windows’ leaves off, adding important chapters on therapeutic process with children, adolescence, on attentional difficulties, groupwork, loss and grief, working with preschoolers and so on.

 Also of note are three videotaped recordings (since transferred to DVD) of  Violet’s work with children and adolescents. Their accompanying study notes show how much Violet’s  perceptions, attitude and approach were deeply rooted in contemporary Gestalt Therapy as can be said of a series of six training cassette tapes she made. Likewise her chapters in  Nevis’s Gestalt Therapy: Perspectives and Applications (1992) and Wheeler & McConville’s    The Heart of Development: Volume 1 (2002) give a clear exposition of her work with young clients, together with her theoretical underpinning.

 Retirement and VSOF

 In 2005 some twenty family members and long -time colleagues met in Santa Barbara to discuss ways of carrying on Violet’s work following her retirement. The Violet Solomon Oaklander Foundation was formed, later launching a website to publish its activities.  These included working with Violet to develop training programs, establish a speakers bureau, publish a newsletter for Friends of the Foundation, create an archive and sponsor a biennial research conference.

 In retirement  Violet and her beloved cat Maydeleh moved to Los Angeles to live next to her son Mha Atma and daughter- in law- Martha who provided her with steady loving care  throughout whilst also continuing to support the work of her Foundation.  I visited Violet in  her home there on two occasions, enjoying  her company and the sharpness of her mind, although deeply saddened to note that she could no longer walk without a frame and was facing the additional challenge of deteriorating vision.

Following a hiatus due to the Pandemic an online international conference was organised in June 2021 by founder member Lynn Stadler.  Many members and friends of the Oaklander Foundation  from around the world  contributed presentations; Violet too was delighted to participate in this highly successful event. She had already taken part in most of the Foundation’s ‘Just For Now’ sessions- a series of  monthly meetings held on Zoom, hosted by Karen Fried with support from other Foundation members and friends. These meetings, initially envisioned as a crisis- intervention response to the Pandemic, simply grew, fostering a growing sense of community across continents. On occasions the calls attracted over one hundred participants from  more than twenty  countries- a measure of the great esteem and love for Violet and her work that continues across the globe, cascading down through ongoing trainings in the Oaklander Method in the UK, US and many other countries.