Donna Orange: “For Whom the Bell Tolls”

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, Donna Orange conducted an online workshop aimed at studying supervision processes in Gestalt therapy. Part of Donna’s focus was on exploring how Gestalt therapy, psychoanalysis, and developmental theories can enrich one another. The array of challenging questions Donna posed stimulated my interest. For example: Does supervision primarily teach skills or attitudes? What do you wish you had learned long ago? What constitutes therapeutic progress? What is the difference between supervision and personal treatment? What is clinical maturity? What is passed on from supervisor to supervisee to patient, and vice versa? What assumptions do we make about normality? How to deal with intrusions of field phenomenology to supervision?Donna’s claim that wisdom is in the group, and not in the possession of a single, special professional, was encouragement to access the group’s creative potential. Her perspective resonated with the field-centered perspective particular to Gestalt groups. By laying the groundwork for a safe space, Donna further impacted me as a practitioner by illustrating elements of good supervision. She reminded me that human relationship is unique and creative, that supervision is interconnected with ethical issues. Our courage to be clear and outspoken when necessary, to be nonjudgmental, and to practice double feedback loops was supported. Learning to work in a fallibilistic spirit proved invaluable. Understanding difficulties in the therapeutic process in terms of the supervisee’s own life was reminiscent of Laura Perls’ advice to therapists stymied by their patients. Donna encouraged supervisees to permit themselves four key sentences: “I need help!” “I don’t know!” “I’m sorry!” “I was wrong!” In her eyes, the task of a supervisor is to mitigate, reduce shame, and encourage the supervisee to stay with the process.The combination of theory, experiential work, small group, and plenary sessions with Donna and competent, experienced colleagues touched me as a practitioner and energized me to read more of her publications. One article that presents much of her thinking in a nutshell still has a strong effect on me. “For Whom the Bell Tolls: Context, Complexity, and Compassion in Psychoanalysis” begins by citing a passage, albeit in poetic form, from the prose “Meditation XVII” of John Donne’s 1624 Devotions upon Emergent Occasions: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main” (Donne 1959, 108; Orange 2006, 5). In the light of her untimely, tragic death, the end of this quotation poignantly sums up Donna’s stance: “[a]ny man’s death diminishes, me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee” (Donne 109).Donna considered compassion as an attitude and process, as emotional understanding, suffering with, and bearing together. Her concepts of fallibilism, focus on ethics, Levinasian approach of not turning away from the other’s suffering, and palpable humaneness all ring true throughout the article cited. Donna Orange wholeheartedly practiced what she preached. The psychotherapeutic community will miss her. She was a Mensch.