Quote: Fritz Perls from "The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy"

“Modern man lives in a state of low-grade vitality. Though generally he does not suffer deeply, he also knows little of true creative living… Instead of it, he has become an anxious automaton [1]. His world offers him vast opportunities for enrichment and enjoyment, and yet he wonders around aimlessly, not really knowing what he wants and completely unable, therefore, to figure out how get it. He does not approach the adventure of living with either excitement or zest. He seems to feel that the time for fun, for pleasure, for growing and learning, is childhood and youth, and he abdicates[2] life itself when he reaches ‘maturity.’ He goes through a lot of motions, but the expression on his face indicates his lack of any real interest in what he doing. He is usually either poker faced, bored, aloof, or irritated. He seems to have lost all spontaneity, all capacity to feel and express directly and creatively. He is very good at talking about his troubles and very bad at coping with them. He has reduced life itself to a series of verbal and intellectual exercises; he is drowning himself in a sea of words. He has substituted psychiatric and psuedo-psychiatric explanations of life for the process of living. He spends endless time trying either to recapture the past or to mold the future. His present activities are merely bothersome chores he has to get out of the way. At times, he is not even aware of his actions at the moment.”
-Fritz Perls – the Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy
[1] A self-operating machine or mechanism, especially a robot.
[2] To relinquish (power or responsibility) formally.