Philadelphia 2010
"CONTINUITY AND CHANGE: GESTALT THERAPY NOW"
Pre-Conference: June 1st & 2nd
Conference: Evening of June 2nd-Afternoon of June 6th
Conference Opening and Presentation Descriptions
OPENING PLENARY
Keynote
Speakers
Lynne Jacobs, PhD lives in two psychotherapy
worlds. She teaches and trains gestalt therapists world-wide. She is co-founder of the Pacific Gestalt Institute and also a training and supervising analyst at the Institute of Contemporary
Psychoanalysis. She is co-author (with Rich Hycner),
of The Healing Relationship in Gestalt
Therapy: A Dialogic / Self
Psychology Approach. She has also written numerous
articles for gestalt therapists and psychoanalytic therapists. She is also
interested in anti-racism work, and to this end, aside from her
article, “For Whites Only,” has given several presentations to white and
mixed-race audiences on the phenomenon of, and implications of, central social
location (which she will explain in her workshop). She has a private practice in Los Angeles.
Myriam Muñoz has
been a therapist and teacher for more than thirty-five years. She earned
her Doctoral and Master's degrees in Counseling and Human Development from
the Universidad Iberoamerican. Mexico D.F. She is a Foundation
Partner and has been Director General of Instituto Humanista de Psicoterapia
Gestalt A.C. Mexico since 1985. Her publications include Gestalt
Sensibilization in the Therapeutic Process, México: Pax; Emotions,
Feelings and Needs, México: IHPG; and several
articles. Myriam is the editor in charge of Figura/Fondo Journal.
Frank-M. Staemmler, PhD, Dipl-Psych, is a
psychologist and gestalt therapist, who lives in Wuerzburg, Germany. He has been working as a Gestalt
therapist in private practice since 1976 and as a supervisor and trainer since
1981. He has written about seventy articles and book chapters
, five books and has (co-)edited five other books. He teaches
internationally and is a frequent presenter on conferences in Germany and
abroad. He was editor of the International
Gestalt Journal from 2001 to 2006 and co-editor of the Studies in Gestalt Therapy: Dialogical Bridges from 2007 to 2009.
Moderator
Gordon Wheeler, PhD teaches and trains widely around the world, using the Gestalt model to
explore relationship, development, self theory, intersubjectivity, culture and gender, coaching,
organizational systems, evolutionary psychology, and interpersonal
neurobiology. Author or editor of
some dozen books and over 100 chapters and articles in the field, Gordon is
longtime Editor and Co-Director of GestaltPress,
publishing jointly with Routledge Taylor
Francis. His work includes several
translations from French and German, and has itself been translated into over a dozen foreign languages. Since 2001 Gordon has also served as President of Esalen Institute, which hosts nearly 20,000 students,
conferees, and other visitors in some 500 residential programs each year, very
many of them based in Gestalt work.
CONFERENCE OPENING FACILITATORS
Anna Bacik, BA, MPASR, Grad Dip Gestalt
Therapy, is a gestalt therapist from Sydney.
John L. Bennett is the Clinical Coordinator of Mental Health at Callen Lorde Community Health Center, an LGBT health center
in New York City. He is a PhD candidate in clinical social work at New York
University, and an associate member of the New York Institute for Gestalt
Therapy. His previous training includes CBT, EMDR and interpersonal
psychotherapy. He is a gestalt therapist and meditation practitioner, master of
neither, but critical seeker in both traditions. He has been published by the
British Gestalt Journal on the topic of his presentation at this conference.
Rodney Cole is a
graduate of Sydney Gestalt Institute. Currently Rodney works in the field of Suicide Prevention and education,
training local communities across Australia. Rodney also has a small private practice and is currently
studying Australian Sign language with a view to working therapeutically with
Deaf Clients.
Karen Ginsburg, LCSW, LMT, has an MSW from New York University.
She studied Gestalt therapy at Gestalt Associates
for Psychotherapy in NYC and was in the first
class of Ruella Frank's training in Developmental
Somatic Psychotherapy. She has a BFA from NYU's Experimental Theater Wing
where she trained intensively in improvisational performance, is certified as a
shiatsu practitioner and is a Licensed Massage Therapist. For the past 8 years
she has maintained a private practice as a Gestalt therapist in NYC, where she
focuses strongly on the integration of the non-verbal into the therapy
experience. She has recently relocated to Philadelphia,
and will be practicing in both New York and
Philadelphia.
PLENARY HONORING PHILIP LICHTENBERG
Philip Lichtenberg, PhD is Mary Hale Chase Professor Emeritus at Bryn Mawr College where he taught for 35 years before retiring in 1996. He has been Co-Director
and faculty member at The Gestalt
Therapy Institute of Philadelphia since its founding in 1984. He is author or co-author of 6 books, several monographs and
numerous articles. His books include: Psychoanalysis: Radical and Conservative; Getting Even;
Community and Confluence; and Encountering Bigotry. In addition to teaching
at GTIP, he leads several consultation groups and a study group. With his wife,
he has 4 married sons and 8 grandchildren. He is a psychologist and a social
work educator.
Erving Polster, PhD is co-author, with his
late wife, Miriam, of Gestalt Therapy
Integrated. He has also authored Every Person's Life Is Worth a Novel, portraying the kinship between the
novelist and the therapist, and A
Population of Selves, an examination of the diversity within each person. He co-authored From the Radical Center, tracing the
evolution of ideas which he and Miriam have presented over a 45 year period in
their lectures, papers and anthology pieces. He has recently also authored Uncommon Ground, a proposal
for transforming private psychotherapy into a life-long communal experience.
Jean-Marie Robine, clinical psychologist since 1967, didactician psychotherapist, founder of Institut Français de Gestalt-thérapie in 1980. International trainer of Gestalt Therapy, has
been president of the European
Association for Gestalt Therapy (EAGT) in the early nineties and of Societé Française de Gestalt,
then cofounder and member of the board of Collège Européen de Gestalt-thérapie.
He has created and edited 2 French Journals of Gestalt Therapy and is part of
the editorial board of several international Gestalt Journals. He authored 4
books of Gestalt Therapy, translated into several languages, and edited 2
books.
Mary Lou Schack is a clinical psychologist working with
individuals and couples, and supervising therapists in her Bala Cynwyd,
PA practice. She received her PhD in Psychology from Temple University and has been training
therapists in Gestalt Therapy and experiential
methods for more than 35 years. She trained in Gestalt Therapy with James Simkin, Isadore From, Laura Perls, and
Erving and Miriam Polster. With Joyce Lewis,
she founded the Gestalt Therapy Institute of Philadelphia, where she teaches
currently. Mary Lou's current areas of theoretical interest include
mutuality and connection in relationships, the experience of time, body/mind
functioning, and the healing of traumatic and early psychological wounds.
RICHARD KITZLER MEMORIAL GATHERING
Dan Bloom, JD, MSW has been in private clinical practice for more than 30 years and has
trained gestalt therapists worldwide. He trained with Laura Perls, Isadore From, Richard Kitzler,
and Patrick Kelley at the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. He was
recently made “fellow” of the institute. He is on faculty of several
institutes. Dan is Editor-in Chief
of Studies in Gestalt Therapy: Dialogical
Bridges, and on the editorial board of the Gestalt Review. He has published widely. Dan recently studied Heidegger’s Being in Time with Simon Critchely at The
New School in New York and is studying phenomenology with Donna Orange.
Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb, Dipl Psychoth Is the Director of Istituto di Gestalt HCC Italy, approved by
the Italian Ministry for Universities
She has been teaching GT since 1979, led about 40 training programs,
trained almost a thousand of gestalt therapists, and is an invited trainer
internationally. She is a Full Member of the NYIGT, past-president and Honorary
Member of the EAGT, past-president of the Italian Psychotherapy Umbrella
Association (FIAP), and of the Italian GT Association (SIPG). She has authored
many writings, and edited 5 books, including Creative License: The Art of Gestalt
Therapy, with N. Amendt-Lyon (Springer, 2003)
translated into German, French and Italian. She authored the book The
Now-for-Next in Gestalt Therapy (Angeli, 2010),
edits the Italian journal Quaderni di Gestalt (since 1985) and co-edits the international journal Studies in
Gestalt Therapy: Dialogical Bridges.
INVITED WORKSHOP PRESENTERS
The Seeds of Community: Optimism , Co-Creation
and the Cape Cod Model
Carol Brockmon
Gestalt Therapy implies a notion
of health that points to a way of life. Optimism is inherent in the idea that
the organism (read system) leans into healing and growing. Our Field theory
orientation tells us that context is integral to that endeavor. We know that
all interpersonal experience is co-created. The central valuing of contact in
our theory leads easily to our understanding that we need to be aware of
processes that enhance connection and community. Paul Goodman’s work leads us
to attend to social, societal, political issues. As we attend to these ideas,
we develop strategies in our work to support and enhance healing, growth,
connection and awareness. The best way to do this is to learn to observe and
convey our understanding of the value and goodness of the developed
competencies in the systems with whom we work, and convey understanding those
strengths believably to our clients. This provides a platform for building
strength in relationship, trust and trustworthiness, and expands into building
community.
Carol Brockmon, MSW, LCSW, has completed (with certificate) training programs in gestalt therapy
by Erving and Miriam Polster, and in Gestalt couple
and family therapy by Sonia Nevis and Joseph Zinker.
She is a core faculty member of the Cape Cod Training Program at Gestalt
International Study Center, and has been for 7 years. She is adjunct faculty at
Salve Regina University, teaching the Cape Cod Model to masters’ students in a
holistic counseling and leadership program. She is a Gestalt Therapist in
private Practice, clinical supervisor, and a past president of AAGT. She has
written articles for the Gestalt Review based on this model.
Embodiment as Continuity
Michael Clemmens
We know and remember the
significant experiences of our lives and relationships through our bodies. By
feel, smell and sound we are connected to those times in this moment. In this
workshop we will explore four practices of embodiment: embodiment, attunement,
resonance and articulation. These practices are skills for supporting the
change process in therapy, allowing us as practitioners to both hold continuity
with our clients and to enhance their fluid sense of self.
Michael Craig Clemmens, PhD, is a licensed psychologist in private practice in Pittsburgh, PA., working with individuals and couples. Michael is a
faculty member of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland and teaches in the
Physical Process training program. He is particularly interested in the
relationship between body process, addiction and field conditions. Michael is
the author of Getting Beyond Sobriety: Clinical Approaches to Long Term
Recovery, other articles on Gestalt Therapy and co author with Arie Bursztyn of “The Embodied
Field: Culture and Body” published in The Bridge: Dialogues Across Culture.
How to Teach Intersubjectivity
Cornelia Muth
My
contribution presents my dialogical teaching since 2001 at the department of Social Work at the University of Applied Sciences
Bielefeld. I describe my approach
to teaching “intersubjectivity” to students of social
work and my practice with it with reference to Martin Buber’s anthropology of
the “interhuman”. Part of this learning programme consists of implementing “groups of dialogue” in order to facilitate the skill
of becoming aware of “otherness” and oneself. My teaching challenges in
that it invites people to develop an awareness of the “interhuman”
as a living concept of intersubjectivity for the sake
of openness to human growth.
Cornelia Muth is a Professor Dr habil (=Habilitation) of Humanities at University
of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld. At the moment she is in research on
prevention in social work and adult education. She is an Educational Gestaltist.
Before her tenured position she worked in the fields of youth
work, intercultural and political education. She was head of the
International office of the University of Applied Economics in Berlin and teaching assistant at the Freie Universität Berlin.
Our Fifty-Five Year Journey with The Gestalt Model: Lessons Learned and
Applied: A Conversation with Sonia Nevis and Edwin Nevis
Edwin Nevis
Sonia Nevis
Inherent in the Model of Gestalt
therapy is the notion that, as practitioners accumulate experience, the Model will
grow and change. We will share our experience in moving from work at the
individual level to the level of couples, families, organizations, and –
more recently – larger social systems. We will talk about what we have
learned and the challenges that have emerged in moving from what begin as
essentially a biological model to include a social/relational model. After some
introductory remarks, we will engage the audience in the conversation, so that
we can draw on the journey of others as well as our own.
Sonia March Nevis, PhD and Edwin C Nevis, PhD co-founded Gestalt International Study Center in 1979. They were among the earliest people
trained by Fritz Perls, Laura, Perls, Isadore From, Paul Goodman and others, as members of
the group that created the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland twenty five years
earlier. Sonia initiated development of the world famous Cape Cod Model of
Intervention, and Edwin helped create the Organization & Systems
Development Program (1977) and the International OSD Program (1991). Both have taught around the world.
Edwin has written or edited five books, and both he and Sonia are prolific
authors of Gestalt-related journal articles.
David Henrich, Facilitator, is a Founding Director of the Gestalt
Therapy Institute of Philadelphia and has
taught there for 25 years. He is a partner at GKSW/Crystal Group
Associates in Wyndmoor, PA where he works with individuals, couples and
families. He also trains and consults in human services for a wide
variety of institutions. He is a graduate of the Gestalt Center for Psychotherapy and Training of New York. He has
studied Gestalt Therapy for over 35 years including study with Sonia Nevis for
20 years. He has taught at Gestalt Associates for Psychotherapy and the
Family Institute of Philadelphia. His areas of interest include major
illness, grief and loss, conflict resolution,
humor and addictions.
Four
Pathways to Connectedness: A Therapeutic Map
Erving Polster
Dr. Polster will show how the concept of connectedness may serve as a bridge between
wholeness and individuation. People feel whole when their experiences all fit
together; that is, when they integrate present life with what preceded it, when
they concentrate undistractedly on what they are
doing, when they enjoy a sense of belonging, etc. Still, experiences are also
individuated, each meriting simple focus on itself, irrespective of where it
may fit into anybody’s life. In examining this key human aspiration, he will
specify four pathways along which lost connectedness may be therapeutically
restored:1) person to person, enhancing relational
experience and belonging; 2) moment to moment, restoring continuity and
fluidity; 3) event to event, recovering life’s storyline and 4) part of one's
self to other parts of one's self, integrating the self.
Erving Polster, PhD, is co-author, with his late wife, Miriam, of Gestalt Therapy
Integrated. He has also authored Every Person's Life Is Worth a Novel,
portraying the kinship between the novelist and the therapist, and A Population
of Selves, an examination of the diversity within each person. He co-authored
From the Radical Center, tracing the evolution of ideas which he and Miriam have presented over a 45 year period in their lectures, papers
and anthology pieces. He has recently also authored Uncommon Ground, a proposal
for transforming private psychotherapy into a life-long communal experience.
Putting
"Gloria" To Rest
Robert Resnick
Finally, after many decades, here
are contemporary Gestalt Therapy demonstration and training tapes that will
hopefully retire “Gloria”. Bob Resnick, personally
certified by Fritz Perls and chosen by Perls to introduce Gestalt Therapy to Europe in 1969, has
been a Gestalt Therapist and trainer for 45 years. These tapes, at GATLA’S long
running (39 years) European Summer Residential Training Workshops, are with
real people dealing with real issues in real time (no actors). Professionally
recorded, with excellent sound and pictures (some Hi Def) and soon will be
subtitled in several languages. This contemporary approach to Gestalt Therapy
is field, phenomenological, process and deeply dialogically based. Discussion,
comments, questions and reactions will be encouraged. This feedback will be
heavily weighed in editing and distribution of these videos.
Robert W Resnick, PhD, Clinical
Psychologist, Gestalt and Couples Therapist and trainer for 45 years. He was
trained (1965-1970) and personally certified (1969) by Drs. Fritz Perls and James Simkin and was
chosen by Fritz Perls to be the first Gestalt
Therapist to introduce Gestalt Therapy to Europe in the summer of 1969. His interview “Gestalt Therapy:
Principles Prisms and Perspectives” appears in the summer 1995 British Gestalt
Journal. “The Recursive Loop of Shame”, Gestalt Review 1997. “Chicken Soup Is Poison” (Perls Festschrift) circa
1967. His first clinical practicum
(while moonlighting as a Columbia University graduate student) was driving a
New York taxicab. Bob’s style is
warm and engaging and he speaks with clarity and humor.
The Id
of the Situation
Jean-Marie Robine
Taking the “id of the situation”
as a starting point for the work -as Perls and
Goodman had suggested- is an emblem of the radical transformation they had
introduced into psychotherapy. What does it means? What are the
presuppositions, implications and outcomes? Carrying on the basis drawn up by
our founder, I chose and go on choosing to emphasis the field perspective
-among other fundamentals- since it offers the greatest paradigmatic shift on
the ground of centuries of intrapsychic tradition.
The clinic and therapeutic consequences of this change are endlessly revealed,
so this posture needs to be worked out and requires more and more attention to
the contact processes, the now. Beyond the therapeutic effectiveness of this
epistemological choice, the social consequences of such a choice have to be
emphasized.
Jean-Marie Robine, clinical
psychologist since 1967, didactician psychotherapist,
founder of Institut Français de Gestalt-thérapie in 1980. International trainer of
Gestalt Therapy, has been president of the European Association for Gestalt Therapy (EAGT) in the early nineties and of Societé Française de Gestalt, then cofounder and member of the
board of Collège Européen de
Gestalt-thérapie. He has created and edited 2
French Journals of Gestalt Therapy and is part of the editorial board of
several international Gestalt Journals. He authored 4 books of Gestalt Therapy,
translated into several languages, and edited 2 books.
The Now-for-Next in Psychotherapy:
Gestalt Therapy Explained through Clinical Examples
Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb
A model to work with couples in a
phenomenological and field perspective will be presented. Participants will
possibly try each step themselves and see a live demo session.
Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb, Dipl Psychoth Is the Director of Istituto di Gestalt HCC Italy, approved by the Italian Ministry for Universities
She has
been teaching GT since 1979, led about 40 training programs, trained almost a
thousand of gestalt therapists, and is an invited trainer internationally. She
is a Full Member of the NYIGT, past-president and Honorary Member of the EAGT,
past-president of the Italian Psychotherapy Umbrella Association (FIAP), and of
the Italian GT Association (SIPG). She has authored many writings, and edited 5
books, including Creative License: The Art of Gestalt Therapy, with N. Amendt-Lyon (Springer, 2003) translated into German, French
and Italian. She authored the book The Now-for-Next in Gestalt Therapy (Angeli, 2010), edits the Italian journal Quaderni di Gestalt (since 1985) and co-edits the
international journal Studies in Gestalt Therapy: Dialogical Bridges.
INVITED PANEL PRESENTATIONS
Evidenced Based Movement, Research
and the Regulation of Gestalt Therapy
Philip Brownell, Moderator; Christine Stevens, Brad Larsen, and Meghann Case
This panel brings together research-oriented gestalt therapists from England, Bermuda, and the USA. They span the range from well-established
"old timers" to the next generation in gestalt therapy–people
who are just now entering the professional field. All are concerned with
a growing regulation globally of social services to conform with evidence-based practice. We discuss what evidence-based practice actually
is, give the perspective of research done at the level of the university,
provide an example of gestalt therapists involved in a practice-based research
project in England, and share the interests of younger gestalt therapists who
are concerned to make sure gestalt therapy has an adequate research base that
would qualify it as "evidence-based" and that would stand up to any
future regulatory demands in the larger field.
Gestalt Philosophy of
Being—Applications for Organizations
Talia Levine Bar-Yoseph,
Moderator; Robert Kolodny, and Mark Magerman
Gestalt therapy is one application of the beauty that the Gestalt school of thought has to contribute to the quality of the life each of us has. When applied to organizations, our theory enriches and betters the business as well as all those effected by it, including families, customers, and the environment. Hence, when working with organizations one has the honour of evoking ripples through the field thus healing many and contributing to the hygiene of the whole. This panel will present an opportunity to learn about and experience the method, inviting dialogue thereafter about application of the Gestalt philosophy of being to organizations, including and specifically during days of a downturn.
Talia Levine Bar-Yoseph, DPsych is co-founder of the
Jerusalem Gestalt Institute. A past head of the MSc in Gestalt psychotherapy at Metanoia, London, she is
a registered clinical psychologist since 1981 with special interest in PTSD,
cross cultural work, and group work. Talia is a trainer and a business
consultant in Israel, Europe, Australia and the USA and is the editor of 'The
Bridge - Dialogues Across Cultures', and ‘Advanced Gestalt Thinking’ to be
published 2010.
Robert Kolodny, PhD is an organization development consultant working with a wide range of
human systems in the US and abroad. For more than 20 years, he has had the chance to work closely with
people in business, government and the non-profit sector in organizations of
many shapes and sizes and to regularly experience the uniquely supportive and
creative possibilities inherent in a Gestalt perspective. Bob has been on the faculty at Columbia
University and at the New School University in New York City, and he is a
member of the professional teaching staffs of the Gestalt Institute of
Cleveland, the Gestalt International Study Center on Cape Cod, the Gestalt
Academy in Scandinavia and the NTL Institute.
Mark Magerman, PhD, LCSW is a board certified clinical social worker with more than twenty-five years
experience working with individuals and organizations as a psychotherapist,
educator, professional development and performance coach. Mark is a member of
the clinical and coaching training faculty of the Gestalt Therapy Institute of
Philadelphia, and member of the Next Generation at the Gestalt International
Study Center and maintains a private practice in Newtown and New Hope,
Pennsylvania. He has provided training to many institutions in the U.S. and
abroad. Mark has also co-edited a special issue of the International Gestalt
Journal on Gestalt Coaching.
Gestalt: Sustainability of Our
Global Environment
Billy Desmond, Moderator; Bruce Aaron, Will W
Adams, Gail Feinstein, Marilyn Myles, and Kailash Tuli
Billy Desmond, is a recently qualified Gestalt psychotherapist. He is an openly gay, married Irish man
with a private practice in London, England, working with clients of different
genders and sexual orientation for the past five years. His interest as a
Gestalt therapist – holistic researcher, is to deepen an understanding of
his work with gay clients who often feel marginalized and unacceptable in the
larger field, particularly when presenting with issues related to their
sexuality. He also works as a
Gestalt orientated OD consultant, executive coach, programme director and tutor at Ashridge Business School.
Bruce Aaron is a Gestalt
therapist in Chicago where he works in private practice as well as for the
Cathedral Counseling Center. He has long had a special interest in groups
and has been offering ongoing therapy groups for the past 16 years in which he
helps people discover authentic and nourishing ways of connecting with each
other. Supporting his interest in connecting is an underlying belief in the
essential interconnectedness of all life. His own paths, both personally and
professionally, seem to be variations on learning this truth at consecutively
deeper levels.
Will W Adams holds an MA in Psychology from West Georgia College and a
PhD in Clinical Psychology from Duquesne University. He previously served as a
Clinical Fellow in Psychology at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School.
He works as an Associate Professor of Psychology
at Duquesne University and as a psychotherapist and ecopsychologist in private practice. Dr. Adams’ special interests include ecological psychology, contemplative spirituality, art
and literature, and psychotherapy. His work has appeared in The
Humanistic Psychologist, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Journal
of Transpersonal Psychology, Journal of
Phenomenological Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, and Existential Analysis.
Gail Feinstein, LCSW, LMT is a somatically-based gestalt therapist in private practice in New York City and the Catskill Mountains consisting of supervision, training, workshops and retreats; integrating breathwork, touch, movement and ritual with focus on women’s work and deep ecology. She was mentored by Laura Perls, is past president and on the faculty of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy and teaches internationally. She emphasizes cultivating sensual wisdom and a sense of relatedness to deepen the connection and responsibility to the global field.
Marilyn Myles, MSW, LCSW is a psychotherapist in private practice in the Chicago area. She studied at the Gestalt Institute of
Toronto and with gestalt teachers trained in Cleveland. She specializes in somatic approaches
to trauma treatment, and teaches classes on compassion fatigue, stress
management and meditation. She has
studied shamanic traditions over the past ten years and utilizes rituals of
healing with individuals, families and groups. Marilyn has long enjoyed spiritual renewal through nature,
and is passionate about protecting the planet’s natural resources.
Kailash Tuli, PhD is veteran academician from University of Delhi,
currently Professor of OB/HRM at IILM Institute for Higher Education. As a
widely traveled Indian psychologist he has the honor of actively participating
in various International conferences, seminars and Residential Gestalt
Workshops (GATLA & GENI). He was a Senior Post-doctoral fellow, Vienna
University. Nationally and internationally, he specializes in Yoga and
Psychology lectures and workshops. He is co-author (with his zoologist wife) of A Dictionary of Sex Education. He is a practitioner and spearheads
Gestalt and Yoga with a focus on their mutual confluence. He is on the
editorial board of various Psychology related journals
and is an APA papers reviewer.
Is Mindfulness Just Gestalt
Therapy by a Different Name?
Eva Gold, Moderator; Brian Arnell,
Victor Daniels, Iris Fodor, and Steve Zahm
Buddhist psychology concepts and methods have
generated great interest among psychotherapists in recent years. Practitioners
from varied orientations are embracing the importance of awareness, a focus on
the present moment, and the power of acceptance of what is. ‘New’ approaches
have been developed incorporating these and other aspects of mindfulness--which
of course have been cornerstones of Gestalt therapy theory and method since its
inception. Where/how do mindfulness and Gestalt therapy intersect? Where do
they diverge? Panel members will offer their perspectives for consideration and
discussion.
Eva Gold, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist in private practice since 1978. She works
with individuals and couples, and provides clinical consultation and
supervision. She is co-founder and training director of Gestalt Therapy
Training Center—Northwest, in Portland, Oregon, and is on the adjunct
faculty at Pacific University, School of Professional Psychology where she
teaches Gestalt therapy. She has written extensively, and trained/presented
nationally and internationally on a variety of topics, including Buddhist
psychology and Gestalt therapy. Her current passion is the intersection of
these two approaches. She has been a vipassana meditation practitioner, and a student of Buddhist
psychology for many years.
Brian Arnell, after exploring Eastern religions for years,
formally took Refuge in the Kagyu linage of Tibetan Buddism in 1984. In 1998, he moved full-time to a
retreat center in New York and began intensive practice in the Theravadan tradition of Mindfulness meditation. To
pass on what he has learned and experienced, he left the retreat center and
moved to Philadelphia in 2006. He has intensively studied buddhist psychology, and trained
in Gestalt therapy theory at the Gestalt Therapy Institute of
Philadelphia. He practices and teaches in Philadelphia, and at meditation
retreats, and offers counseling to individual clients and groups.
Victor Daniels holds a PhD in
psychology from UCLA and has taught for 40 years at Sonoma State University,
where he also served as Psychology Department Chair. He has trained with over 20 Gestalt elders, has been a
Gestalt therapy practitioner for 35 years, and has presented in both English
and Spanish at Gestalt conferences. He was program chair for the Amsterdam and
Vancouver AAGT conferences. He has contributed numerous articles to the online
journal Gestalt!, and co-authored, with Jungkyu Kim, the chapter “Experimental Freedom” in the 2008
Handbook for Theory, Research, and Practice in Gestalt Therapy.
Iris Fodor, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University
and a psychotherapist in New York City. She has written about the integration
of Gestalt and Cognitive Therapy, anxiety disorders, women’s body image and
feminist therapy. Recent work focuses on mindfulness and Gestalt Therapy.
Steve Zahm, PhD is a clinical psychologist in private practice since 1972, working with
individuals and couples and providing clinical consultation and supervision. He
is co-founder and co-director of Gestalt Therapy Training
Center—Northwest in Portland, Oregon, and a professor at Pacific
University, School of Professional Psychology, where he teaches Gestalt
therapy, couples therapy and group therapy. He has been committed to bringing
Gestalt therapy into academic settings for over thirty years, and has written
extensively, and trained/presented nationally and internationally on many
topics including Buddhist psychology and Gestalt therapy. He has been a vipassana meditation practitioner for many years.
The Field of the “Field”
Dan Bloom, Moderator; Sylvia Fleming Crocker, Brian
O’Neill, Donna Orange, and Gordon Wheeler
“Field theory” is one
of the foundational concepts of gestalt therapy.
While it was presented as a given in our earliest literature, as gestalt
therapy matured this concept has developed in various ways to the extent that
there is no longer a consensus among contemporary psychotherapists about its
meaning. Each panelist is an expert in our “field” and has a different
perspective on this topic and will offer it for our discussion.
Dan Bloom, JD, MSW, has been in private clinical practice for more than 30 years and has
trained gestalt therapists worldwide. He trained with Laura Perls, Isadore From, Richard Kitzler,
and Patrick Kelley at the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. He was
recently made “fellow” of the institute. He is on faculty of several
institutes. Dan is Editor-in Chief
of Studies in Gestalt Therapy: Dialogical
Bridges, and on the editorial board of the Gestalt Review. He has published widely. Dan recently studied Heidegger’s Being in Time with Simon Critchely at The
New School in New York and is studying phenomenology with Donna Orange.
Sylvia Fleming Crocker trained with Erving and Miriam Polster and at
the Gestalt Therapy Institute of Los Angeles. She is a full member of the
New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. She has a PhD in Philosophy and
master’s in both comparative religion and counseling. She
has presented at many Gestalt conferences and has given training
workshops in the USA, Australia, and Europe. The author of a number of Gestalt journal articles and book
chapters, she has also written a book, “A Well-Lived Life: Essays in Gestalt
Therapy,” now in its third printing. It is required reading for
trainees in a number of Gestalt Institutes.
Brian
O’Neill, BA (Hons), MAPS is past president of AAGT and on the editorial boards of the Gestalt Review and Studies in Gestalt. He
has published on topics such as field theory, couples therapy and on community
in a gestalt context, and recently completed chapters (with his wife Jenny) on
gestalt couples therapy and the use of group in training. He is co-writing a
text on the field perspective with Séan Gaffney, following their chapter Field theoretical strategy in “The Handbook for theory, research and practice in gestalt therapy”,
(Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
Donna Orange is a
training and supervising analyst and faculty member at ISIPSe (Istituto di Specializzazione in Psicologia Psicoanalitica del Se e Psicoanalisi Relazionale, Roma [Institute for Specialization in
the Psychoanalytic Psychology of the Self and Relational Psychoanalysis]);
Faculty and Supervising Analyst, Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of
Subjectivity, New York. She is
author of Emotional Understanding: Studies in Psychoanalytic Psychology;
Thinking for Clinicians: Philosophical Resources for Contemporary
Psychoanalysis and the Humanistic Psychotherapies, and with George Atwood
and Robert Stolorow, of Working Intersubjectively: Contextualism in Psychoanalytic Practice and Worlds
of Experience: Interweaving Philosophical and Clinical Dimensions in
Psychoanalysis. With Roger Frie, she coedited Beyond Postmodernism: Extending the Reach of
Clinical Theory.
Gordon Wheeler, PhD teaches and trains widely around the world, using the Gestalt model to
explore relationship, development, self theory, intersubjectivity, culture and gender, coaching,
organizational systems, evolutionary psychology, and interpersonal
neurobiology. Author or editor of
some dozen books and over 100 chapters and articles in the field, Gordon is
longtime Editor and Co-Director of GestaltPress,
publishing jointly with Routledge Taylor
Francis. His work includes several
translations from French and German, and has itself been translated into over a dozen foreign languages. Since 2001 Gordon has also served as President of Esalen Institute, which hosts nearly 20,000 students,
conferees, and other visitors in some 500 residential programs each year, very
many of them based in Gestalt work.
Working with Children and Adolescents
Jon Blend, Moderator; Ruella Frank, Neil Harris, Mark McConville, Bronagh Starrs, and Denise Tervo
Within the last thirty years a new specialist knowledge and skills base
has arisen within Gestalt Therapy. Today’s focus
is on understanding developmental processes and the experience, needs and wants of infants, children
and adolescents. We may draw on ideas from
Attachment and Systemic theories together with research from
neuroscience. Unlike adults, young persons grow up within
a family field which mediates their
experience and affects their freedom to act. Thus when a young
person encounters difficulties this raises important questions: who is the
client and what approach is best suited: dyadic work with mother and child? Individual child/ adolescent sessions? or therapy involving the family network? Our panellists, all of whom are well known in their particular
‘field’, offer views on contempory conundrums, challenges and changes they face in their working
practice.
Jon Blend MA, CQSW is a (UKCP registered) psychotherapist, counselor, supervisor and
trainer. He is also a non-executive Director at the Gestalt Centre, London. Jon
has extensive experience of working with young persons and families in the UK,
in social work and NHS mental health services and in private practice. Jon is also a musician who performs
with a local band and with a Playback Theatre Company. He has developed a keen interest
in “Communicative
Musicality” (Trevarthen, 2009) and is currently
undertaking further training in Music Therapy.
Ruella Frank, PhD, is founder and director of the Center for Somatic Studies, faculty at
Gestalt Associates for Psychotherapy and the New York Institute for Gestalt
Therapy, and also teaches throughout the United States, Mexico and Europe. She
is author of articles and chapters in various publications, as well as the book Body of Awareness: A Somatic and
Developmental Approach to Psychotherapy, available in four languages.
Neil Harris is a
Gestalt psychotherapist who also works as a child and adolescent
psychiatrist. And he is a child
psychiatrist whose work is permeated with, and orientated by, his training and
experience as a Gestalt therapist. He works with patients and clients of all ages, individually and with
their families. He has a
particular interest in the therapeutic applications of attachment theory. A key area of his work is with adopted
and fostered children who have histories of serious trauma and loss.
Mark McConville, PhD is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Cleveland, Ohio
specializing in adolescent and family psychology. He is the author of Adolescence: Psychotherapy and the Emergent
Self, and co-editor of The Heart of
Development: Gestalt Approaches to Working with Children, Adolescents, and Their
Worlds, Vols. I & II. Mark is a senior faculty member
of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, where he developed and co-chairs its
child and adolescent training program, and teaches internationally. He is currently completing a book for
parents on the failure-to-launch syndrome of emerging adulthood.
Bronagh Starrs is an accredited psychotherapist and trainer who maintains a clinical practice in Omagh, Northern Ireland. She specializes in working with
children, adolescents and their families, and with people who are coming
to terms with the legacy of 'The Troubles'
in their lives. Bronagh has a particular
interest in tracking the impact of psychological trauma through childhood and adolescence and how this trauma can continue to impact
the adult self. She has authored various articles on the subject and works from
a Gestalt relational perspective.
Denise Tervo, PhD is a licensed psychologist, supervisor and trainer in private practice
in Pittsburgh, Pa. She has worked with children, adults and families for over
thirty years. Denise is a Faculty member of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland
and the Gestalt Institute of Pittsburgh. She teaches the Child Play Therapy and
Child Psychotherapy graduate course at Duquesne University. Her publications
include “Physical Process with Children and Adolescents” in The Heart of Development (2002) and “Zig Zag Flop and Roll: Creating
an Embodied Field for Healing and Awareness when Working with Children”, British Gestalt Journal (2007). Denise
integrates body process and energy awareness in her clinical work.
PEER REVIEWED WORKSHOPS
Cultivating Intimacy in the Shared Earth Community: Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, Buddhism, and Gestalt
Therapy
Will Adams
Ecopsychology discloses the interdependence of human well-being and that of the rest of
nature. The biological peril we are facing (or not) is grounded in a
crisis of consciousness and culture, with alienation from nature generating
great psychological and social distress. This crisis derives largely from
the shadow of modernity’s Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm: a supposedly
separate, ego-centered self; dissociation of humans and nature; and exclusively
anthropocentric cultures and practices. A participatory, psycho-cultural
“therapy” is needed to benefit all who share this one earth community.
Through experiential engagement, theory, and conversation, this workshop
integrates phenomenological, Buddhist, transpersonal, and Gestalt approaches
(regarding psychotherapy, socially engaged research, and ecopsychology).
Gestalt perspectives are dialogued with Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Dogen, and Thich Nhat Hanh.
Contemplative, body-oriented, relational awareness exercises are emphasized.
Will W Adams holds an MA in Psychology from
West Georgia College and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Duquesne University. He previously
served as a Clinical Fellow in Psychology at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical
School. He works as an Associate Professor of Psychology at Duquesne University and as a psychotherapist and ecopsychologist in private practice. Dr. Adams’
special interests include ecological psychology,
contemplative spirituality, art and literature, and psychotherapy. His
work has appeared in The Humanistic Psychologist, Journal of
Humanistic Psychology, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, Psychoanalysis
and Contemporary Thought, and Existential Analysis.
Changing Times, Changing Families – Exploring
Stepfamily Situations
Claire Asherson Bartram
Jon Blend
Stepfamilies are the context within which
increasingly either we or our clients have grown up, or are presently living
in. They are the fastest growing
type of family in the UK and USA today. Stepfamilies have a history of change and loss, yet the biological basis
between parents and their children provides continuity and structure. Stepfamily members tend to form
sub-groups around their biological relationships. Issues they face include conflicting loyalties, equality and
insider/outsider dynamics. We will
use the group as a base for exploring stepfamily dynamics. Participants are invited to bring their
own, or their clients’ stepfamily experiences and we will create experimental
explorations from this material. This will involve some or all of the following: role play, artwork,
dialogue and discussion.
Claire Asherson Bartram, DPsych is an experienced
therapist, supervisor and group leader working in private practice in
London. She qualified in
1991. She is also a mother, stepmother
and grandmother. She has recently
completed her Doctorate in which she explored the experiences of mothers in
stepfamily situations. She found
stepfamilies to be field events; they often have fluid and complicated
boundaries, yet the original biology remains constant. Dr. Asherson Bartram founded an organization; StepIn ASAP Advancing Stepfamily
Awareness through Psychotherapy. This is a group of therapists who meet regularly to explore these
issues, and sensitize their awareness of how they may be affecting their
clients.
Jon Blend MA, CQSW is a (UKCP registered) psychotherapist, counsellor,
supervisor and trainer. He is also a non-executive Director at the Gestalt
Centre, London. Jon has extensive experience of working with young persons and
families in the UK, in social work and NHS mental health services and in
private practice. Jon is also a
musician who performs with a local band and with a Playback Theatre Company. He has developed a keen interest
in “Communicative
Musicality” (Trevarthen, 2009) and is currently
undertaking further training in Music Therapy.
A Critical Exploration of the Integration of
Buddhist Mindfulness Techniques in Gestalt Therapy
John L Bennett
Many gestalt therapists express an interest in
Buddhist practices. Often it is assumed that gestalt therapy and Buddhist
philosophy and practice are compatible with little or no alteration of either
approach. Part experiential and part theoretical, this presentation explores
the boundary between these two aesthetics/philosophies, searching for
meaningful overlap and, equally importantly, areas of fundamental difference.
Buddhist philosophical concepts will be compared to gestalt therapy theory
chiefly as outlined by Perls, Hefferline and Goodman.
John L Bennett is the Clinical Coordinator of Mental Health at Callen Lorde Community Health Center, an LGBT health center
in New York City. He is a PhD candidate in clinical social work at New York
University, and an associate member of the New York Institute for Gestalt
Therapy. His previous training includes CBT, EMDR and interpersonal
psychotherapy. He is a gestalt therapist and meditation practitioner, master of
neither, but critical seeker in both traditions. He has been
published by the British Gestalt Journal on
the topic of this presentation.
Tuning In and Tuning Out: Exploring Contact and
Withdrawal through Music- Making in Gestalt Therapy
Jon Blend
This part practical, part didactic workshop brings
together ideas from contemporary neuroscience, music theory and intersubjectivity. Our initial focus will be on the nature
and significance of music making as a dialogic communication, from evolutionary and developmental perspectives. We will briefly consider some links between music and emotion
including the role played by rhythm in highlighting or underscoring
affect. After ‘warming up’ our bodies and
voices, the group will explore communicating via improvised music –making using some ideas from Gestaltist Violet Oaklander followed by drummer John Stevens’ unusual ‘Click’ and ‘Sustain’ excercises. Case vignettes illustrate how such
experiments can offer a useful
adjunct to therapy with individuals or families. We will conclude with questions and answers. Note: No prior musical experience
or skill required!
Jon Blend MA, CQSW is a (UKCP registered) psychotherapist, counsellor,
supervisor and trainer. He is also a non-executive Director at the Gestalt
Centre, London. Jon has extensive experience of working with young persons and
families in the UK, in social work and NHS mental health services and in
private practice. Jon is also a
musician who performs with a local band and with a Playback Theatre
Company. He has developed a keen
interest in “Communicative
Musicality” (Trevarthen, 2009) and is currently
undertaking further training in Music Therapy.
Chasing Rainbows: Ethics
in Gestalt Therapy – External Ethics, Foundational Ethics -- and the “Rainbow,” Emergent
Ethos
Dan Bloom
I will consider “ethics” within
gestalt therapy. “Ethics” for this purpose will be defined as the values
or rules of conduct guiding therapy. I will describe “external ethics” and
“foundational ethics” in clinical practice. I will propose that “emergent
ethos” is “disclosed” with the proper balance of those two ethics within the
session. Emergent ethos is the “domicile” for “dialogical contact,” the heart
of the gestalt therapy process—and the essence of “relational” gestalt
therapy. I will then re-evaluate the sequence of contact in this light. The
self/world field as a supplement to the organism/environment field will
help clarify these concepts. I will show this with concrete clinical examples.
Dan Bloom, JD, MSW has been in private clinical practice for more than 30 years and has
trained gestalt therapists worldwide. He trained with Laura Perls, Isadore From, Richard Kitzler,
and Patrick Kelley at the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. He was
recently made “fellow” of the institute. He is on faculty of several
institutes. Dan is Editor-in Chief
of Studies in Gestalt Therapy
:Dialogical Bridges, and on the editorial board of the Gestalt Review. He has published
widely. Dan recently studied
Heidegger’s Being in Time with Simon Critchely at The New School in New York and is studying phenomenology with Donna Orange.
Adolescent
Phenomenology and the Intimate Witness
Marlene Moss Blumenthal
Mark McConville
Through the lens of participants’ own adolescent
“remembering” 1) there will be an opportunity to experience being witnessed in
the moment without being pressured to offer more. And, 2) there will be an opportunity to be an intimate
witness to a “young client’s” emerging process. As gestalt therapists working
with adolescents we become part of a larger integrated field. In this workshop we will explore only a
small portion of that larger field—a few moments as collaborators in our
young client’s growth. As therapists, in our grounded presence and ability to
notice the “what is” we offer our young clients an experience that is not
readily available in their often pressured, achievement oriented daily
existence.
Marlene Moss Blumenthal, PhD trained as a clinical psychologist and has practiced as a licensed
school psychologist. She has worked with adolescents, their families, and their
teachers in day treatment, residential, and school settings, both individually
and in groups, as well as in private practice. She has published research on mother/adolescent daughter
relationships, conflict modes and gestalt resistances. Marlene was one of the chairpersons and
co-presented at Esalen’s Evolution of Gestalt
Conference: Relational Child-Relational Brain. She is a former director of clinical training at the Gestalt
Institute of Cleveland, developed and co-chairs GIC’s child and adolescent training
program, and teaches internationally.
Mark McConville, PhD is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Cleveland, Ohio,
specializing in adolescent and family psychology. He is the author of Adolescence: Psychotherapy and the Emergent
Self, and co-editor of The Heart of
Development: Gestalt Approaches to Working with Children, Adolescents, and
Their Worlds, Vols. I & II. Mark is a senior faculty member
of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, where he developed and co-chairs its
child and adolescent training program, and teaches internationally. He is currently completing a book for
parents on the failure-to-launch syndrome of emerging adulthood.
Holy Holism! Is It Time for a Change?
Charlie Bowman
“Holism” suggests transpersonal, spiritual, and
esoteric applications more than the serious scientific/philosophical movement
from whence it was born. This
presentation includes a review of holism (paper provided) to start discussing
the future of the concept as integral to Gestalt therapy. We will wrestle with holism and Gestalt
therapy in small and large group discussion of the paper and through small
group experiments highlighting the difference in holistic and field theoretical
approaches. Can field theory
replace holism as the vernacular that promotes Gestalt therapy training? Can it provide the continuity necessary
to spark a return to training based upon the phenomenological method, moving
away from “Gestalt and…” approaches? These questions, and those that emerge in our process, will comprise our
inquiry into holism, continuity and change.
Charlie Bowman, MS is a senior faculty member at the Indianapolis Gestalt Institute, Core
faculty at the Gestalt Training Institute of Bermuda, and he was the third
president of AAGT. He has also
served as Vice President, Treasurer, Board Member, Conference Co-Coordinator,
Communications Director and Interest Group Co-Chair for AAGT. Charlie has remained active in AAGT
since its inception and is fiercely dedicated to its development in accordance
with the Constitution and By-Laws. He has published numerous articles on Gestalt therapy and currently
edits the AAGT Newsletter.
Intentional Spirituality: A Contemporary
Phenomenological Perspective
Philip Brownell
This presentation explores spirituality through the
lens of phenomenology–most specifically through intentionality.
"Intentional objects are situated by the interest in a person's voice,
held by faith, surrounded by a person's attitude, and enlightened by the
horizon of potential and possibility in a person's life." These concepts
and the views of French phenomenologists such as
Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, and
Jean-Louise Chretien will be explored for relevance to spirituality and gestalt
therapy. Participants will be stimulated by new thinking in phenomenology and
challenged to distinguish between what must remain (continuity) and what must
yield to change in gestalt therapy's approach to spirituality. Presentation
includes didactic, experiential, dialogue, and discussion.
Philip Brownell, MDiv, PsyD is a licensed clinical
psychologist, gestalt therapist, organizational consultant, and coach. He is
seminary educated, an ordained clergyman, and Director of the Center for
Theistic Studies at the Gestalt Training Institute of Bermuda. He completed six
years of gestalt training and has facilitated the gestalt-focused discussion
group, Gstalt-L, for thirteen years. Phil is the
Editor of the Handbook for Theory,
Research, and Practice in Gestalt Therapy and author of Gestalt Therapy: Guidebook to Contemporary
Practice. He has been involved with the AAGT since 1995 and is co-chair of
the AAGT's Research Task Force.
Between the Generations: Living Your
Parent/Adult-Child Relationship in the Present
Joan H Cole
Peter H Cole
This
workshop will be facilitated by a mother & son co-therapy team both of whom
are practicing Gestalt therapists & trainers. We are interested in
creating a dialogue within a small group to explore the challenges &
promise of adult relationships between the generations. The Parent/Adult
Child relationship carries the weight of shared history, biology, family
identification & fate. We will offer the following question as an object of
contemplation and dialogue for workshop participants: How and to what degree
and can we create more choiceful, authentic contact
in these intergenerational relationships? This question will then be a
launching point for sharing, feedback, discovery and process. We will
consider the parent/adult-child relationship in both our personal lives and as
an issue in clinical practice. This workshop is limited to 12 participants and will be conducted as an
interactive Gestalt group
Joan Cole, PhD is a clinical social worker in private practice in Berkeley CA. She has
served on the faculty of the University of Maryland, UC Berkeley School of
Social Welfare and Lone Mountain College. She is past president of
The Psychotherapy Institute of Berkeley (TPI) and serves on the faculty of
TPI's Supervision Study Program and Psychotherapy Training Program. She serves
on the faculty of the Sierra Institute for Contemporary Gestalt Therapy.
Peter Cole, LCSW is a clinical social worker in private practice in Berkeley and
Sacramento CA. He serves as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
with the UC Davis School of Medicine. He is co-director of the Sierra
Institute for Contemporary Gestalt Therapy. He is the author of two books
on the psychology of money. He has written numerous articles in the
fields of gestalt therapy and family financial issues.
Gestalt
Therapy in Community Mental Health: Expanding the Boundaries of Gestalt
Practice
Sean Coyle
Adrienne Newman
Learn to apply Gestalt therapy with those most
debilitated by mental illness: people seeking treatment at community mental
health centers. An average day for a community mental health counselor might
consist of sessions with clients suffering from borderline processes,
developmental disabilities, unmedicated schizophrenia
and PTSD - all before lunch. Drawing upon our experience, we will show through lecture and demonstration
how Gestalt concepts of figure formation/destruction, contact, process,
phenomenology and creative adjustment are effective in working with people
suffering from chronic, disabling mental illnesses. We will explore Gestalt
theory in its application with delusions, borderline processes and
hallucinations related to schizophrenia. The workshop will include discussion on how you can increase the
presence of Gestalt therapy in your local
community mental health centers.
Sean Coyle, MA, LMHC is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in Washington State as well as a
Licensed Professional Counselor in Oregon. He has a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology from Lewis
& Clark College. He has worked
for the past six years at Community Services Northwest, a community mental
health agency in Vancouver, Washington. Mr. Coyle is currently the Clinical Supervisor of the Wellness Project,
a free mental health clinic run by Community Services Northwest. Previous to his master’s studies, Mr.
Coyle was a social worker for 12 years in settings serving the homeless,
refugees and HIV/AIDS patients. Mr. Coyle has completed nine years of Gestalt training and is currently
enrolled in advanced training at the Gestalt Therapy Training Center Northwest
in Portland, Oregon.
Adrienne Newman, MA, LPC began working with people suffering from severe persistent mental
illness in the early 1990’s. After
completing her BA in psychology, she worked as a counselor in homeless
shelters, domestic violence shelters, and on rape and domestic violence
hotlines. Since receiving her MA in Counseling in 2001, and advanced training
in Gestalt therapy through the Gestalt Therapy Training Center Northwest, she
has worked predominately with low socioeconomic individuals suffering from mental
illness. Adrienne has been a
therapist in community mental health agencies and is currently employed as a
therapist with the Oregon Department of Corrections in a women’s prison.
A Fresh Look at Phenomenology in
Husserl and Gestalt Therapy
Sylvia
Fleming Crocker
Although Gestalt’s method is phenomenological, the
nature of the method itself is often not clearly understood. This
presentation investigates Husserl’s mature understanding of his method, and
shows how its transformation in Gestalt therapy is responsible for much of the
latter‘s power.
Sylvia Fleming Crocker, PhD trained with Erving and Miriam Polster and at
the Gestalt Therapy Institute of Los Angeles. She is a full member of the
New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. She has a PhD in Philosophy and
master’s in both comparative religion and counseling. She
has presented at many Gestalt conferences and has given training
workshops in the USA, Australia, and Europe. The author of a number of Gestalt journal articles and book
chapters, she has also written a book, A
Well-Lived Life: Essays in Gestalt Therapy, now in its third
printing. It is required reading for trainees in a number of Gestalt
Institutes.
Dimensions of Dialogues: Their Forms
and Uses
Victor Daniels
In recent years, while
the dialogical-relational approach has received great attention in the
English-speaking Gestalt therapy world, some of the other forms of dialogue
that historically have been used have received less attention. This workshop
offers a descriptive typology of the diverse forms of dialogue used by various
Gestalt therapy practitioners, from internal projective dialogues through the
dialogical-relational to the psychodramatic. In so
doing, it will demonstrate the use of less well-known dialogic forms. It highlights
the power, utility, and limitations of each of the forms described, addressing
questions of the circumstances under which each is most appropriate, how to
move from one form to another, and guidelines for their effective use.
Volunteers will be invited to participate in demonstrations.
Victor Daniels holds a PhD in
psychology from UCLA and has taught for 40 years at Sonoma State University,
where he also served as Psychology Department Chair. He has trained with over 20 Gestalt elders, has been a Gestalt
therapy practitioner for 35 years, and has presented in both English and
Spanish at Gestalt conferences. He was program chair for the Amsterdam and
Vancouver AAGT conferences. He has contributed numerous articles to the online
journal Gestalt!, and co-authored, with Jungkyu Kim, the chapter “Experimental Freedom” in the 2008
Handbook for Theory, Research, and Practice in Gestalt Therapy.
Gay Clients Seeking Meaningful Relational Contact: Scared
of the Sacred
Billy Desmond
Urban gay men‘s creative adjustment of making
contacting with another often manifests in configuring their sexual self at the
contact boundary. In therapy the erotic is sometimes figural, where a
contacting process of confluence and withdrawal emerges as a pattern. The sacred as experienced in the
unfolding ‘here and now’ intimacy between person and person, appears to be what
is achingly longed for in the co-created therapeutic relationship. As therapists, we need to
consider interventions that support gay clients hope for a more ‘choiceful’ relational contact in the ‘here and now’. This
requires us to become aware of our responses to the novel /unknown in our
sexualities and open to the sacred in our dialogic relational contact with gay
clients.
Billy Desmond, MSc, MBA is a recently qualified Gestalt psychotherapist. He is an openly gay, married Irish man
with a private practice in London, England, working with clients of different
genders and sexual orientation for the past five years. His interest as a
Gestalt therapist – holistic researcher, is to deepen an understanding of
his work with gay clients who often feel marginalized and unacceptable in the
larger field, particularly when presenting with issues related to their
sexuality. He also works as a
Gestalt orientated OD consultant, executive coach, programme director and tutor at Ashridge Business School.
Flying Without Wings: Life With Arnold Beisser, MD
Liv Estrup
Arnold Beisser, MD, a
Gestalt psychiatrist, author of The
Paradoxical Theory of Change, seven books and almost 100 professional
articles was a national tennis champion when completely disabled by polio at
age 25. His relationship with
Fritz Perls was instrumental in dealing with his
disability and his writing The
Paradoxical Theory of Change. Interviews of Dr. Beisser, family, friends and
colleagues show how he lived his life fully and inspire us to do the same.
Liv Estrup,
MA is a Gestalt therapist in practice in Santa
Monica, California since 1971. Her co-therapist, Rufus, is a Golden
Retriever. Liv is a GATLA Faculty member and has trained psychotherapists nationally and
internationally over the last 10 years. She teaches at Loma Linda University and at LACMH. Liv is an
AAMFT approved supervisor and co-authored (with Rita Resnick,
PhD) “Supervision: A Collaborative Endeavor”, Gestalt Review (Vol. 4, No. 2). She is an Associate Editor of the Gestalt Review. Liv created
the video, What’s Behind the Empty Chair? Gestalt Therapy Theory and Methodology in
2000.
Practice, Embodiment and Gestalt Form
Robert Farrands
What principles of systemic practice are illuminated by figure ground form? The figure is only figural because some things are excluded as the person, system or thing comes to fuller identity. Including the excluded is a route towards transformation, but how, in practice, can this be achieved? The body, together with it’s affect and perceptual “sensing”, is structurally excluded from systemic practice (Merleau-Ponty). How can it’s inclusion illuminate systemic practice and reveal organizational cultures? Gestalt practice’s readiness to include the body suggests a way forward, but its focus on presence/identity tends to hide the fertile possibilities of opening to (incarnate) experience of the other. What practice might welcome, open towards and bring to expression what is in the ground?
Robert Farrands, PhD consults and coaches to large private sector organisations and also to the public sector. He has worked on significant large scale projects for Shell and BG, including a major joint operation in Kazakhstan for BG and the Italian national oil company ENI. Rob is well versed in creative systemic interventions and in dispute resolution. He teaches in the UK, Sweden and the United States on systemic change and methods of consulting. He publishes articles on these subjects. His doctoral thesis explored the conjunction between Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the body, gestalt form and consulting practice.
From Abandonment to Embodiment and Beyond
Gail Feinstein
The nature of our times is calling us, more than ever, to the task of developing a new mode of perceiving our place in the world; one which stresses the interrelatedness of all things, and an expanded awareness of our common humanity. This is imperative to the healing of the sense of separateness that contributes to global turmoil. Committing to this task, we pause and slow down, listen and pay attention to detail while experimenting with breathing, movement and touch as a way of deepening our practice of sensual exploration and cultivating a sense of relatedness. As we expand our somatic aliveness and proprioceptive awareness, we pay attention with new intention. Growing beyond inhabiting our bodies and personal fulfillment, we deepen our connection and responsibility to the global field.
Gail Feinstein, LCSW, LMT is a somatically-based gestalt therapist in private practice in New York City and the Catskill Mountains consisting of supervision, training, workshops and retreats; integrating breathwork, touch, movement and ritual with focus on women’s work and deep ecology. She was mentored by Laura Perls, is past president and on the faculty of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy and teaches internationally. She emphasizes cultivating sensual wisdom and a sense of relatedness to deepen the connection and responsibility to the global field.
Discovering Embodied History
within Postural Pattern: A
Relational Perspective
Ruella Frank
In this workshop we will
explore a system of postural analysis through understand the dimensions:
horizontal; vertical; sagittal. Each dimension’s
subjective experiential aspects facilitate particular elements of action
– that is, they can be seen and experienced in the sequences of
contacting. And each dimension has implications for its own sensory, affective
and cognitive corollaries. Using an understanding of this system of postural
analysis, participants will learn how to flesh out embodied history as it
exists in the present moment.
Ruella Frank, PhD is founder and director of the Center for Somatic Studies, faculty at
Gestalt Associates for Psychotherapy and the New York Institute for Gestalt
Therapy, and also teaches throughout the United States, Mexico and Europe. She
is author of articles and chapters in various publications, as well as the book Body of Awareness: A Somatic and
Developmental Approach to Psychotherapy, available in four languages.
Creating Exact Moments of Healing
Mariah Fenton Gladis
This experiential and didactic workshop will
demonstrate the fundamentals of creating
exact moments of healing, an innovative Gestalt approach. When creating an
exact moment of healing, a painful memory is briefly revisited, followed by a
recreation of the experience that includes a new, positive healing outcome
based on a specific unmet need. Once this merger of pain and healing takes place, a dysfunctional memory
can never be recalled in isolation; it is now bonded to a positive, healing
memory. This influencing and reconstructing of destructive memory and its
effect on the organism, and merging it with a positive, corrective, healing
experience, allows a new field to open, with infinite possibilities for hope
and change. Music will be interwoven to enhance the healing environment and
support each client’s needs.
Founder
and Clinical Director of the Pennsylvania Gestalt Center for Psychotherapy and
Training since 1976, Mariah Fenton Gladis has been a workshop leader at Esalen Institute since 1987. She received a Social Worker
of the Year award from NASW, a Living Legacy Award from the Women’s
International Center, and is one of “Pennsylvania’s Best 50 Women in Business.”
Mariah is faculty for Center for a
Healthy World, a psychotherapy cooperative, and
belongs to the National Association of Social Workers, where she is a Board
Certified Diplomat. Mariah is the author of Tales
of a Wounded Healer, an accessible description of her Gestalt practice.
Gestalt Therapy Training
Integrating Buddhist Psychology
and Mindfulness Methods
Eva Gold
Steve Zahm
We will present a model for Gestalt therapy
training that integrates Buddhist psychology concepts and meditation methods
based on our training program-- Buddhist Psychology and
Contemporary Gestalt Therapy: Bringing Mindfulness to Psychotherapy
Practice. We will consider what makes this integration possible, and
beneficial including the complementarity of the two
systems, and the potential for enhancing the skills of Gestalt therapists, and
adding a dimension of depth and richness to the training process. In addition
to other experiential aspects, a ‘fishbowl’ group will demonstrate one way this works
in the training, and provide an experience for further questions and
exploration.
Eva Gold, Psy D is a clinical psychologist in private practice since 1978. She works
with individuals and couples, and provides clinical consultation and
supervision. She is co-founder and training director of Gestalt Therapy
Training Center—Northwest, in Portland, Oregon, and is on the adjunct
faculty at Pacific University, School of Professional Psychology where she
teaches Gestalt therapy. She has written extensively, and trained/presented
nationally and internationally on a variety of topics, including Buddhist
psychology and Gestalt therapy. Her current passion is the intersection of
these two approaches. She has been a vipassana meditation practitioner and a student of Buddhist
psychology for many years.
Steve Zahm, PhD is a clinical psychologist in private practice since 1972, working with
individuals and couples and providing clinical consultation and supervision. He
is co-founder and co-director of Gestalt Therapy Training
Center—Northwest in Portland, Oregon, and a professor at Pacific
University, School of Professional Psychology, where he teaches Gestalt
therapy, couples therapy and group therapy. He has been committed to bringing Gestalt therapy into
academic settings for over thirty years, and has written extensively, and
trained/presented nationally and internationally on many topics including
Buddhist psychology and Gestalt therapy. He has been a vipassana meditation practitioner
for many years.
How
To Undo A Self-Hating Depression: Using Gestalt Therapy Principles of
Figure/Ground Formation as an Agent of Change
Elinor Greenberg
One of the challenges of working with highly
narcissistic clients or others with low self esteem is that when their thin
veneer of confidence is pierced, they can rapidly spiral down into a
self-hating depression characterized by self-reproach, shame, and the sense of
being worthless, unlovable and defective. During this depression, only the
client’s failures and the disliked parts of the self are foreground; while past
successes and the client’s strengths are part of the unseen background. This
workshop will show how to use the Gestalt principle of Figure/Ground formation
to facilitate a shift in awareness by the client so that the unseen strengths
and successes are made figure in the moment and the client’s sense of self and
mood becomes more realistic and positive.
Elinor Greenberg, PhD, CGP is a member of the NYIGT, a former faculty member of The Masterson Institute
(a postgraduate training institute in the psychodynamic treatment of
Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Disorders), and is adjunct faculty to
The Gestalt Center where she lectures on the diagnosis and treatment of
Personality Disorders with Gestalt Therapy. Dr. Greenberg lectures and writes extensively on personality
disorders and is a member of the Gestalt Review’s editorial board.
A Gestalt Therapist Teaches Singing
Susan Gregory
In this didactic and
experiential workshop, we will explore how we and our clients use voices in
speaking, sounding and singing and how working with voice may promote growth
and well being in individuals and groups. Both singers and observers are
welcome; while experiential activities will be offered, both active and
observing participants are valuable parts of the field in this workshop. The presenter is a published author in this field
of specialty, a professional singer, and a Gestalt therapist in private
practice in NYC for over 18 years.
Susan Gregory is a Gestalt
therapist in private practice in NYC, where she also teaches singing and the Gindler approach to breath and bodywork. Her chapter
"you must sing to be found..." appears in Healing with Art and
Soul (2009), a book on expressive arts therapies which is available
through Amazon. Her articles may be found in the British, Australian and
International Gestalt Journals. She has taught worldwide, and is the immediate
past president of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. Ms. Gregory
was formerly a principal artist with the NYC Opera.
Escape from Your Internal Bondage--Change Your Introjected World: Loosening the Root of the Tongue
Seishi Harada
We’re all living in the world we have introjected. Manipulative introjection keeps you from vivid experiences and artistic sensibility.If you really want to change your world, you have to face your introjecting system. Introjection accompanies body reaction, which is tightening root of your tongue. Through
work with your tongue, we can know our introjection process. I’m goint to
show you how manipulative introjection press you to
be isolated, lowers your self-esteem, and how to get free from our internal
bondage.
Seishi
Harada was born in Tokyo and studied
under Ricky Livingston (Rose Najia). He
completed the Tokyo Gestalt Institute Training Course and soon thereafter gave
a demonstration of Gestalt therapy on TV, curing
a dancer’s stage fright. He has since conducted
individual therapy and workshops for executives, artists, business people,
researchers, housewives, and actors. Additionally, he served on the Tokyo
Metropolitan Educational Counseling Center Advisory Staff and AAGT’s Manchester Program Committee. He is the author of 私を救うイメージセラピー（How to Save Yourself） and 依存からの脱出（Bye Bye Addiction ）and is responsible for the Japanese translation of In and
Out of the Garbage Pail.
Sex & Brain And Gestalt Therapy
Marta Helliesen
This workshop integrates gestalt therapy and
neurobiology and presents an experiential and theoretical approach for working
with sexual obstacles. The
experience at the boundary where the organism meets the other is the heart of
gestalt therapy and also of the erotic encounter. When this experience is not
“right” people seek help. Underlying any sexual behavior are numerous interacting neuronal networks, and change in behavior results from
modulation of action/interaction of the given networks (brain plasticity).
Experiential exercises will demonstrate how the therapist/client field can be
fertile ground for new erotic awareness and novel stimulation of the brain.
Didactic presentation will outline the underlying neurobiology and explain how
that translates to change in sexual behavior.
Marta Helliesen has a PhD in Arts and Sciences with a specialization in Sexology. She
is a former neuroscientist, a trained gestalt therapist and has been in private
practice as a sex therapist/psychotherapist in NYC for 14 years. She is known
internationally for her interdisciplinary treatment modalities for sexual
problems, based on gestalt therapy theory, neurobiology and breath and body
awareness. She is a full member of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy.
Imposing NonJudgmental Values: Paradoxes of Gestalt Ethics
Eric Hoffman
The Gestalt approach to therapy affirms certain
values in its claim to be a full philosophy of life.
Yet, Gestalt approaches to therapy emphasize a profound respect for the
client’s process of coming to and affirming his or her own values. How do
we, as Gestalt therapists, understand and negotiate this and other related
paradoxes? Earlier Gestalt approaches reflected the familiar existential
tension of seeking to live “authentically.” Does authenticity suffice, or
does the new Gestalt emphasis on relationship overcome weaknesses of the
authenticity approach? Must we seek support for values in an authority external
to Gestalt, or can we ground all values in the Gestalt values of authenticity
and relationship? Come experience, explore and reflect.
Eric Hoffman has
been teaching moral philosophy at the college level for more than 30
years. He is also a Gestalt
therapist and workshop conductor. Since completing his dissertation on John Rawls’ theory of justice, he
has taught courses in ethics, political philosophy, existentialism, Marxism,
the meaning of life, philosophy of sex and love and other topics raising issues
of individual and collective values. He has worked with other philosophers to develop the
practice of philosophical counseling and has supported individuals and groups
in exploring their own values in his private practice and workshops.
Social Location and Marginalization: Contextual
Constraints on Contacting Possibilities
Lynne Jacobs
We will have discussion and experimentation with
how our “social location”—which shifts according to context--shapes awareness
and contacting both within and between socially defined groups. This is an
attempt to expand our awareness of how our phenomenal fields co-influence each
other’s experience, and how contextual variables constrain the possibilities of
contacting and awareness.
Lynne Jacobs, PhD, lives in two psychotherapy
worlds. She teaches and trains gestalt therapists world-wide. She is co-founder of the Pacific Gestalt Institute and also a training and supervising analyst at the Institute of
Contemporary Psychoanalysis. She is co-author (with Rich Hycner),
of The Healing Relationship in Gestalt
Therapy: A Dialogic/Self
Psychology Approach. She has also written numerous
articles for gestalt therapists and psychoanalytic therapists. She is also
interested in anti-racism work, and to this end, aside from her
article, “For Whites Only,” has given several presentations to white and
mixed-race audiences on the phenomenon of, and implications of, central social
location (which she will explain in her workshop). She has a private practice in Los Angeles.
A Phenomenology of Sexual Intrusion
Des Kennedy
Sexual violation, especially by a family member,
has long been like a cancer deeply hidden and frequently denied in the body of
our culture. As Freud discovered
and then denied, it underlies the personal psychopathology of many people. This
is because it attacks those fundamental structures which support the very being
of the person-in-the- world. One
of the difficulties facing psychotherapists helping people with this condition
is the danger of re-traumatizing the victim and so prolonging the suffering.
This can happen if sufficient account is not taken of the injury sustained at
the pre-reflective level of the personality. The phased phenomenological approach favored by Pierre Janet
and developed by Van der Hart and colleagues is very
congenial to Gestalt therapy.
Des Kennedy has
been a Gestalt practitioner and trainer working in the North West of the UK
since 1992. This is his third
career. Previously he was a Jesuit
priest, and then in 1972 he immigrated to Britain, married and headed a
Department in a Grammar School for eighteen years. In 2002 he successfully defended his PhD thesis: Healing
Perception (The Application of the Philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to the Theoretical Structures of Gestalt Psychotherapy). He has published many articles relating
to this in the British Gestalt Journal.
Our Internal
Critic, and the Cult of Individualism
Robert Lee
Understanding how our learned and now automatic world view shapes
every interaction with our self and others is the goal of this workshop. As we assimilate this truth in a
supportive/connective atmosphere, we will begin to explore the implications for
theory, practice, and the breadth of our personal life. Along the way we will explore, from a
relational perspective, the recurrent hidden themes of shame and belonging that
emanate from the many contexts in which we reside.
Robert G Lee, PhD is a psychologist in private practice in Newton, MA, has written extensively
and presented widely on shame and belonging as reguator processes of the relational field. He is co-editor of The Voice of
Shame (Jossey-Bass, 1996), editor of The Values of Connection (GestaltPress/The Analytic Press, 2004), and author of The Secret Language of Intimacy (GestaltPress/Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group,
2008). His current book project is
co-editing Relational Child, Relational
Brain (GestaltPress/Routledge, Taylor &
Francis Group, in press). He is a faculty member of The Gestalt Institute of
Cleveland, a visiting faculty member of a number of Gestalt institutes world-wide, and an editor at GestaltPress.
Two-You Work – The Same As Gestalt Two-Chair
Technique Only Different
Bea Mackay
Two-You Work is an adaptation of Two-Chair Technique
that retains the theory of Two-Chair Technique and the power of its
effectiveness, while simplifying how it is used. This introductory workshop
focuses on Two-Chair theory of change and making explicit the dynamics between
aspects of self in conflict. The
presentation deals with types of splits that evolve and how to shift and change
focus as different splits come to the foreground. Through experiential exercises and a demonstration, the
workshop introduces a way to conceptualize working with splits using unique
terminology and specific interventions.
Bea Mackay, PhD, is a registered psychologist in private practice in Vancouver, Canada. For many years Dr. Mackay was a senior
trainer at the Vancouver Gestalt Training Institute. She has presented her work on the Two-Chair Technique at
Gestalt conferences in Canada, Europe, USA and Australia. Dr. Mackay’s doctoral
research investigated the theory underlying the Gestalt Two-Chair
Technique. She is currently writing
a manual for therapists on how to work with aspects of the self in
conflict. Dr. Mackay also offers
self-help at Compatible.DecisionQuiz.com – an interactive website for
people conflicted about staying in their relationships or jobs, which is based
upon the theory of Two-Chair Technique.
Working With Men Who Are Gay From A Process Based
Gestalt Perspective
Kevin McCann
This presentation will look at a process model for
working with Gay men, firstly by identifying what do we mean by the term gay
men and what influences the working relationship with this cohort group.
Fundamentally the presentation will offer a process methodology for working
with Gay male clients paying particular attention to the possible interruptions
in the process and offering new ways of working that can use the interruptions
to support contact. Finally we will look at how difference can be used to
support contact rather than truncate contact.
Kevin
McCann, Dip Coun was born in Lurgan, Co Armagh, Northern Ireland in 1957. For the past twenty years Kevin has lectured in
Professional Cookery and Culinary Arts at Tralee Institute of Technology in Co.
Kerry, Ireland. As well as being a chef by profession Kevin is also a
registered Gestalt Therapist. He continues to develop his Gestalt training with
the Gestalt Training Associates of Los Angeles where he trains at advanced
level. Kevin graduated from University College Cork with honors in Gestalt
therapy and in Integrative Psychotherapy Studies. He has a special interest in
men’s issues especially male sexuality, and runs groups for socially
disadvantaged men. Kevin lectures nationally and internationally on several
themes from a process based Gestalt perspective.
Freeforming a Co-Creative, Dynamic, Meditative Practice
Peri Mackintosh
Freeforming is a
co-creative, dynamic, meditative art - a play in connective awareness. Freeforming promotes being creatively alive to contact in
the present moment. Freeforming is a present-centred, improvisation focused on shared attention between
participants – an embodied, relational expression that draws from Gestalt
Therapy, Aikido, and Zen. It explores the tension between connection and
individual freedom and illumines, intersubjectivity,
I-thou relating, attunement and mutual mindfulness within non-verbal domains.
The workshop with be an experiential introduction to the practice. Be prepared
to move.
Peri Mackintosh is psychotherapist,
supervisor and trainer at the Bethlem Royal Hospital.
He is an examiner and academic consultant for Metanoia were he was a primary tutor. He is principle trainer at Konjiki Dojo. He has worked with using improvised music and dance with people with
severe mental illness and challenging behaviors since the mid-eighties. He has studied vipassana and Zen meditation since 1973 and trained in Aikido for 25 years teaching in
UK, USA and Norway. He trained at London School of Contemporary Dance and Laban Centre. He composed music and choreographed for
dance, theatre and TV.
A Four-Step Gestalt Game: A New Egyptian
Approach for Facilitating Therapeutic Change
Refaat Mahfouz
Mohamed Taha
This paper presents a new practical approach that
is thought to facilitate personal change in the process of psychotherapy. Based
on many years of clinical experience in therapy groups, using gestalt games as
their main therapeutic technique, the authors could integrate and develop
various theoretical and clinical orientations into what they call “the
four-step gestalt game approach”. Through targeting the levels of patients’ needs, wants, rights and decisions, the authors
could define a certain hierarchy for working through clients’ personal and
emotional difficulties in psychotherapy. The paper describes the theoretical
and technical elements of the approach, supported by detailed clinical
examples. Though developed in groups, the approach is assumed to work equally
effective in individual, couple and family settings.
Refaat Mahfouz, MD, is a senior professor of psychiatry, Minia faculty of medicine, Egypt. He is the founder of
the Minia Integrative Dynamic
Model of Group Psychotherapy and one of
the basic contributors to the development and growth of group
psychotherapy practice and research in Egypt. He works with a team of
colleagues in Egypt developing their integrative approach of group
psychotherapy; an approach that draws its principles from many schools of
psychological thought, modifying them to the Egyptian culture.
Mohamed Taha,
MD, is a lecturer in psychiatry, Minia faculty of medicine, Egypt. He has been trained in group psychotherapy both in Egypt and in England. For the last decade, he has been working on
the use of Gestalt games in group psychotherapy,
analyzing their structure, functions and applications. He has published 2
international papers and a book, besides giving presentations in many international conferences.
How
Does Gestalt Theory Inform the Changing Face of Researcher Identity? An
Exploration of Gestalt Theory within the Context of Research, Singing, Pedagogy
and Music Education
Liz Mellor
David Tune
This paper reports on a research project undertaken at the University of
York St. John, UK which applied gestalt theory to
research group singing. The presentation sets out some of the pedagogic issues
in applying gestalt theory in this context with a specific focus on the
presence of the trainer, and also explores how gestalt training has also effected the process of researching itself. The presentation
offers a dialogue co-constructed between a researcher in the field of music
education with training in gestalt psychotherapy and a researcher and psychotherapist in the field of body psychotherapy with an interest in singing. The paper offers
the opportunity for some participant experiential discussion and voice/body
work.
Dr Liz Mellor is a Reader in Music and Applied Arts in the Faculty of Arts, York St.
John University. Liz has extensive experience of both teaching music in
schools, and training teachers within Faculty of Education, Cambridge
University, UK. Her research interests include aesthetic perception, creativity
and collaboration. She has trained in Arts and Psychotherapy at the Institute
of Arts in Therapy and Education, London and is currently a fourth year gestalt
trainee at the Manchester gestalt Centre, UK. She was recently awarded a CETL
(Centre for excellence in Teaching and Learning) Research Fellowship
which brings together her research interests in music education and
gestalt psychotherapy.
Dr David Tune is a Senior lecturer in Counseling and Psychotherapy at York St John University
and a practicing psychotherapist, trainer and supervisor. He studied Counseling
Psychology and Bioenergetic Psychotherapy in New
York, USA and completed his psychotherapy training at the ‘Chiron Centre’ in
London, UK. This training
integrated Body Psychotherapy and Gestalt into a holistic model, and this mind-body
integrative approach informs his professional interest. He has published practitioner research
on the therapeutic use of touch in recent counseling and psychotherapy texts.
His research approach is grounded within the qualitative paradigm placing the
researcher in the centre of the research endeavor.
Managing Conflict-Introducing the Concept of
Contempt
Joseph Melnick
The Gestalt approach
has much to contribute to our understanding of conflict, its creation, its
ongoing nature, and resolution. We will first explore the theme of conflict,
which, when engaged in poorly, rather than leading to growth and learning,
results in ongoing discord. After
first describing conflict from a Gestalt perspective, the concept of contempt
will be looked at both theoretically and experientially. It is hypothesized
that contempt plays a major role in our inability to bridge differences.
Joseph Melnick,
PhD, has been interested in how we effectively manage
differences throughout his career. He co-edits Gestalt Review which recently presented a number of articles that
dealt with conflict. He also teaches modules on managing and bridging
differences, and has recently co-edited a book on social change which focuses
on this topic.
Developing Mutuality: The Techniques Of Relational Gestalt Therapy
Ken Meyer
While
“techniques” might seem an oxymoron in regard to relational psychotherapy,
there are gestalt methods that serve to set the ground for relational work, and
others that make less likely, or even preclude, developing mutuality in the
work. The point is that mutuality has to be developed; it cannot
simply be declared. This workshop is designed to provide an historical
perspective, experiential understandings and practical tools for making visible
the unique and unfolding bipersonal field of
therapist/client. It will be a practical, hands-on workshop that
will include demonstration, discussion and experiential exercises.
Kenneth Meyer, PhD is a Co-Founder of the Gestalt
Center of Long Island and for many years the Director of its Certificate
Training Program. His training in relational gestalt therapy was with
Lynne Jacobs and his Buddhist training is with the New Kadampa Tradition. He is currently the Academic Director of the Gestalt
Center in NYC and guest faculty at area programs. He is a Full
Member of the NY Institute for Gestalt Therapy, has presented at local and
international conferences, and is RCP for AAGT NE Region.
Good
Moments in Gestalt Body Process Psychotherapy
Barbara Jean Nagrant
James Kepner, PhD
co-developed Gestalt Body Process Psychotherapy (GBPP), as a distinct
body-oriented approach within Gestalt Therapy. Kepner participated in a qualitative research study that aimed at accessing
psychotherapist, client, and researcher’s perspectives on “good moments” in
GBPP. This session will present an overview of this study, discuss the general
findings, relate them to other process research studies on good moments,
highlight how participant values influenced the determination of what is
“good”, and illustrate how the therapeutic use of touch and energy work
distinguishes GBPP within the practice of Gestalt Therapy. Through discussion
and experiential exercises, participants will have an enhanced awareness of how
their values influence clinical work and enhanced skill in using embodied
language that conveys physical experience as an expression of self.
Barbara Jean Nagrant, PhD is a
Clinical Psychologist on the faculty of Allegheny Center for Digestive Health
and Integrated Medicine at Allegheny General Hospital. She has been a clinician
since 1991 specializing in trauma and integrating mind, body, and spirit in the
practice of psychology. Dr. Nagrant has completed
advanced training from the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland. She has continued
studying Kepner’s work through the N.S.E.W.
Certification Program and has participated in a Gestalt Physical Process Energy
Consultation Group since 1997. She is a member of the American Psychological
Association and a practitioner of Gestalt Body Process Psychotherapy.
Dialogue
from the Classroom to the Boardroom: An Approach for Human Development
Mary Grace
Neville
Richard Hancock
Many of us
talk frequently about dialogue. However, when asked to define the
phenomenon or explain the circumstances under which “good dialogue” occurs,
most of us have very different assumptions. This session seeks peer input
to validate an emergent set of beliefs about dialogue as a phenomenon and a
process for human development. The beliefs are being constructed by the
two presenters based on literature surveys, field experimentation and an action
research design. Case examples will be shared to build common ground,
followed by an interactive, dialogically-based, forum in which participants
co-create themes that can be used both to validate and extend the presenters’
work. Implications will be drawn for teachers, organizational coaches and
Gestalt therapists.
Mary Grace Neville, PhD,
MBA advocates use of dialogue through the
classroom as a means to opening young minds for collaboratively creating
possibilities in our increasingly complex global world. She integrates
her Gestalt training with her Organizational Behavior PhD in undergraduate
classrooms as a means of building students’ cognitive complexity and interpersonal
skills; she facilitated a 2008 AAGT conference session on this topic.
Neville’s objective is to change the world by opening minds. By
shifting our interpersonal interactions towards “humanness,” we can
collectively improve our innovative capacity towards good business practices
that enhance global social well-being.
Richard
Hancock, MA is an experienced organizational
consultant, specializing in the areas of executive coaching, team and board
development, and conflict management. His work builds on the skills of
emotional intelligence, with an emphasis on helping leaders work with
resistance. Richard is a frequent speaker at national conferences on the
subjects of leadership, communication and emotional intelligence. He also
serves on the faculty of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, an organization
devoted to the innovative application of Gestalt theory and methodology to
professional and personal growth. He is Co-Chairperson of the Institute’s
Foundational Gestalt Training Program, 2009-2011.
The
Function of the Boundary Layers with Japanese People
Noriyoshi Okada
It seems people have seven patterns of
characteristic behavior, at least with Japanese people, as if they have layers
of defending walls over their contact boundary. They would unconsciously choose
how many layers they wear according to what situation they are in. I call those
walls the Boundary Layers. I suggest there are five walls, and the behavioral
tendency differs in accordance with how many walls you wear. I derived this concept from the history
of human culture. I made a questionnaire which produces a graph that shows your
behavioral tendency and patterns. By using this concept together with the
Gestalt cycle of experience in a group work or OSD consulting, participants will
have greater awareness and understanding of themselves.
Noriyoshi
Okada is the founder
and the Chief Facilitator of Gestalt Associates Japan. He is a Senior
Industrial Counselor, certified by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
His book on gestalt therapy is the first one written in Japanese. Noriyoshi
learned gestalt therapy from the late Dr. Paula Bottome, the former Chairperson
of the San Francisco Gestalt Institute. He translated her books into Japanese.
Self in Body Relation
Peter Philippson
Gestalt Therapy understands self as always being
relational to otherness. As
Gestalt is a holistic therapy, the primary source of that relationship is
physical (somatic and sensory) experience. Yet the relationship between body and self is not a simple
one. We can treat a tool as an
extension of our body, and we can treat parts of our body as objects to be
examined. In this experiential and
theoretical workshop, I will outline a Gestalt approach to working with the
body and physical experience. There
will be time for exercises and demonstration work, and I will also make
reference to recent research in neuroscience.
Peter Philippson, MSc is a Gestalt psychotherapist/trainer,
founder member of Manchester Gestalt Centre, Full Member of the New York Institute
for Gestalt Therapy, trainer for GITA (Slovenia) and trainer for training programmes internationally. Author of Self in
Relation and The Emergent Self,
co-author of Contact and Relationship in
a Field Perspective, chapter respondent in Gestalt Therapy: History, Theory and Practice, co-author of Gestalt: Working with Groups, and
author of many papers on Gestalt therapy. He serves on the Editorial Board of
Studies in Gestalt Therapy, Editorial Advisor of the British Gestalt Journal, and Past-President of AAGT. Peter is a teacher of Aikido.
Couples Therapy Revisited Two Become One and Then
There Are None. From a Fusion Model to a Connection Model
Robert Resnick
Rita Resnick
After presenting their model of relationships,
couples and couples therapy, the Resnicks will
demonstrate their way of working with live volunteer couples and/or videotaped
couples. All clinical work will be related to the theory. Volunteer couples are included in the
discussion and the theory presentation, making the experience totally
transparent and inclusive. Emphasis will be on two basic issues for couples: How to be connected to an other and maintain a
self… and, dealing with difference… from
a field, phenomenological, dialogic and process perspective. Questions and comments
will be encouraged as will comparisons with other couples therapy models
– systemic, CBT, EFT, contemporary psychoanalytic, postmodern, other
Gestalt models. Bring your biases,
your questions, your ability to perceptually reorganize and, most importantly,
your sense of humor.
Rita Resnick, PhD has been Faculty Chair of GATLA's European Summer Residential Training
Program since 1991. In addition to private practice, Rita is training
psychotherapists in the United States, Australia and Europe in both
Gestalt and Couples Therapy. Her professional interests include the exploration
of innovative and supportive approaches to supervision ("Supervision: A
Collaborative Endeavor", Summer 2000 Gestalt
Review) and a devoted, passionate (and self serving) interest in the area
of women growing older - menopause and mid-life vitality. An interview on
Contemporary Gestalt Therapy with Rita and Robert Resnick was recently published in the Tidskrift For Norsk Psykologforening – the Norwegian Journal for Psychologists. The Resnick's are frequently happily married.
Robert W Resnick, PhD, Clinical
Psychologist, Gestalt and Couples Therapist trainer for 45 years was trained
(1965-1970) and personally certified (1969) by Drs. Fritz Perls and James Simkin. He was chosen by Fritz Perls to
introduce Gestalt Therapy to Europe in the summer of 1969. His interview “Gestalt Therapy:
Principles Prisms and Perspectives” appears in the summer 1995, British Gestalt Journal. “The Recursive Loop of Shame”, Gestalt
Review 1997. “Chicken Soup Is Poison” (Perls Festschrift) circa 1967. He is currently developing a series of contemporary
Couples Therapy and Gestalt Therapy video tapes. His first clinical practicum was
driving a New York taxicab. And
yes, the Resnicks are frequently happily married.
A Brief Introduction to Family Constellations for Gestaltists
Carol Siederer
This workshop will offer an extended experiential
exercise, and then a brief presentation of some basic principles of
constellation work, as first formulated by Bert Hellinger and later developed by many therapists worldwide. Open discussion time will allow for participants’ interests
– from adapting constellations as Gestalt experiments, to the challenges
this work has provoked for Gestaltists. Participants will have an opportunity
to both look at their own family system and engage in an exercise which they
can use in individual work with clients.
Carol Siederer, MA, UKCP-registered, is a tutor, trainer, and former Director, at the
Gestalt Centre London, and was previously Associate Director of the Antioch
University/Regents College (London) MA in Psychotherapy and Counselling. She is an integrative therapist and
supervisor with over twenty-five years experience, and practices Gestalt within
the framework of systemic psychotherapy. She trained in the systemic constellations approach over many years with
senior therapists in Europe, including Hellinger,
Hunter Beaumont, Jakob Schneider, Albrecht Mahr, and Franz Ruppert. She runs Family Constellations
workshops at the Gestalt Centre London.
Ego, Anger, and Attachment: A New Way of Looking at
and Working with Aggression in Gestalt Therapy
Frank-M Staemmler
In Ego,
Hunger, and Aggression, Frederick S. Perls (1947)
first proposed his theory of “healthy, ‘dental’ aggression“ which I think has
outlived its usefulness. It is based on flawed conceptual thinking and on the
“hyper-individualistic, hyper-autonomous” (Wheeler) Perlsian ideology. Clinically, I think it has lead to unhelpful, sometimes detrimental,
cathartic procedures.
However, in this lecture I will not only criticize Perls’s theory, but will also suggest alternatives that I
think are more in line with recent developments in various fields (e.g.,
psychological research on the development and regulation of emotions, the
psychosomatics of aggression, the insights that today are available concerning
mechanisms of catharsis). I will also relate these findings to ancient Buddhist
traditions with respect to the dynamics of aggression.
Frank-M Staemmler, PhD, Dipl-Psych, born
in 1951, is a psychologist and gestalt therapist, who lives in Wuerzburg, Germany. He has been working as a Gestalt
therapist in private practice since 1976 and as a supervisor and trainer since
1981. He has written about seventy articles and book chapters and five books
and has co-edited five other books. He teaches internationally and is a
frequent presenter at conferences in Germany and abroad. He was editor of the International Gestalt Journal from 2001
to 2006 and co-editor of the Studies in
Gestalt Therapy: Dialogical Bridges from 2007 to 2009.
Time Travel: Healing the Inner Adult
Marcy Stern
Deborah S Kaufman
Healing the inner child has been a well-known theme
in psychotherapy The focus of this work has been on
the adult healing the child. Yet, children have both innate and learned
capacities for thriving and healing. In this workshop, we intend to give
participants an opportunity to explore personal healing resources from earlier
stage(s) of their own life that can be significant and profound. We will expand
on the traditional gestalt concept of creative adjustment to creative
adjustment patterns and styles that serve the individual in responding to
challenges over the course of his or her life.
Using guided imagery, therapeutic writing and art,
we will facilitate the process of transcending the boundaries of physical time
to experience authentic self-expression and vitality.
Marcy Stern, EdD, LMHC is a Counseling Psychologist in Sarasota, Florida. She is a Certified
Gestalt Therapist and is currently the Clinical Coordinator at a local
not-for-profit social service agency. She also has a private practice
specializing in pain management, substance abuse, sleep disorders, relationship
conflict, depression and anxiety. Marcy has been an active member of AAGT since
1996. She was AAGT’s newsletter editor for 7 years. Marcy is the director of
The Gestalt Institute of the Gulf Coast.
Deborah S. Kaufman, MSW, LCSW is a Certified Gestalt psychotherapist and is a Licensed Clinical
Social Worker in Sarasota, Florida. She maintains a private practice specializing in anxiety disorders,
childhood trauma and sexual abuse. She also provides clinical supervision for
Florida licensure. She
received her MSW in 1982 and completed her formal Gestalt training in 1985. She
is also a certified Kripalu Yoga teacher. Her
commitment to herself and to her clients is to honor and respect our unique
differences and to find the common threads of our experiences.
How
Does Supervision Inform Our Practice? Presentation of a Supervision Research
Project Using Video Data
Christine Stevens
A monthly supervision group, which I facilitated,
met over the period of a year both as practitioners and as reflexive
researchers to explore the question “How does supervision help our practice?”
Specifically, we were interested in the problem of bringing into supervision
the process of the therapy relationship when so much of what is important
happens out of our awareness or at a non-verbal level. We explored bringing the process of the
therapeutic relationship into the supervision space, without first formulating
it into language, through the use of plastic media such as the sand tray or
clay. This was then filmed and the film reviewed in the light of subsequent
sessions with the client. In this
workshop I present our findings and invite feedback and discussion on
methodology and the research process.
Christine Stevens, Ph.D. is Editor of The
British Gestalt Journal, and lives in Nottingham, UK, where she maintains a
private and National Health Service practice. She manages a clinical training
unit for psychotherapy in primary care and leads a postgraduate training in
gestalt pastoral counseling at St. Johns College in Nottingham. She is an
academic advisor for the DPsych in psychotherapy by
professional studies and in public works at Metanoia Institute, London
If You
Could Change Your Parents....You Could Change Yourself - Introjected Family Patterns and Birth Order Transferences
Anne Teachworth
We are all influenced
by our earliest family-of-origin be that positive or negative. This workshop
will explore the Psychogenetic approach to re-imprinting introjected interactional patterns, focusing particularly on parenting of self and
children, with some information about birth order transferences.
Anne Teachworth is founder and
director of the Gestalt Institute of New Orleans/New York and Gestalt Institute
Press, an active publishing company. Anne is a Fellow of the American
Psychotherapy Assn, an Associate Member of the NYIGT, and author of Why We Pick The Mates
We Do. She has just finished her second book, History Repeats
Itself and is busy on her third, If You Could Change Your Parents. She is in private
practice in New Orleans for the last 30 years specializing in couple, parenting
and family counseling.
Eastern Wisdom Can
Empower Western Psycho-therapies
Kailash Tuli
In this contemporary age of
complexity that includes rapidly changing technology, increasing diversity, and
instant global communication we are challenged in maintaining our flow of life
and creativity. This workshop is
designed to explore how people experience shifts in culture. Presenter will
examine the validity of applying Mark Twain’s quote to contemporary times:
“East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” through a
brief didactic and participant exercises that focus on global sensitivity.
Therapies in different cultures play a significant role in getting the best out
of that. Through this exploration we will attempt to identify common themes
that emerge.
Kailash Tuli, PhD is veteran academician from University of Delhi,
currently Professor of OB/HRM at IILM Institute for Higher Education. As a
widely traveled Indian psychologist he has the honor of actively participating
in various International conferences, seminars and Residential Gestalt
Workshops (GATLA & GENI). He was a Senior Post-doctoral fellow, Vienna
University. Nationally and internationally, he specializes in Yoga and
Psychology lectures and workshops. He is co-author (with his zoologist wife) of A Dictionary of Sex Education. He is
a practitioner and spearheads Gestalt and Yoga with a focus on their mutual
confluence. He is on the editorial board of various Psychology related journals and is an APA papers reviewer.
The
New Evolutionary Psychology: A
Gestalt Perspective
Deborah Ullman
Gordon Wheeler
Evolutionary psychology invites reflection on who
we are as a species among other living species, and on what this evolutionary
moment is. How are we morally challenged to grow? What do both evolutionary and
Gestalt theory offer to support human aptitudes that we have to sustain
ourselves? Recent findings in multiple scientific arenas contribute to an
emerging picture of an inherited human nature -- pro-social, cooperative, intersubjective. This new picture
collapses the old “nature/nurture” debate, showing instead a human nature born
unfinished and prewired for completion in relationship to our environments,
contradicting the “selfish gene” model, bringing us more into harmony with
lived experience and a field-relational Gestalt. This workshop uses theory,
visualization, personal narrative, and discussion to explore/articulate a
Gestalt perspective on fertile new directions in psychology for understanding
our human moral predicaments today.
Deborah Ullman, MA, is a Gestalt coach, therapist, and somatics-based
practitioner, serving as Editor and Co-Director of GestaltPress,
now publishing jointly with Routledge Taylor
Francis. She is a founding faculty
coordinator of the Evolution of Gestalt Study Conference series at Esalen, author of several chapters and lead editor of the
new collection CoCreating the Field. Deborah is a member of the transitional faculty of the Gestalt
International Study Center and Visiting Faculty of the Gestalt Institute of
Cleveland and of Esalen Institute. She directs a
group somatics practice on Cape Cod where she studies
evolutionary panentheism, a process-oriented
spiritual practice.
Gordon Wheeler, PhD teaches and trains widely around the world, using the Gestalt model to
explore relationship, development, self theory, intersubjectivity, culture and gender, coaching,
organizational systems, evolutionary psychology, and interpersonal
neurobiology. Author or editor of
some dozen books and over 100 chapters and articles in the field, Gordon is
longtime Editor and Co-Director of GestaltPress,
publishing jointly with Routledge Taylor
Francis. His work includes several
translations from French and German, and has itself been translated into over a dozen foreign languages. Since 2001 Gordon has also served as President of Esalen Institute, which hosts nearly 20,000 students,
conferees, and other visitors in some 500 residential programs each year, very
many of them based in Gestalt work.
Gestalt Community Living: 50 Years of Continuity and Change in the Esalen Gestalt Community
Gordon Wheeler
Nancy Lunney-Wheeler
For nearly 50 years, Esalen Institute has hosted and been staffed by the largest and longest-running
Gestalt-based residential community in the world. Based on the teachings of Fritz Perls,
inflected in a more contemplative direction by Dick and Chris Price, and
further developed with a relational emphasis by program and community leaders
including Dorothy Charles, Barclay Erickson, Nancy Lunney-Wheeler,
Mary Ann Will, Gordon Wheeler and others, the principles and practices of the
community are deeply infused with Gestalt values and commitments . Central among these are awareness,
intention, dialogue, co-responsibility, experiment, growth, and service.
In this workshop, using theory presentation,
history, and interactive discussion together with extensive visuals, we will
explore the lessons gleaned from this long and deep social experiment for our
evolving Gestalt model.
Gordon Wheeler, PhD teaches and trains widely around the world, using the Gestalt model to
explore relationship, development, self theory, intersubjectivity, culture and gender, coaching,
organizational systems, evolutionary psychology, and interpersonal
neurobiology. Author or editor of
some dozen books and over 100 chapters and articles in the field, Gordon is
longtime Editor and Co-Director of GestaltPress,
publishing jointly with Routledge Taylor
Francis. His work includes several
translations from French and German, and has itself been translated into over a dozen foreign languages. Since 2001 Gordon has also served as President of Esalen Institute, which hosts nearly 20,000 students, conferees, and other visitors in some 500 residential
programs each year, many of them based in Gestalt work.
Nancy Lunney-Wheeler,
MA, is a licensed Marriage and Family Counselor
who also has a long professional background in music. As longtime Director of Programming at Esalen Institute in Big Sur CA, Nancy has produced some 12,000 residential courses
offered to over 10,000 students and others each year. Nancy is recognized as a world leader in integral and
alternative education, and is a founding member of the governing circle of AWE,
the international alliance of women entrepreneurs. Long a student of Systemic Constellations, she has presented
her work in this field in the Abrahamic Family
Reunion Conference series of the Fetzer Institute and
the Esalen Center for Theory and Research. Her work combining Gestalt with music
and song grows out of her years as a professional accompanist and singing coach
with actors in Hollywood and New York.
Five Levels of Experiential Interventions to
Enhance Gestalt Group Work
Ansel Woldt
In my years of facilitating groups I have
accumulated numerous practical ideas and experiential strategies that energize
group participation and create meaningful dialogue. While designed for group
therapy and personal growth groups, they are equally useful in individual,
couple and family therapy. The interventions are organized into five levels
that reflect Gestalt therapy theory and practice. Following a brief overview of
Gestalt group work, participants will divide into small groups to experience
selected interventions with guidance from this presenter at each of these
levels: 1. Sensory-Experiential Level; 2. Emotional-Transferential Level; 3. Social-Cultural Level; 4. Imagined/Projective Level; and 5.
Spiritual-Transpersonal Level. Participants choosing not to participate in a
group will be provided guidelines for observing group interactions with the
opportunity to provide feedback on their observations at the end of the group
experiences.
Ansel Woldt did his post-doctoral training at Gestalt Institute of Cleveland,
1970-73. He is Emeritus Professor at Kent State University where he has taught
graduate students in counseling for the past 40 years while simultaneously
maintaining a private practice as a psychologist in Kent, Ohio. Gestalt
therapy, group dynamics and small group work are his specialty areas in teaching,
having facilitated literally hundreds, if not thousands, of small group
experiences. Ansel is co-editor of Gestalt’s
contemporary textbook: Gestalt Therapy:
History, Theory and Practice (2005); Founding secretary, incorporating
officer and continuous officer in AAGT; and creator of the Gestalt Therapy
Archives in Kent State University Libraries.
Deconstructing Shame and Other Intense Bodily
Feeling States
Lee Zevy
Shame, Guilt, Embarrassment, Self-Consciousness and
Humiliation are intense organic bodily feeling states that are instantly
painful and can be long lasting. The memories of these feeling states, often
associated with past traumatic experience, serve as a protection from further
trauma but can cause individuals to constrict creative, spontaneous and
adventuresome pursuits. Because these feelings are introjected from early experiences they also contain within them complex positive messages
that relate to early relationships and serve as positive and necessary guides
to moral, ethical and social boundaries. Untangling the complexity of these of these states and working with them
effectively requires an understanding of the new information on neurobiology,
trauma, relational psychology and effective therapies. Through case examples, experiments and
dialogue workshop participants will gain an understanding of these states
within a relational context and how to work with them effectively.
Lee Zevy is a former President of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy
where she has been a full member and on the faculty since
1978. In these capacities she has written and published, taught seminars,
classes and workshops and worked to develop various aspects of Gestalt therapy
theory and practice. Her current work includes multi-cultural views of self in
process, a re-examination of intense bodily introjects and how creative experiments arise out of therapeutic process.