Current Offerings:

Workshop in the Theory and Practice of Gestalt Therapy

This on-going monthly workshop focuses on contemporary gestalt therapy.

Contemporary gestalt therapy is based on the sequence of contact model (Gestalt Therapy, Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman, 1951) as it has been subsequently developed within further understandings of self-emergence in a “relational” phenomenal field. “Dialogical contact” will be seen as at the core of the gestalt therapy’s psychotherapeutic practice.

The workshop will integrate theory with practice, discussion with experience, and outside readings with present “experiments.”

Readings will include the basic text, Gestalt Therapy (1951) and current gestalt therapy writings, as well as writings from related modalities and fields, such as intersubjective psychoanalysis, neuropsychology, and phenomenology.

Participants can expect to get an understanding of the philosophical and psychological foundation for gestalt therapy and a facility with gestalt therapy’s core concepts in practice. 

Members of the workshop will work with one another and with the group-as-a-whole in order to develop their own clinical skills. Gestalt therapy group process is the context for the entire workshop and will be directly experienced. Participants will accordingly also learn the method and theory of interactive gestalt therapy group process.

This workshop is open to beginners and experienced practitioners. It is limited to 8 participants.

It meets on Saturdays from 10AM to 2PM, at my office, 220 West 15th St, New York, New York, 10011.

The fee is $200 per month.

CEU’s are available.

This program is co-sponsored by AAGT and NYIGT. AAGT is approved as a provider of continuing education by the American Psychological Association, National Board for Certified Counselors, California Board of Registered Nurses, and California Board of Behavioral Sciences for Marriage, Family and Child Counselors and Licensed Social Workers. AAGT maintains responsibility for this program and its contents.

Learning Gestalt Therapy Theory "By the Book" in the "Traditional Way"

This bi-weekly group will study the foundational test, Gestalt Therapy, Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, by Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman in the "traditional way."

This text was the first formal statement of gestalt therapy. All further development of gestalt therapy's theory and practice is built on its foundation, in one way or another. However, this text has a reputation for being difficult to read -- and understand.

Since the time of that book's publication, trainers at the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy developed a style for teaching this text by a careful line-by-line reading in a group setting. Group members learn  gestalt therapy theory  as they discuss  the ideas that emerged through living dialogue with the text, guided by the group leader.   The group and its members are used as here-and-now examples of the theory, which stimulates experiences specific to the material being explored.  In this way, gestalt therapy in action is also experienced. This became "the traditional method" for learning  "PHG." This was the method used by Isadore From and Richard Kitzler. I will continue this tradition.

A group meets for 1 1/2 hours at Noon on alternate Mondays. The fee is $35 per meeting.

A second group meets monthly via a Skype conference call. It has international participants.

Supervision

I offer supervision in individual, couple, and group psychotherapy.