Presenter: Nicole Chew

Theory and story exist symbiotically, frequently told together.

Description:

This presentation explores my movement from learning Gestalt as a body of theory to understanding it as a lived, relational, and teachable practice. Over years of clinical work, writing, and research, I came to feel that some of the most essential dimensions of Gestalt therapy – atmosphere, field sense, aesthetic knowing, and the subtle process of contact – are not easily conveyed through conceptual explanation alone. While theory and research remain vital, they do not always communicate the immediacy, texture, and complexity of lived experience. Story became, for me, not only a way of illustrating theory but also a way of thinking and knowing.

Out of this tension emerged my development of therapeutic autoethnography, a research methodology and way of writing psychotherapy that attempts to preserve the living texture of the field rather than flattening it into explanation alone. In this session, I will reflect on how story can carry theory, how this has shaped my clinical practice, teaching, and writing, and what it may suggest about the future transmission of Gestalt therapy. Participants will be invited to try the method directly by telling, on the spot, an opening of a case story, and to notice what becomes thinkable when we remain close to atmosphere, relational movement, and the felt sense of the field.

Biography:

I’m a Gestalt psychotherapist in private practice in Singapore. I trained at IGWien, affiliated with Sigmund Freud University in Vienna, where I also earned my doctorate in psychotherapy science. I came from corporate life and to formal study at 40. I work as an independent researcher on the topics that interest me. I supervise and train non-Gestalt psychologists and counselors, and working with them pushes me to make concepts digestible.

I am multicultural, and much of my life has involved holding my ground amid differences, which is the central theme of my recently published book on couples therapy. I realized the need to feel into the boundary. That boundary has recently become my subject of study because it is where shame lives – and shame is the center of my next book. “Shame and AI” is the focus of my recent article in the European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling.

I know that sensing the boundary is best approached through art, and the art I bring here is the art of the story. This is me turning my back on case reporting and reductionist research. A story is a lie that brings us closer to the phenomenon. From this, I developed therapeutic autoethnography – also my doctoral thesis – a way of researching and writing about psychotherapy processes that stays close to the atmosphere and the felt sense of the field. It is what I bring to the session.