Special Meeting for Members and Guests
Online Symposium with Helena Kallner
This is the first of what we hope will be special meetings to honor the achievement of our members by discussing their work.
Helena’s contribution to Gestalt therapy pushes at the boundaries of our contemporary approach and discovers new, exciting, and practical ways to develop further our clinical phenomenology.
In this meeting, Helena Kallner will lead a discussion of her research by presenting her thesis for which she was just awarded her PhD. This is her description of it:
My work explores how movement shapes experience and knowing, challenging the dominance of abstract and quantifiable knowledge in our culture.
I argue that bodily knowing is central to psychotherapy and propose holding as a key professional skill – a pactive, or receptive and responsive movement that guides therapeutic action.
A core theme throughout is verbalizing lived bodily experience, with an emphasis on grounding phronesis and bodily knowledge in well-defined concepts.
People are encouraged to read sections of her dissertation prior to the meeting.
Her complete dissertation and abstract can be downloaded here:
Reading suggestions to prepare for the meeting
For a quick overview:
- Abstract
- Aims & Research Questions (pp. 40-43)
- Structure of the Dissertation (pp. 43-45)
For a summary, read the end-of-chapter summaries or:
- Findings and Concluding Reflections (pp. 323–365)
For a more detailed exploration of phronesis:
- Chapter 6: Holding as Phronesis (pp. 223–276)
- Chapter 7: Holding as Movement (pp. 277–322)
For an overview of Helena’s method:
- Researching Practical Knowledge (pp. 71-74)
- Methods of Gathering Data (pp. 77-78)
Members and their guests can contact Dan Bloom (president@nyigt.org)Â with questions and to get the link to the symposium.
