Presenter: Simone LaVerne

Description:

Richard Kitzler (1927–2009) was one of the founding members of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. First beginning therapy as a young man with Frederick Perls in 1949 – and increasingly adored over time by Lore – he left an impact on NYIGT’s teaching/learning community, with a legacy that lives on to this day through his former students, colleagues, and friends. Kitzler impacted many in the Gestalt therapy world outside of NYIGT as well, in such places as AAGT (where he was a founding member and initiated the tradition of process groups) and in Europe, where he played an important part in building and cementing new connections for NYIGT abroad.

This presentation draws from interviews with Kitzler’s former NYIGT students, colleagues, and friends to paint a portrait of his impact on the teaching/learning community that is the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. It will encourage participants to reflect on how elements that were key to Kitzler’s approach, including group process, the social environment (as understood through American pragmatist George Herbert Mead’s work), and an intellectual style that was always in touch with both the aesthetic and the concrete, continue to be seen – and aren’t seen – at NYIGT today.

The presentation itself – with participants both in person and online – will be an experiment in how the social environment plays out in the groups that will be present, in relation to who we are as Gestalt therapists today. Its hybrid nature, too, will be an experiment in the experiences that participants are having regarding the elements of social environment, group process, and aesthetic criterion listed above.

Participants will then be invited to a local dinner, where people who knew Kitzler can reminisce and share their memories of him. Newer members who didn’t know him will have the opportunity to learn more about who this person was, and his impact on so many at NYIGT who have taken on teaching and leadership functions.

Biography:

Simone LaVerne is a licensed psychoanalyst. She has an MA in psychology from the New School for Social Research and completed postgraduate training in Gestalt therapy at Gestalt Associates for Psychotherapy. From there, she continued her training at NYIGT, becoming a member in 2018. Simone was the clinical director at Identity House, an all-volunteer organization focused on peer counseling within the LGBTQ+ community in New York City, in 2021. She also ran supervision groups there in 2019 and 2020.

Simone is currently working on a project about Richard Kitzler and his contributions at NYIGT and elsewhere in the Gestalt therapy world. She is also a practicing visual artist. She is a native of New York and resides there with her partner and son.