New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy

The Field of Supervision
2024-12-08 13:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | Zoom
Presenter: Nancy Amendt-Lyon
Description:
In this presentation, I will describe how the concepts of “parallel process,” “field forces,” and “reversed roles” are implemented in my supervisory work. There will be references to Gestalt psychology, psychoanalysis, and the continuous development of Gestalt therapy practice. After some theoretical input and a brief case vignette, we will have breakout groups for experiential learning, and then conclude with a discussion involving all participants.
Biography:
Nancy Amendt-Lyon, MA, DPhil, was born in New York and studied psychology in the United States, Switzerland, and Austria. She trained in Gestalt therapy and group psychoanalysis, and has been in private practice in Austria since 1978. Nancy is an associate editor of Gestalt Review, the founding chairperson of the Austrian Association for Gestalt Therapy (ÖVG), and a member of the Austrian Association for Psychotherapy (ÖBVP) and the European Association for Gestalt Therapy (EAGT). She has many years of experience training Gestalt therapists in Austria and abroad. Her numerous publications include Timeless Experience: Laura Perls’s Unpublished Notebooks and Literary Texts 1946–1985, Creative License: The Art of Gestalt Therapy, and a début novel, Case Unclosable.

SPECIAL ELECTION EVENT:The Sunday After
2024-11-10 13:00 - 15:00
Description:
The U.S. presidential election is on Tuesday, November 5. The result is a toss-up. While we hope for good news, one thing is sure. No matter who wins, chaos is certain.
This meeting is an open space for us to face the aftermath of the election together.
Facilitated by Dan Bloom.

The Power of Third-Person Storytelling
2024-11-03 13:00 - 15:00
Presenter: Scott Kellogg

Description:
Stories and storytelling have been central to my life and my journey as a therapist. I fell in love with the Gestalt therapy of Fritz Perls through the stories that he and others shared about his work in the 1960s; I just thought that they were amazingly beautiful.
On a more clinical level, I feel that Erving Polster, in his book Every Person’s Life Deserves a Novel, presented a series of compelling examples of the power of therapeutic storytelling as a method for working through profound and life-resonating traumas. For Polster, the telling, the hearing, and the editing of narratives are central tools that can be used to help patients heal and reclaim their lives.
For myself, Third-Person Storytelling, or the repetitive telling of one’s story as if it were being witnessed from the outside, is a therapeutic method that allows individuals to deeply engage with and express the complexities of their personal experiences while simultaneously being able to have greater emotional distance from them. This form of narrative healing is used in the treatment of histories of trauma and interpersonal abuse because it can effectively decrease the experience of fear, shame, and guilt while enabling the integration of difficult and painful narratives and memories. In addition to trauma work, it can serve as a vehicle for 1) reclaiming disowned stories of success and achievement; 2) creating a path to successful goal completion; and 3) creating a more self-directed life through the practice of self-eulogy.
In this workshop, I will give a brief presentation on the Three Dialogue method. This will be followed by a demonstration with a volunteer. The participants will then be invited to break into small groups so that they may have an opportunity to practice and experience the healing power of repetitive Third-Person Storytelling with one another.
Biography:
Dr. Scott Kellogg is an ISST-certified Advanced Schema Therapist who has also trained in Gestalt therapy and Voice Dialogue. He created the Transformational Chairwork approach in 2008 and he currently teaches this method of psychotherapeutic dialogue to clinicians in both the United States and abroad.
Scott is in private practice in New York City and has served on the faculties of New York University, The Rockefeller University, and the Yale University School of Medicine.
In addition, he is the author of Transformational Chairwork: Using Psychotherapeutic Dialogues in Clinical Practice (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).
His Chairwork website is: https://transformationalchairwork.com/

SPECIAL AUTUMN EVENT ~ Hope, Fear, Election! Living at the Boundary
2024-10-20 13:00 - 15:00
Please join us ahead of a momentous U.S. presidential election – one that will have national and international consequences. Bring your community spirit to explore democracy within an experiential group; we will also look at how the current political climate is impacting therapists and clients.
Facilitated by Dan Bloom.

Gestalt Therapy in a Time of Loss and Crisis of Meaning
2024-10-06 13:00 - 15:00
Presenter: Inna Didkovska
Inna Didkovska will share her experiences of being a Gestalt therapist, supervisor, and trainer during Ukraine’s war with Russia. She will present how the climate of danger, grief, loss, and meaninglessness affects her and her colleagues throughout Ukraine.
Biography:
Inna Didkovska is the director of Kyiv Gestalt University (KGU) and a psychotherapist with over 25 years of experience. She is an active member of the European Association for Gestalt Therapy (EAGT), the European Association for Psychotherapy (EAP), and the International Federation of Gestalt Training Organizations (FORGE). She is also a certified supervisor of the Parisian School of Gestalt, the French Gestalt Institute, and the Norwegian Gestalt Institute. In addition, she is a trainer of different levels in Gestalt therapy, the author of intensive courses in India dedicated to the theme of freedom to be oneself, and the organizer of online educational projects (international conferences, courses, and webinars).

2024-2025 Business Meeting #1
2024-09-29 13:00 - 15:00

The Street, Between Oikos and Polis: The Political Dimension of Caring
2024-05-19 13:00 - 15:00
Presenter: Chiara Sovegni
Description:
My presentation is about my experience as a Gestalt therapist working with adolescents and people who use drugs on the street from Venice to the Bronx. My observation is of the street as a therapeutic setting and the therapist’s body as the space of creating the here and now of a relationship that tries to overcome the trickery of institutions in order to deliver care.
I would like to present this topic because, after almost 20 years of working on the street in two different countries and with hundreds of different individuals, I am aware of the importance of how “giving voice to those who don’t have one” is part of my responsibility as a therapist and human being.
Through books like Growing Up Absurd by Paul Goodman and Harmonizing Psychotherapy and Community to Enhance Everyday Living by Erving Polster, I learned that the Gestalt approach is about responsibility, and how psychotherapy can be used in a creative way to be accessible to a greater number of people.
The extraordinary flexibility of the Gestalt work allows you to exit your office and go wherever people congregate, taking care of the quality of the contact and experiencing new ways of staying together.
I will discuss how meeting a person where they are at, having a non-judgmental approach, and considering the life they are living as the best they can do in the here and now are the only ways to promote the change that can save a human life, and I will share a couple of clinical cases.
Biography:
Chiara Sovegni is a Gestalt therapist with a five-year bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Padua, Italy, and a four-year master’s degree in Gestalt therapy from GTK Institute, Italy.
After years of private practice in individual therapy with kids and families, she started in 2004 to work with adolescents and people who use drugs for the Department of Health and Social Services in the metropolitan areas of Venice and Padua. In 2018, she moved to New York City, where she worked as a life coach with Italian women until COVID happened. Since 2020, she has worked in the South Bronx, NYC, with a nonprofit organization, where in 2021 she became the co-director of programs, taking care of the clinical staff’s supervision.

A Gestalt Approach to Working with Children and Adolescents
2024-04-14 13:00 - 15:00
Presenter: Jon Blend
Description:
The renowned child and adolescent therapist Dr. Violet Oaklander posited that two common reasons for young people entering therapy are a) difficulty with using one or more contact skills and b) low self-esteem. Many have also experienced difficulties with play and playfulness, especially since COVID. Working with young people requires an awareness of maturational processes and of the changing fields of family, school, and community. Young people differ from adults in terms of their awareness, responsibility, and response-ability. As children develop, some extend their lifespace with relative ease while others struggle with the process of “disembedding” from their family of origin (Mark McConville, 2013).
What helps a nervous, troubled youngster join the relational dance, crossing the threshold into therapy? In answering this, I will first share a memory of an encounter I experienced in therapy as a child. Next, I’ll introduce some “icebreaker” activities that I find help many young clients feel at ease and met in a relational dialogue. Then, a few vignettes from clinical practice will illustrate an arts-based therapy approach. Arts modalities often function as “experience-near” vehicles for children and adolescents, helping them explore issues of complexity and “unfinished business.” The arts may also operate as a “relational third,” enabling therapist and client to find their unique co-regulatory rhythm.
Breakout session – some topic options:

Participants may wish to explore their experience of first encounters with younger clients in therapy. What makes for “good-enough” hosting by the therapist? Are there limitations that such an orientation might bring?
As our younger clients develop and grow, some of the quests they encounter en route to adulthood include searches for identity, autonomy, equality, morality, and intimacy. What issues are most important to the young clients that you work with?
It’s commonly held today (by the World Health Organization, etc.) that the process of maturation extends into the mid-twenties and beyond. What implications does this have for current psychotherapy training and practice?

Biography:
Jon Blend, MA, is British, of Austro-Russian heritage. He is a UKCP and ECP registered Gestalt psychotherapist, child psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, musician, and Playback Theatre performer (www.londonplayback.com). He maintains a psychotherapy practice in London seeing adults, children, and supervisees.
Jon is a faculty member of the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education and an approved trainer with the Violet Solomon Oaklander Foundation. Since 2002, he has taught the Oaklander model of projective arts therapy to psychotherapists and other professionals. His career in adult and child mental health began 40 years ago, as a social worker in various hospital and community-based settings.
Jon has delivered Gestalt training workshops and presentations to institutes and organizations in Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Poland, Romania, the USA, and the UK. His interests include animal-assisted therapies, interfaith working, and transcultural and intergenerational dialogue. For nine articles and training information, visit https://www.gacp.co.uk.

Aging, Illness, and Loss: Being a Fully Human Therapist
2024-03-24 13:00 - 15:00
Presenter: James Battaglia
Description:
This presentation’s focus is on enhancing one’s own experiences of aging, illness, and loss and to regard these experiences as an essential part of being a fully human and authentic therapist. The assumption is that by confronting these issues in our own lives, we can be more present with our patients as they confront these issues in their own. This sensitivity is not without its challenges. A therapist may desire, or may not have a choice, to disclose one’s own illness with patients – a choice that may be fraught and lead to unexpected consequences in the treatment. This presentation provides a place of safety in which participants may choose to share their own experiences and the expectation that all will be received with compassion, respect, and confidentiality. Aging, illness, and loss are present throughout the lifespan, so all are welcome irrespective of age or health condition.
During this presentation, I will share my experience with aging, illness, and loss especially in the context of my own recent history. During the discussion, the three pillars of Gestalt therapy will be addressed – phenomenology, field theory, and dialogue. During the breakout groups, participants will be asked to discuss their own experiences with aging, illness, and loss and how they may (or may not) impact the therapeutic work. One major goal of the presentation is to enhance awareness and acceptance of our own experiences – and those of colleagues – as therapists so we can be in a better position to recognize them and address them with our patients.
Biography:
James (Jim) Battaglia, PhD, is a school psychologist by training, now licensed in NY and NJ, who was the teaching assistant to Iris Fodor, PhD, at NYU’s School Psychology program in the mid-1980s. After some 30 years of doing psychoanalytic-oriented psychotherapy with children and adults, he wandered into the Gestalt therapy world at Iris’s encouragement by attending a GATLA European Residential in Buffalo, NY, in 2009. He studied at GATLA for four years before turning to the Pacific Gestalt Institute (PGI), where he attends annual residential training – now as a more senior trainee and party organizer. Jim also has been a noncontinuous member of NYIGT since 2013 and has had leadership positions in AAGT.
His medical history includes HIV, cardiac disease (including a heart attack in 2010 while in LA), COVID, and prostate cancer – diagnosed in 2021, for which he was treated with surgery and 37 radiation sessions in 2022. Two significant losses include his “big brother,” Bud Feder, in 2018, and his “big sister,” Lynn Smith, in 2023 the day after his 62nd birthday. Lynn was his high school guidance counselor, who became his friend, and both were diagnosed with cancer around the same time.
Jim has found he cannot ignore his aging, illness, and loss because he is heavily engaged with treating practitioners, his friends talk of their own experiences, and his patients invariably bring up their own during therapy sessions. When it becomes too much, Jim turns to his husband, Jonathan, who, thankfully, is younger and healthier but who, not unexpectedly, has his own losses that are now part of their shared experience. Jim is an advocate of early PSA testing (starting at age 40), and he will be offering in-person and online therapy groups for gay men diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Exploring Subverbal Interactions in Everyday Life and in Therapy: Gestures and Their Meanings
2024-02-11 13:00 - 15:00
Each facial and bodily gesture we make expresses an important meaning, and demonstrates how we experience ourselves within our world. When fully felt and understood, they tell us something we had not known about ourselves in our relationships or that we knew, but now see more clearly.
During this workshop, we learn how our gestures form complex negotiations with others. They are the pathway to what has gone on in our earlier histories, what they entail for this present moment, and what they anticipate for the future. Aside from their communicative dimensions, gestures don’t merely express thinking, gestures are thoughts forming in the phenomenal field. Once aware of their meanings, we have the capacity to change our habitual and rigid gestural patterns in relation – patient-therapist, partner-partner, employer-employee, teacher-student – to more spontaneous and free exchanges.
Biography:
Ruella Frank, PhD, brings many years of experience to her work as a Gestalt psychotherapist – as a professional dancer and choreographer, yoga practitioner, student of various movement theories/therapies, and student of Laura Perls, co-founder of Gestalt therapy. Ruella is the originator of Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy, founder and director of the Center for Somatic Studies, faculty at the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy, guest faculty at Gestalt Associates for Psychotherapy, and adjunct faculty at the Gestalt Institute of Toronto; she teaches throughout the United States, Europe, Eurasia, Mexico, South America, and Canada. She is the author of articles and chapters in various publications and the book Body of Awareness: A Somatic and Developmental Approach to Psychotherapy (2001, GestaltPress, available in four languages), the co-author of The First Year and the Rest of Your Life: Movement, Development, and Psychotherapeutic Change (2010, Routledge Press, available in three languages), and the author of The Bodily Roots of Experience in Psychotherapy (2022, Routledge Press, available in seven languages). Her video Introduction to Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy is available in three languages. www.somaticstudies.com

WINTER SPECIAL EVENT – Encountering Artificial Intelligence – Exploring a Phenomenology of Embodied Experience
2024-01-14 13:00 - 15:00
On October 30, 2023, the White House announced an executive order on global AI safety.
It is increasingly clear how a profound journey toward a new civilization is emerging, different from the one in which we were born. AI isn’t just coming, or coming fast. It is here. Even if we don’t access it, or like it. And it is not so much our accessing AI, but how it is accessing us. Within our daily lives.
How do we experience this as Gestalt therapists? How might AI impact Gestalt therapy communities all over the world?
This special event will:

Explore a phenomenology of embodied experience in relation to AI;
Consider how to integrate Gestalt theory into clinical practice within a situated world of AI;
Identify new developments in AI and how we may understand these in terms of field emergence;
Explore whether as Gestalt therapists we may creatively interact with AI;
Ask “Can AI be ethical?” and “Can an AI landscape be relational and field-emergent?”

How do we want to participate in the unfolding of this new lifeworld? And who are we becoming right now, as Gestalt therapists in this changing landscape?
Biographies:
Maciej Lukaszewicz is a fourth-year student at Wielkopolska Szkoła Psychoterapii Gestalt (WSPG) in Poznań, Poland. He has been in clinical practice with clients since 2021.
For the last 15 years, he has been working in culture and art management, including for Robert Wilson at his Watermill Center, in New York, from 2012 to 2015.
Maciej graduated with an MA in theology and philosophy from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland and a MSc in European policy and management from Birkbeck College, University of London, UK.
In so-called free time, he leads a theater group and directs performances or spends hours staring at miniatures in medieval manuscripts.
———
Claire Spiller is the current secretary of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. She is also a UKCP registered and accredited Gestalt psychotherapist, and a clinical supervisor approved by the Metanoia Institute, London.
She is also a graduate of the Online Therapy Institute and the Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy program at the Center for Somatic Studies. In addition, she has published an article entitled “A Year of the Pandemic: Existential themes for psychotherapists” in Existential Analysis, 2021, Vol. 32., No. 2, and is working on a paper on phenomenology in Gestalt therapy.
Claire has been working clinically online since 2016, and has a background in writing, designing, and delivering a range of clinical training courses locally and nationally in the UK, teaching and assessing qualified and trainee therapists on working with survivors of traumatic experiences.
She is also on the faculty of the “Working with the Complexities of Trauma” certificate program of Therapy and Counselling, which has been accredited by the National Council of Integrative Psychotherapists, offers international online training, and was named the best UK professional therapy training service of 2023 in Wales.
Claire has a private practice in South Wales, UK, working remotely and in person.

Reading Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality
2023-12-17 13:00 - 15:00
Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality by Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman (PHG) is a complicated historical document holding the richness of the novel thinking of its time and, importantly, the genius of its authors. PHG now 70 years forward is widely recognized as Gestalt therapy’s founding text. Since the first coherent presentation in 1951, practitioners have been evaluating, clarifying, redefining, and expanding upon the details of its theory and practice. It has been read, cited, criticized, and acclaimed. It has provided fertile ground for questioning ideas, learning, and impetus for new theory and practice.
This presentation will discuss PHG as a comprehensive presentation of Gestalt therapy theory and practice. I will explore its value as a formative text for new and experienced practitioners, provide a brief sampling of its ideas, share my experience reading PHG line by line in an experiential group, and discuss aesthetic and hermeneutic perspectives and critical comments. The presentation will involve didactic and experiment segments.
Biography:
Perry Klepner, LCSW, has been a psychotherapist in private practice in New York City and Kingston, NY, since 1977. He has been an instructor at several Gestalt institutes and provides training, supervision, and individual, couples, and group therapy. He trained with Laura Perls, Isadore From, and Richard Kitzler at the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy, where he is a past president (1993–95) and a full member, fellow, and instructor. He has authored articles and led workshops on Gestalt therapy at numerous conferences in the U.S. and abroad.

Gender Fluidity: A Modern Revolution in Today’s World
2023-11-12 13:00 - 15:00
Presenter: Lee Zevy
Description:
We are currently experiencing a confusing destabilizing revolution of all aspects of sexuality and gender as evolving heterosexual and LGBTQI+ definitions, meanings, identities, categories, and behavior undergo dramatic changes. Although in many ways, these changes are occurring worldwide, each country and culture is determining how it integrates or tries to inhibit what is happening.

In many ways, this process harkens back to other clinical revolutions, like the advent of psychoanalysis and when Gestalt therapy and the other experiential therapies changed the relationality of the therapeutic environment.

For clinicians, gender fluidity can be a confusing array of categories, identifiers, and meanings that have to be negotiated with each client.

During this presentation, I’ll ground the current evolution of gender fluidity historically and then focus on the ways it affects the field clinically. Exercises in breakout groups will allow participants to experience, play with, and discuss their relation to this unfolding process. Then we will re-form into the whole group to continue discussion and uncover emerging themes.
Biography:
Lee Zevy is one of the founders of Identity House, a walk-in peer counseling and psychotherapy community mental health center for the LGBTQI+ community in New York City, which began in 1971. After completing her training at the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy, where she is now a fellow, she became the clinical director of Identity House for many years and still does supervising and training there. In addition to becoming president of NYIGT twice, she teaches, supervises, writes, and publishes on the theory and practice of Gestalt therapy. Her current interest is how the fluidity of gender and sexuality today is moving to change the discourse of society around these topics.

The Zen of Gestalt Therapy
2023-10-15 13:00 - 15:00
Presenter: Olivier Winghart
Description:
Autumn brings us a special time for contemplating impermanence, and so I’m pleased to offer my presentation about Zen and Gestalt therapy this month. I plan to take up:

The importance of Zen and Taoism for the Gestalt therapy pioneers.
The parallels between Zen practice and Gestalt therapy practice for a therapist.
A closer look at a few relevant sources (F. Perls, J. Enright, D. Price, M. Epstein).
Interpersonal meditation for individual therapy and couples therapy.
The differences in intention and perspective between Zen Buddhism and Gestalt therapy (including spiritual awakening, the concept of self, and the most precious gift to give a human being).
Inspiration from this quote: “Listening to the ongoing process, and getting out of the way.”

We shall also explore the topic experientially in small groups.
Biography:
Olivier has been an associate member of the Institute since 2015 or 2016, thanks to a suggestion by the late Sean Gaffney and practical help from Susan Gregory.
He has a diploma in engineering from École Centrale Paris, and two Master of Science degrees – one in computer science (from UT Austin, USA), and one in Gestalt psychotherapy (from the University of Derby, UK).
Olivier’s first career was in computer science and artificial intelligence, and in the early 2000s, he started to train in Gestalt therapy. He has maintained a private practice since 2008, first in Stockholm, Sweden, then in Lyon, France (individual and couples therapy). He also has translated six books related to Gestalt therapy from English into French.
Regarding the topic of the presentation, Olivier has maintained a regular Zen practice since 1987 and was ordained as a novice priest in 2020 in the Japanese Soto Zen School.
