Papers and Publications
Member papers appear here with the author’s permission.
Papers of institute members are currently being collated. More will appear here shortly.
Situated Ethics and the Ethical World of Gestalt Therapy1
©Dan Bloom 2011
Gestalt Therapy in Clinical Practice: From Psychotherapy to the Aesthetics of Contact, ed. Gianni Francesetti, Michela Gecele, and Jan Roubal (It: FrancoAngeli, 2013), 131–45.
Abstract: This chapter proposes a framework for a phenomenological ethics in psychotherapy: situated ethics. It also identifies extrinsic, intrinsic and fundamental ethics of psychotherapy. These are the ethics of the phenomenological practice of gestalt therapy.
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“Tiger! Tiger! Burning Bright” – Aesthetic Values as Clinical Values in Gestalt Therapy
©Dan Bloom 2003, 2014
A version of this paper appeared in Creative License, the art of gestalt therapy, M. Spagnuolo Lobb, N. Amendt-Lyon (eds.), Springer:Wien/NewYork (2003)
Introduction:
The aesthetic is central to Gestalt therapy. Its particular organization of sensation includes – without being limited to – the experience of beauty itself. This same aesthetic attitude that creates art and appreciates beauty ac-counts for life’s harmonies and rhythms. Aesthetic qualities animate the life- work of an artist as well as the quotidian events of ordinary life. The theory and practice of Gestalt therapy is infused with these qualities. It is no accident that the first and most comprehensive elaboration of Gestalt therapy theory was written by Paul Goodman, whose efforts in creative literature (fiction and poetry) were as ambitious as his works in psychology and social theory. His collaboration with Frederick Perls is the coming together of European psychoanalysis, phenomenology, Gestalt psychology, and existentialism with the American pragmatism of William James, George Herbert Mead, and John Dewey (Richard Kitzler, “Three Lectures,” article in preparation).
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THE SONG OF THE SELF: Language and Gestalt Therapy
Dan Bloom
The Gestalt Journal, Vol. XXIV, No. 2 (2015)
Introduction: Laura Perls once asked her students “What is Gestalt therapy?” After listening to their varied replies, she said “Gestalt therapy is an experiential, phenomenological, holistic, organismic, existential psychotherapy.” Because Gestalt therapy encompasses so much, attempts to address the theory satisfactorily encounter enormous obstacles. Many of us believe that Paul Goodman set forth an excellent model for Gestalt therapy and have worked within it over the years. And we believe that this model is best set forth in Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. This is a formidable problem that I must address at the outset.
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“Evil: The sight that cannot be seen; the speaking that cannot said”
©Dan Bloom 2018
Published version in M. Spagnuolo Lobb, D. Bloom, J. Roubal, J. Zeleskov Djoric, M. Cannavò, R. La Rosa, S. Tosi, V. Pinna (Eds.) (2018). The Aesthetic of Otherness: meeting at the boundary in a desensitized world: Proceedings. Siracusa (Italy): Istituto di Gestalt HCC Italy Publ. Co. (www.gestaltitaly.com) ISBN: 978-88-989-1208-7, pp. 119-128.
Free access at https://www.gestaltitaly.com/taormina-conference-proceedings/
Abstract: This is paper is a revised text from my contribution to a panel “The Aesthetic of the Emerging Other: beauty, responsibility and evil at the contact-boundary.”. My fellow panelists were Sally Denham-Vaughan and Gianni Francesetti. This paper is a personal reflection on evil, responsibility, ethics, and the other from a gestalt therapy perspective. I consider the phenomenon of overwhelm of the contact-boundary and questions of responsibility and non-indifference raised by this phenomenon.
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Archimedes’ Lever
Philosophy of Psychotherapy – the tool of «thought»
Dan Bloom
Psychotherapie-Wissenschaft 10 (1) 28–35 2020
www.psychotherapie-wissenschaft.info
CC BY-NC-ND
https://doi.org/10.30820/1664-9583-2020-1-28
Abstract: This is a reflection on philosophy and psychotherapy. It develops the notion that the two are so entwined that it is more appropriate to consider the philosophy of psychotherapy, the thinking that is intrinsic in it. The paper proposes that thinking is an engaged and embodied practice of understanding and psychotherapy is its embodied, clinical enactment. Philosophy and psychotherapy, in some sense, began as common human responses to the being-in-the-world, wonder, and disappointment. This idea is discussed from an historical perspective from pre-Socratic philosophy, empiricism, the Kantian, and phenomenology. A central focus is on thinking as implicit in the psychotherapy process.
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Neither from the “Inside” Looking “Out” nor from the “Outside” Looking “In”
Dan Bloom
Psychopathology and Atmospheres, Francesetti and Griffero, eds. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021
Introduction: Some things speak for themselves. This book of essays speaks. It demonstrates that “atmospheres” has crossed-over from its use by the “new phenomenology” to various clinical disciplines– psychology, psychiatry and psychotherapy, including my modality of practice, Gestalt therapy. In this chapter I reflect on this crossing-over and consider on what basis Gestalt therapy could be hospitable to some of the ideas of the new phenomenology. I frame my comments within my own contemporary relational understanding of Gestalt therapy’s core concepts and especially in terms of Gestalt therapy as a clinical phenomenology. While I am looking “out” at ideas of this new phenomenology from “inside” Gestalt therapy, I assume my comments are equally relevant to other modalities “outside” Gestalt therapy. The boundaries that separate modalities with significantly similar worldviews are permeable despite differences. There is neither an “outside” nor an “inside” in the experiential sphere in which we work. And this is underscored when the modalities have a phenomenological approach in common.
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Evolutions and Developments of an institute at the source: the NYIGT
©Dan Bloom 2021
Rivista di Psicotherapia, GTK No 10, 2023
Introduction: In Requiem for a Nun, the American novelist wrote, “The past is not dead, it is not even past” (Faulkner, n.d.) Reflecting on the past, present and future of gestalt therapy from my perspective as a someone who has lived all of his gestalt therapy life in the New York Institute for Gestalt therapy (hereinafter NYIGT), it is easy for me to understand this. Gestalt therapy’s past is not past, it is still lived. Since I have been a member of the NYIGT since 1976, I have had a front row seat to experience this.
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The New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy: Training at an Institute that is Not Training Institute
©Dan Bloom 2024
Introduction: The New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy (NYIGT) is the world’s first Gestalt therapy but it is not a training institute
in the usual sense of the word. We never had a training program with a sequence of required courses leading to a certificate. New York City has Gestalt therapy institutes with formal training programs that grant certificates to graduates. They have offices and paid staff. The institute never had office.
Our telephone is voice mail only. Members take turns responding to its messages. We have a website (www.newyorkGestalt.org) and an email address
(info@newyorkGestalt.org). For 60 years, we’ve met in brick and mortar rooms rented on an ad hoc basis.
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Phronesis and knowing through movement: working with Gestalt psychotherapy online
British Gestalt Journal
2020, Vol. 29, No. 2, 11–17
© Copyright 2020 by Gestalt Publishing Ltd.
Received 13 July 2020; revised 13 September 2020
Abstract: How can we understand the role of movement and kinaesthetic resonance in shaping our experience and knowledge? This paper gives a brief introduction to my current doctoral studies at Metanoia Institute/Middlesex University, where I am researching the experiences of psychotherapists. I have discovered my area of interest falls within Studies in Practical Knowledge, a growing research tradition in Scandinavia. This article presents some of the material I have gathered so far, focusing on working with embodied awareness in online Gestalt psychotherapy.
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Dancing dialogue, Gestalt therapy and the 5Rhythms. An obituary for Gabrielle Roth (1941–2012)
British Gestalt Journal
2013, Vol. 22, No. 1: 11-14.
© Copyright 2013 by Gestalt Publishing Ltd.
Introduction: Gabrielle Roth, founder of the 5Rhythms dance and movement meditation practice, died of lung cancer in October 2012, at the age of seventy-one. Gabrielle was a dancer, author, teacher, artist, mother and a musician – with a special interest in shamanism and healing. Her work is practised by thousands of people all over the world, and her institute ‘The moving centre school’ has certified over 300 teachers. Gabrielle was very much
inspired by Gestalt, which is evident in her work. In this text I will briefly introduce you to Gabrielle, the 5Rhythms, my experience of the work, and links I make to Gestalt.
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