ALL PRESENTATIONS ARE WITHOUT CHARGE.
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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.
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.
Description:
The topics or themes of these meetings will emerge from the interest and excitement of the NYIGT community over the course of the season.
(For members.)
Presenter: Perry Klepner
Description:
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.
Presenters: Maciej Lukaszewicz and Claire Spiller
Description: To come!
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.
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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, where she is a final-year Gestalt PhD student.
Claire presented her doctoral research, The Phenomenology of Gestalt Therapy Online, at an EAGT research webinar and the UKCP International Research Conference in 2022.
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 recently submitted an article to the British Gestalt Journal 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 charity sector, teaching and assessing qualified and trainee therapists on working with survivors of traumatic experiences.
In 2022, following an accident at sea, Claire developed a clinical training three-day program in an introductory, embodied approach to working with trauma, which she teaches online internationally and which has been accredited by the National Council of Integrative Psychotherapists.
Claire has a private practice in South Wales, UK, working remotely and in person.
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