Institut de Développement du Thérapeute

Relational Gestalt Therapy with Lynne Jacobs

2020-03-25T12:39:00Z

Exploring and experiencing the Intersubjective Field

24-25-26 June 2022

Lynne Jacobs, Ph.D., Psy-i0 D., is a Gestalt therapist and co-founder of the Pacific Gestalt Institute (PGI) in Los Angeles (CA. USA) where she teaches and supervises. She is also a psychoanalyst, teacher and supervisor at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP) in Los Angeles.
In her book The Healing Relationship in Gestalt Therapy: A Dialogic-Self Psychological Approach (1995) (co-authored with R. Hycner) and through her teaching she has greatly contributed to anchoring Gestalt Therapy in a relational perspective.

Gestalt therapy with its fundamental concept of field and the theory of intersubjective systems with its notion of intersubjective field both highlight the inextricable intertwining of our emotional lives.
The full consideration of this field both removes the stable landmarks of Cartesian objectivity and at the same time allows us to consider therapy from a new angle. In this perspective, the therapist's task is to become fully involved at the emotional level in an exchange that is best able to recognize the profound meanings of the patient's experience in the actuality of what is lived together during the session.

In the midst of such complexity, what will be the new benchmarks to guide practice and support emotional regulation that is often undermined?

To discover Lynne Jacobs=> read our interview...

Objectives of this Master Class

The aim of this seminar is to provide sensitive reference points to guide the participants' field practice as well as to help them to support emotional regulation in a dialogical setting.

To understand and develop the therapist's dialogic sensitivity as a source of confirmation/restoration of the sense of dignity of his patients.
To be able to engage in the experience of being recognized by the other and to recognize him/her in the therapeutic process
To be able to identify the clinical implications of authentic therapist-patient dialogue
To be able to identify ways to support the therapist's dialogical attitude when he is in difficulty.

This experiential seminar is a unique opportunity to work with a therapist with as much clinical sensitivity as precision and theoretical depth.

Langage: English with simultaneous translation into french - Limited number of places

Practical Information

Bulletin d'inscription Jacobs

Dates: Friday 23, Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 April 2021
Start time: Friday 9:30 am
End time: Sunday 5pm
Location: Paris - to be defined
Price: 585 €.

Guidelines for intervening in a field perspective

2020-03-23T13:28:00Z

Registration Form

FRANCESETTI, BEJA, BELASCO

The Intervention: structure, process and experience

2-days webinar: 7-8 of June 2021

Initially scheduled for 11-12 May 2020 this seminar was postponed to 7-8 June 2021 due to Covid-19, which in its turn had to be organized online. Any registration for the May 2020 seminar is automatically postponed for the June 2021 webinar unless an explicit request for reimbursement is made to IDeT.

Objectives :

The aim of this webinar is to present and implement an intervention methodology from a field perspective. The theoretical-clinical frameworks promoted by Beja and Belasco at IDeT and by Francesetti offer a coherent perspective on the intervention. This course will enable participants to identify - from their own experience in the situation - the issues at stake within the therapeutic relationship and, simultaneously, to organize and guide their clinical interventions.
This webinar will help you to become familiar with:

the particularities of the intervention in a field perspective
its different phases
the type of resources to be mobilized

Langage: French

Gianni FRANCESETTI, Psychiatrist, gestalt therapist, international trainer and supervisor. Member of NYIGT (New York Institute of Gestalt Therapy). President of IPsiG (International Institute for Gestalt Therapy and Psychopathology) and former President of EAGT (European Association of Gestalt Therapy).
He has edited or co-edited several books: Psychopathologie en Gestalt-thérapie ( 2013), Attaques de panique et post modernité ( 2009), L'Absence est le pont entre nous (2017).

Florence BELASCO, Psychotherapist and clinical psychologist, she has been a Gestalt-therapist for twenty years. She is a certified supervisor by the EAGT (European Association for Gestalt Therapy) and trainer in several institutes.
Throughout her career, she has been interested in non-verbal and somatic aspects of Body Psychotherapy and has practiced several therapeutic approaches. She is a member of the Research Committee of the EAGT (European Association for Gestalt Therapy), member of the SPR (Society for Psychotherapy Research) and of the SEPI (Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration). Co-founder of the IDeT

Vincent BEJA, Gestalt-therapist, trainer, supervisor. He is in charge of the Research Committee of the EAGT (European Association for Gestalt Therapy), member of the SPR (Society for Psychotherapy Research) and of the NYIGT (New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy). Member of the reading committee of the Revue Gestalt for 10 years, he has written more than thirty articles on Gestalt Therapy in various French and English journals and translated many others.
Co-founder of the IDeT

Hands-on information

Registration Form

Date: Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 of June 2021
hours: 9h30-11h30 // 12h-13h30 // 14h30-16h // 16h30-18h
Online webinar
Price: 390€

References

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Interview of Gianni Francesetti with Florence Belasco published under the title: “Gestalt Therapy's Perspective on Psychopathology - Panic Attack Clinic” in Le Journal des psychologues - July-August 2018.
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Translated excerpts from the interview

Florence Belasco - Can you then describe and illustrate what the gestalt therapist's posture is, since he does not directly treat the symptoms, nor does he have an intrapsychic vision of the client's problem?

Gianni Francesetti - The gestalt therapist is above all in a posture of curiosity and openness, without preconceived ideas and oriented towards discovering the meaning of what is happening. Everything that happens can be interesting. But it requires to pay full attention to it and to be able to stay long enough in this opening.
(...)
The risk for the therapist is to be caught in the field which is actualizing itself, to play the same game: I can be depressed with a depressed person or be reactive to it, I can feel alone with someone who has panic attacks or react to it, I can feel little considered in a narcissistic field, undergo it or react to it... but all this is not therapy. To do therapy is to recognize what is happening, not to identify oneself totally in this field while having the possibility to live in it, and to remain as much as possible present anyway.
(...)
The essence of the posture is to really consider that what is happening is co-created. And the crucible of the therapy consists in changing what I am creating with the patient and not in changing him, to be less depressed when he is depressed, less alone with him when he has panic attacks, less narcissistic etc...

Psychotherapy of the Relational Living Body with Julianne Appel-Opper

2020-03-22T12:46:00Z

From the sensitive use of the therapist's body resonances

4-5-6 february 2022 COVID CANCELLED

Initially planned for the 17-18-19 of September 2021

Number of gestalt approaches to bodywork focus primarily on the therapist's awareness of the client's body sensations. After gestalists Jim Kepner and Ruella Frank, who each developed an original use of body processes, we, at IDeT and with Julianne Appel Opper, go further.

By helping the therapist focus on how he or she physically resonates with the story expressed by the patient's body, Julianne Appel Opper allows us to enter into a “living body to living body” communication that accesses the implicit and sensitive relational knowledge operating in the relationship. This communication is a very powerful method to support healing and change

This profoundly incarnated and situated way of setting bodily processes in motion thus comes to nourish in return the relational turn taken by contemporary Gestalt therapy.

Objectives

The aim of this seminar is to provide a framework and practical skills that allow participants to identify the body resonances that are generated by the therapeutic relationship and to organize them into non-verbal interventions.

This seminar is experiential, with a maximum of 25 participants; it is a rare opportunity to work with this finesse and depth on the whole carnal implicitness engaged between therapist and client.

Julianne Appel-Opper: Psychologist, psychotherapist, Gestalt therapist, supervisor and international trainer. Currently working in Germany.
She is accredited by the UKCP (United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy), member of IARPP (International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy), UKAHPP (United Kingdom Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners), and BPS (British Psychological Society).

Hands-on information

Bulletin d'inscription - Registration Form

Date: Friday 4, Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 February 2022
scheduled times: start: reception Friday 9.30 am - end: Sunday 5 pm
Location: Paris

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More...

Many Gestalt approaches of body-work are largely based on the awaress of the therapist about the body feelings of his/her patient.
Following the gestalt-therapists Jim Kepner and Ruella Franck who each have developed an original use of the body processes, Julianne Appel Opper leads us a bit further on.
By helping the therapist focusing on how his/her body resonates with the history that the body of his/her patient is telling, Julianne Appel Opper allows us to enter into a live-body-to-live-body communication, and thus allows us to access the implicit and sensitive knowledge which is operating into the relationship.
This communication is a very powerful method to support healing and change.
And then, this deeply embodied and situated way to set off the body processes nourishes back the relational turn of contemporary Gestalt therapy.

Julianne Appel-Opper: Excerpts

"Clients bring with them their pre-verbal relational knowledge implicit in our offices. The way the client enters the room, looks at us, sits, moves, all his gestures tell us about their relational rhythms and melodies. Their bodies tell the story around them of how they were looked at, held and touched, whether they were comforted and encouraged or abused and mistreated.
The living body uses a certain language: a motionless shoulder, a lost gaze, a way of looking for breath, a tenuous movement say something. As therapists we react physically to these body narratives. They reach us skin to skin, heart to heart, muscle to muscle with little or no mediation of a cognitive or reflexive process and we react to them in an unintentional way. With small movements: we step back, we hold our breath, we stretch, we look away, and suddenly we are cold. I firmly believe that all these resonances of the therapist also send something to the client. This motivated my exploration of this embodied and permanent communication between therapist and client. My goal was to find a way to bring this rich, often unnoticed communication into the light of the therapeutic space.
The result is a body-based approach to psychotherapy that I have named “Relational Living Body Psychotherapy” (RLBP) and about which I have already published several articles in the UK (Appel-Opper, 2008a, 2008b, 2009).

Many concepts related to body psychotherapy focus on the awareness of the client's body resonances and sensations. The therapist's physical resonances, reactions - such as subtle changes in posture, gestures, or movements - are generally either used as sources of information about the client (Joyece & Stills, 2001) or viewed as a body countertransference (Soth, 2006).
I believe it is insufficient to simply become aware of the physical resonances of the therapist and/or client. It seems more effective to develop embodied interventions that then act as a healing communication, from living body to living body. I see this non-verbal communication between therapist and client as a co-creation in which each connects and refers to the other. The client's bodily narratives co-create resonances in the therapist, which in turn co-create resonances in the client. In RLBP psychotherapy, the therapist brings his or her own body resonances into the therapeutic space, thus affirming - from body to body - what the client's body narratives convey. This is an important part of RLBP psychotherapy because it encourages the client's body to continue talking. (...)"

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Appel-Opper, J. (2012), Psychotherapy of the Relational Living Body: From Physical Resonances to Embodied Interventions and Experiences. in Young, C.(Ed) (2012). About Relational Body Psychotherapy. Stow, Galashiels, http://www.bodypsychotherapypublications.com/titles_BPP-3.html, Translation IDeT, 2019, https://www.idet.paris/IMG/pdf/psychothe_rapie_du_corps_vivant_relationnel_2012_2019.pdf

Last modified 2022-11-22

Practice in the Light of Field Theory with Malcolm Parlett

2020-03-21T07:57:00Z

Three days to inhabit the new paradigm of psychotherapy...

January 15, 16, 17, 2021 - CANCELLED

Malcolm Parlett—the introducer of the field theory in Gestalt Therapy—comes to share his sensitive view and the way he thinks about the field today. Above all, he will make us feel the importance of the perceptual change that the adoption of this perspective induces in the conduct of a therapy:

“Too many people approach field theory as a cognitive challenge: in reality it is a living experience and to cultivate a global sensibility”

In 1991 Malcolm Parlett wrote a seminal article in the British Gestalt Journal that definitively brought field theory into gestalt practice. Since then, taken up by many authors and clinicians, this approach has only grown and refined.

As advocated by IDeT, the field perspective renews the handling of the therapeutic relationship and gives it greater importance as a vector of change.

Objectives

This seminar aims to make the participants feel the deep spring of field practice. It will provide each participant with concrete elements to refine his or her own posture.

This seminar is experiential; it is a unique opportunity to grasp in a sensitive way what guides the practice in a Gestalt therapy field perspective and to deepen our concrete and sensitive understanding of this clinical approach.

Come and meet a pioneer of field practice ! His last visit in France !

english & french translation - Due to the pandemic: Limited number of places

Registration Form

Hands-on Information

Date: Friday 15, Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 January 2021
Schedules
- Start: Friday 10am
- End: Sunday 5pm
Location: Paris
Price: 570 €

Interview

Vincent: I met you twenty years ago and you came last year in France to do a first 2-day seminar. It was here, in our institute, at IDeT. Although you are famous abroad, you are still little known to French gestaltists. Can you briefly tell us who you are and how you came to field theory?

Malcolm: My attraction to the field theory of Gestalt therapy goes back to my early days in Gestalt in the 1970s. At that time I was a consultant and researcher in the educational sciences and was particularly interested in the “learning environment” which is the crucial element in shaping the educational experience. Even earlier I had grown up in a family where disappointment and secrets reigned - a totally pathological field - and my life task was to discover a greater truth, which required a holistic approach.

Vincent : How was the writing of your famous article?

Malcolm: I wrote the article “Reflections on Field Theory” ((British Gestalt Journal, Vol1/2) in 1991 after having been invited to give a lecture on this topic at a gestalt symposium. For six months I immersed myself completely in what had been written by others on the subject, particularly Joel Latner and Gary Yontef. Since then I have continued to write, teach and further develop these ideas and practices, realizing more and more clearly that “field theory” should actually be called “field practice”. Too many people approach field theory as a cognitive challenge: in reality it is about living experience and cultivating a global sensibility.

Vincent: Since then, you've been talking about exploring practice in five dimensions. What do you mean by this?

Malcolm: These five dimensions do not correspond to the five principles I described in my 1991 article. Rather, they are the five competencies that I described in the book “Future Sense: Five explorations of whole intelligence for a world that's waking up” published in 2015 for a non-specialist audience. These are five dimensions of human competence fundamental to global intelligence, i.e. to function healthily in the world and to participate in making it better in the form of personal and social commitment. I call them “responding to the situation”, “interrelating”, “embodying”, “experimenting” and “self-recognizing”.
After this book I have continued my reflection and I have come to believe that for clinicians, each of these five explorations (or dimensions) offers a different starting point for the search for an integrated form of field practice, that is, a practice that creates the experiential conditions in which personal growth can unfold: emotionally, intellectually, socially, politically and spiritually.

References

Malcolm Parlett, “Reflexions on Field Theory” in British Gestalt Journal, vol 1.2, 1991
Malcolm Parlett, FUTURE SENSE: Five Explorations of Whole Intelligence for a World That's Waking Up, Troubador, 2015.