Personal and Relational Gestalt Development

Gestalt Practitioner – Details

The overall Purpose, Goals and Objectives for GIS-International:

• To develop and maintain training programs of high international standards and professionalism
• To encourage the students to achieve personal development as individuals, therapists and leaders
• To train highly skilled and professionally competent Gestalt Psychotherapists and
  Organizational Consultants who are compatible with the highest international standards
• To ensure deep personal integration of theory, practice and ethics

First Year. Seminar 1-5

Purpose and Goal: To provide students with foundational knowledge of Gestalt principles, methodology, and therapeutic practice, including the philosophical, theoretical, and therapeutic directions that have influenced Gestalt. Emphasis is placed on the student’s personal development and emerging relational integration.

• Intensive personal development

• Basic concepts and theory of Gestalt

• History, development, and societal role of Gestalt therapy

• Developmental psychology and personality formation

• Individual therapy and self-reflection

• Oral examination in Gestalt principles and methodology

• Written assignment: Autobiography connecting personal development to Gestalt terminology and methodology

• Introduction and integration of evaluation tools

Seminar 1: Establishing the Group.

Introduction to Gestalt psychotherapy: Awareness, Here-and-now, Responsibility, Contact, Resistances. Historical overview of Gestalt roots. Seminar 2: Body Work in Gestalt exploring the hidden resources of the body: Retroflection, body awareness, figure-ground, unfinished business. Focus on developmental psychology.

Seminar 2: Body work in Gestalt.
The hidden resources of the body. Retroflection, body awareness, figure-ground, unfinished business. Focus on developmental psychology. November

Seminar 3: The roots of Gestalt: Existentialism and Zen.
Choice and responsibility. Awareness processes and the connection to Existentialism and Zen. February

Seminar 4: Confluence and dependency.
Basic field theory and attachment theory. Group dynamics and process work, encounter. April

Seminar 5: Examination and evaluation.
Gestalt theory related to own development and personality. The roots of Gestalt: Psychodrama and creativity. Gestalt work with autobiography. June

During the first year of training the student integrates the basic theory of Gestalt. In the written autobiography, the student integrates her Gestalt perspective documenting her deep understanding and integration of own process.

Hours first year

Second Year. Seminar 6-10 + Supervision option 1 – 2.

Purpose and goal: To continue personal development with increasing integration. To deepen knowledge about the fundamental psychological and therapeutic theories and methods of Gestalt and to provide knowledge about the roots of Gestalt (Existentialism (Kirkegaard, Yalom, Spinelli), Gestalt Psychology, Psychodrama (Moreno), Psychoanalysis (Freud), Body oriented therapy (Reich and Lowen). To integrate ethics in the work with Gestalt methods, principles and techniques. To understand and integrate how the emotional Gestalt approach connects to the existential Doing and Being.

• Continued personal development with emphasis on relational work starting with the group process and group dynamics
• Deepened work with communication skills and conflict resolution (encounter)
• Training in basic skills (Person-Therapist-Observer work)
• Integrate understanding of and skills in working with the basic theories, concepts and methods in Bioenergetics, Psychodrama, Existentialism, Psychoanalysis, Zen etc.
• Oral examination in the fundamental psychotherapeutic theories and how they connect to Gestalt theory, approach and practice
• Basic knowledge about other psychotherapeutic methods and their connection to Gestalt therapy.
• Written work about how one of the fundamental psychotherapeutic theories and how it has influenced Gestalt theory, approach and practice
• Evaluation process where the student´s readiness personally, relationally and professionally is assessed. The process determines whether the student is accepted to the third year of training or is recommended another second year.

Training Seminar 6: Psychodrama and creativity in Gestalt, continued.
Confluence, dependency and co-dependency in couples and families. Dialogical work. Relational work, encounter, conflict resolution in systems and in organizations. Field theory and practice. September

Training Seminar 7: Bodywork in Gestalt. Gestalt and Bioenergetics.
Creative work with dreams and fantasy. Deep integration Gestalt work individually and in the group with body awareness as a key issue. Developmental psychology in connection to the body. November

Training Seminar 8: Gestalt methods and techniques – in clinical work and in development work.
Psychopathology in theory and practice. Boundaries and contact. Ethics. February

Training Seminar 9: Gender issues: Sexuality and sensuality related to own personality.
Ethics and boundaries. Couple therapy, Gestalt work with families and systems. April

Training Seminar 10: Examination, evaluation and Gestalt work with the roots.
Transition to the 3rd and 4th year. Supervision and action plans.  June

Voluntary Work, Client Supervision
Supervision on client work. 60 hours. Voluntary work with clients 1. Transition to becoming a therapist. The student organizes therapeutic practicum/work under supervision in an organization in cooperation with GIS. Individually planned. Through last part of the training year

During the last part of the second year the student writes an essay describing one of “the Roots of Gestalt” and how that root has influenced Gestalt therapy and terminology. At the end of the year there is an oral examination in the roots/the basic theories of Gestalt.

Hours second year

Overall content for both 2-year and 4-year training program

The Study plan for the 2-year Gestalt Practitioner education is identical to the first 2 years of the Study plan for the 4-year education for Clinical Psychotherapist or Organizational Consultant.

The training programs are experiential, theoretical, and practical. The study program is divided into 2 parts. 1st part of 2 years and a 2nd part of 2 years with duration of 4 ½ years altogether including a ½ year of pre-training. Each year the student concludes by an evaluation, an oral examination and a written work. The total minimum of the Training Program for all 4 years is 1639 hours of 60 minutes or 2185 study hours of 45 minutes. Individual study, self-reflection and written tasks are estimated extra 900 hrs./1200st.hrs.

The Gestalt program for both 2 and 4-year program includes

• Intensive personal development work in theory and in practice, integrating Gestalt Theory,
  principles and methodology
• Experience and training in working with the client´s change process in the mental health area
• Personal and professional leadership training
• Specialization within Clinical Psychotherapy 3rd and 4th year
• Specialization within Organizational Consulting and Counselling, 3rd and 4th year
• Direct and indirect supervision
• Theoretical and practical experience with most significant other psychotherapeutic theories
  and methodologies
• Clinical work with individual clients and with groups under intensive direct and indirect
  supervision. (Min. 450 hours)