An international trio from our world Gestalt community meld content and process; past, present, and future, in a didactic, experiential, and artistic dance designed to enhance awareness of the emergence of Gestalt therapy into the millennium. There is a collective need to honor and maintain the best of our Gestalt theory and practice. Simultaneously, as we voyage into the future without a map, it is our vision of the possible that illuminates the way. This presentation will highlight the historic ground of Gestalt, and call attention to the amplifications being made to our theory, both therapeutically and organizationally. We will use ourselves as a cross- cultural partnership team to illustrate the benefits of bridging diversity. Story-telling, case examples, and in progress research will be cited. This is the first part of a three part plenary, designed to weave our conference together, enhance integration, and develop excitement and contact.

Erving Polster, Ph.D. and Miriam Polster, Ph.D. (both from Case Western Reserve University) are Director and Co-Director of the Gestalt Training Center-San Diego where they have been teaching gestalt therapy to people from all around the world for the past 25 years.. Erv is Clinical Professor and Miriam is Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego. Erv conducted the first locally led workshops at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland in 1956 and was its first faculty Chairman until 1973. She has taught psychology at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland State University.

Erv and Miriam co-authored an important text in gestalt therapy, Gestalt Therapy Integrated. Erv also has written Every Person's Life is Worth a Novel, in which he spells out the therapeutic applicability of the kinship between the novelist and the psychotherapist. His most recent book is A Population of Selves (Jossey-Bass, 1995). In this book he presents a theory of the self which coordinates the concept of wholeness with the concept of personal splitting and narrows the gap between theoretical principles and therapeutic practice. Miriam has also written Eve's Daughters: The Forbidden Heroism of Women in which she enunciated some general characteristics of heroism, showing how cultural perspectives have excluded the particular kinds of heroism which women have commonly exercised.

Currently, the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland Press is composing a book, tracing the evolution of the ideas Miriam and Erv have presented over the years in their lectures, papers and anthology pieces.

9:00 to 11:00 a.m., Multiple Presentations

Process Groups

The conference offers an unique opportunity to meet in a small group of conference participants from around the world who are previously unknown to each other. Two co-leaders will meet with the same group periodically throughout the conference to discuss, integrate our experience, discover who we are, what we are here for, where we/I stand, find out about "other," build, discover, invent a new relationship, and continue to create our international community's direction and future. This year the Process Groups will be intricately connected with the Plenary Sessions.

12:15 - 2:00 p.m. Buffet Lunch
12:45 - 1:45 p.m. Interest Group Meetings &...

2:00 to 4:00 p.m. Multiple Presentations

9:00 - 11:30 am