It's noteworthy to mention that I participated to my first Summer Residential with GATLA (Yenne, France 1999) just after I've been introduced to Gestalt Therapy in my country. So GATLA's Summer Residential Training has a very primary role in my Gestalt story.
After being trained on Cognitive-Behavioral approach for years I gradually realized that I was "pushing" myself to do my best but "resisting" to do more at the same time. I was aware of my motivation to be a satisfying and a satisfied therapist. Unfortunately, I was the very responsible therapist without any enthusiasm! To figure it up, I was stucked!
Then comes my step into Gestalt workshops in my country and final decision to go for it by my first Summer Residential I mentioned above. It ended up with a residual effect as if I was dressed with a comfortable, suiting, fitting "tailor made" costume which I didn't want to take off anymore.
Afterwards I experienced a flow both in my personal and professional field. Professionally, I began to reorganize my environment to fullfill my needs. Started to individual therapy with a Gestalt therapist, participated in a beginning Gestalt Training movement and took quite a responsible role both as a trainee and a possible trainer in Turkey. Personally, my most rewarding recent experience was to begin drawing and painting after all years which passed "resisting" with the idea of not drawing and painting unless being academic. Now I do this without any "shoulds" just with passion.
In which ways Summer Residentials contributes for me to this process? From my point of view, they are encouraging, motivating and exciting. "Encouraging" because there really a very safe ground provided to check out and experience my potential possibilities both personally and professionally. "Motivating" because I had the chance to share rewarding experiences as a client, as a therapist, as an observer, as a community member. Such a rich experiential ground surrounded with a very supportive team. A team which is rich again in terms of every trainer's unique therapeutic style and personality. The GATLA team for me is a very good example of how differences work for meaningful interactions.
"Excitement" comes from the challenging multicultural environment Gatla provides. Far from home, quite an unfamiliar and an anxiety provoking field surprisingly turns into a field where I feel privileged in terms of forming and experiencing my phenemenology.
As a result of all of the above and the other detailed comments not mentioned here (because of the required limitations) each Summer Residential ends up with satisfaction and turns into hunger for the next.
In the time period between, keeping in touch with GATLA team and my friends all over the world from the community makes me feel myself everywhere and enlarges my heart.
Thanks again to GATLA and Phil Brownell for the invitation to share
these valuable comments.
1991 was a year filled with losses, including the death of a dear friend, mentor and colleague, Arnold M. Beisser, M.D. So when Rita Resnick encouraged me to attend the Summer Residential the following year, I thought it might be just the experience I needed. I had heard about the program since it’s inception and always wanted to attend. A further enticement was its location. I had been to Denmark (my father’s birthplace) in 1969 and it gave me a good excuse to visit my cousins again.
Because I had been a therapist for 20 years and had also trained in the local GTILA program and been certified in 1979, I was accepted into the clinical practicum. One of the requirements was to offer a presentation to that group. I hadn’t presented anything to colleagues in a number of years and felt quite anxious about the process. I read much, wrote and rewrote my material right up until the night before I presented, only later to learn that all the group members were intimidated watching me continue to work throughout the workshop. What I didn’t know was that all the other group members were consulting with each other and staff about their presentations….a supportive learning process with which Ihad no experience but grew to love.
That first year was very intense for a number of reasons. On the professional level, the schedule was very full, my work with a client was observed each day, and I was unaccustomed to being observed so closely. Each day one of the participants in my groups gave a lecture and led discussions on such topics as field theory, phenomenology, and dialogue. My topic was a comparison of various therapy theories and methodologies. Personal work was done in our group by both the trainer and the participants. Both theory and clinical issues were discussed after each piece of work. Group process was dealt with as needed. Some participants were preparing for theory and clinical exams, which heightened the intensity of our connection and work together. I was very pleased that my clinical skills improved over the summer, as did my skills in supervision.
On the personal side, there were many accents ? Danish, bringing back memories of my father who had died when I was 22 ? English which brought
back memories of my former husband. One of my roommates was from the US, another from Denmark and we shared a cottage with colleagues from Germany, Canada, Australia, Scotland, and Switzerland. On one of the free days, a group of us went sailing in the Baltic, swimming, too. For someone used to the bath temperature of the Gulf of Mexico, it was quite an adventure. We formed a remarkably close community during our two weeks working together and many of us became close friends over the years.
The summer experience rekindled my interest in Gestalt therapy theory and I joined the advanced group in the local training program. The following year I returned to the Summer Residential, this time in Rorschach, Switzerland and most of the other Clinical Practicum members also returned. The few new members were quickly integrated into the group. That year I chose to talk about Gestalt therapy and creativity, which really sparked my interest in theory and particularly how we conceptualize it. Of course, our nautical group went sailing again on a free day.
I continued in local program, spent another year in the clinical practicum in Chudobin, Czech Republic, meeting some of my new colleagues to explore Prague before and after the summer program. The following year the residential was held outside Helsinki, Finland, and I joined the Supervision Practicum for the first time. This provided an opportunity both to have my therapy supervised and to supervise and have my supervision supervised. And the location provided a chance to visit St. Petersburg, Russia, and a friend’s family on the west coast of Finland.
Back in Los Angeles, I followed up my creativity presentation with a brief talk on visual images of Gestalt therapy with no idea that it was the beginning of what became the video, "What’s Behind the Empty Chair?" It was through the encouragement of Todd Burley in particular that I began to think about how complex Gestalt theory is and how visual images might help students and trainees integrate the theory.
The 25th anniversary Summer Residential was held in a 10th Century castle outside Barcelona. I had always wanted to see the Gaudi architecture and was very excited about attending. It was my second year in the Supervision Practicum. I was doing more supervision in Los Angeles and felt the program was really supporting my work. I was also learning more about different cultures which led to my starting a group in Los Angeles for people who had emigrated from other parts of the world.
In 1997, the faculty invited me to be a Trainer Assistant. This program was created at the Summer Residential in Rorschach to give more advanced training experiences to those who doing training in their home countries. I continued to be a Trainer Assistant in Vevey (Switzerland), Yenne (France), and Eretria (Greece), as well as in the local training program and was accepted as a faculty member last year. For our 30th anniversary year, I look forward to returning to Spain, this time near the Guggenheim museum.
The training faculty has always been supportive of the growth of participants, both personally and professionally, from the basic program, through clinical and supervision practicums, trainer assistants and the faculty itself. A great deal of attention is given to the internal supports of each participant and the challenge of each level of the training program. Participants who want to be certified are supported through the process. The interest of the faculty is in the learning process and in participants developing their own style of Gestalt therapy.
The intensive training in Gestalt therapy has had a profound effect on my work as a therapist and supervisor. In addition, becoming a part of an international community of colleagues and developing meaningful personal relationships has provided opportunities to visit colleagues and friends and become a part of a world much larger, and much smaller, than I ever thought possible.
I think it is really a chance to have the program and idea of the Summer Residential out to a broader community. But I must admit that it is difficult for me to distinguish what I have specificly learned from the Summer Residentials separated from my further gestalt training and personal therapy. For me it has been a consecutive development, that still is going on, and very often for me, what I have learned intellectually at one time first really gets personally integrated afterwards and the other way round. Fortunately we have here in Denmark a living gestalt community and good supervision and training possibilities.
So I have to answer your questions more generally. My 4 participations in the Summer Residentials have contributed to strengthening and consolidating of both the theoretical and the practical part of gestalt therapy as well as the personal therapy gave me a good step forward. I for my parts returned, because I found, that the Summer Residentials still had much to give me, and that it was good to meet people. This meeting gestalt people from all over the world, I found is a very good and very important thing.
All together the Summer Residentials have contributed to that I now work full-time as gestalt therapist in a well-going private practice.
