Susie: I am a Gestalt therapist in NY and a co-director-with Iris Fodor of the Center for Integretaive GT (NY). We met in at the SF conference.

John: I'm completing a masters in counseling at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio (USA), as well as a year-long Gestalt therapy training. I'm looking to enter private practice.

Jean-Marie: I'm in France, chairman of the "Institut Français de Gestalt-thérapie" based in Bordeaux but having training programs in several places in Europe (see http://www. cyberstation.fr/~gestalt). I wrote more than 60 articles, chapters and books in GT and soon "Contact, the unfolding self" will be translated and published by Cleveland Press and probably in other languages. I'll come to the AAGT conference next June in Cleveland, with a workshop, and will be happy to meet many of you. I'm also the editor in chief of the french G. Journal, published 2 times a year, each one about a specific topic, 200 pages each. #0 about awareness and unconscious, #1 about clinical work, # about nastiness, next March, about "id", next October about group in GT. OK to receive papers on "groups in GT" to be translated in french… Currently, I'm working about re-reading Perls & Goodman in the light of postmodernity and social constructionism…

Morgan: I'm Director of the Gestalt Institute of Santa Cruz and I also run (through GISC) an in-house gestalt training program at Esalen Institute in Big Sur CA, with John Soper. We offer four month long gestalt groups and four weekend intensives a year to Esalen Institute staff. We give elective credit for visiting teachers such as Robert Hall, Christine Price, Gordon Wheeler, etc. Recently, Phil Brownell came down and did a great demonstration of the I-thou aspects of the work. It was really interesting for me because Phil and I have a relationship that has been largely internet based and to see him in person for (I think) only the second time was something new. I'm amazed at the depth of relationships that can develope over the net and what wonderful things they lead to...

I'm also involved (with Phil) in Gestalt Global Corporation and various projects connected to the internet and distance learning.

I'm member of AAGT and the current co-chair of the Interest Group on Gestalt Institutes Training and Development.

Right now training and demonstrations are my focus.

It's very exciting to see more activity on this list. I'm interested to know more about others who we have yet to hear from.

Suzy: I live in Wilmington, Delaware, USA. I have a Master's degree in Interpersonal Communication and I am working on a second Master's degree in Social Work. I graduated last year from a three year Gestalt Training Program at the Pennsylvania Gestalt Center. I currently work at an agency which does assessments and intensive short term intervention therapy with suicidal/homicidal or otherwise high risk adolescents and their families. I am also in the process of creating a private practice, specializing in working with surviviors of trauma and abuse. I enjoy participating in these online discussion groups and hope to learn from you all on this one.

Bruce: G'day everyone. Nice to make some new contacts and renew old ones previously established through the AAGT list.

I first encountered Gestalt in the late 60's when I was working as a young clinical psychologist in the psychiatric system in Australia. Throughout the seventies I pursued training in Gestalt, and then in the early 80's was invited to co-direct a Gestalt training institute in NSW. I continued in this role for 9 years when we put the institute into recess and since that time have continued to run gestalt training groups as a member of faculty of other training organisations in Australia.

I currently work full time in a University as a psychotherapist in a counselling service and also teach individual and group psychotherapy to Masters of Clinical Psychology students in an experiential setting.

Looking forward to some good dialogue.

Charlie: I've been way too busy this year and have limited my Cyber-time to lurking.

I am President of the Indianapolis Gestalt Institute and of AAGT. That keeps me busy enough in addition to the jobs I hold which actually put food on the table (I've got five children, two in college, and one getting married in the spring!).

I practice Gestalt therapy exclusively and my focus this year has been in merging/understanding field theory in all it's modern day manifestations with the more limited view outlined in Perls, Hefferline and Goodman.

I am also interested in, and doing workshops called, "Relational Gestalt Therapy".

Maybe in the New Year I will find the time to write more on the Net!

Catherine: I am psychologist and live in Marburg/Germany.

As I work as a Gestalt therapist in a free practice I am interested in contacting other therapists having the same "roots" as I have. Meanwhile I am also studying the systemic family therapy and so I do a lot of experiments bringing together those different ways of thinking. But it works and it is exciting for me to see the outcome. Currently in Germany psychotherapists have many problems if they are not behaviour therapists or psychoanalysists. These days there will be a new law concerning psychotherapy. The consequence will be that collegues who worked since years are forbidden to continue because of working with "wrong" methods. Thats why we have to do a lot of political work with some colleagues.

Sorry for my english, warm greetings!

Bruno: Checking in! Editor, Australian Gestalt Journal, Editor, The Experiential Therapist, Editor, the Despatch; psychologist/Gestalt therapist, ex-management training consultant, ex-high school, English/History teacher, ex-Karate instructor, married twice, born in Muggia (Trieste), Italy 1945; first Gestalt group participation 1979; trained with Don Diespecker and Frank-M. Staemmler. I hope that this'll get off the ground as did the aagt list for a while. Season's Greetings!

Brian: Guess i'll introduce myself now.... i have just finished my Master's program in Counseling at Appalachian State in Boone, NC. While there, i became interested in Gestalt Therapy by interacting with Dr. Jack Mulgrew...

I've been working since May 97 at an agency in High Point, NC... working with youth ages 7-17... been seeing individuals, families, and doing home and school visits too.

I am currently still trying to learn the "lingo" of counseling.. .. working with school teachers who talk about IEP's, BEH, and ADD... =)

I would love to receive further training in Gestalt.. if for no other purpose than to just be around the atmosphere of a training facility... too often in this agency world that i know, people adhere to a single view of how things are, and are unwilling to explore the many possible realities.

In my personal life, I've just been married. Met a wonderful woman, and haven't been the same since. We just spent a week in Key West FL, and I'd love to return. I spend time with my wife, my cat Harriett, and my friends... I love antiques and auctions, and i hope to learn more about each of you.

Mike: My wife, Lynda, is a gestalt psychotherapist and trains gestalt psychotherapists at Metanoia Institute, London.

Since she is incomputant I act as her 'computer operator' and print out postings from the list for her.

I'm usually a lurker not a contributor.

Cara: Wow, "rounds" online! What fun!

I am a professor of education, a certified gestalt educational counselor by the Los Angeles Institute (GTILA). My interest is the use of gestalt for academic anxiety (reading reluctance, writing blocks, test anxiety, stage fright, etc.). That interest began to develop when I was a classroom teacher at the junior and senior high school levels working as a reading specialist. Students in our highly literate society do not go very long with a reading problem before they experience great anger and resentment about it. Being from the Midwest, I had been raised to cut off my feelings so when I ended up in Watts after the 1965 riots with a bunch of angry low literacy kids, I was confronted with my need to get in touch with my own anger. These were the days of the T-groups (Kurt Lewin) and that was my first taste of gestalt. When I went to graduate school I got into a gestalt group and from there to training.

That initial interest has resulted in the major research focus of my career: I supervise educational therapy sessions for academic anxiety in Pepperdine's clinics in Culver City, CA (Los Angeles, near the airport) and Irvine (Orange County, just south of Los Angeles County). Those sessions are conducted by Psy.D. and M.A. candidates who are interested in working with children and learning gestalt. Unfortunately the psych guys who teach the humanistic/existential track give about one lecture on gestalt so students are hungry for more. I want to publish a manual on educational therapy for academic anxiety for this population.

As for the education students, they are very needful of help with basic communication and introspection processes. I have just published Too Scared to Learn: Overcoming Academic Anxiety through Corwin Press, the educational arm of Sage. Last summer I published an article "Educational Therapy: An Ancillary to Family Therapy" which is at http://www.pgi.edu/prog6/garcia.htm

Everything is going quite well with these projects. I believe that schools are becoming a center for the delivery of mental health services in our society. California elementary schools are using "Healthy Start" grants from the state gov't to hire social workers and psychologists to work with parents in finding all the social services for which they are eligible. Pepperdine and USC place psych practicum students at one of these sites to provide psychotherapy and educational therapy to students. I hope this program grows...

I am very interested in meeting others who are doing education-related work. I love email and also I will be at the AAGT conference in Cleveland in June.

Sylvia: I´m 32 years psychologist from Uruguay (SouthAmerica). I began studying Gestalt before I got my title, as a continuation of a very succesful therapy. That took me to Gestalt, the realization that it really works, that is a way of growing accesible to anyone who has the will to...

I colaborate with Gestalt! as part of the editors staff.

I´ve been working as a Gestalt therapist with individual, adult patients, since more or less 6 years. Now I´m working in a Program that vinculates elder people with abandoned children, in a role called of "Grandparent friends", although I don´t work specifically with Gestalt there. I´m specializing in gestalt approach of somatic illness with Dra. Adriana Schnacke. I´m forming a team with a doctor friend and we hope to work with persons who suffer a physicall illness, helping them explore their sense and meaning, taking the illness as a path for growing. I´m also studying in depth the dream work these days...I began to read Jung for first time! It seems for me that all items relating to people are so fascinating that I´m in a period of intense study, in fact, I don´t have the time to study or learn all the things I would like to...!

Anne: A beautiful warm Sunday morning and I'm checking in before going out into the garden. I'm almost at the longest day of the year and before Christmas arrives we have three family birthdays!

I've been having a sabbatical year - a personal retreat to discover how I'm going to work in 1998 in my own practice as a Gestalt therapist, supervisor and teacher here in Christchurch, New Zealand. The focus of the year has been on the spiritual nature of this incarnation and conscious awareness of what that means both personally and professionally.

I am involved in the setting up a Gestalt Associaton in New Zealand. I was also a co-founder of the Gestalt Institute of New Zealand and on the faculty for a couple of years.

I have enjoyed meeting you through your check-ins and look forward to some more replies.

Christmas greetings to you all.

Guilherme: Hello, I'm a psychiatrist from Brazil, I live in Salvador Bahia where I have a private cabinet where I practicize.

My interest in Gestalt comes from the fact that I have been submited to it during a few weeks and the feeling that it's really fun and, MOST OF ALL, it Works fine!

The problem is that I couldn't have a formal course and so I don't feel able to use it with my patients., I entered in this list hoping to learn more...

So I'll go on just "lurking" and here and there I'll pose some questions.

My best regards for all of you and I hope you'll forgive my bad english...

Wilbert: For 18 years I was a molecular cell biologist at the state university of Utrecht, the Netherlands. I did cancer research, but could not cope with the people bearing these tumors. So I came in contact with Gestalt therapy and discovered its great value not only for people needing therapy, but also for people (me!) doing scientific research and teaching students. From there on I became a Gestaltist. About 9 years ago I left the university as an assistant professor and settled as a Gestalt therapist and health counsellor in my own cabinet. Since june this year I am one of the two directors of the Flemisch-Dutch Gestalt Institute 'Multi-di-Mens'.

I like Gestalt because it is such a convenient matter of fact approach.

Phil: I was wondering if you, having come from the field of molecular cell biology, had noticed the difference between Goldstein's structural-biological model of the organism-environment field and Lewin's functional model of the lifespace. It seems to me that Gestalt therapists often have difficulty navigating as they move between these two metaphors. I don't know if your exposure to Gestalt has included field relationships. Do you have any thoughts?

I was also struck with the way you were touched by those with cancer, and I'd be interested to know of you've done much work with the terminally ill.

Wilbert: I did indeed work with terminal ill patients. Especially these patients and of course their spouses did me often feel 'nasty', because the importance of these patients at that time was for me to keep them alive for 'my tumor'! I was not very respons-able in my 30ties. As a matter of fact I did not do much with field things because the metaphors used by Gestaltist sounded for me very 'unscientific'. At the moment I am most attracted to Lewin's approach. I myself see the 'thing' 'man as a biological being' - that is all that can be measured and recorded in and on an individual: a concept. On the other side there is 'man as a cultural being', also a 'thing', a replacable number in economics, a case in medicine, or a historical concept. The interface is the dynamic process 'man as a human being'. Sometimes this process has more biological characteristics, e.g. a woman in labor, or someone in intensive care after heart failure, etc. At other times the cultural aspects are more profound, e.g. a therapist doing his/here work or a judge in function. In my view contact is between human beings, between those dynamic interfaces. As you see there is some of Lewin in it. This metaphor gives me the oppurtunity to see the 'things' in people and at the same time meet them in contact. It is especially convenient for diagnosis. For instance I can see people that are very tired, not because they have some intense emotional problem, but because in the first place their thyroid function is sub-optimal. With these people you can do all kinds of psychotherapy, and they will probably benefit a little, but in my view it is more wise to help them first with their thyroid and thereafter otherwise.

My methaphor gives me the opportunity to deal with (and even understand it a little bit) 'mind and matter' and to deal with traditions, religion and cultural aspects, while 'seeing the other as he/she is' at the same time. It is my humble solution to 'labeling'.

Jim: I am a psychotherapy intern in San Francisco, CA. I have a nearly 20 year interest in Gestalt as a therapeutic modality and a life philosophy. I was first exposed to it as an undergraduate at Michigan State where I tested out Fritz' stuff on friends, especially playing with dreams and dream work. More recently I was at a training center in SF that was run on Gestalt principles and taught mostly working with awareness and contact with a strong focus on the process of beginnings and endings.

Currently, I am in the process of working my way through the M.F.C.C. licensing process in California. I work with highly traumatized individuals in a low fee clinic setting. I find that the basic principles of Gestalt are the solid foundation for whatever else I might do in my work. I love the work that I am doing and the lengthy licensing process with very low renumeration has taken a toll on me..

Sabina: I live in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I graduated from psychologist at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and I did a three year Gestalt Training Program at the Asociación de Psicólogos de Buenos Aires with teachers like Dr. Norberto Levy, Dra. Adriana Schnake (Nana) , Lic. Victoria y Marta Atienza , etc. I currently work at hospital in the Prevention program with groups open to the community . I m belong to the IGTA and Im recently include myself at the Scientific and Medical Network .

Last year I went at Esalen in the work study program with Cinthia and Julian Silverman. Actually I work with my profession in a private practice and I discover I like very much develop new forms to communicating with Internet. I m coordinating 2 lists , one is the list of gestalt in spanish (with the thechnical support of IGTA) and the other is the list of Tango because my father dead and I countinous his project in the website .

One of my interests is " connect" the spanish gestaltists between and integrating with the others countries (ambiscious project ?...). For this reason I created a website called Gestaltnet , in brieve available in English too. Im working with the other people in a magazine specializing in Gestalt here.

Some times ago I sent to you an email to conect the both list in spanish and in english and I selected one of the "egg or the chiken" to "talk" about it in the spanish list and rerturn to you the conclusions . I think it s very dificult to do it but in the measure of my possibilities I can do it ocasionally.

Well, thank you and I'm sorry if my English is not very legibily.

Rudolf: My particular interest in Gestalt Therapy is the application of its principles in everyday life situation, as a way of being.

My Gestalt journey began 1977 with a life changing experience, at Freie Universitaet Berlin, from which I graduated with a major in Adult Education. I left Germany 1982 and have been living in Christchurch, New Zealand, for the last 14 years. Here I have been working as a Gestalt therapist in private practice for the last 11 years. Apart from workshops and seminars I have been involved in Gestalt and counselling training. I keep up my own ongoing training with occasionally attending European Summer Residentials with GTILA (Gestalt Therapy Institute of Los Angeles).

For the last 3 years I have been the editor of a Newsletter, called "Gestalt Dialogue", published twice yearly. The last issue focuses mainly on intimate relationships. For 1998 I will be working together with my partner Mirjam Busch with couples. That's what excites me at the moment.

I am interested in any thoughts you might have on Gestalt couple work, or any publications you know of.

Let me know if you are interested in my "down-to-earth" newsletter.

Simon: HI! Trainee Clinical Psychologist studying for my doctorate in Plymouth, UK. I am in my second year of training, and my search for a therapeutic approach which concorded with my own personal values and beliefs has led me to Gestalt. I am about to begin my third clinical placement, working with children and families, having already completed placements in adult mental health and learning disabilities.

I am also contemplating a study of client perceptions of the process of TWO-CHAIR WORK, and would welcome any thoughts regarding existing research in the area, ideas for possible areas of inquiry etc. I would also welcome contact from anyone who has used GROUNDED THEORY as a tool for studying process within therapy.

Looking forward to hearing and learning from you all!

Lars: I find it interesting to experience everyone's stepping forward into the limelight of this "Cyber room" that the Gstalt-L list seems to constitute. I does feel like an online "round", as you wrote, Cara.

I live and work in Stockholm, Sweden, where I have my private practice as a Gestalt therapist, Artist and Graphic designer. I worked solely as an Artist for about 10 years after my exam at the National College of Art, Craft and Design in Stockholm. Then, after a period of personal crisis, I found Gestalt therapy as a way of turning my "I-focus" into a "Thou-focus". I'm still working on integrating these focuses into living "I-Thou". I don't think it's easy, though.

My particular interest is in exploring the visual and creative aspects of Gestalt philosophy, where I combine my background as an Artist with therapeutic work into a kind of Gestalt Art therapy. I also try to express the Gestalt quality in editing and designing the Nordic Gestalt Journal and two Web sites, Gestalt inFormation (in Swedish so far) and the Gestalt Gallery.

The Gestalt Gallery is a just started experiment that I hope will become an interesting platform for Gestalt people around the world to explore the artistic and creative sides of Gestalt phenomenology and terminology. As an Artist I find the Gestalt terminology and it's manifestations very much Image and Form oriented. Art relies heavily on "wholes that are greater than the sum of it's parts" - and the correlation of Gestalt work and Art is intimate, I think.

I have a little family, constituted by my wife Meit - who is just ready to go as a Gestalt therapist, too - and my son Joen, 3,5 years old. These to wonderful people take a big bite each of my time and space and I have to stop here to keep my appointment with them this evening.