NEW GESTALT VOICES THE JOURNAL Edition 2 | January 2018 RC SCHOLARSHIP (MELISSA SEDMAK) contents 4 ABOUT NEW GESTALT VOICES 5 EDITOR’S LETTER 8 WHEN THE THERAPIST FALLS | Christine Dukes 21 THE VOICE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY | David Picó-Vila 33 COMING OUT IN APPRECIATION | Chris O’Malley 42 BEING PRESENT AS A TRADER | Steven Goldstein 47 BITE-SIZE GESTALT THERAPY | Wil L 55 THREADS HOME | Gabrielle Anaïs Tekerian 61 IN DEFENSE OF BEING A JERK | Karla Morse STAYING WITH UBIQUITOUS SHAME | Bernadette O’Koon, Gillian LaRue, 71 Janelle Dixon & Paige Ziegler A DISCOURSE ON ACCESSIBILITY IN GESTALT PSYCHOTHERAPY | Ayhan 78 Alman de la Osa & Nick Adlington THE PRESENCE OF GOD AND THE PNEUMENAL FIELD IN GESTALT THERAPY 90 | Philip Brownell 100 BOOK REVIEW| Kamila Bialy 106 PROBLEM PAGE | Dr Fake Pearls 107 SUPPORTERS 108 EVENTS AND NOTICES 3 about the journal New Gestalt Voices is a platform to support Publisher: New Gestalt Voices mostly those who have not published Flat 5, 24 Bemerton Street before to share their writings in relation London N1 0BT to gestalt therapy and other applications of gestalt practice. Website: www.newgestaltvoices.org For all editorial matters: We publish a twice-yearly journal, [email protected] which is issued in PDF format on a free subscription basis, with dissemination via For advertising enquiries: all gestalt teaching institutions and major [email protected] associations. Editor-in-chief & founder: John Gillespie In addition to the journal, we also enable sharing of other forms of creativity, NGV team: Nils Konstantinovs, Olena including images and audio-visual Zozulya, Maria Grigorieva, Melissa Sedmak, material, on our website. There you’ll Ayhan Alman de la Osa, Elena Ryabtseva, find much more information about the Jen Clayton, Dawn Gwilt, Deirdre Foley, Tracey-Kay Coe journal, the people behind it, and the ways in which you can contribute. Production editor & webmaster: Sally Taylor If you’d like to be notified when the next edition is published, please sign up for the Journal design & layout: Trey Taylor, Sally NGV newsletter via the website. Taylor The experience of writing and sharing Disclaimer: New Gestalt Voices is an independent publisher and does not officially endorse any writing can be a lonely one. If you have products or services or organisations advertised or read an article and been moved or otherwise featured in this publication. All text and provoked, please tell us and our authors images are accepted on condition that permission about your experience. Most email has been given for use in this publication. addresses follow articles, otherwise Copyright: All text, images and design in please write via the editor-in-chief. We will this publication are subject to copyright. Any publish responses in the next edition. unauthorised duplication is strictly prohibited. 4 editor’s letter As a student-run enterprise, we could not put this journal together without the support and contribution of a significant number of people who have helped to proof-read, edit, and generally to maintain spirits during the sometimes onerous task of producing a journal – TraceyKay Coe, Dawn Gwilt, Jen Clayton, Elena Ryabtseva, Deirdre Foley, and others. It truly takes a community to produce a journal. Thank you all who helped. I am particularly grateful to Sally Taylor, our Another development is that NGV is now able print and website editor, for all that she does to publish longer manuscripts as stand-alone to showcase the work of our writers and booklets. If your writing warrants a larger contributors to our blog in the best possible audience, but is too long for a typical journal, light. we will publish you. Over the past six months, the NGV I come now to this second edition. It is, if community has explored different ways in anything, more punchy, and more political which we can support greater belonging and than the first. voice right across the gestalt profession. We are alive to the lack of support that is often Christine Dukes, an experienced but never experienced by people who have recently before published therapist, kicks us off with graduated, and the extent to which many of a courageous and deeply moving piece about us feel alone with our particular insecurities her personal experience of bereavement. and vulnerabilities. I was touched by the This is a tour de force that well captures many who told us they felt supported by the Christine’s depth and humility: I challenge voices in our first edition. I believe we are on you to get through it without tears! to something. David Picó-Vila, a Spanish therapist In this issue we are delighted to be launching and musician, writes about the voice in a research bursary, with funding supplied by psychotherapy. This is the first time David Relational Change to support research in the has been published in English. This piece field of ‘relationality’ (see inside front cover). highlights the nuances of the role that the This is one of a number of practical initiatives voice plays in psychotherapy. It is individual we expect to launch over the next year. and groundbreaking. David, you must write more! 5 Chris O’Malley, a UK-based gestalt therapist, Karla Morse from New Jersey warrants writes on the theme of appreciation. He special appreciation for her bravery in argues for the centrality of appreciation as a sharing her experience of coming to terms concept foregrounding an attitude towards with her prejudice – her “inner jerk”. Within a ‘what is’ – an appreciation even of the difficult field model where we accept the inevitability and the ugly. His article gestures movingly that we all hold prejudice, it is nonetheless towards the place of the spiritual in our inspiring and rare to read a piece where the praxis. author shares their experiences of grappling with prejudice including racism. I am delighted to include Steven Goldstein’s article about the application of Relational ‘Staying with Ubiquitous Shame’ is an article Change’s SOS model to the financial trading written by Bernadette O’Koon and three floor. Steven talks about the importance doctoral student colleagues at Wright State of presence in this environment. We need University School of Professional Psychology more and stronger testimony to the various in Dayton, Ohio – Gillian LaRue, Janelle Dixon applications of gestalt outside of the therapy and Paige Ziegler. The article confronts room. internalised oppression as encountered in a therapy session, and in so doing it speaks for Now we come to two very creative writers, a society and an epoch. I am in awe of all the each of whom find their own language authors – their honesty and how much they to conjure a landscape that conveys the bare of themselves. This is a must read piece. poignancy of their personal and familial narratives. Next, we have a dialogue in which two of my training colleagues from London, Wil L writes of her journey to and through Ayhan Alman de la Osa and Nick Adlington, gestalt. The gratitude she expresses to a past exchange views on the accessibility of gestalt. tutor at the end of her article speaks so much I commend this article for Ayhan’s behind- for so many of us. I haven’t read much that the-scenes re-imagining of how gestalt got conveys so well the spirit of what ‘this gestalt its name (it makes me chuckle), and Nick and shit’ is all about. Ayhan’s thoughtful exchanges. These guys set down a marker for the next generation Gabrielle Anaïs Tekerian writes of the of gestaltists. Based on their concerns and disparate threads that lead her “home” – a calibre of dialogue, the state of the gestalt quest that spans continents and national profession is indeed healthy. identities in the search for something that perhaps is only available, ephemerally, in the Another article I am delighted to include present moment. This is an achingly beautiful is Phil Brownell’s response to Nils piece of writing. Konstantinovs’ piece in the first edition, on Nils’ experience of gestalt psychotherapy I am particularly heartened that, given the as a religious person. Phil is an experienced choice of what to write about, the authors of gestalt therapist and writer – we welcome our next two pieces decided to write about contributions from anyone in the field that race. engages with issues likely to be important 6 to newer gestaltists. Phil sets out his ideas about a "pneumenal field" that contains God. SEEKING He invites exploration of what working within this field might look like. It’s great to push the CONTRIBUTIONS boundaries of theory in our journal. Thanks, Phil. Our next edition is scheduled for publication in July 2018. We welcome anything that can Finally, we have a review of Harmut Rosa’s be shared in PDF format. You don’t have to ‘Resonance: A Sociology of the Relationship be a student or recently qualified, or a first- to the World’ (currently only in German) by time writer. And we are particularly keen to Polish therapist and sociologist Kamila Bialy. feature more contributions from the many Harmut’s book traverses territory familiar gestaltists working in the coaching and to gestaltists - how do we escape existential organisational fields – we know you’re out isolation and know the other - yet from the there! perspective of an adjacent field of study. Kamila’s insightful review will hopefully whet If long-form writing is not your thing, or your appetite for the English translation due you’d rather not wait for the next issue of the out later this year. journal, you might like to produce a shorter piece or a video or something else that And finally, finally, please do check out our can be published immediately on our blog.