NEW GESTALT VOICES INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL Edition 7 | January 21 NEW GESTALT VOICES | EDITION 7 | JANUARY 2021 New Gestalt Voices An international community and not-for-profit organisation committed to widening participation and exploring new ways of building community via application of gestalt (and aligned disciplines) across a number of domains – health services, education, therapy, organisational/ business, community, and government/political. CONTRIBUTION OF GESTALT comes to us to innovate – commissioner, We understand gestalt as a socially transform- organisation, team or individual. ative approach that is concerned with restoring 'aliveness' to human living and activity - and with COMMUNITY an orientation towards the wider 'field' - the The NGV approach esteems development at the various social wholes of which our activities form group/community/systemic level. We turn our a part. Gestalt's founding text says "it is attention to the wider systems, including impossible for anyone to be extremely happy until structures of power, influence and oppression we are happy more generally (Perls et al. 1951). (such as racism), against which much traditional change work proceeds. EXPERIMENT NGV offers a test bed for innovation with a view to supporting applications of gestalt in relation to social justice, environmental and political challenges – what Paul Goodman, one of gestalt’s founders, called “social-therapy”. CATALYST We do not see NGV as doing it all ourselves. We act as a network – or convenor of ‘worknets’ (Bruno Latour) – first phase mover, incubator and ultimately support for others to enter into new areas. We will continue to support anyone who 'Spanish Holywood' images credit 2 NEW GESTALT VOICES | EDITION 7 | JANUARY 2021 about our journal Through our international journal, New Gestalt Voices offers a platform to support those who have not published before, and PUBLISHER: New Gestalt Voices. Flat 5, 24 Bemerton others, to share their creativity in relation to Street, London N1 0BT, UK gestalt coaching, organisational practice and therapy. GUEST EDITOR Bernadette Latuch The journal is usually published twice-yearly [email protected] in PDF format, and is downloadable from our website. We also publish short-form ORIGINAL DESIGN CONCEPT : Trey Taylor / Sally Taylor articles and opinion pieces on our blog and occasional papers, as well as images and audio-visual material. EDITORIAL SUPPORT: John Gillespie (UK) We invite a range of expression, including Annie Garrety (Aus) poems, stories, journaling, dialogue, debate, WEBSITE: photographs, drawings and other artwork, www.newgestaltvoices.org as well as responses to previously published articles. FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/newgestaltvoices Contributions are welcome from trainees, recently qualified or experienced ® practitioners, PhDs, non-academics and New Gestalt Voices is an independent publisher and does not officially endorse enthusiasts alike. We invite non-gestaltists to any products or services or organisations contribute to our conversations. advertised or otherwise featured in this publication or on its website. All text and Thanks to all who have been part of this images and design contained herein are experience. subject to copyright. 3 contents 5 EDITOR'S LETTER | BERNADETTE LATUCH 16 GESTALT AND CAPITALISM: THOUGHTS IN TIMES OF PANDEMIC | Ivan Moyano 22 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN PRACTICE, SCAR TISSUE, HOW ADDICTION CAN BE TRAUMA'S MANIFESTATION | Romina Baldwin 39 THE POWER OF CREATIVITY IN GESTALT THERAPY | Caroline Vassallo 50 FINDING A VOICE: IN THE SCHOOL SYSTEM | Kate Egawa 58 POWER AND POSITION: IS IT TIME TO MODERATE GESTALT'S PHENOMENOLOGICAL IMPERIALISM IN FAVOUR OF A MORE 'FIELD HUMBLE' VIEW OF SELF | John Gillespie 66 AGORATHERAPY: BRINGING GESTALT INTO THE SQUARES | David Cebrián Tarrasón, PhD 70 A GESTALT PRACTITIONER-THEORIST REFLECTS ON RECENT DYNAMICS OF OUR CO-CREATED FIELD | Seán Gaffney 71 LIFE ON EARTH | Seán Gaffney 74 GENERATIONAL SPLIT - PASSING THE TORCH | Kamila Bialy 79 CURATING AN EXPRESSION OF RELATIONAL GESTALT THERAPY | Various - Scarborough Counselling and Psychotherapy Training Institute, Relational Gestalt Therapy Diploma Programme. 4 NEW GESTALT VOICES | EDITION 7 | JANUARY 2021 WITH SUPPORTFROM IAAGT editor's letter As I write this editor’s letter, I am looking out my dining room window at the snow falling on a quiet Sunday afternoon in Pittsburgh. I wrestle my inner critic with one hand and reach for the right words with the other, while my four-year-old son is (ironically) playing a game called “Perfection,” in the background. Bless him. He is trying to fit all of the pieces into place before a timer runs out and the whole puzzle pops into dazzling disarray. 5 NEW GESTALT VOICES | EDITION 7 | JANUARY 2021 I think about “Perfection,” perfectionism, procrastination, time running out…and how this moment says so much about what I have learned through my involvement in NGV. In short, I (we) can keep chasing the great white whale of perfection, justice, transcendence… or I can accept that as soon as I (we?) have something figured out, it’s all going to col- lapse into another beautiful mess—thesis, antithesis, synthesis…new thesis, new antithesis, new synthesis…”world without end” (hopefully?). And in acceptance of the seeming futility of it all, I find meaning and pur- pose, I make art, I am art—and like my child when the timer runs out, I can laugh joyfully (and, given dynamic field conditions, sometimes resist and protest) as I see one figure collapsing and another emerging… When John asked me to act as guest edi- And this way of being (and doing) togeth- tor of this edition of NGV, I was moved not er—raw, honest, from the heart—is, in my only by his trust in me, but also by his style opinion, the backbone of relational gestalt of leadership. For a self-proclaimed “nar- and a theme that carries throughout this cissist” (the accuracy of which I dispute), edition of the NGV International Journal. John is rather shy in receiving feedback Also prominent in this edition is the idea on (what I perceive to be) one of his great- that gestalt and art (and gestalt as art) can est strengths: making space for others to operate within and beyond the bounds of shine. In momentarily handing over the traditional therapy to facilitate personal, reins to me, John models what it means community, and global transformations. A to share leadership, to provide a platform small print on my bookshelf reads “make for “new voices” to emerge. John has said art, not war,” and yet in making art do we that he created NGV because of his own not also fight war? (That sentence is in- difficulty finding a “home” in the gestalt tentionally a slippery one…) world, a place that would embrace all of him. In his search for a home, he has cre- Anyway… ated a home (or maybe more of a play- ground) where divergent, timid, and/or This edition opens with a provocative marginalized voices (including mine) are piece by Ivan Moyano, “Gestalt and Capi- welcomed, heard, and supported in the talism: Thoughts in Times of Pandemic.” I process of maturation. While our profes- met Ivan in March of 2020, the very week sional collaboration has been rewarding, that the COVID pandemic “broke.” We it is our friendship that gives me courage were in New York City attending the first and the hope to persevere in this broken weekend of Ruella Frank’s Developmen- world. tal Somatic Psychotherapy Training. Our 6 NEW GESTALT VOICES | EDITION 7 | JANUARY 2021 training was cut short by a day, and Ivan “This is how she learned that it is true what and I spent the day walking around Central they say, that the wolf is the wisest of all. If Park. We stopped by the Imagine Mosa- you listen closely, the wolf in its howling is ic and talked about our favorite Beatles always asking the most important ques- songs. We sat together in the grass, not re- tion—not where is the next food, not where alizing that in a matter of weeks that same is the next fight, not where is the next ground would be occupied by hospital dance?—but the most important question tents. From those strange circumstances, in order to see into and behind, to weight a friendship was forged between two work- the value of all that lives, ‘wooooooooor ing class gestaltists from opposite sides of aieeeee th’ soooooooool?’ ‘wooooooooor the Atlantic. As I reflect back on our con- aieeeee th’ soooooooool?’ Where is the versations that week and in the months fol- soul? Where is the soul?” lowing, I am moved and proud to see Ivan share his reflections—and himself—with Romina’s piece is not only an elegant ac- the rest of the gestalt world. In articulating ademic study, but also a beautiful medi- his “more political version” of Gestalt Ther- tation on the power of relational, dialogic, apy, Ivan’s care for the future of gestalt embodied gestalt therapy to restore alive- and of humanity is figural. I wonder what it ness. As Romina so beautifully states, “… might mean for us as therapists, coaches, the antithesis of trauma is flow and this and practitioners, for our clients, and for can be achieved by awakening….” our world if we were to lean into the truth of our “working class” status…will we be “with- Equally moving is the case study present- drawn or transformed” or is there a way in ed by Caroline Vassallo in “The Power of which we can transcend being “products” Creativity in Gestalt Therapy.” Caroline of a global marketplace? It is a privilege to describes with poignant detail how the introduce the voice of this “working class use of art in session facilitated healing and hero” to NGV’s readership. meaningful contact between herself and her client, a 40-year old woman previous- In the next article, “Scar Tissue: How Ad- ly diagnosed with borderline personality diction can be Trauma’s Manifestation—A disorder.