Ansel L. Woldt - Gestalt Therapy: History, Theory, and Practice

GESTALT
THERAPY

GESTALT
THERAPY

History, Theory, and Practice

EDITORS

Ansel L. Woldt

Kent State University

Sarah M. Toman

Cleveland State University

Copyright 2005 by Sage Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information:

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gestalt therapy : history, theory, and practice / edited by Ansel L. Woldt, Sarah M. Toman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7619-2791-3 (pbk.)

1. Gestalt therapy. I. Woldt, Ansel L. II. Toman, Sarah M.

RC489.G4G4845 2005

616.89143dc22

2004019663

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

05 06 07 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

C ONTENTS

ANSEL L. WOLDT, EDD

Dialogue Respondent: Sarah M. Toman, PhD

CHARLES E. BOWMAN, MS

Dialogue Respondent: Edwin C. Nevis, PhD

MARGHERITA SPAGNUOLO LOBB, PSYD

Dialogue Respondent: Philip Lichtenberg, PhD

MALCOLM PARLETT, PHD

Dialogue Respondent: Robert G. Lee, PhD

SYLVIA FLEMING CROCKER, PHD

Dialogue Respondent: Peter Philippson, MSc

GARY M. YONTEF, PHD, MSW, ABPP

Dialogue Respondent: Reinhard Fuhr, PhD

JOSEPH MELNICK, PHD, AND SONIA MARCH NEVIS, PHD

Dialogue Respondent: Norman Shub, BCD

SABIN FERNBACHER, MA

Dialogue Respondent: Deborah Plummer, PhD

R. ELLIOTT INGERSOLL, PHD

Dialogue Respondent: Brian ONeill, MA, PsS

CYNTHIA REYNOLDS, PHD

Dialogue Respondent: Peter Mortola, PhD

SARAH M. TOMAN, PHD, AND ANN BAUER, PHD

Dialogue Respondents: Mark McConville, PhD, and Bruce Robertson, MSW

J. EDWARD LYNCH, PHD, AND BARBARA LYNCH, PHD

Dialogue Respondent: Joseph C. Zinker, PhD

PAUL SCHOENBERG, PHD, AND BUD FEDER, PHD

Dialogue Respondents: Jon Frew, PhD, and Irwin Gadol, PhD

RICK MAURER, PHD

Dialogue Respondent: Sen Gaffney, PhD

PHILIP BROWNELL, MDIV, PSYD

Dialogue Respondent: Karen Fleming, PhD

MICHAEL CRAIG CLEMMENS, PHD, MSW

Dialogue Respondent: Helga Matzko, MA, CAGS

CARA GARCIA, PHD, SUSAN BAKER, MA, AND ROBERT DEMAYO, PHD

Dialogue Respondent: George Isaac Brown, PhD

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

T his textbook would not have been possible without the contributions of talent, time, and tenacity of each chapter author and dialogue respondent. All brought their passion for Gestalt therapy to the printed page. We have established new friendships and enriched existing ones through the process of working together. All deserve an A for their genius, positive energy, and desire to make this a worthy contribution to the Gestalt literature.

We received much needed support and words of encouragement for this project from a variety of sourcesour students, our colleagues, and our friends. We are especially appreciative of the support we received from our editor at Sage, James Brace-Thompson, who assisted us through each stage of the development and production of this book. Thanks, too, to the others at Sage who offered their technical expertise and assistance, including Karen Ehrmann, our editorial assistant, and Sanford Robinson, our production editor.

We greatly appreciate Phil Brownells contribution to the appendix Digital Gestalt: Online Resources for the Discipline of Gestalt Therapy, in which he detailed the history of digital Gestalt and assisted Ansel in assembling the list of Gestalt resources available on the Internet at the time of completing the manuscript. Phils commitment to the Gestalt community is unwavering.

We also want to express our appreciation to two of the most generous, yet unpretentious supporters of Gestalts development and maintenance around the world. Rarely seen or heard, due to their quiet presence, are Edwin Nevis and Sonia March Nevis, whose unwavering support is always thereencouraging, coaching, creating, challenging, contributing, and urging us (and literally thousands of others) on to higher ground. Edwin and Sonia have been central in the founding of two of the worlds most prominent Gestalt centersthe Gestalt Institute of Cleveland nearly 60 years ago and, more recently, the Gestalt Meeting House at the Gestalt International Study Center on Cape Cod, located in a beautiful wooded setting adjacent to the National Seashore. Their continuing efforts and financial support for the Gestalt Writers Conferences had a direct impact on our decision to create this textbook. Thank you, Sonia and Edwin!

The book is dedicated, though, to the two people who believed in this project from its fledgling beginnings through its phase of standing by for departure to takeoff. Without their support and encouragement, this book would not have been completed.

So, a GRAND THANK YOU to
Nancy Woldt
and
Doug Toman

P ROLOGUE -F OREWORD

A NSEL L. W OLDT AND S ARAH T OMAN

ABOUT CREATING THIS TEXTBOOK

The idea for this textbook project originated with the Kent Gestalt Writers Groupa small group of friends and colleagues living near Kent, Akron, and Cleveland, Ohio, most of whom had been doctoral advisees of Ansel, the senior author, at some time. Some of them are present in this textbook as chapter authors (as noted in their biographical sketches). For a time we gathered together monthly, and then on an irregular basis, to support each others creative potential and writing spirit. Part of the fun in our gathering was that we rotated meetings from home to home and the host and/or hostess provided dinner or luncheon. Scrumptiously speaking, at some meetings there was more eating than writing. Interestingly, four books, two doctoral dissertations, some chapters in books, and several journal articles have emerged in 4 years since our inception, although not all of them were on Gestalt therapy.

The spirit of the writers group caught hold of Sarah Toman during our early gatherings, and she presented a fantastic idea of creating a textbook for novices entering the world of Gestalt. At that time, she was proposing a new Advanced Counseling Theories course on Gestalt therapy for doctoral students at Cleveland State University and was in the Post-Graduate Training Program at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland. This idea struck a particular note with me, Ansel, as I had been encouraged numerous times over the past three decades of teaching Gestalt therapy to use my course syllabi, lecture notes, class handouts, experiential activities, and other class materials to write an academically oriented textbook on Gestalt therapy. Support and encouragement from the writers group naturally led to the ideas taking form and moving toward the creation of this new gestaltthe coming together of all the pieces where the whole is greater than and different from the sum of its partsand, for us, truly an aha experience.