This event is hosted by the Morris County Unit.
New to a Unit event? NASW-NJ has 12 volunteer-led, county-based Units that hold regional events around the state of New Jersey for members in that area. (However due to the public health emergency, Unit events will be held virtually until further notice!) These events are planned and coordinated by an appointed volunteer Chair and Co-Chair, as well as a Regional Representative from NASW-NJ’s Board of Directors. The Morris County Unit Chairs are Cheryl Cohen, MSW, LCSW (cherylcohen.msw@gmail.com) and Veronica Grysko-Sporer, MSW (vgsporer@gmail.com) and the Northwest Regional Representative is also Veronica Grysko-Sporer.
Unit events are a fun, informative way to grow your network near your home or workplace. These events are one of the many benefits of NASW-NJ membership, but we do invite all mental health professional to join us at this meeting. Learn more about our Units here.
Relational Gestalt Therapy
Date: Wednesday, March 10th from 6:00-7:30pm
Zoom login information will be emailed to you once you register. Attendees will earn 1.5 clinical CEUs for this webinar.
Course objectives:
- How has gestalt therapy changed since it’s inception in the 1950’s?
- What is relational gestalt therapy? How does it differ from the original gestalt therapy methods?
- What do these terms mean in relational gestalt therapy: singularity, principle of possible relevance, contemporaneity, perspectival view of reality, I-thou/I-It encounter, presence, inclusion, commitment to the between, and the paradoxical theory of change?
Relational Gestalt Therapy
Presented by: Andy Lapides, MSW, LCSW, BCD
In the 1960’s and 1970’s, the heyday of gestalt therapy, many therapists were exposed to the older style of gestalt therapy. Many remember the confrontational style of Fritz Perls, one of the co-founders of gestalt therapy, made famous by the “Gloria Film” (which many of us watched in graduate school). Perls’ approach was shocking, almost abrasive, and creatively brilliant, yet ethically concerning to say the least.
Since then, beginning in the 1980’s, gestalt therapy has evolved beyond the “hot seat” approach (made famous by Fritz’s theatrics) and has moved toward a “relational gestalt therapy” perspective. The relational gestalt movement is an ethical turn toward valuing the primacy of a co-created, embodied, relationship within an applied-phenomenological practice.
Two of the main theorists involved with this evolution is Lynne Jacobs and Gary Yontef at the Pacific Gestalt Institute in Los Angeles, California. I was fortunate to study with both Lynne and Gary in California for one week during their residential program in 2016. Lynne is also an intersubjective psychoanalyst and teaches in both arenas (gestalt and psychoanalysis).
I originally trained in New York City at the Gestalt Center for Psychotherapy & Training from 2005 to 2008. I went on to train in psychoanalysis and group analysis. Since then, I have been the secretary of The New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy, the first gestalt therapy training program founded by Laura and Fritz Perls in the 1950’s.
My approach to psychotherapy has been influenced by my training, personal therapy, along with being a social worker for over twenty years working with a variety of populations and settings. I don’t use either gestalt therapy or psychoanalytic psychotherapy in a pure way and work more pragmatically. I find this pragmatic approach is grounded in relational gestalt therapy philosophy.
I published a paper in an integrative journal in 2012 entitled “A Gentler Gestalt Therapy: On Reducing Stimulation in Adult Survivors of Abuse”. Since then, I have been teaching at Rutgers School of Social Work as well as working in my private practice. I enjoy doing a variety of modalities: couples work, group work, individual psychotherapy, and family therapy.
