THE HISTORY OF IAAGT

IAAGT was founded in 1989 originally as AAGT (International was added in 2020).

IAAGT was incorporated in January of 1993 as a non-profit educational incorporation. Our first annual general meeting (AGM) was held in May 1994 where we decided to create an Annual International Gestalt Therapy Conference. To date, we’ve held 16 international conferences.

Learn more about IAAGT’s organizational history of officer succession, boards of directors, and biennial meetings:


GESTALT THERAPY


THREE SOURCES OF GESTALT THERAPY

The theory of Gestalt therapy has three major sources. First is psychoanalysis, which contributed some of its major principles concerned with the inner life. Humanistic, holistic, phenomenological and existential writings, which center on personal experience and everyday life, constitute a second source. Gestalt psychology, the third source, gave to Gestalt therapy much more than its name. Though Gestalt therapy is not directly an application or extension of it, Gestalt psychology’s thoroughgoing concentration on interaction and process, many of its important experimental observations and conclusions, and its insistence that a psychology about humans include human experience have inspired and informed Gestalt therapy.


THE PERLS’

Gestalt therapy emerged from the clinical work of two German psychotherapists, Frederick Salomon Perls, M.D., and Lore Perls, Ph.D. F.S. Perls, known to many of his students as Fritz, was trained as a psychiatrist. He worked with Kurt Goldstein, a principal figure of the holistic school of psychology, in his inquiries into the effects of brain injuries on veterans of the first World War. Later, in the 1920s, he trained in psychoanalysis with Karen Homey and Wilhelm Reich. Laura Perls–she adopted the anglicized spelling after she came to the United States–studied with the existential philosopher Martin Heidegger and was awarded a doctorate in psychology for her graduate studies. The most important of her teachers was the Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer. F. S. and Laura Perls fled Western Europe in 1933 ahead of the onslaught of Nazism to Johannesburg, South Africa, where they practiced until the termination of hostilities in 1945.


THE IMPACT OF EGO, HUNGER & AGGRESSION

Ego, Hunger and Aggression was written during this period. The book, published under F. S. Perls’s name in London in 1947, is subtitled A Revision of Psychoanalysis. It included chapters reevaluating the analytic viewpoint on aggression. They suggested that Freud and his followers had underestimated the importance of the development of teeth, eating, and digestion, and that this developmental watershed was as important as the others noted by Freud. These suggestions constitute an early contribution to the development of ego psychology. The book also contained chapters from holistic and existential perspectives and chapters describing therapy exercises. These exercises were designed to promote physical awareness rather than insight, and were called concentration therapy.


THE FIRST GENERATION OF GESTALT THERAPISTS

With the end of the war, the Perls’ emigrated to the United States. They settled in New York City, in a community of artists and intellectuals versed in philosophy, psychology, medicine, and education. Several years of collaboration with members of this group resulted in the training of the first generation of Gestalt therapists, a comprehensive formulation of the theory, methodology, and practice for this new approach, and a book describing it. Published by the Julian Press in 1951, the volume was entitled Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. Authorship was credited to F. S. Perls, along with Ralph Hefferline, a professor of psychology at Columbia University, and the writer Paul Goodman, perhaps best known for his subsequent bestseller, Growing Up Absurd (1963).

Half the book consisted of reports of the results of exercises in awareness which Hefferline administered to his students. The other half was their statement of their new approach. Goodman wrote this section, basing his work off a manuscript by F. S. Perls and reflecting the common ground achieved by the collaborators. Goodman’s keen and prolific mind–he wrote more than 30 books and hundreds of shorter pieces (novels, plays, poems, articles, short stories, and books of shorter essays in the fields of literature, psychology, philosophy, and social and educational criticism)–is reflected in the volume. His special respect for the many contributions to psychology of Otto Rank, perhaps especially the importance of art and the artist in understanding daily life, for Reich, and for communitarian philosophers like Kropotkin also find a place in Gestalt Therapy, and he is responsible for a large measure of its completeness and power. Gestalt Therapy remains the basic book of the theory and practice of Gestalt therapy, a cornerstone of the Gestalt approach.


IN MEMORIAM

ALAN SCHWARTZ

10 June 1932 – 26 March 2019

Alan’s obituary can be found here.

ISABEL FREDERICSON

28 September 1922 – 16 March 2022

“I am sad to pass the news on to the IAAGT community that Dr. Isabel Fredericson passed away on March 16th in Palo Alto CA. She was 99 years old – just a few weeks from her 100th birthday. Isabel had been involved with the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland for many years – almost since its inception. She moved to Santa Barbara California with her husband, Dr. Joseph Handlon in 1981. Isabel and Joseph were both Gestalt Therapists who published many articles in Gestsalt Review and other journals. Isabel was an accomplished individual and group therapist. She taught internationally. For many years she facilitated a growth group for Gestalt Therapists in the Bay Area. Isabel was a lifelong friend to Erving Polster – they were students in the same Kindergarten class in Cleveland Heights Ohio (!) and remained close throughout both of their lives.

She will be remembered by her many students, patients and colleagues as a warm, honest, intelligent and thoughtful woman who had a zest for life and was a gifted clinician.”

Peter Cole

Isabel’s obituary can be found here.

DR. LOIS BRIEN

– October 8, 2023

Dr Lois Brien, training faculty member at Gestalt Institute of Cleveland in the 70s,
passed away peacefully Oct 8, 2023 at a retirement home in Flagstaff, AZ. Lois
was a force of Nature–everything you would expect from a gestalt pioneer! After
Cleveland, Lois went to California and worked with Perls at Esalen. Later she co
founded the San Francisco GI, then San Diego and did training in Japan and Hong
Kong. With her life long partner Marilyn Joyce she played Dixieland Jazz in a bar in
Long Beach, was an accomplished classical pianist, feminist scholar at San Diego
State Department of Women’s Studies, and dean of psychology and faculty at
National University.

Shared by Dr. Maureen O’Hara and Caroline Paltin

NORMAN FRIEDMAN

Norman was a scholar, a seeker and a gentleman. He found his way to Gestalt in midlife. Already an accomplished professor of literature, he brought his considerable intelligence, energy and interest to bear, first as a student and client. He completed a training program in Gestalt and also earned another post graduate college degree with his characteristic thoroughness to become a full accredited practitioner.

As a university professor, he had authored many books and articles, was a foremost critic and champion of the poet E.E. Cummings and was a published poet in his own right. As a Gestaltist, he taught, saw clients and wrote a number of articles on Gestalt theory that can be found in Gestalt journals. He was a founding member of AAGT.

Gestalt brought the paths of his life together and fulfilled his desire to understand and to live life fully. He remained committed to its theory for the rest of his life. When he could no longer jog, he walked. He loved the changing of the seasons. During his long illness and in spite of diminishing cognition he continued to be in contact, centre and at peace.

Zelda Friedman

ANNE MACLEAN

– 8 March 2022

Anne Taua Whatuhuia Maclean was a woman of small stature with a large, dynamic presence. She was loving, fierce and believed in people’s goodness. With a background in education and a strong value in community, Anne’s life and energy was dedicated to service.

Anne co-founded the Gestalt Institute of New Zealand in 1990, and continued as a faculty member, trainer and supervisor there. She was the initiator and inaugural co-editor Gestalt Journal of Australia and New Zealand 2004–2005 for the first two volumes and continued as a consultant editor and Editorial Board member.

Anne co-edited with Yaro Starak, and contributed work to, Grounds for Gestalt (published by Foreground Press in 1994), and More Grounds for Gestalt (published by Foreground Press in 1997).

Anne was invited as an international Gestalt elder to AAGT Conference in Vancouver, August 2006 and was interviewed there by Seán Gaffney. This was recorded on DVD along with the interviews with the other invited elders: Dr Erving Polster, Dr Judith Brown, and Dr Richard Kitzler.

Anne also co-wrote Saturday’s Women with Judith Challies, Rosemary Maxwell, Joanne Gumbrell, (published by Hazard Press in 1989), and The Heart of Supervision (published by Topdog Publishing USA in 2002).

In her later years, Anne studied with Māori elder and kaumatua Maurice Grey, and completed the Te Whai Ao – Māori, a programme teaching ancient Māori knowledge and indigenous beliefs and healing methods.

Anne died on March 8th  2022, in Christchurch, New Zealand, aged 88 years.

Nickei Falconer

ERVING POLSTER

Erv was one of the best known and most loved ambassadors of Gestalt therapy in the world. His contributions to IAAGT and to the worldwide Gestalt community through his writing, training, workshops, presentations, and actively supportive presence are immeasurable. I first met Erv and Miriam in 1979 at a weeklong training and went on to work with them in different contexts over the next 20 years. Erv was not only brilliant, prolific, and creative, his loving presence and capacity for contact were exceptional. Erv’s humor was always of-the-moment, a way of genuinely connecting.

One of Erv’s sayings–a foundation of his approach to therapy and relationship–was “It takes one to know one.” He always sought a common thread, to understand the other’s experience. Working with someone who commented that his interaction with Erv would not change anything, Erv replied “I’m not interested in changing you, I’m interested in knowing you, I’m interested in being with you.”

When Miriam died in 2001, Steve Zahm and I were asked to write a remembrance for the Gestalt Review. We came to know Erv more deeply as he responded to our emailed questions with stories about Miriam’s early life, how they met, and their 52-year marriage. Living without Miriam was the hardest thing he’d ever done, he said. “I am a home person, and Miriam was my home.” He also described the loss of their daughter Sarah, who died shortly before Miriam, as “searing.” Steve and I had attended the Polsters’ Training for Trainers and Graduates programs for years, and now we continued to connect with Erv at conferences, often meeting for dinner to catch up. Erv showed us it was possible to survive and thrive in the wake of devastating loss.

Once Steve and I visited Erv and his second wife Rose Lee. I walked into the kitchen in the morning to find Erv and Steve in their bathrobes, deep in conversation over coffee. It struck me in that moment how Erv was always just himself. Accomplished and revered as he was, whether presenting at a conference to hundreds of people, or in his bathrobe in his kitchen, he was unpretentious, funny, and present–just human. And he could also seem superhuman. In 2017 when we asked Erv to write a foreword for our book, he was eager to do it, but concerned because he was soon going in for hip replacement surgery. He not only wrote a brilliant foreword, he completed a draft before going in for the surgery, then talked to us about it on the phone while in his post-surgery rehab—and he was 95 at the time!

In a call once I’d asked Erv how he was. “I can’t see, I can’t hear, I can’t swallow, and I can’t walk…but otherwise (laughing) I’m doing OK.” Still that perfect comic timing, and he could still laugh! When I spoke to him just before he died, he sounded clear, his voice strong, saying “I’m coming to the end of the line…that’s how it goes.” At almost 102 he was not eager to leave but was accepting. Erv’s humanity, his work, his life, his love, touched, supported and inspired us. That legacy lives on.

Eva Gold

SEÁN GAFFNEY

1942 – 5 March 2022

Seán Gaffney died 5 March 2022, leaving a grieving family, and for us, a legacy of so many brilliant teaching moments, light touch facilitation, warm hearted supervision, and those friendly exchanges on books, music, TV series and popular culture. This is our personal and collective tribute, as the Gestalt Centre Belfast, to a great friend, colleague, teacher.

Ed Nevis (Cleveland) who became Seán’s mentor and colleague died in 2011. Just as Sean wrote Ed‘s obituary
for the British Gestalt Journal (Vol.20, No.2, more Irish wake than obit!) now this falls to us. And so, raising a glass of Black Bush to Seán, let us begin.

“An Irishman by birth, culture and conviction” is how this ‘north Dub’ living in Sweden since 1975 described himself. Always moving between cultures and languages, looking for the way home and never fully home. (“Now I know I am home,” Seán Gaffney, Belfast, 1996)

The “road home” came after meeting in 1995 Flora Meadows and Hilda Courtney (Gestalt Trust of Scotland and North of Ireland) and agreeing to teach the 3rd cohort (GT3) of their training programme in Belfast.

The gossip about Seán’s approach to Gestalt was heard by GT4 which requested that Seán lead their first residential in Wicklow, 1996. Two of us drove to Dublin airport to collect a stranger, variously described as ‘Santa’ or ‘Karl Marx.’ That residential changed Gestalt practice forever here.

Seán invited the group to experience Kurt Lewin’s field theoretical approach: forces, vectors and themes rather than individuals – no hot seat demo sessions for him. His experiments emerged in the moment in the group, and the day concluded with group meaning making, and considering possible theoretical frameworks. Excitement reigned! Afterwards, Seán became one of the main trainers in Year 2 including a residential his summer house in Sjöbacken, 1997.

Meanwhile, Sonya Murray and Marie Quiery, Gestalt practitioners asked Seán to consult to Triskele, their community-based organisation. And so Seán’s work as an OD consultant, trainer, supervisor and facilitator began in the North of Ireland. A supervision and training group was formed with membership varying from 3 – 23 and lasted until two years before his death.

There were many stunning moments during Seán’s insightful and ‘magical’ work using field and lifespace, always committed to emergence: a ‘water clearing’ experiment supported the exploration of ambivalence. Following a prolonged silence in one group, Seán asked people to stand behind their chairs and consider the empty circle remarking that we had a choice to participate or not, just as he had. People started to work! Seán was a committed existentialist!

In Ireland, Seán supported us to appreciate the style of Gestalt that we developed here [The Belfast Model] and a gestalt practice responding to the conditions of conflict and post-conflict. He consistently created opportunities for us to include ourselves in the wider Gestalt world for which we are deeply appreciative.

Chronóidh muid choiche é. Ba crann tógala é agus ní bheith muid a leithéid arís ann.

We will always miss him. He was a tower. We’ll never see his like again.

Joëlle Gartner
with the contribution of Bríd Keenan, Mary Kay Mullan, Paula Keenan, Marie Quiery

Tribute to Seán by Brian O’Neill

“Sean and I first met at the then AAGT Conference in Cleveland in 1998 and I remember I was guiding him around the conference and we saw a notice board which advertised the meetings for the various Special Interest Groups that were happening and he said “Let’s form our own Special Interest Group.” And so was formed the Irish Interest Group which we facilitated across many IAAGT conferences for many years. And so began a long friendship that lasted until he passed away. He came to Australia many times and ran groups as guest faculty for our students at the training center run by my wife Jenny and I and in the course of time he became an adopted uncle to our sons Ben and Sam as well as a great shopping companion for Jenny.

His accomplishments are many as he worked and ran workshops not only on Gestalt therapy but was well known for his writing and consultancy in gestalt at work. He eventually received a Ph.D. for his writing, which is extensive, including a book we co-wrote on gestalt field theory which was edited and introduced by our dear friend Malcolm Parlett. He and I shared a wonderful week in Belfast after the Manchester conference with Bud Feder and Jack Alyward and the kids in the street said to him “Are you Santa Claus mister?” “Yes,” he said, “and this is my elf” pointing to Bud. When I last saw him in person at Sydney airport as he left I could feel this would be our last time together. We caught up again for ongoing supervision by zoom in the last few years and this was a lovely way to end such a unique friendship.

He told me much of his personal life including losing his son and wife in Sweden and at that point he said “Absence is presence” which still stays with me. Once when coming from the airport and talking about AAGT politics he said “Brian, even when you are in the wrong, know I am on your side.” Now he is gone I know I can still feel absence is presence.”

– Brian O’Neill, USA

ROBERT WILLIAM (BOB) RESNICK

10 July 1937 – 11 October 2022

Bob Resnick of Los Angeles, California, was born in Far Rockaway, New York. He received his undergraduate degree attending night school at CCNY while he supported himself by driving a NYC taxi. He was very proud of this feat and often said that it was the best training a psychologist could ever have. He was awarded his master’s degree from Columbia University and his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Florida.

Bob was passionate about three things – his family, his work, and food.

Bob’s 1965 internship at Neuropsychiatric Institute, UCLA, was a turning point. He observed a demonstration by Jim Simkin, PhD, who had trained with Fritz Perls in New York. Plans to return to New York were thrown to the side. Bob took a job with the Peace Corps, taught at California State University Long Beach, and started a private practice in Beverly Hills in Jim’s office. In 1969, Bob Resnick, along with Bob Martin, MSW and Eric Marcus, MD (psychiatry) formed the Gestalt Therapy Institute of Los Angeles with the blessings of Fritz and Jim. Those were exciting times with Fritz giving demonstrations before hundreds of interested therapists and the public.

Bob began training therapists in Europe in 1969 when he was invited to do a workshop in Rotterdam. Soon after he and Jan Rainwater (and others) organized the first GTILA Summer Residential. Not a surprising development for Bob since he was a summer camp counselor as a teenager.

Bob was a founding member of Gestalt Associates Training Los Angeles with his wife, Rita Resnick, and Todd Burley – dedicated to post graduate training in Gestalt therapy and continuing the Summer Residential now in its 51st  year.  He was active in the Gestalt Journal Conferences from their inception. His dedication continued with AAGT (and IAAGT). He along with Iris Fodor were Co-chairs of the Program Committee for the first AAGT conference in New Orleans.

Bob’s first article, Chicken Soup is Poison, was published in Fritz’s Festschrift (c. 1967). Additional writing has been published in book chapters and journals. Several interviews are available on the Internet. He was on the Board of Editors for the Gestalt Review from the beginning. In 2019 Bob received a lifetime award from the American Psychological Association (APA) for his work in Europe.

Bob wanted to be remembered by 1) His chapter on Gestalt therapy in APA’s Handbook of Psychotherapy (2023), 2) How he applied the theory of homeorhesis to Gestalt theory, and 3) his concept of coupling moving from a fusion model to a connection model. Bob always aspired to write a book on couples which he wrote multiple times in his head. Unfortunately, he was never able to get it down on paper. However, he left a series of live therapy films hoping to update the view of Gestalt from Fritz’s film, Gloria.

Bob was a ‘foodie’ before it was a term. He most enjoyed large plates of RARE meat. If he got to choose where, it would be at Brooklyn’s own Peter Luger’s. He would happily talk about the last dinner he had, the next to be planned, and specifically what to order wherever you went. He was so devoted to good Chinese food that he always carried a card with him, written in Chinese, to ensure that he received the right sauce! From years of shared seders, his family and friends know well his expertise in the kitchen.

Bob had a New York sense of humor. He loved to laugh, slap his knee, then wipe the tears from his eyes from laughing so hard. Mostly, he was full of love, warmth, and if he cared about you, if he loved you, he would do absolutely anything for you. Countless times he loaned friends and family his home, cars, money, advice (a lot of advice), and anything he could give. Bob is survived by the love of his life, Rita, his two sons, Chris and Erik, and their mother, Liv Estrup, as well as his younger brother, Norm and his older sister, Edith Schlamm.

A memorial was held January 27th, 2023 in Santa Monica, California.

Liv Estrup

JOHN O. STEVENS

It is with great sadness that I tell you that John O Stevens has died. Later known as Steve Andreas. Steve founded Real People Press and edited and published two of Fritz Perls later major works: “In and Out the Garbage Pail and “Gestalt Therapy Verbatim”. He was a therapist, trainer, writer, editor and publisher.

He brought the Gestalt community together for the first time, (I believe in the world), at Estes Park, Colorado in 1975 to promote his new book “Gestalt Is”. Luckily, I was able to attend. Steve trained with Fritz Perls at Esalen and Lake Cowichan after founding Real People Press in Lafayette, California in 1967.

He wrote “Awareness” in 1971. He also compiled and wrote “Gestalt Is” in 1975. Steve published many other Gestalt and Personal Growth oriented books through Real People Press.

In 1976 he moved to Boulder, Colorado with his fiancé Connirae Andreas- where I lived; he looked me up and asked if he could watch me lead one of my groups.

Later he invited me to live with him in a nice three-year-old home. I was to take care of the home, while he was gone during summers, at his 400-acre ranch in Shura, Utah near Moab- where the publishing company was based. He also worked out of our home in Boulder. I oversaw the house when trainers would come in for the summer, to reside at our home, to teach at the Naropa Buddhist Institute. Robert Hall, trained by Fritz, was one of those people and he turned out to be a very rewarding exposure for me. Robert also developed the Lomi school of Body Therapy in Mill Valley, California. This was a very rich experience for me. Steve would publish perhaps one percent of the manuscripts sent to him. I got to read all that I wanted. We had the Fritz films from Esalen and Lake Cowichan in the basement, that I could watch whenever I wanted. He gave these to the Gestalt Journal and Joe Wysong made CDs from these originals. I was in training at the Gestalt Institute of Denver, but Steve impacted my style. I attended many of his trainings and Groups. He’d also answer all my questions. I lived with him for 18 months and one thing I took from him was to “Summon the courage- to dare to do big things”! I was lucky!

In 1977 Joe Wysong organized the first Gestalt Journal conference In Berkeley, California. Steve and I attended a workshop there- led by Los Angeles Gestalt Therapist and Psychiatrist, Eric Marcus. Eric introduced us to Neuro Linguistic Programming in a very impressive and powerful workshop.

Steve left Gestalt Therapy shortly after this exposure and shifted gears- giving up his Gestalt involvement and gave his Gestalt book titles to Joe Wysong- to continue to publish. Then he embraced NLP and pursued training with Bandler and Grinder. Before long he was editing their workshop materials to create books from- like he did for Fritz with “…Verbatim”. The first one, “Frogs Into Princes” sold 500,000 copies. He and Connirae went on to develop methods and publish their own books on NLP.

He sent me an article he wrote more recently entitled “Reflections On Gestalt Therapy 40 Years Out”.

Sometimes I am a slow responder. I finished a four-page letter to him, then Googled him- to find out that he had been dead for 13 months. He may have left the Gestalt world but remained an important person to me.

Afterwards, I made a heartfelt visit his wife Connirae in Boulder, Colorado. We all lived together for 18 months and she’s like a sister.

I considered Steve a friend and mentor. I was lucky to know him. (He comforted me when I got the news that my father had died back in 1977.) He is likely to have impacted all of us.

So long Steve!

Jack Neggerman

DOLORES BATE

30 July 1932 – 29 November 2015

Dolores Bate, who died aged 83 in late 2015 in Victoria, Canada, was a long-time member of the gestalt community, and a keen founding member of AAGT. She lived and worked in Vancouver, Canada, where she established the gestalt institute and practiced in her later years. As a young woman, having originally worked in radio, Dolores moved to England, where she trained as a gestalt therapist with Ischa Bloomberg. She established a therapy practice in London, while bringing up three children. She was much appreciated as an independent gestalt trainer for her openness to different approaches, her strong interests in the arts, her great sense of humour, and especially her linking of gestalt with spirituality.  She died expressing gratitude for the life she enjoyed.

Malcolm Partlett

CARL HODGES

2022

Carl Hodges was the first president of the New York Institute who was chosen by us members — and the second president of the International Association for the Advancement Gestalt Therapy — died in the fall of 2022. He was 80.

Carl is survived by his wife, Marie, daughter Carrie, and a brother — and by so many of us across the world whom he touched with his sharp analytical intelligence, careful psychotherapeutic skills, which were informed
by his gentle heart and his warm and charming wit.

We lost a friend, colleague, and leader who had been central to the heart, the breath, the soul of the NYIGT. And so he remains.

Carl was born and raised in Queens, New York to a middle class African American family. He studied political science in Queens College of the City of New York and then received a Master of Social Work from Hunter College, where he later taught as adjunct faculty. He was trained by Ricard Kitzler, Isadore From and Laura Perls of the NYIGT. He was a long-time member of Richard Kitzler’s seminar in gestalt therapy. He studied the systems- centered group model with Yvonne Agazarian.

He is memorialized in the structure and values of the organizations he helped found (AAGT) re-restructure (NYIGT), the institutes where he taught (including, London Gestalt Centre, Istituto di Gestalt HCC) and where he presented workshops (AAGT, EAGT). He was one of the developers of the process group model for conferences that is now intrinsic in AAGT and EAGT.

Dan Bloom

STEVE (STEPHEN) ZAHM

22 January 1943 – 29 April 2023

My beloved life/professional partner of 45 years, Dr. Steve (Stephen) Zahm passed away on April 29th at our home in Portland, Oregon surrounded by family and love, after four years of valiantly meeting the challenges of metastatic cancer. He was eighty years old. He died as he lived, with courage, integrity, wisdom, and his sense of humor intact to the very end. Steve had the warmest smile, the best laugh, the biggest heart, and the most brilliant mind. It is beyond words to say how much he will be missed.

Steve’s first experience with Gestalt therapy was in the late 60s at a small workshop with Jim Simkin in Montana, shortly after he completed his psychology PhD at the University of Portland. He was hooked! Steve then began training at the Gestalt Training Center–San Diego. His experience with Erv and Miriam Polster ignited his lifelong calling–working as a Gestalt therapist, teacher, supervisor, and trainer. He graduated from that program in 1977 and was one of the first to bring Gestalt therapy training to the Pacific northwest. Bob Martin was also an important influence as trainer, supervisor, and therapist for over twenty years. Steve had a passion for bringing Gestalt therapy into academic settings and taught in various colleges and universities before landing at Pacific University School of Professional Psychology where he was an adjunct professor from 1980 to 2017. Any course that Steve taught was always in demand. He brought his values of non-hierarchy, collaboration and deep respect for students and the learning process to his teaching. He loved teaching, and his students, and in return he was loved and revered by them. Steve was truly a master therapist and had unique skills as a teacher, but was humble about it, and was committed to continuing to learn himself.

These are only a few examples of the many loving tributes that poured in as people learned of Steve entering hospice shortly before he died. One of his former students wrote:

“This world will be forever changed because of your presence and absence. As much as a student can love a teacher, I love you. You’re living through all of us you touched for generations to come.”

And a current trainee wrote:

“You have been more than a teacher and mentor to me. You have been a guiding force, a wise and compassionate presence, a gestalt father who has helped me to grow and learn in ways that I never thought possible. Your kindness, wisdom, and insight have touched me deeply, and I will always carry your teachings with me. You have made an indelible mark on my life, and I am grateful for every moment that we have shared.”

Steve and I were true partners and a professional team from the beginning of our relationship in 1978, working with couples, co-leading therapy groups and later training groups; we married in 1981. We attended many weeklong Graduates and Training for Trainers programs with the Polsters, continuing to learn and grow together. We gave our first conference presentation at a Gestalt Journal conference in the late 80s, then presented at most AAGT conferences through 2018, and had more international adventures that included working in Australia and Israel. Steve and I co-founded an APA approved training program, Gestalt Therapy Training Center – Northwest, in 1996 along with Jon Frew, and trained hundreds of therapists over more than twenty years, creating a strong and vibrant Gestalt professional community in Portland. The regional AAGT conference that we sponsored that drew over 100 participants featured local presenters and was created by a planning committee of our trainees. After many years of studying Buddhist psychology, practicing meditation, and attending retreats together, we developed a training track integrating Buddhist psychology/meditation with Gestalt therapy training in 2007. Steve also wrote and co-wrote many articles and book chapters on Gestalt therapy and practice, and our book Buddhist Psychology and Gestalt Therapy Integrated: Psychotherapy for the 21st Century was published in 2018. Steve was deeply grateful that the book has been so well received and widely read in the US and internationally over the past 5 years.

Steve was diagnosed with cancer in 2019, and not long after we learned that the cancer had metastasized to his brain. There were more than three and a half years of successful treatments, and Steve continued to live his life with so much love, his indomitable spirit, and renewed commitment to his work and to meditation practice. He was an inspiration to family and friends, as well as his trainees/supervisees and patients in how he faced treatment challenges and the possibility of his death. After brain surgery in December of 2022, Steve was never well enough to return to his practice. Although he continued to hope to get back to the work he loved–he never wanted to retire–it was not to be. There are so many Gestalt therapists in the world now who were his students and trainees over so many years, influenced in this career direction by their contact with Steve. And there are so many patients who say he saved their lives or their marriages. The ripple effect will go on and on as his legacy. His family, friends and I are deeply grateful to have been able to share this life’s journey with this amazing man. May his memory be a blessing.

With love to all and condolences to those who also knew, loved, and will miss Steve.

Eva Gold

VIOLET OAKLANDER

18 April 1927 – 21 September 2021

It is with great sadness that I inform members that Violet Oaklander, aged 94, passed away peacefully on September 21st. She was a pioneer who integrated Gestalt Therapy Theory and practice with play -therapy, bringing an accessible sensory rich and experience -near approach to child and adolescent psychotherapy. Her books, Windows to Our Children and Hidden Treasure became best sellers; they have been translated into many languages affording Violet international renown for her relational projective arts -based approach to Gestalt Therapy with young people.

It is with great sadness that I inform members that Violet Oaklander, aged 94, passed away peacefully on September 21st. She was a pioneer who integrated Gestalt Therapy Theory and practice with play -therapy, bringing an accessible sensory rich and experience -near approach to child and adolescent psychotherapy. Her books, Windows to Our Children and Hidden Treasure became best sellers; they have been translated into many languages affording Violet international renown for her relational projective arts -based approach to Gestalt Therapy with young people.

When I first met Violet in 1999 at AAGT’s Manhattan conference I was enthralled by her creativity, wisdom and the vitality and warmth of her presence. I immediately signed up to her annual summer intensive in Santa Barbara the following year.  Her training had a life- changing effect on me and on so many others. Over the years that followed she became my mentor and a dear friend.

Violet was truly an inspiration to many of us who sought to follow in her footsteps. She took a keen interest in the outreach work of the Oaklander Foundation of which she was a founding member, remaining an active participant in the Just For Now series of online training seminars until very recently. Throughout the Pandemic the Oaklander Model also found a regular home within CAIG, IAAGT’s Child & Adolescent Interest Group, providing regular dialogue and support to child therapists across continents. Violet’s legacy continues to flourish; her ideas from practice, training and writing over so many years have greatly influenced generations of children, families and therapists. She will be greatly missed.

Her obituary can be found in the Los Angeles Times and on the Violet Solomon Oaklander Foundation site.

Rest in peace, Violet.
– Jon Blend (MA, Dip Psych, Dip Child, CQSW)

CYNDY SHELDON

20 September 1935 – 11 May 2021

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It is a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” — Pema Chödrön

Cyndy Sheldon, MSW, was passionate about living Gestalt as a way of life and about egalitarian relationships from a Gestalt perspective. She trained many Gestalt therapists in the US and abroad and wrote two books: Gestalt As A Way Of Life and Don’t Tell Me What To Do…Ask Me!

Cyndy trained in Gestalt Therapy with Fritz Perls and Jim Simkin. At the suggestion of Dr. Perls, she co-founded the original Gestalt Institute of San Francisco in 1967, where she taught until 1990. While trained in several other therapeutic approaches, Gestalt remained her primary approach because of its comprehensive philosophy and its focus on growth rather than illness.

In the 1990s Cyndy moved to Arizona, where her work as a Social Worker put her in intimate contact with Navajo people and culture over the next decade. Later, in her books and teachings, Cyndy shared the profound congruences she noticed between Navajo culture and Gestalt as a way of life. She radiated a deep sense of wonder whenever she spoke of this chapter of life.

Cyndy moved to Bellingham, WA, in 2006, where she wrote her books, taught classes and led an ongoing Gestalt therapy training group that continued meeting right up until she passed away on May 11, 2021, at age 85. What’s more, Cyndy started a second training program, a Women’s Gestalt Group, a few months before her death.

At age 26, in her first workshop with Fritz in 1961, Cyndy heard an inner voice say, “You will be doing this work for the rest of your life,” and this was how her life unfolded; Cyndy would bring this work to many over the next 60 years.

Cyndy’s Legacy: In addition to her two books and countless students, Cyndy was featured in four thoughtful video interviews (conducted in the months before her death), in which she shares an intimate oral history of West Coast Gestalt. In addition to stories dating back to the early 1960s, she also shares the evolution of her own work, giving particular attention to the Egalitarian aspects of Gestalt. An article she penned a few years earlier on the original Gestalt Institute of San Francisco is on her website, as are her four video interviews and links to her two books. All of these resources can be found on her website.

Tribute to Cyndy by Patrick Dougherty

As I sit down to my computer to type this, I’m aware of the aloe plant in the large pot to my left, filled with healing juices, patient, still, and ready to be of service, while slowly growing to be of greater use. I’ve had it in my therapy office since 2014, just a few months after I met Cyndy Sheldon.

Cyndy struck me then as she did every day until her passing last week: Gentle, rooted in Egalitarianism, her radio tuned to helping others understand her walk of Gestalt as a Way of Life, (the title of her book), which appeared to me to make her practice as a Gestalt therapist seem effortless.

I was fortunate to start attending her training group shortly after meeting her, never being more than 7 or so people in a therapy office, or her homes around Bellingham, WA. I fondly remember being instructed to go into her garden and experience each plant as a child who has not yet discovered the words to describe what I encountered, rooting myself back to pure experience; Sitting across from another, sharing what I’m experiencing through my senses and when a thought would arise, exclaim, “I’m having a thought” and struggling to leave it at that as my mind wanted to describe itself; and sharing the training space with several non-therapists, as Cyndy imbued the greater world with Gestalt principles and thought that cultivating Gestalt in community was a virtuous and worthy endeavor. Not the least of these was her voice so melodious in my head now: “I don’t believe in labels.”

I now sit in a place of wealth, that I received a morsel of the greatness she offered, and knowing that the lives she touched will be forever joyful that they were lucky enough to bask and learn in her presence. If you didn’t know Cyndy well, I encourage you to peruse her website, especially her books and videos, and other sharing about the development of the Gestalt world, from someone who watched Fritz Perls doing empty chair work with Sigmund Freud, and was at those early meetings with Fritz as the first West Coast Gestalt institutes were established.

With Love, Peace, and Awareness of my fingers on my keys, glancing at a handcrafted skull from Mexican artisans that today represents a great and masterful human that is Cyndy.
– Patrick Dougherty, Eugene, Oregon, USA

Tribute to Cyndy by Bruce Hostetter

Tribute to Cyndy by Adam Ward

Tribute to Cyndy by Stella Resnick

ALVIN REVELL

16 October 1932 – 10 May 2018

Alvin was a pioneer in community mental health, an esteemed educator who served Pennsylvania as Director of Equal Educational Opportunity in Higher Education, and a long-time therapist in private practice.

Many people who speak of him talk about his gregariousness, his capacity to “work the room,” and yet he listened in a way that conveyed that everything about you was of supreme importance to him. He loved his wife and children, and it showed. His delight with life was palpable. If you asked him how he was, he would say “Fantastic!!!” and was known to add that you should be careful because “it’s infectious.” And he loved the Gestalt community and was loved by many members of that community in return.

Elizabeth S. Revell

BOB WITCHEL

10 June 1948 – 3 May 2017

Bob joined AAGT in May 2014 and died suddenly in May 2017. In those three short years he contributed hugely to AAGT. With his co-chair Daniel Bak, he fostered a revival in Interest Groups. He designed the printed programme of the Taormina joint conference, which had been considered impossible.

He expanded the role of Communications Officer, doing much to raise the profile of AAGT, steering more active promotion of AAGT, and bringing us into the 21st century with a Facebook page.

As a colleague Bob was lovely: warm, always prepared and informed, a generous and self-less enabler. I consider myself blessed to have had Bob as a fellow Board member.

He gave to AAGT unstintingly. We are grateful for who he was: for all of us. Thank you Bob.

– Toni Gilligan

BUD FEDER

1930 – 16 October 2018

Having known Bud for 4 decades beginning at Gestalt Journal conferences with a common interest in Gestalt group therapy, our relationship flourished when AAGT was founded. Bud and AAGT thrived as he took on responsibilities for numerous organizational activities and active leadership in many roles.

In 1998-99 he took responsibility for logistics for the NYC conference, at times personally paying for necessities while not requesting remuneration – just one of his many generous and unspoken gifts to our Association. Bud served as AAGT Treasurer 1999-2002, President-elect 2001, AAGT President 2002-04, and Past President 2005. He was conference co-coordinator for St. Petes Beach 2004 and 2006 biennial conferences, Organizational Affiliates Officer 2005-10, and Scholarship co-chair 2010-14. He continued 2014-16 to share his wisdom and leadership on the Board as At-Large Member. As if that wasn’t enough, he organized and coordinated three Annual General Meetings on odd years.

As many in the Gestalt community know, Bud’s heart and soul were invested in creating, managing and sustaining AAGT’s Scholarship Fund. His heartfelt services were recognized in 2014 when he was awarded AAGT’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Following Bud’s death, he was honored by naming the “Bud Feder AAGT Scholarship Fund” for his contributions of unceasing dedication and donations of time, talent, money, and his prudent leadership.

In addition to Bud’s dedication to AAGT he was recognized throughout the world for his knowledge and talents as Gestalt group therapist and these publications: Beyond the Hot Seat: Gestalt Approaches to Group (with Ruth Ronall); Peeling the Onion: A Gestalt Therapy Manual for Clients; Gestalt Group Therapy: A Practical Guide; A Living Legacy of Fritz and Laura Perls (with Ruth Ronal); and Beyond the Hot Seat Revisited (with Jon Frew).

Ansel Woldt

Tribute to Bud by Jack Aylward

I first met Bud Feder in 1980 at a “massage workshop for couples” that I was offering at the Plainfield Consultation Center in New Jersey, the home of one of the “growth centers” of those times as well as my private practice. At the end of the weekend, Bud’s date came over to me and said: “I think you and Bud would work well together as group therapists.” That was all she said, and yet using enough insight to last the two of us for the next thirty-eight years. Our work together expanded into a variety of formats, as did the deep and wonderful friendship we shared.

Bud had two professional loves: The New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy and The Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy. As a member of the former, he remained active in many roles and responsibilities. As for AAGT, his passion was the Scholarship Fund. For many years we ran a pre-conference group experience, the fees for which were donated to that fund. His overall work on that committee reaped a total of over $100,000 over those years.

Both personally and professionally he loved what gestalt therapy had to offer. He gave to others both lovingly and generously, yet demonstrated the tenacity of a pit bull when feeling the need to protect the gestalt approach he so dearly loved. In many ways he fit Paul Goodman’s model of anarchism, most evidently seen in Bud’s consistent reliance on self-regulative autonomy with his clients, rather than on external authoritarian principles.

At the time of his death in 2018, his top fee for therapy was around sixty-five dollars per session. If you lost your job or insurance, he would make other arrangements or just let things continue as they were. The combination of his generous heart and clinical skill formed a unique gestalt in and of itself – one that touched many and provided me with all I could ever ask for as a therapist or as a human being.

EDWIN NEVIS

20 May 1926 – 20 May 2011

Edwin Nevis was an editor, publisher, institute leader, mentor, professor, and entrepreneur. But above all he was a teacher who aimed to foster learning by breaking down material into digestible chunks.

His contributions to the Gestalt world are too many to list. He was a founding member and 11 year president of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland and, along with his wife Sonia, created the Gestalt International Study Center. He co-founded Gestalt Review, two organizational consultant training programs and created and ran many conferences. He wrote and edited a number of books on organizational consulting and social change.

Throughout his life he was a fan of the working man, a fierce advocate for fairness and social justice, and always supported the underdog.

– Joe Melnick

GILL CARADOC-DAVIES

4 September 1944 – 1 June 2017

Born Gillian Joubert in Northern Transvaal, South Africa, Gill studied medicine in Cape Town, after a year in the UK she returned to South Africa and a couple of years later emigrated to New Zealand. While living in Hastings UK, she studied Gestalt therapy, back in New Zealand she trained as a psychiatrist. She qualified as a Gestalt therapist in 1986 and in 1987 became a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, combining the holistic discipline of Gestalt psychotherapy with Psychiatry.

Gill was a founder of the Gestalt Institute of NZ in 1990. She coached a small group of us as New Zealand trainers and was especially proud of her tutorials on the interface between psychiatry and psychotherapy. Gill headed the training programme from 1990 until her retirement in 2000. She was part of the original Editorial Board for the British Gestalt Journal, a role she held until her retirement.

I was privileged to know her as a generous teacher, colleague and friend.

– Brenda Levien

GERT HARROW

8 September 1922 – 20 June 2016

Gert was a gem — smart, kind, loyal, warm, and funny – the “wise old woman” for many of us. Fleeing Vienna at 17 when the Nazi’s arrived, she and her family went to Dublin where she enrolled in Trinity College.

Eventually, she came to the USA and passed the Statue of Liberty. Holding hands, tears rolled down her face as she passed the Statue of Liberty once more on a boat ride during the NYC AAGT conference.

After finishing her PhD at University of Chicago, she came to Los Angeles with Hedda Bolgar (her mentor) and Alexander French to Cedars Hospital. A Gestalt therapist since the late 1960’s, she was a revered trainer for GTILA and then for GATLA. Moreover, Gert was a treasured friend and support to many. Truly loved and missed.

– Bob Resnick

JAN RAINWATER

11 September 1922 – 7 March 2016

What has always been notable to me about my relationship with Jan Rainwater was that she never seemed to have her “nose in the air” and “was a real down to earth” person. These qualities, along with a poster on her wall with the statement, “The world is full of possibilities that are limitless,” was a beacon and an encouragement for me to be more assertive and take more positive risks personally, and in my career as a therapist. I love her name, “Rainwater.” It has a musical and dancelike quality for me.

Jan was fierce and fearless, she was honest and creative, and she was a friend and a mentor to be treasured. Jan left an indelible mark on my life as well as on countless others’. She truly stands out, righteously as a champion of “goodness” and “continuous growth.” I am fortunate to have been “touched” by her in my life. Though her physical presence is no longer with us, her presence will always be.

– Nickie Godfrey

JANET (JAN) RUCKERT

6 June 1926 – 24 February 2017

Jan Ruckert was a school psychologist in Southern California when she was invited to a training group with Jim Simkin and Fritz Perls because “they needed more women.” She became a trainer with the Gestalt Therapy Institute of Los Angeles in the early 1970s, was President, and served on the Board for the rest of her life. Jan joined the faculty of Pacific Gestalt Institute through 2017. She trained with GATLA Summer Residential as well.

In addition to being a creative therapist and trainer, Jan was a published poet and painted watercolor at Venice Art Studios. Her paintings grace the office of therapists around the globe.

A home burglary initiated Jan’s love of Rottweilers. Taking Lorelei (her first) to her office led Jan to write The Four-Footed Therapist and Are You My Dog?

Jan was the first Co-Chair of AAGT’s Scholarship Committee. She had a charming way of getting people to do things they had no idea they could do. Jan is well missed.

Liv Estrup

JOEL LATNER

23 December 1940 – 4 August 2016

Joel Latner can be best described as a renegade Renaissance individual possessed of a variety of strong passions and appetites. His practice of Gestalt therapy integrated his talents as a professional musician, gourmet cook, and political anarchist. Joel authored, The Gestalt Therapy Book, a classic resource for those in search of a clear and comprehensive understanding of the psychological and philosophical richness contained in the Perls, Hefferline and Goodman tome, Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality.

As a teacher, Joel emphasized the therapeutic importance of sensing the life and brightness of the figures that form in our work with those seeking our help.

While the life of Joel Latner is no longer with us, his brightness will continue to shine within the Gestalt community.

– Jack Aylward

KAREN HUMPHREY

25 September 1941 – 11 March 2017

Karen was a beloved friend, colleague, teacher and mentor to scores of Gestalt therapists throughout her long career at the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy.

Karen began studying Gestalt therapy with Lore Perls at the Institute in the 1960s. She soon found a therapeutic, social and political home engaging in spirited dialogues with Paul Goodman and other early teachers as part of her learning.

As a Fellow of the Institute, Karen never ceased to teach, supervise, and write about her passion for Gestalt therapy. She continuously supported the growth and changes of the Institute, and then AAGT, as they evolved, always providing a guiding hand with calm, wisdom and clarity.

– Lee Zevy

KEN EVANS

3 February 1947 – 15 July 2015

Ken Evans FRSA, President of the European Association for Gestalt Therapy from 2002-2008, founded the EAGT Human Rights and Social Responsibility Committee. Honoured and delighted to learn he was to receive The Maslow Award for Outstanding Services to Psychotherapy, his planned acceptance lecture included “the need for a radical re-think of our relationship with nature and non-human species, not simply for survival but for the reintegration of the human spirit.”

Ken was a much loved, charismatic, inspirational teacher, writer and lecturer, latterly continuing his vibrant psychotherapy career alongside sheep farming in rural Normandy. His chosen epitaph was:

Live life fully,
Love Generously,
Become all that you can be.
Those who knew him would agree
His life was testament to this.

– Joanna Hewitt Evans

LESTER WYMAN

11 November 1937 – 20 August 2019

Les Wyman, master of metaphor, was known for his clarity, directness, and compassion, as well as his dry sense of humor. He was a loving and dedicated family man, loyal friend, adored by his grandchildren, and revered and deeply appreciated by his patients and mentees. He was a licensed pilot who loved carpentry, sailing, traveling and home repair projects. Lester lived at the contact boundary with authenticity and integrity. He died as he lived—on his own terms with agency and awareness after building his own casket.

Les was a native of Cleveland, Ohio, USA. After graduating from Brandeis University he returned to Cleveland where he worked as a social worker with community agencies, juvenile court, and the Veteran’s Administration Hospital. He achieved his PhD in social work from Case Western University, while continuing to be heavily involved in community organizations.

As a faculty member at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland from 1981, Lester developed and taught in multiple training programs, co-facilitated an on-going group for 17 years with his daughter, Amy, and was mentor, consultant, and therapist to many.   Following his dream to enhance Gestalt training in Israel, he collaborated with a Turkish and several Israeli Gestalt therapists in developing ISRAGIC – residential trainings on the Sea of Galilee.  He also left a lasting legacy still resonating through the corridors at the Gestalt Institute in Brisbane, Australia. He provided supervision and consultation locally and internationally until his last days.

 – Marlene Blumenthal

MIRIAM POLSTER

07 June 1924 – 19 December 2001

Miriam Polster was a brightly spirited woman, whose very presence warmed the atmosphere among the people she was teaching. But there was more. In the quiet manner of her confident flow of language she got across her personalized understanding of principles that Gestalt therapists live by. There was a minimum of jargon or textbook style; much like a person at a party, just engaged in ordinary conversation. She attracted many people from all over the world to the Gestalt Training Center-San Diego, where, together with her husband, Erving Polster she spelled out a Polster flavor that gave equal billing to human qualities as well as techniques.

She wrote Eve’s Daughters: the Forbidden Heroism of Women, which celebrates the female champions of everyday life as well as the more familiar context of daunting dangers.  She co-authored Gestalt Therapy Integrated, and From the Radical Center.

Ervin Polster

Tribute to Miriam by Erving Polster

NIFONT DOLGOPOLOV

28 August 1953 – 22 January 2018

Director, Moscow Institute of Gestalt Therapy and Psychodrama —a man of many facets, talents and involvements. He was a wonderful husband, father, son, friend, Gestalt therapist and trainer and a fierce fighter. Knowing and working with Nifont for over two decades, I have seen him refine and enlarge both his private and professional life – smart, ironic, creative, funny, stubborn and warm. Marrying Nadia Lubyanitskaya —a few years ago while battling a devastating cancer— they brought a new baby into the world, Lev (Lion) —now two years old and beautiful. Nifont’s creative gestalt therapy presentations began with the audience knowing little of what he was talking about – or where he was going. By the end, we knew and enjoyed what he was teaching —and everything connected. Nifont didn’t follow the grooves —he made them.

– Bob Resnick

NORMAN SHUB

11 January 1949 – 2 January 2018

Norman made therapy into the Art of Love. The congruence between his teachings and what he used to do in life is part of what he left with us: his ability to be friend, teacher, partner, father, therapist and colleague. He always aimed for what he used to say, “Be a better person.” The “little Norman bird on the shoulder” was always there during hard times.

His legacy is vast and broad, complete and complex. His writings reflect his style–simple and profound; as he used to say, “The mission is repetition.”

On his last day of training, Norman said, “Gestalt is about learning to close, to let go…” While going away, he gave us a teaching, an experience and an experiment… a Gestaltist till the end!

His strength and wisdom will continue guiding our hearts.
He is the light in moments of darkness.
He taught how to love with love.
He is our guide, our teacher, our friend.
He is the light of growth, of love, of wisdom!

– Pablo Allen

PEGGY CLEARY

4 September 1949 – 19 January 2018

Peggy Cleary was the treasured chair of the GIT’s Board of Directors for many years. Sparkly and competent, Peggy’s open listening; clarity in communicating, her inclusiveness and her humour were appreciated by the faculty and the Board Members.

Peggy graduated from the G.I.T. training program in 2002, and integrated her Gestalt into her consultancy practice in the corporate world. She was one of a small number of graduates who took Gestalt into the corporate context in Toronto. Her work entertained and heightened awareness with lightness, humour and depth. Peggy lived a full life, generous, loving, awake and hard-working.

About five years ago, she began to experience symptoms of Multiple Systems Atrophy, a debilitating neurodegenerative disease. In close connection with her devoted partner of many years, Keith MacDonald, she attended to the quickly arriving changes in her condition and lived this difficult time with great courage and humour, with great strength and love. Together they came into close connection with family, friends and co-workers until the end of her life.

SONJA MARCH NEVIS

10 July 1927 – 10 September 2017

Sonia led a full life as an exceptional Gestalt therapist and teacher for over fifty years from Co-leading groups with Fritz Perls at Esalen, to creating the Center for Intimate Systems at the Cleveland Institute. In her later years, she co-founded with her husband, Edwin Nevis, the Gestalt International Studies Center in Cape Cod. Always interested in relationship and community, Sonia developed the Cape Cod Model and continued the Training Program for couples and family therapists worldwide.

Sonia was much loved and touched so many. I was privileged to know Sonia in her later years, experiencing her as a generous, insightful, wise and supportive friend. She was a key figure in the “Eaters and Writers” gatherings to support Gestalt writers. Sonia connected deeply to her family, friends, and mentees dedicating her life to helping others make a difference.

For Sonia remembrances-See GISC link to her memorial service and Gestalt Review, 2018 Vol.22, no. 1.

Iris Fodor

SYLVIA FLEMING CROCKER

1933 – 2019

Sylvia Fleming Crocker, whose creative thinking offered us a bold conceptualization of Gestalt therapy grounded in philosophical thought with prosaic nuances of its clinical applications. She was an avid reader, articulate debater, respected author, faithful Christian and a decent golfer who enjoyed classical and contemporary music, world-wide traveling, a good joke and drink now and then, stitching needlepoint while telling heart-warming stories from her life as a Gestalt therapist.

In the early 1980’s, Sylvia changed her career focus from professing philosophy to becoming a licensed counselor followed by training in Gestalt therapy with Miriam and Erving Polster who became life-long, esteemed friends. In the years that followed she trained with the GATLA faculty in their European summer programs. She supplemented her Gestalt training with psychodrama, which culminated in her developing an innovative, reflective, enactment-oriented Gestalt-psychodrama approach to dream therapy. Dreams, creativity and experiments were Sylvia’s passion. She established private practices in Laramie, Cheyenne and Rawlins, Wyoming and was well known throughout the state for 30 years, often sought as a presenter and workshop trainer for the Wyoming Counseling Association conferences.

Sylvia was one of the founders of AAGT where she chaired the Gestalt Theory Development Interest Group and served on the Board of Directors for 8 years. Her active involvement in the Gestalt Writers’ Collective culminated in authoring her classic book, A Well-Lived Life: Essays in Gestalt Therapy (1999). She was a prolific writer whose articles regularly appeared in all Gestalt journals. Sylvia’s life was enriched by and with philosophy. Existential philosophy permeated her thinking, her writings and her clinical work. She was committed to emphasizing the phenomenology of Gestalt therapy and was working on a book on the topic at her death. She was enamored with understanding, describing and clinically applying the nature of the phenomenological method with particular interest in Husserl’s method.

Tribute to Sylvia by Alexandra MacCracken

PHILLIP LICHTENBERG

1 October 1926 – 22 May 2020

Our beloved colleague, friend, and Gestalt Training Institute of Philadelphia (GTIP) Co-Founder Philip Lichtenberg died on May 22, 2020.

On July 12, 2020, GTIP held a Zoom memorial for him, attended by over 70 people from the Philadelphia area (his home) and around the world (including Israel, Italy, Argentina, Ireland, and England). The memorial was a moving and profound gathering of those in the Gestalt community who knew and loved him. In addition we were honored and pleased to have his four sons Peter, Andy, Eric, and Tom and one of his grandchildren, Elinor Lichtenberg, in attendance.

Philip was a brilliant, kind, loving, and creative human being. He could also be tough, challenging, and provocative. Through his teaching, writing, and therapy practice he touched and impacted many. He wrote extensively in Gestalt therapy including numerous books (Community and Confluence: Undoing the Clinch of Oppression and Encountering Bigotry are two that are often mentioned) and more than 35 articles, chapters, and reviews in Gestalt and other publications. He has been a speaker and honoree at conferences around the world. He was a founding member of AAGT. In 2010 at the Philadelphia AAGT conference he was awarded the AAGT lifetime achievement award.

In these current times the GTIP community especially remembers Philip for his strong voice for social justice. In her introduction to our memorial, Jennifer Jones, our executive director reminded us of his words:

We are all responsible for what exists now and we will all be
responsible for deciding whether we will change the institutions
in which we live and work (from his book: Getting Even: The
Equalizing Law of Relationships).

Philip believed in the importance and usefulness of attending to the intersection of social change and clinical social work. This commitment and fundamental belief system was a unifying thread that ran through his career and even into his retirement at Kendal where he and Mary Lou Schack (also a GTIP cofounder) did several workshops together for the residents. Quite a few attendees at the memorial remembered how this work of his influenced them and supported them in the work in their communities and in their countries.

Philip’s work was also deeply relational. All students at GTIP are introduced early on to his concept of what he called the Four Corners of contacting and numerous people at the memorial spoke about that. Here he outlined a schematic that facilitates both speakers and listeners to define themselves vividly and relationally. This way of understanding contact has often proved fruitful at GTIP especially when difference needs to be acknowledged and/or conflict needs to be attended to. (For those interested in knowing more about this we refer you to his paper Creating a Distinct “I” and a Distinct “You” in
Contacting published in the Gestalt Journal 23(2))

But the memorial was about a lot more than his work. The memories shared about Philip were often very personal. To give those of you who were not able to attend a flavor of that, we end with some quotes from those who spoke:

Philip saw my intellect and leadership skills
He believed in me before I believed in myself
I was very touched by Philip’s kind and loving nature, his respect
for me and his willingness to engage in dialogue
[This was a]…wonderful example of his humility, openness and
willingness to listen
He was a rare presence of honesty and openness
He believed in me and saw me in ways that opened and freed
me
He told me he loved me.
I know there was love between us
He took delight in my becoming more and more myself, allowing
myself to be seen, rather than hiding, celebrating any small
accomplishment or large

We are grateful to all who were able to attend the memorial honoring Philip for his contributions to the field and to so many individuals who will miss him greatly.

Janneke van Beusekom, GTIP Faculty
For The Philip Lichtenberg GTIP Memorial Committee
– Jennifer Jones, Executive Director and Faculty
– David Henrich, GTIP Co-Founder and Faculty
– Mary Lou Schack, GTIP Co-Founder and Faculty
– Cathy Gray, GTIP Faculty
– Donna Cotzen
– Cindy Orns, GTIP Faculty
– Joan Stern

SUBMIT A MEMORIAL

If you would like to add a colleague or loved IAAGT member to this memorial, please contact us.

Please include a photograph, first and last name, dates of life, and a statement about the person and their contribution to Gestalt Therapy (approx. 250-500 words).

We understand 250 to 500 words is nowhere near enough to describe the impact these people have had on us and our community. In the spirit of cherishing, reflecting on, and sharing our beloved members of IAAGT, we welcome your comments, memories, links, and so on. To add a personal tribute, please contact us.