Description of the Plenary Process
The plenary sessions aim to frame the specific focus of each day; community (Friday – 2 plenary sessions), practice (Saturday – 1 plenary sessions) and life (Sunday – 1 plenary session). As part of each plenary session Gordon will offer a few thoughts about the theme and locate it in a wider context. These reflections are intended as conversation starters for the shared discovery process. This design will support the exploration and dialogue process as well as providing opportunities to deepen contact between participants.
The radical contextual, experiential, holistic and relational perspective of Gestalt supports us to make a contribution to finding solutions for the challenges of our times. We are part of the whole, and we have a part to play.
Community:
We live with global issues in the foreground of our awareness, even if our inclination is to bury them in the immediate concerns of our everyday life. We live embedded in nations and neighbourhoods inextricably linked as interdependent communities, even if our inclination is to imagine ourselves as “stand-alone” individuals. As Gestalt practitioners we are richly resourced people with profound ideas and methods to enable change, even if at times we feel disheartened and impotent.
- Does contemporary Gestalt therapy have a distinctive contribution to offer, in the matter of serving the needs of communities?
This gathering will explore a part that we can play as ‘citizen practitioners’ who are awake and attending to what is happening around us, politically, socially, culturally, and ecologically.
I think the work that I am doing is political work. If you work with people to get them to the point where they can think on their own and sort themselves out from the majority confluences, it’s political work and it radiates even if we can work only with a very limited number of people (Laura Perls, 1992).
Practice:
A range of contemporary scientific, economic and bureaucratic influences are challenging how we practice - especially as counselling and psychotherapy professionals. Our practice is challenged with the need for adjustment and transformation. The times favour evidence based practice and cognitive approaches; the times favour particular professional groups and rebates for specified services; the times favour self-regulation and accountability. These are the times in which we practice as counsellors, psychotherapists and consultants - and particularly as Gestalt practitioners in multiple contexts and varied professions.
As field sensitive practitioners we cannot ignore the contexts in which we are embedded and the multiple influences and perspectives that shape our practice. As responsible practitioners, committed to our ongoing development and the service of our clients, we cannot turn away in reaction from the cognitive, from scientific advances in knowledge, from evidence based practice, from accountability or self-regulation.
- Does contemporary gestalt therapy have a distinctive contribution to offer, in the matter of developing effective counselling, psychotherapy and consulting practice?
This gathering will explore a part that we can play as gestalt practitioners who are embedded in the contemporary context, who are integrative of other theories of practice, and who are faithful to the essence of Gestalt.
Life:
Our being-in-the-world is deeply personal. We are continually responding, interrelating, self-recognising, embodying and experimenting; and in the process we make a life for ourselves and others. We do things, produce things, attend to things, look after things, hold onto things, let go of things; and the way in which we live out our existence matters.
- Does contemporary gestalt therapy have a distinctive contribution to offer, in the matter of living well in our personal lives?
This gathering will explore a part that we can play by prioritizing the personal and connecting to this as our inspiration and pathway to the political.
Our Gestalt perspective and model survives, against the grain, against the flow of the dominant culture a lot of the time, because it is holistic; because it is an integrative as well as a specialised approach; because it does justice to and can handle complexity; because it satisfies many people who are put off by more formal or inflexible approaches; because its models of human being-in-the-world are congruent with experience; and because it ‘rings true’ (Parlett, 2009).
*Used with Permission
Ullman, D. & Wheeler, G. (ed.) (2009). Co Creating the Field: Intention and practice in the age of complexity. New York: GestaltPress Book (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group).
O’Neill, B. (ed.) (2009). Community, Psychotherapy and Life Focus: A gestalt anthology of the history, theory and practice of living in community. Mount Keira: Ravenswood Press.