The new council for 2020 was sworn in at the Annual General Meeting of GANZ on the 16th of October 2019.
The Council roles are detailed in these documents:
Anthony Jones
Vice President
Anthony is a psychologist and Gestalt Therapist with many years’ experience in the health and welfare sector. He currently works in community health and private practice, and has a particular focus on trauma, dissociation and relational problems. Prior to working as a therapist, Anthony worked in an industrial sugar mill for 10 years.
Nathan Dick
Treasurer
I am in the final months of completing my Masters of Gestalt Therapy with GTB. My study and research in recent years have focussed on parenting, culture, neuroscience and unresolved trauma. I am passionate about social justice and feel drawn to challenge systems of injustice and societal norms around race, gender and sexuality.
I have many years of experience working in business management. I currently work for a project supporting West Papuan people in their struggle for self-determination. I am also in the process of setting up my private Gestalt practice in Murwillumbah, Bundjalung Country (Nth NSW). I feel privileged to have the opportunity to serve the Gestalt community as GANZ treasurer.
Julia Werner
Secretary
I am a Gestalt therapist working with individuals and couples in my small private practice Gestalt Pathways. I have trained at Gestalt Therapy Australia in Melbourne and in gestalt informed couple therapy in Germany. I loved the training and increasingly developed a desire to work with people as a counsellor helping them in turning their sufferings into emotional growth. I completed the 4-year course in 2013.
Gestalt theory first came into my life when I was lecturing in landscape architecture and environmental planning at Leibniz University Hanover in Germany. I have a Master of Science in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning and a Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching and Learning and continue to lecture in landscape architectural design.
I enjoy working with complex systems such as cities or the landscapes that we inhabit, developing creative design ideas for potential future developments and fostering the sustainable co-existence of people and nature.
Counselling has become my second career, while I remain to work part-time as a lecturer in landscape architecture. For me the external and the internal worlds are related, and I am interested in the interactions between the two worlds. My knowledge of how complex systems work and relate to each other has given me an insight into how our ‘internal structures’ relate to each other and the effects they may have on our ‘whole’ when they are disconnected from one another.
I took up the role as the GANZ secretary and now enjoy working alongside a Council team so passionate and dedicated to Gestalt.
Eric Houghton
International and External Relationships
I am a therapist and counsellor in private practice in Wellington, New Zealand. I am fortunate to practice with colleagues I met through Gestalt training. Alongside seeing individual clients, I have spent a fair amount of time doing group work. I have facilitated groups and trained facilitators in adolescent resilience, parenting through separation and grief by suicide. In my role as a facilitator-trainer I have run trainings in many locations around New Zealand. I also have worked as a guidance counsellor at a local high school.
Prior to entering the therapeutic field, I worked in various roles in the fields of communications, broadcasting and feature film. My most prominent work was as an assistant director, which has more parallels to being a therapist than you might think.
My interest in psychotherapy began with me engaging in my own personal work. This opened my own awareness and I developed an interest in using what I was learning to assist others. I began by completing a degree in psychology at Victoria University of Wellington. On completion I was scheduled to do a Masters in Counselling Psychology, though in a serendipitous turn of events found Gestalt instead. Currently, I am in the final stages of a Masters in Gestalt Therapy with Gestalt Therapy Brisbane. This follows four years of training with the Gestalt Institute of New Zealand.
I am very pleased to be involved with the GANZ council. I work in International Relations with a particular focus on New Zealand. My primary interests are to see our organisation strengthen as a collective and to help Gestalt therapy grow and flourish in the region.
Annie Garrety
Research
I am a Therapist and Counsellor in private practice in Mapleton and Brisbane Qld. My previous experience in counselling and hypnotherapy was at a complementary medicine fertility clinic. I have done extensive training in Family Constellations and have completed a Masters in Gestalt Therapy at Gestalt Therapy Brisbane and am a qualified hypnotherapist. Prior to entering the profession of psychotherapy I was a specialist teacher of the arts in primary music.
My interest in research began when I contributed to single case studies in my final year of training. I was inspired then to attend the Gestalt Research conference in 2019 in Santiago, Chile where I spoke to the effectiveness of student research that had been completed and contributed to a paper with Madeleine Fogarty. I then spent a year traveling in Europe and completed studies in Contemporary Gestalt Therapy and Clinical issues with Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb, Gianni Francesetti, Jean-Marie Robine and Carmen Vázquez Bandin. I also attended the EAGT conference in Budapest and was inspired by the workshops of Jan Roubal and continue to study with him online.
I am very happy to be the research chair on GANZ Council and plan more research projects with supervision from both Jan Roubal (Czech Republic) and Marghertia Spagnuolo Lobb (Italy). I am fascinated with and aim to have a study group with the topic of PHG through the hermeneutic eyes of the European Contemporary field oriented Gestalt Therapy writers.
Aicha Brogan
Community and Membership
I have worked as a therapist since 2001, providing therapy to a wide range of clients. I am a Clinical member of PACFA and a former member of PACFA’s Gestalt Leadership group. I currently work in private practice and for a non-for-profit, in Hawthorn and Warburton, Victoria.
In practicing through a gestalt lens, I found a therapeutic home and a deep love for Gestalt Therapy! I am passionate about supporting the growth and sustainability of gestalt locally and internationally and have joined Council to both promote GANZ and in order to support the coming together of other Gestalt practitioners who share the love of this framework.
Michelle Sier
Professional Development
I am a psychologist and psychotherapist working in private practice in Melbourne. I have a deep love for and commitment to Gestalt Therapy and the ways in which it invites and allows us to become aware of our capacities for change, choice and to live a fulfilling life.
I am passionate about professional development and how it can bring us together as a community to resource and support our work and connections to each other. I am interested in understanding the ways therapists with different backgrounds and professional training and experience can connect and learn from each other clinically and relationally. My hope is to expand opportunities for contact and learning, and to help facilitate creativity, vitality and passion amongst our community through professional development events.
Prior to therapeutic practice, I worked on a national children’s mental health initiative to develop mental health professional learning resources for early childhood educators, primary school teachers, and families in Australia. I have also worked in mental health program management and policy development with the Australian Government Department of Health in Canberra.
I am currently completing my 4th year training as a Gestalt psychotherapist through Gestalt Therapy Australia in Melbourne.
Marc Moskowitz
Student Representative
I am a Mental Health Social Worker, Counsellor and Psychotherapist working in private practice and not-for-profit counselling and am completing my final year of study at Gestalt Therapy Australia (GTA) in Melbourne. My work experience has been in not-for-profit counselling, employee assistance program (EAP) counselling, university student counselling and mental health case management. I have also been a union representative in a previous workplace and am experienced in advocacy and promotion.
I am passionate about Gestalt Therapy theory and practice and hope to see the psychology and psychotherapy communities more engaged with Gestalt. As the student representative, I hope to support students’ ongoing development and careers as emerging Gestalt Therapists and to see students connect more with each other and the wider Gestalt community.