Year Four
Training and Supervision in Gestalt Therapy

Students in Year Four are trained academically and experientially in the fundamentals of therapy practice and a range of diverse clinical applications of the work. Emphasis is on Gestalt as the clinical application of relational phenomenology. Beginning in November, students gain approval to begin seeing clients under supervision once they have obtained professional liability insurance and chosen an Approved Supervisor. They are then invited to become active members of the Student Clinic, participating in a supervised and mentored process of intake, screening, and risk assessment with prospective clients. Students are supported and guided through an experiential and practical training in all aspects of the practice – from preparing for the first meeting, to intake, risk assessment, note taking and managing the therapy hour. The Student Clinic provides Year Four students with screened clients throughout the year for their beginning practice.

Once students begin their supervised therapy practice there is deeper and more immediate integration of the Gestalt approach to change, field theory and the practice of embodied relationality. Learning includes the intrinsic and extrinsic forms of diagnosis, risk assessment, situational ethics, comparative psychotherapies and the fundamentals of being a psychotherapist including safe and effective use of self and principles pertaining to transference, counter transference and self-disclosure. Training is both didactic and experiential, with priority always given to process in the here and now, and continues to apply application and theory to real life situations. There is always time for creativity and laughter.

All Learning Outcomes are now applied to the practice of psychotherapy with particular emphasis on:

• Apply skills of embodied relational practice in practicum with actual clients

• Intrinsic & extrinsic skills of risk assessment

• Understanding of situational ethics and the use of professional resources

• Ethical & legal concerns

• Safe & effective use of self in the therapeutic encounter

• The aesthetic practice of Gestalt where “knowing” arises out of sensing which leads to Gestalt diagnosis of the field of suffering

• How to create experiments using what emerges between therapist & client

• How to properly close with a client & how to make appropriate referrals.

Apply Contemporary Gestalt therapy to:

• • • Socio-political intersection with therapy

    • Human sexuality

    • Working with eating disorders

    • Gestalt approach to addictions, trauma, racism, shame, & forms of contact called psychopathology.

Students are expected to complete:

• Oral and written assignments

• 50 hours of intake training and practicum

• 160 hours of experiential and didactic learning

• Client and supervision hours

Tuition Fee

• • $5100 plus residential fee
  • Five-Day May Residential fee of $860 includes accommodation and all meals.

*Travel arrangements are the responsibility of the individual