Year Three
Finding Support in The Therapist’s Chair

In Year Three, students experience sitting in the Gestalt therapist’s chair, in practice sessions in front of their group, and in supervised demonstrations with student clients. This year provides the refinement of their skills and the grounding in the relational method that will support the transition to seeing clients through their practicum in Year Four.

Year Three brings a new maturation from identity as a group member to becoming a group of leaders. Year Three students dedicate an additional one to two months of their schedule to sit beside the faculty as co-leaders in Years One and Two theory evenings and weekends. Their task is to observe the interaction between faculty and students, between students in the class and the leader’s support of group process. They will receive guidance in developing creative ways to support group process and have an opportunity to demonstrate their work through leading an evening activity for the students and receive feedback from both students and faculty.

No therapist in our contemporary world can operate without peer support, and students are encouraged early to form study groups to meet throughout the year to discuss challenges and principles of practice. This will continue through their fourth year.

Learning Outcomes in Year Three include:       

• • Refine & discover a language for the embodied experience with others that will become an effective bridge to change

  • Awareness of self in relation to professional role

  • Develop safe & effective use of self in a therapeutic relationship with peers and students in Years One & Two

  • Learn to bracket assumptions and become aware of biases to assume non-judgmental stance

  • Maintain appropriate professional boundaries with Year One and Two students and peer co-leaders

  • Adapt the therapist’s approach within a diverse group

  • Demonstrate awareness of the impact of context and the presence of the therapist and the co-leader on process

  • Demonstrate effective skills of awareness of self, the client, the co-created field and the process of contact — “the dance”

  • Develop an experimental attitude and approach

  • Employ empathy, respect and curiosity

  • Maintenance of self-care and level of health necessary for responsible therapy and group membership.

      

    Students are expected to complete:

• • Oral and written assignments

  • 160 hours of experiential and didactic teaching

  • 50 additional hours of supervised leadership

  • Brief live therapy demonstrations

  • Minimum of fifty hours of personal therapy with Gestalt psychotherapists by the end of Year Three..

Progression from Year Three to Year Four is determined by faculty assessment following the May weeklong training after guidance and review throughout the year.