Offerings for professionals

8 online sessions · 90 minutes each, monthly $750

Scheduling will be determined in consultation with participants.

The foundational 1951 text Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality by Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman (PHG) gave us a radical vision of psychotherapy—one that has shaped generations of gestalt therapists. It has often been accepted without question or challenge. And it has also been rejected outright and ignored. More than seventy years later, we ask: Is PHG still useful today? What can it still teach us—if we meet it in critical dialogue rather than in reverence?

This 8-session monthly webinar critically revisits PHG as a theory of reference for contemporary gestalt therapy. Together we will:

– Explore the original theory in depth—its terminology, its vision, its conceptual architecture, its social and clinical context.

– Challenge its orthodoxy with contemporary perspectives: intentionality of contacting, the aesthetic criterion, theory of self, the contact-boundary, relationality, the situation, and field epistemologies.

– Compare and contrast PHG with newer models and worldviews

– Ask how this theory might still inspire our clinical sensibility—if we listen with fresh ears.

Our goal is not veneration but renewal: to reinhabit PHG in the light of what we now know and what the current circumstances of the present world demand, so that we rediscover its vitality as the source of gestalt therapy.

Format: Didactic + interactive
Readings: downloadable
Recordings: available
Discussion: online message list

To register or inquire: dan.bloom@me.com

More about me: www.danbloomnyc.com

I offer online individual and group supervision for Gestalt psychotherapists. I currently have openings in my ongoing online supervision groups and available individual hours.

My supervisory work is grounded in a field-emergent, phenomenological, and relational understanding of Gestalt therapy, with sustained attention to clinical process, ethics, and the lived situation of both therapist and client.

I am an EAGT-accredited supervisor.

New supervision groups are in formation.

This webinar introduces phenomenology as the philosophical and methodological ground of Gestalt therapy, understood as already implicit in Gestalt clinical work. The seminar treats Gestalt therapy itself as a form of clinical phenomenology, and asks what follows when this claim is taken seriously.

The webinar moves beyond orientation and overview to examine how phenomenological concepts actively shape clinical perception, therapeutic judgment, and ethical responsiveness. Participants are invited to consider how phenomenology informs the way figures emerge, how meaning takes shape over time, and how the therapist’s presence is implicated in the unfolding clinical situation.

Over the months, the webinar engages in sustained dialogue with selected major phenomenological thinkers, including Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Bernhard Waldenfels. Rather than surveying their ideas descriptively, we work with them as conceptual resources for clarifying core Gestalt concerns such as intentionality, embodiment, temporality, relationality, dialogue, responsivity, and the ethical dimension of psychotherapy

Topics include the phenomenological method, intentionality, temporality, lived-experience, the lived body, the lifeworld, intersubjectivity, being-in-the-world, the other, responsivity, and ethics. Particular attention is given to how these dimensions are disclosed in the moment-to-moment process of therapy.

Throughout the webinar, theoretical work is continually applied to concrete clinical situations. The webinar aims to refine clinical seeing, deepen phenomenological listening, and support a more responsive and ethically attuned practice.

Readings are downloadable. Each meeting is recorded for future viewing.

This webinar consists of 8 monthly, 90-minute meetings.

Readings are downloadable. Each meeting is recorded for future viewing
The fee is 700 USD.

This shorter webinar is intended for clinicians seeking an accessible introduction to the general themes and philosophical influences shaping Gestalt therapy and its phenomenological orientation.

The focus is on contemporary Gestalt clinical practice, understood as a form of clinical phenomenology. We examine how our everyday therapeutic work is already phenomenology-in-practice, and how it deepens when key phenomenological concepts are made explicit rather than left implicit.

The seminar includes a brief and focused exploration of the relevance of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as thinkers whose ideas illuminate central dimensions of our clinical work. We see how our key concepts (for example, field, organism-environment, contacting, and self) are enriched by ideas such as intentionality, lived experience, embodiment, temporality, lifeworld, and being-in-the-world.

The emphasis throughout is on clarity and clinical relevance rather than on the complexity of phenomenology. This offering is for clinicians seeking a conceptual map of the relationship between phenomenology and Gestalt therapy.

This webinar consists of 4 90-minute meetings.
Readings are downloadable. Each meeting is recorded for future viewing.
The fee is 400 USD.

This advanced webinar deepens and extends the work of the introductory phenomenology seminar.

It is open to previous participants, or, by consultation, to clinicians already familiar with phenomenology and Gestalt therapy concepts.

Rather than following a fixed syllabus, the seminar evolves in response to the group’s interests and questions. Concepts from previous webinars are revisited and further developed as new insights emerge from the shared exploration.

Readings include both foundational texts and new material selected in response to the group’s emerging needs.

The seminar meets monthly for 8 90-minute meetings.

Readings are downloadable. Each meeting is recorded for future viewing.

The fee is 700 USD.