Residential Training Program

February 23-March 3, 2023
Rancho Mirage, California

The 2023 Residential Program is fully subscribed. We are not accepting applications for this program. Registration for the 2024 Program will be posted in May or June, 2023. Please join our mailing list if you wish to be notified when registration begins.

Learning Goals

Join our faculty and other participants to explore clinical applications of the evolving relational perspective we have been developing over the years. We have explored various theoretical foundations from gestalt therapy theory, from contemporary psychoanalysis, and from our philosophical forebears. Share our week of exploration and learning and living together. We have opportunities for learning for all levels of experience with gestalt therapy, from folks who serve on gestalt therapy faculties, to folks who have minimal clinical experience.

Program Highlights

A strong sense of community, coupled with an inclusiveness towards all participants, has allowed the faculty and community to experiment with program design. For instance, we have an optional evening program run by participants who wish to contribute ideas and experiences. Some examples have been:

• Improvisation and presence
• Embodied shame
• Aesthetics of creativity and therapy
• Yoga and the relation with “self.”
• Moving meditation
• Free writing

From beginning therapists to faculty members of gestalt therapy training programs, we have an extremely high rate of returning participants. Defining qualities of the program have become: the support for taking risks, mutual respect, and honest (even when difficult) dialogue.

We are excited to reconvene our residential training program in 2023!

This year we will have a special guest faculty, Donna Orange. Donna has been with us before, and has been invited back by popular demand. She is a philosopher and psychoanalyst (and avid bicyclist) who has enriched our program twice before. Here is a description posted on her web site (https://sites.google.com/site/donnamorange/Home).

“A lifelong student of philosophy, with a midlife addition of clinical psychology and psychoanalysis, I teach in psychoanalytic institutes: IPSS (Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, New York), NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis — Relational Track, and ISIPSé (Istituto di Specializzazione in Psicologia Psicoanalitica del Sé e Psicoanalisi Relazionale, Roma e Milano). I also offer clinical consultation in these institutes and others and teach in humanistic psychotherapeutic settings worldwide and in private study groups. My recent books are Thinking for Clinicians: Philosophical Resources for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Humanistic Psychotherapies (2010), The Suffering Stranger: Hermeneutics for Everyday Clinical Practice (2011), Nourishing the Inner Life of Clinicians and Humanitarians: The Ethical Turn in Psychoanalysis (2015), Climate Crisis, Psychoanalysis, and Radical Ethics (2017), and Psychoanalysis, History, and Radical Ethics: Learning to Hear (2020).”

Our setting will be different than in years past. Because of the pandemic, we had to schedule our meeting at a resort hotel in Palm Springs area instead of at a retreat center (it is a long story). The hotel is: Omni Rancho Las Palmas Resort. While the setting itself will be lovely and classier than our usual spaces, it also means, unfortunately, that we have to raise our prices. However, we have been graced by Janet Ruckert’s generosity, who bequeathed both PGI and GTILA (Gestalt Therapy Institute of LA) with money for scholarships. For those who did not know her, she spent decades teaching training and supporting the people and programs that advanced gestalt therapy in the LA area. We hope the price does not daunt you from applying to the program, since you are also invited to apply for scholarship assistance.

Registration

Ordinarily we ask for a fully-refundable deposit of 500 USD. However, this year we prefer to wait until we have a better sense of how Covid-19 is playing out. In the meantime, please send an email to Lynne Jacobs at lmjacobsl@gmail.com to ask for more information and/or to express interest in attending.

Continuing Education for Psychologists, MFTs and LCSWs: 36 hours

Pacific Gestalt Institute (PGI) Provider #PCE 369

PGI is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. PGI maintains responsibility for this program and its content. The California Board of Behavioral Sciences recognizes APA approved CE providers for MFT’s and LCSW’s.