See also:
pre-conference workshops
roster of conference presentations

Those who are not familiar with the AAGT, or the kind of conferences that we put on, should consult an issue of Gestalt! (http://www.g-gej.org/3-1/index.html), the online journal for gestalt therapy, as one of its issues profiled the 1998 conference, held in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, and it also offered the program schedule for the 1999 conference in New York, New York, USA. Between the program and abstracts for the one and the program listings for the second, one can see the kind of presentations these conferences usually offer. Further, one can read articles and see pictures to gain a sense of the "feel" of an AAGT conference. With our care about processing, we also place each participant in a small group where he or she can meet others and attend to aspects of the experience of the conference on a more intimate and supportive basis.

Opening Night:

Charlie Bowman and Seán Gaffney will lead an opening plenary to explore and celebrate the evolving nature of our organization and to celebrate our maturing identity as an international community.

Charlie Bowman is Past-President of the AAGT, Co-President of the Indianapolis Gestalt Institute and a Gestalt therapist, trainer and author. Charlie is Director of Verizon Communication’s Work/Family programs and maintains a small Gestalt therapy practice. He and his wife, Ann, live in a quiet town in mid-America where he enjoys time with five children, four grandchildren and his Harley. He is chapter author for History and Development of Gestalt Therapy in Gestalt Therapy: History, Theory and Practice, Woldt, A. & Toman, S. (eds).

Seán Gaffney is Irish by birth, culture and conviction but has been living in Sweden since 1975.  He is a Gestalt therapist and organizational consultant, a full faculty member of the Organization and System Development Center for the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, a member of the Gestalt International Study Center, and trainer over the years with gestalt institutes and associations in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Russia, Italy, Ireland, and Israel. He is a university lecturer in cross-cultural management. His work in all areas is bilingual, multicultural, and international. He is on the faculties of the Gestalt Academy, Scandinavia; the Gestalt Trust, Scotland/North of Ireland; the GIC/IGOR International OSD Programme; the Institute of International Business at the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden; and The Masters Division, Universitá Bocconi, Milan, Italy, and he is a member of the Core Faculty for the Gestalt Training Institute of Bermuda. He also lectures on Masters’ Programmes in Universities in Latvia and Iran. He has published articles in the Nordic Gestalt Journal (founding editor) and Gestalt Review, and he is a chapter respondent for Gestalt Therapy: History, Theory and Practice, Woldt, A. & Toman, S. (eds). He is currently completing a Ph.D. on gestalt with multicultural groups.

Keynote Address:

Our Keynote will take place on the morning of our first full day. Gaie Houston and Dan Bloom will present the Keynote, moderated by our President, Peter Philippson.

Gaie Houston is a well-known gestalt therapist and writer who teaches and trains internationally. She is the author of Brief Gestalt Therapy, Integrative Therapy: A Practitioner's Guide, The Group Alive, The Now Red Book of Gestalt, The Red Book of Groups, and Supervision and Counselling. She is a senior lecturer at The Gestalt Centre, London., and she is on the editorial boards for The British Gestalt Journal, and Gestalt Review. Gaie is also a playwright and director.

Dan Bloom is Editor in chief of Studies in Gestalt Therapy–Dialogical Bridges, is a psychotherapist in New York City. He studied with Laura Perls, Isadore From, Richard Kitlzer, and Patrick Kelley. He is a full member of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy and its ex-president, having been the first person to serve 2 terms since Laura Perls. Dan is a member of the European Association for Gestalt Therapy (EAGT) and the president-elect of the Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy, an international community (AAGT). He teaches and lectures internationally and is a member of the Core Faculty for the Gestalt Training Institute of Bermuda.

Invited Presenters:

In addition, we have invited three notable colleagues to come and to present at this years conference - Lynne Jacobs, Daan Van Baalen, and Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb.

Lynne Jacobs is co-founder of the Pacific Gestalt Institute. Lynne has long been interested in the relational dimension of psychotherapy, and in integrating humanistic with contemporary psychoanalytic theories. Both a gestalt therapist and a psychoanalyst, she is a co-founder of the Pacific Gestalt Institute. She is also a training and supervising analyst of the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP) in Los Angeles. She teaches at ICP, and teaches gestalt therapists locally, nationally, and internationally. Lynne co-authored, with Richard Hycner, The Healing Relationship in Gestalt Therapy: A Dialogic, Self-Psychological Approach. Recent articles include “Shame in the Therapeutic Dialogue”, “Optimal Responsiveness and Intersubjectivity Theory”, and “Pathways to a Relational Worldview.” She has a private practice in West Los Angeles.

"Enduring Relational Themes:
Thinking Outside the Transference 'Box.'"

Gestalt therapy has some powerful concepts by which to make sense of patterns of contacting that are resistant to change. And therapeutic dialogic is a powerful approach to engaging these patterns. I wish to show how we can use insights from psychoanalysis without succumbing to the deadening idea that the past determines the future. In this didactic and experiential workshop, I offer a way to think about patterns of contact in a therapeutically meaningful way, and then we will engage in either some experiments or some demonstration work.

Daan Van Baalen is co-founder of the Norwwegian Gestalt Institute (NGI) and Rector of NGI college. He has developed training programmes in gestalt psychotherapy, coaching and organisational development in Norway, Netherlands and Belgium and is a Visiting Trainer in several European countries. While being a university lecturer at the Erasmus University, Netherlands he was enagaged in research with chronic diseases and psychotherapy. He has written articles in sevarl languages and is co-editor of the European Journal for Qualitative Research in Psychotherapy . Daan is External Relations Officer for the European Association for Gestalt Therapy (EAGT) and Chair of the Norwegian Association for Psychotherapy (NFP). He is a member of the board and recognised expert for the European Association for Psychotherapy (EAP), a member of the International Federation of Gestalt Training Organisations (FORGE), and serves on the Editorial Board of Gestalt Review.

"The Revolutionary Consequences of the "Law of Prägnanz""

In the country in which I work, gestalt therapy gets more and more credibility. With this recognition, I see at the same time a loss of the revolutionary, exciting concepts of Gestalt therapy. One of those concepts is “the law of Prägnanz” formulated by Max Wertheim and Wolfgang Köhler. It says that every gestalt becomes as “good” as possible - or takes the best possible shape. This law, however, is incompatible with major streams in health care dominated by medical science. I want in this workshop to explore what is meant by the law of Prägnanz and to see what future consequences this can imply for gestalt therapy practice.

Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb is a licensed psychologist, psychotherapist and gestalt therapy trainer since 1979. She teaches in the five offices of her Italian Institute, and is an invited trainer and conference presenter internationally. She has served as president of the European Association for Gestalt Therapy (EAGT) for 6 years, of the Italian Umbrella Association for Psychotherapy (FIAP) for 2 years, and of the Italian Association for Gestalt therapy (SIPG) for 2 decades. She founded the European Conference of Gestalt Therapy writers, has served as editor of the Italian journal “Quaderni di Gestalt” since 1985, and she is co-editor of the new journal, Studies in Gestalt Therapy-Dialogical Bridges. Her writings, which cover both epistemological and practical issues, have been published and translated in many languages.

"Borders, Bridges and the Co-Creation of the
Contact-Boundary: The Emergence of the Situational Field"

For us, the perception (and hence also the emotion) of the patient or the therapist is a process which occurs not “inside” the individual, but as co-creation in the space “between” in which their experiences are realized. What happens at the contact boundary is a figure supported by the perceptive ground of the situational field. The child’s perception, for instance, is oriented towards the contact boundary between mother and father, as well as, respectively, towards the contact boundary between her/himself and the mother and between her/himself and the father. The child experiences a field, a situation, which includes both the ground and the figure. Carrying over this viewpoint to the therapeutic setting, the patient never sees us in isolation, but always as part of a relational field.

Schedule

PRE-CONFERENCE
Tuesday, July 22nd

0700-0900:	Breakfast Provided by Hotel (serve yourself)
0900-1830:	Half-day and Full-day pre-conference workshops and marathon groups

PRE-CONFERENCE/CONFERENCE
Wednesday, July 23rd

0700-0900:	Breakfast Provided by Hotel (serve yourself)
0900-1730:	Pre-Conference Workshops/Marathons; Registration
1430-1630:	Process Group (PG) Leaders' Meeting
1830-2100:	** Welcome to the Community and Opening Plenary (incorporating first Process Group meeting)
2100-2200:	Social Hour/Free Time

Thursday, July 24th

0700-0900:	Breakfast Provided by Hotel (serve yourself)
0800-0900:	Early morning activities: see notice board for offerings (or offer something yourself)
0900-1100:	* Plenary Two: Keynote Address with Gaie Houston and Dan Bloom, moderated by Peter Philippson
1100-1130:	Break
1130-1330:	Round One of Presentations
1330-1530:	Lunch/Regional Contact Persons' (RC P) Meeting
1530-1730:	Round Two of Presentations
1730-1830:	Second Process Group Meeting
1830-1900:	Free time/passing time/space
1900-2030:	Dinner/ AAGT Board Meeting
2030-2200:	First Community Meeting: Orientation to our process and agenda (with potential prominent place given to the role of RCPs in an expanding international identity)
2200-... :	Free Time

Friday, July 25th

0700-0900:	Breakfast Provided by Hotel (serve yourself)
0800-0900:	Early morning activities: see notice board for offerings (or offer something yourself)
0900-1100:	Round Three of Presentations
1100-1130:	Break
1130-1330:	Round Four of Presentations
1330-1500:	Process Group Luncheon
1500-1900:	Second Community Meeting
1900-2030:	Dinner
2030-????:	Irish Interest Group/Free Time

Saturday, July 26th

0700-0900:	Breakfast Provided by Hotel (serve yourself)
0800-0900:	Early morning activities: see notice board for offerings (or offer something yourself)
0900-1100:	Round Five of Presentations
1100-1130:	Break
1130-1330:	* Round Six of Presentations (Invited Presenters Round)
1330-1500:	Special Interest Groups Luncheon
1500-1730:	Annual Meeting
1730-1830:	Final Process Group Meeting
1830-1900:	Free time/passing time/space
1900-2030:	Dinner
2030-2330:	Dance/Auction/Dance Alternative Social Event

Sunday, July 27th

0700-0900:	Breakfast Provided by Hotel (serve yourself)
0800-0900:	Early morning activities: see notice board for offerings (or offer something yourself)
0900-1100:	Round Seven of Presentations
1100-1130:	Break
1130-1330:	Final Plenary and Closing of Conference
1330-1500:	Lunch for new AAGT Board and the 2010 CPC

* these presentations will potentially be recorded for inclusion on DVD

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