Biographies of Presenters
Peter Philippson M.Sc Gestalt Therapy (UK)
Peter Philippson, M.Sc. (Gestalt Psychotherapy) is a UKCP Registered Gestalt psychotherapist and trainer, a Teaching and Supervising Member of the Gestalt Psychotherapy & Training Institute UK, a founder member of Manchester Gestalt Centre, Full Member of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy, Senior Trainer for GITA (Slovenia), faculty member, IpsiG (Turin), advisory board member, Center for Somatic Studies, founder member of IG-FEST and a guest trainer for many training programmes internationally. He has been working as a psychotherapist for 35 years. He is Past President of the International Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy. Peter is the author of ‘Self in Relation’, pub. Gestalt Journal Press, ‘The Emergent Self’ pub. Karnac/UKCP, ‘Gestalt Therapy: Roots and Branches’ pub. Karnac and ‘The ‘Active Principle’ in Gestalt Therapy and Other Essays’, and many other chapters and articles. He is a teacher (4th dan) and student of traditional Aikido.
Eliat Aram
Eliat Aram is a Chartered Scientist Psychologist (BPS), a UKCP registered Gestalt Psychotherapist and have been one of the pioneering members of the CMC (Complexity & Management Centre) of Hertfordshire University. Her theoretical grounding is in complexity theory, organisational studies, Gestalt psychotherapy theory and systems psychodynamics. She is a keen practitioner of Group Relations, the Tavistock enterprise’s core ‘learning through experience’ practice and has directed many GRCs nationally and abroad. She has been fortunate to work across the globe and have what some call an ‘anthropological phenomenologist’ stance to the world around her. She tends to grapple with cultural and geographical boundaries, labouring to understand the local context where she works, immersing in its vicissitudes.
Peri Mackintosh (UK)
Peri is a senior psychotherapist and supervisor at the National Autism Unit at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, with over 40 years’ experience of working with people with severe and complex mental illness and autistic conditions. He has specialised in working with people who may be less verbal or have other communication difficulties.
Peri began training in Judo in the 1960′s then vipassana, Zen meditation and Hatha Yoga in the early 1970′s. He studied at the Laban Centre for Movement Studies and the London Contemporary Dance School and performed, choreographed, and composed for theatre and television. He trained and taught Aikido for 25 years.
Peri pioneered the use of mindfulness-based movement and music orientated therapeutic workshops in residential mental health units in the early 1980′s and developed the movement and voice practice Freeforming.
Peri has been a tutor for the Metanoia Institute master’s programme.
He was a contributor to Dance Theatre Journal and is the author of the chapters Attentional Scope and Mental Illness in Embodied Relational Gestalt Editor: Michael Clemmens 2019, Freeforming; Connecting Without Words with co-author Paul Barber in Continuity and Change: Gestalt Therapy Now Editors: Dan Bloom and Philip Brownell, 2011. Peri was a contributing author to Guidance for identification and treatment of individuals with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder based upon expert consensus 2020.
Website i-u.org
Larysa Didkovska, PhD (Ukraine)
Larysa Didkovska, PhD is a clinical psychologist, gestalt psychotherapist, trainer, and supervisor. Larysa works in the areas of crisis counseling; psychotherapeutic support for refugees and displaced persons; psychotherapeutic support of combatants, their families; supervision support of psychologists and psychotherapists who work with many categories of people (anti-terrorist operation participants, displaced persons).
She is a member of the Ukrainian Umbrella Association of Psychotherapy (since 1996), Gestalt therapist with The European Certificate of Psychotherapy (since 2001), Head of the section of Gestalt-therapy of the UUAP (since 2002), member of Ontario Association of
Consultants, Counselors, Psychometrists and Psychotherapists (since 2004), President of the Ukrainian Association of Gestalt-therapy (since 2006), Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, Ukrainian Free University (Munich, Germany) (since 2009), Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine (since 2010), the member of EAGT (since 2018). Larysa has publications on psychology and psychotherapy.
Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb (Italy)
Please note this is an online event, screened live at the conference. If you wish to attend this portion of the conference remotely via ZOOM, you can register here. The event duration is approximately 90 mins.
Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb is Founder and Director of the Istituto di
Gestalt HCC Italy (www.gestaltitaly.com), Post Graduate School of Psychotherapy, International post graduate Programs for psychotherapists on Development and Psychopathology, and on Supervision.
Author and editor of many books, articles and chapters on the phenomenological, aesthetic and field oriented approach of Gestalt therapy, she has developed a relational Gestalt therapy approach, applied to clinical and psychiatric settings, to work with children, to groups and organizational development. Her book, The Now for Next in Psychotherapy. Gestalt Therapy Recounted in Post Modern Society, has been translated in 11 languages. Recently, with Piero Cavaleri, she has edited the book Psychopathology of the Situation (Routledge). She is Main Editor of the Gestalt Therapy Book Series (Routledge), and of the scientific journal Quaderni di Gestalt (since 1985).
She has received the Lifelong Achievement Award from the AAGT (Toronto, Canada, 2018).
Past President and Honorary Member: European Association for Gestalt Therapy (EAGT),
Founder and Honorary President: Italian Association for Gestalt Psychotherapy (SIPG), Past President: Italian Federation of Recognized Gestalt Training Institutes (FISIG), Italian Federation of All Psychotherapy Methods (FIAP).
Full Member: New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy (NYIGT), Society of Psychotherapy Research (SPR), Society for Gestalt Theory and its Applications (GTA), IARRP, International Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy (IAAGT).
More about her work: https://www.gestaltitaly.com/margherita-spagnuolo-lobb/
Richard Hycner PhD (USA)
Rich Hycner’s main focus in Gestalt Therapy has been to attempt to move it in the direction of a more explicitly dialogical/relational approach.
He trained with Erving and Miriam Polster, and became a Training Faculty Member with them at the Gestalt Training Center, La Jolla.
He is the author of: Between Person and Person, Toward A Dialogical Psychotherapy, (transl: De Pessoa A Pessoa: trans: Zwishen Mechen):
Co-author with Lynne Jacobs of: The Healing Relationship in Gestalt Therapy A Dialogical-Self Psychology Approach). Co-Editor with Lynne Jacobs, of Relational Approaches in Gestalt Therapy. (transl: Relaçåo e Cura em Gestalt-terapia).
He has conducted workshops, and trained therapists in Brazil, Canada, England, Ireland, Norway, the US. And Wales.
Though having been a therapist for over 50 years, he now feels that he is so much more deeply understanding how much he has yet to open himself up, yet live the paradox of truly being himself, in order to be more genuinely relational; In order to more accurately and deeply connect with another human being, who also happens to be a patient.