Every person’s life deserves a novel: a co-therapy session led by Erving Polster and Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb

Journal title QUADERNI DI GESTALT
Author/s Elisabetta Conte, Maria Mione
Publishing Year 2017 Issue 2016/1 Language Italian
Pages 12 P. 79-90 File size 181 KB
DOI 10.3280/GEST2016-001006
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The article is the transcription of a live session that took place in Palermo, during a seminar organized by Istituto di Gestalt HCC Italy, titled Every person’s life deserves a novel: psychotherapy in the flow of life, June 2011. The co-therapy session is lead by Erving Polster and Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb. The "client"is a psychologist who attended the seminar. The session demonstrates the phenomenological and aesthetic perspective of Gestalt therapy, the idea that the goal of psychotherapy is to re-awaken the interest of client and therapist, and to animate the harmonic flowing of the whole session, from moment to moment, from event to event. The careful attention of these two deans of the Gestalt community on the missed gestures of the client, reawaken her interest in life as if a new light were brought to it.

Keywords: Co-therapy, triadic setting, primary relationships, phenomenological field, contact boundary in action.

  1. Perls F., Hefferline R.F., Goodman P. (1971). Teoria e pratica della terapia della Gestalt. Vitalità e accrescimento nella personalità umana. Roma: Astrolabio (ed. or.: Gestalt Therapy. Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. New York: The Julian Press, 1951).
  2. Polster E. (1988). Ogni vita merita un romanzo. Quando raccontarsi è terapia. Roma: Astrolabio (ed. or.: Every Person’s Life Deserves a Novel. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co, 1987).
  3. Spagnuolo Lobb M. (2008). Sessualità e amore nel setting gestaltico: dalla morte di Edipo all’emergenza del campo situazionale. Idee in Psicoterapia, 1, 1: 35-47.
  4. Spagnuolo Lobb M. (2009). Il setting dal punto di vista della psicoterapia della Gestalt. La co-creazione dell’esperienza terapeutica nel qui e ora. In: Loriedo C., Acri F., a cura di, Il setting in psicoterapia. Lo scenario dell’incontro terapeutico nei differenti modelli clinici di intervento. Milano: FrancoAngeli.

Elisabetta Conte, Maria Mione, Ogni vita merita un romanzo. Seduta co-condotta da Erving Polster e Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb in "QUADERNI DI GESTALT" 1/2016, pp 79-90, DOI: 10.3280/GEST2016-001006