SIPG Recounts: The History of Italian Gestalt Psychotherapy. Riccardo Zerbetto and CSTG

Journal title QUADERNI DI GESTALT
Author/s Riccardo Zerbetto, Monica Pinciroli
Publishing Year 2026 Issue 2025/2
Language Italian Pages 16 P. 63-78 File size 0 KB
DOI 10.3280/qg2025-2oa21396
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

View article Download Open Access article

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 presents a reworking of the interview with Dr. Riccardo Zerbetto, conducted in January 2025 as part of the series “SIPG recounts: The history of Italian Gestalt psychotherapy”. The text offers a significant contribution to the reconstruction of the origins and developments of Gestalt psychotherapy in the Italian context, outlining Zerbetto’s pioneering role in the dissemination of the “West Coast” approach and its application to the contexts of addiction and public health.

Through a journey that intertwines clinical experience, social commitment, and epistemological reflection, the foundations of a Gestalt perspective emerge, understood as a humanistic, phenomenological, and existential practice, in dialogue with contemporary cultural and scientific transformations.

The interview also explores the author’s most recent research directions, which include the comparison between psychotherapy and quantum physics, the exploration of the connection between myth and psyche, and the enhancement of the poetic dimension as a path to knowledge and healing.

As a whole, the text offers a vision of Gestalt therapy as an open and integrative approach, capable of combining symbolic depth and experiential vitality, in a perspective that Zerbetto himself defines as “archetypal Gestalt”.

Keywords: History of Gestalt;training;professional growth;psychotherapy

  1. Detienne M. (2002). Apollo con il coltello in mano. Un approccio sperimentale al politeismo greco. Milano: Adelphi.
  2. Freud S. (1928). Dostoevskij e il parricidio. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri,1978.
  3. Hillman J. (1975). Revisioning Psychology. New York, NY: Harper & Row (trad it.: La revisione della psicologia. Milano: Adelphi 1979).
  4. Jung C.G., Pauli W. (2022) Il carteggio originale: l’incontro tra Psiche e Materia. Bergamo: Moretti e Vitali.
  5. Nietzsche F. (1977). La nascita della tragedia. Milano: Adelphi.
  6. Perls F. (1942). Ego, Hunger and Agression: A Revision of Freud’s Tbeory and Method. London, UK: George Allen & Unwin; New York, NY: Random House, 1969 (tr. it.: L’Io, la fame e l’aggressività. L’opera di uno psicoanalista eretico che vide in anticipo i limiti fondamentali dell’opera di Freud. Roma: Astrolabio, 1998).
  7. Perls F. (1969). In and Out the Garbage Pail, Moab, Utah: Real People Press (trad. it.: Qui e ora. Psicoterapia autobiografica. Roma: Sovera, 1991).
  8. Zerbetto R. (2008). Principi di Gestalt. In: Ferrara A., Spagnuolo Lobb M., a cura di, Le voci della Gestalt: sviluppi e innovazioni di una psicoterapia. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
  9. Zerbetto R. (2009). In ricordo di Barrie Simmons. Quaderni di Gestalt, 1: 127-134. DOI: 10.3280/GEST2009-001011
  10. Zerbetto R. (2010). West and East coasts: la formazione nella Gestalt terapia tra scienza ed esperienza. Quaderni di Gestalt, 3: 47-58. DOI: 10.3280/GEST2010-002004
  11. Zerbetto R. (2011). Il sogno, la Gestalt e gli Archetipi. In: Metzler D., a cura di, Contributo a: Mazzo di fiori, Festshrift in onore di Herbert Hoffman. Wiesbladel, DE: Verlag Franz Philipp Rutzen.
  12. Zerbetto R., a cura di (2014). Fondamenti comuni e diversità di approccio in psicoterapia. Milano: FrancoAngeli.

Riccardo Zerbetto, Monica Pinciroli, La SIPG racconta: la storia della psicoterapia della Gestalt italiana. Riccardo Zerbetto e CSTG in "QUADERNI DI GESTALT" 2/2025, pp 63-78, DOI: 10.3280/qg2025-2oa21396