67th Annual Conference

Saturday, February 27

Morning Open Session

9:00 - 11:30 A.M.

Louis R. Ormont Lecture

Session 315
Life Focus Communities

Presenter:              

Erving Polster, Ph.D., Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of California at San Diego, San Diego, California

There is an important extrapolation to be made by psychotherapy extending its leadership from private sessions into leadership of Life Focus Communities. This would expand therapy's inter-relational purpose, incorporating the security of belonging with the inspirational powers of people joining together, all directed to a lifelong examination of the lived life. Dr. Polster will offer some novel comparisons with religion and demonstrate through experiential exercises how such groups may be conducted.

Erving Polster is Director of the Gestalt Training Center - San Diego.  He is also Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego.  Polster is co-author, with Miriam Polster, of an important text in gestalt therapy, Gestalt Therapy Integrated (Vintage, 1974).  He also has written Every Person's Life Is Worth a Novel (W.W. Norton, 1986) in which he spells out the therapeutic applicability of the kinship between the novelist and the psychotherapist.  His next book was A Population of Selves (Jossey-Bass, 1995), in which he explores personal diversity and presents a theory of the self which narrows the gap between theoretical principles and the therapeutic practice.  In 1999 GIC Press published a book tracing the evolution of ideas which he and Miriam Polster have presented over a 45 year period in their lectures, papers and anthology pieces.  It is entitled From the Radical Center: The Heart of Gestalt Therapy. He has recently authored Uncommon Ground: Harmonizing Psychotherapy and Community (Zeig, Tucker and Theissen, Phoenix, AZ, 2006).

Learning Objectives:

The attendees will be able to:

1. See the concept of the sacred in a new way, showing common ground between psychotherapy and religion.

2. Transform private therapy into a public format.

3. Create exercises for design of Life Focus Communities.

Course References:

Polster, E. (2006). Uncommon ground. Phoenix: Zeig, Tucker and Theissen.

Perls, F., Hefferline, R., & Goodman, P. (1951). Gestalt therapy. New York: Julian Press.

Rank, O. (1941). Beyond psychology. New York: Dover.