Hi John. I am happy to read you here. I am, God willing, going to be 76 near the end of December. My brother died late this summer, and he was 71. I am watching a generation passing in the arts, in science, in psychotherapy, and in my family. And here. I wish you time well beyond 91, but we will all die. I planted twenty new trees last week, and put mulch around them. And paid for it with my body. All that getting down low to the ground, digging in the dirt, pulling weeds, mixing planting mix with natural soil, putting in root stimulator, and then mulching. Down and up and down again and again. Pain not just in the lower back, but in my hands, my arms, my legs. And weakness that I had not known before. We don’t just arrive at some kind of door and suddenly go through it into eternity. We die a little today and tomorrow. We get there slowly and then all at once. Yes. Gestalt therapy has affected who I am. Not simply by virtue of its evolving theory but also because of the people it has brought into my life and the places into which I have gone because of it. This year Linda and I went to Kyiv. It took three days to get there. Ten hours on planes, an overnight in Warsaw, and then an 18-hour train ride. There was a missile attack while we were there. We met people in the bomb shelter below the hotel. But mostly the city was alive and moving almost as if there were no war. Almost. We fell in love with the people and city. We did a tour of Bucha and Irpin and the mayor of one of those cities (I cannot recall which) gave us a walking narrative of what happened there. We toured a brand new children’s treatment center in Bucha, and I asked them what clinical perspective they followed most (CBT). Even in Ukraine, where gestalt is a majority, the relentlessness of evidence-based practice marches on. Because of the need to establish a research tradition for gestalt I met wonderful people largely from Europe that I would never have met otherwise. My life has been enriched tremendously because of the field of gestalt therapy. And I could never have imagined it sitting in Evan Wolf’s gestalt group on the “open ward” at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in San Leandro California in 1969. “Be your foot.” Indeed. Phil > On Nov 6, 2023, at 10:35 AM, john wymore <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > > There are’nt many people left who were trained when Fritz and Laura were still alive. I’ll be 91 at the end of this month. I often wonder at the Impact that my training had on my life , especially how it has grown through the years. It was certainly due in part to the unique personalities of my trainers at the New England institute (Lee, Allen, and Kathy) plus adjuncts like Erv, Miriam, Bob, and Neila. It may have been due to the total effect of the encounters with the many fellow trainees. It might have been because of the Human Potential Movment, Esalen, even Alan Watts which influenced me during my years going up on the West Coast. > > All this varied and uniquely potent contact contributed to a personality that was slyly antiestablishment, amusedly cynical, anf often described as “free spirited”. > We were definitely nonconformists and sometimes smuggly so. You will note that I have changed the pronoun to “we”. There were others like me who were also trained in those early says. I might add that charm was not necessarily a trait. In fact it was even fashionable to be rude —for some. We should all be like Fritz. Authentic, no? > > Recentlfy I discovered a quote from the late Evolutionary Psychologist , Richard Alexander, Ph. D. University of Michigan which states eloquently and with more intellectual insight as to what we were about. Alas, we really never became a movement as we gave in to conformity. But we are still very young as a species with a lot of room for growth. Scholarship enlightened by the study of the evolution of human behavior hints how the next movement in human potential may look. Here is the quote extracted , I believe, from a discussion that Professor Alexander was having with colleagues and students probably about the direction of Evolutionary Psychology: > > “. . .an evolved human psychology that is not constrained by cultural rules but rather responds to culture with creativity, dynamism and confidence that the world we live in can be changed.” > > I beleive that that was the mentality that shaped the style and values of early Gestalt training. It should do that again. > > Breathe !! > > John Wymore > > > ______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, <http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L,> and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives. ______________ Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.