Gestalt Therapy in Times of War

Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb is Psychologist, Psychotherapist, Director of the Gestalt Institute HCC Italy, and Chair of the Gestalt Therapy Book Series.Pietro Andrea Cavaleri is Trainer at the Post Graduate School of Psychotherapy of the Gestalt Institute HCC Italy.Mattia Romano is Psychologist and a Senior Trainee in Gestalt Psychotherapy at the Gestalt Institute HCC Italy.Giacomo Bisonti is Psychologist and a Senior Trainee in Gestalt Psychotherapy at the Gestalt Institute HCC Italy.

"Gestalt Therapy in Times of War is a deeply moving and timely collection that reveals the courage, compassion, and ethical depth of Gestalt psychotherapists confronting human suffering in war. By weaving clinical insight with social conscience, this volume renews faith in humanity and in the healing power of relationship, offering hope where despair reigns and showing how empathy itself can become an act of peace."Scott D. Churchill, Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Dallas"This well-conceived book is a vital contribution to psychotherapy in an era marked by violence, trauma, and social upheaval. Each chapter deepens our understanding of how Gestalt therapy—phenomenological and aesthetic—can facilitate healing for those enduring the continuous traumatic stresses of wartime. The book revisits Gestalt’s foundations as a social and political therapy, one that invites engagement with the world through personal development, clarity of judgment, and action with political consequence.By integrating Gestalt principles with political awareness, this book offers clinicians not only therapeutic tools but also a profound ethical compass. I highly recommend it to therapists across modalities seeking to address the ongoing traumas of war."Ruella Frank, PhD, is the founder and director of Center for Somatic Studies, NYC, and author of The Bodily Roots of Experience in Psychotherapy."This book provides an engrossing, in-depth exploration of today’s European crisis, examining underlying forces, its traumatic toll, and Gestalt therapy's role providing essential theorizing and new clinical approaches. The discourses are heartfelt, presented in evocative and absorbing narratives informed by current circumstances, philosophic perspective, and fundamental human concerns as war and peace, trust and betrayal, injury and healing, death and survival, freedom and oppression, grief and celebration. The clinical and therapeutic approach is especially absorbing, as it proposes new emphasis, theory, and method, and clarifies Gestalt therapy’s special suitability for trauma treatment with awareness born of a healing relationship anchored in its phenomenological, field, and aesthetic stances.I highly recommend this work to stimulate, inform, and provide innovative clinical guidance."Perry Klepner, Fellow, the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy"This is a book that engages the heart. It offers perspectives on war, strivings for peace, and community, by people who are most directly affected by violence, disunion, disruption ,and institutional failures. They champion dignity and community and, through their stories. And through the people they invite us to meet, they inspire me to cherish how our gestalt therapy can support a more humane future."Lynne Jacobs, Ph.D., Co-founder, Pacific Gestalt Institute, Los Angeles Training and supervising analyst, Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles

• 1. Introduction: Hope begets peace, fear begets war 2. Gestalt psychotherapists in times of war: Generosity, courage, and emotions crossing borders 3. The knowledge of psychology and war 4. Trust and living experience in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl 5. The evolution of the European spirit 6. Upholding human dignity in a field in crisis 7. Psychotherapists in wartime: Notes of two Ukrainian therapists 8. The "imprisonment" condition of Russian psychotherapists: Personal and professional ethics 9. Libyan hell: A tragedy that concerns the background of the world: Psychotherapy with Ebrima 10. Does Gestalt therapy have anything to do with peace?: Flying with a view from above 11. The present of the future: Concluding reflections on being a therapist of today and tomorrow