gestalting

so yet another gestalt weekend is upon me.

the theme of the weeekend is the "gestalt approach to development", and yesterday was more of a review for those of us already in mental health, but we were introduced to a couple of development theories that are new to me (prolly cause its difficult to make them 'evidence based' theory, which is necesarry for payment by insurance companies)

but what was most interesting is that anna freud was discussed (yeah! a chick!)and she appears to be the first to put a more gestalt bend to her thinking process

in gestalt, process is foremost important, and anna freud, instead of creating a series of linear steps (which even erikson, whose stages can remain incomplete, but still in order) anna freud created a design of four continuums that occur simultaniously (and yes, i know my spelling is atrocious) which is a fascinating idea to me...
plus, tyhe state of women is currently on my mind alot (i have alot of feelings around hillary clintons campaign right now, and what it means for society to possibly have a female president)

we also learned about ken wilbers theory, which is more thematic then stage based. he has 26 facets (which really made me cringe, another 30 some things to know by hear for the assessment process?), who looks at things like sspirituality, religiousity, feelings on dewath (which us americans dont even want to think about, let alone be judged on) sexual and gender identity...like i said the list goes on....but the facilitators are creative and interesting and i am not so bored as ive been at some of the lectures recently in this program