MEETING AT THE BORDER - PSYCHOPATHOLOGY IN A PHENOMENOLOGICAL GESTALT APPROACH

MEETING AT THE BORDER

Psychopathology from a phenomenological perspective of Gestalt therapy
How to move from “diagnosing” the patient to a genuine “meeting” with them?
A seminar for psychotherapists.

Date: 24–26 April 2026
Place: Wilanowska Pracownia Psychoterapii, ul. K. Kieślowskiego 3d/1, Warsaw.
Hours:
Fri: 10:00–14:00 / lunch / 15:30–19:00
Sat: 9:00–13:00 / lunch / 14:30–19:00
Sun: 9:00–13:00
Price: 1800 PLN
Registration via form: formularz

Description:
We invite you to a seminar that fills the gap between Gestalt philosophy and clinical practice, combining the phenomenological method with Gestalt’s focus on contact and the Self. We will learn to perceive psychopathology not as a deficit within the individual but as a specific style of being in the world.

Key learning areas:

• The phenomenological method: description, bracketing, horizontal seeing.
• The Gestalt perspective: understanding the “field,” “contact boundary,” and Self Theory in an aesthetic approach to psychopathology.
• Lively dimensions: exploring how time, space and embodiment change in different states of suffering.

Traditional psychology often asks “why?”. What if we focused on the question “how?” — how do you experience your body, how do you perceive time in this moment, how do you perceive the space between you and another person?

What is phenomenological Gestalt psychopathology?
Phenomenology is the study of experience. In the context of psychopathology it is the art of setting aside clinical prejudices to truly see the patient’s world from within. Instead of the label “a case of depression” we examine the alteration of experienced time – when the future seems unreachable and the past an unavoidable burden.

Key pillars:

• Intentionality: understanding how our consciousness is directed toward the world.
• The lived body: examining how suffering is not only “in the head” but felt in breathing rhythms, posture, or limb tension.
• Intersubjectivity: analyzing how our sense of self is built through connections (or disconnections) with others.
• The Gestalt perspective: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Gestalt psychopathology sees mental suffering not as a broken mechanism but as a disturbance of the contact boundary between the individual and their environment. When we lose the ability to form distinct figures emerging from the background of experience, we feel stuck, fragmented, or restless.

What you will discover:

• The power of “NOW FOR THE NEXT”: learning to work with what arises in the present moment.
• Creative adaptation: symptoms are often ingenious, though outdated, survival strategies.
• Holism: seeing the person as an integrated whole – mind, body, and world, not a set of symptoms.

The seminar will provide you with:

• Humanistic vocabulary: going beyond DSM-5 and learning to describe suffering in a deep, relational way.
• Enhanced clinical presence: developing a therapeutic stance to hear what is unspoken in the patient’s posture and tone.
• A philosophical dimension: grounding practice in the works of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Perls; the aim is to help the patient become aware of how they function in the world so they can find new ways to grow.

Facilitator:
Giovanni Turra — psychologist, Gestalt psychotherapist and supervisor, EAGT certified. An experienced trainer and supervisor at the Postgraduate School of Gestalt Psychotherapy at the Kairòs Institute (Italy). Trained by, among others, Giovanni Salonia, Valeria Conte, Ruella Frank, J. M. Robin and Gianni Francesetti.

Additional information:

• The workshop will be interpreted from English into Polish.
• We issue certificates of participation (meeting “free choice” certification requirements).

Join the phenomenological journey and step beyond the diagnostic manual — rediscover the beauty and complexity of human experience.