![]() Not the least of which is the insidious way in which the dominant culture’s values percolate into parts of the psyche… how come I thought there was something wrong with me in the first place? Private practice and 18 years of AIDS work (much of it concerned with grief and loss) taught me the importance of therapy in the context of peoples lived lives and to not underestimate the impact of living in an oppressive culture that privileges the white, the male, the heterosexual etc and disadvantages the “others” in many ways. And I learned there was nothing wrong with me. Why? The gestalt approach acknowledged the full range of who and how people are complex, messy, juicy, wonderful, terrible – not just black boxes with input and output slots, nor simply thinking machines. Graduated, emigrated, procrastinated, committed: A 3-year training program at the Gestalt Institute of Toronto. Encounter groups, human potential, Eastern religions, gender studies, cross-culturally informed perspectives I was hooked. Finally psychology was talking about people. ![]() In the final year of my undergrad I specialized in Humanistic Psychology. I still didn’t know what was wrong with me but, oh well, I could be useful and this stuff was very engaging. Over 12 weeks we had talks from the Samaritans, Alcoholics Anonymous, M.I.N.D… and I learned about reflective listening and the value of being heard. ![]() Obviously further study was the answer! At university (Keele, England) I took my first couselling course (in 1983) for the drop-in peer counselling centre. I took advanced level studies in college… but somehow all those dogs and bells, monkeys with wire mothers and drawings of neurons didn’t answer my question. I became interested in psychology as a teenager because I thought it could explain what was wrong with me. ![]()
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