Gestalt Therapy with Children

Children today come to therapy with problems related to anxiety, eating, lack of concentration, and difficulties in how they socialize and learn. This clinical picture is a dramatic mirror of the actual development of our society.
For years we have been witnessing events that show a widespread disowning of the human condition. Deaths following terrorist attacks or migration flows in the Mediterranean area, and dramatic climate changes that have drastically affected our spirit. What does a child feel when she listens silently to the news and the comments of the adults, or when she is directly involved in such traumatic events? Children absorb the cruelty, and, even worse, the adults’ dissociation may lead them to perceive these events as “normal.”

Psychotherapy and child development research must acknowledge these new conditions in which children grow up, and clinical work should take account of this now widespread experiential background.
This book tries to outline how contemporary Gestalt psychotherapists face the actual clinical situation when they work with children. The aim is to develop new tools to help children and their families to feel part of the human community, in a way that is not desensitized. It is addressed to psychotherapists of all approaches.

Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb, Ph.D., is Director of the Istituto di Gestalt HCC Italy (Siracusa, Palermo, Milan). She has significantly contributed to develop a Gestalt approach to psychopathology and child development, connected with actual social trends. Her book The Now-for-Next in Psychotherapy. Gestalt Therapy Recounted in Post Modern Society (2013) is available in six languages. She lives in Siracusa, Italy.

Nurith Levi, Ph.D., M.S.W., is a certified psychotherapist and supervisor, a specialist in child and adolescent therapy, an experienced Gestalt trainer working throughout Europe. She is Chair person of Training Standards Committee, and active member of the Human Rights and Social Responsibility Committee at EAGT. She lives in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Andrew Williams, M.A., Dip SW, is a qualified social worker and Gestalt psychotherapist who has worked with children and their families for over 20 years. He is currently Clinical Lead for a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service at Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust (UK). He lives in Wirral, England.

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