At the source of Gestalttherapy.

  • In Paris
  • Punctual workshops and ongoing training for professionals
  • Led by David Hoban, MD

Who should attend :

Psychotherapists and trainers with several years of professional background (you may register alone or with your partner, co-trainer …)

Number of places available : 14.

Objects and context :

Through the variety of its Gestalt obediences the constitution of the group offers the possibility to deepen and to enrich one’s identity as a Gestaltist by the very fact of its differences.

Gestalt therapy is multi referential, it is constituted by a certain number of psychological, therapeutic, philosophical and methodological approaches. It is an original form, a new creation integrating and transcending in an significant wholeness these approaches from which it descends while relying on a new paradigm.
In the actual sociopolitical context which is reviewing the status of psychotherapists, the Gestalt therapists are more than ever confronted with questions dealing profoundly with their professional identity to which they try to respond.
These seeks for identity often take parallel ways : psychoanalysis, object relations, Buddhist philosophy, phenomenology, existentialism, etc.
Understanding Gestalt by the means of studying these different approaches means also taking the risk to move away from the subject.
With this workshop we propose to go back to the source, to have a confrontation with the very essence of Gestalt therapy.
So, we propose to experience a “pure”, skin approach of Gestalt therapy as it is practiced and taught by David Hoban.

This is one of the principal guidelines of the workshop : going back to the roots.
The other one is : experiencing a Gestalt filiation.

David Hoban is the representative of a branch of Gestalt therapy which still is less developed in France : the Simkin filiation. Jim Simkin, student and friend of Fritz Perls has been leading groups since 1964 in Easelen and Los Angeles. He was renowned for his authenticity and his clear-sightedness. In accordance with the existential theme of responsibility and without pushing the client he developed a singular style of Gestalt therapy. He transmitted to his students a particular know how and posture in Gestalt therapy which includes the use of power as well as letting go.


These workshops offer the opportunity to strengthen professional competences by personal work, by studying clinical cases in individual and/or group therapy, questions concerning co-teaching, couples and family therapy as well as supervision.

More than just an introduction to David Hoban’s Gestalt approach a workshop can also be considered as a stepping stone to continuous training for participants who are interested in working in an ongoing group.

Dates :

2024 :

Workshop 1 : will be determinated

Contact :

Gestalt-Académie

Gestalt-Académie, has been created in 1992 as an association “loi 1901” for professional training. The purpose was the divulgence of Gestalttherapy in a specific way which combined Gestalttherapy with “creative media”. The purpose today is to promote Gestalttherapy and to contribute to its methodological and theoretical development based on an artistic level which is understood in its profoundest sense.

It offers training for all persons who are in search of meaning and for health professionals through series of punctual workshops and long term training.

This kind of “artistic” attitude characterized Joseph Zinker, one of the pillars of Gestalttherapy, who led 80 days of professional training between 1993 and 2007 for Gestalt-Académie.

David Hoban

David Hoban is a psychiatrist and Gestalt therapist, he lives in Santa Cruz/California. He was trained by Jim Simkin, Ph.D. for over 13 years. He has worked in depth with Abe Levitsky, Ph.D. He has been training therapists since 1978 in Europe and Australia as well as in the United States. By his own description, he is haughty and generous in style. He prefers to work with trainees whose interest in the mysterious, the profound and the new is tempered by a desire to discover what there is to be found.

This is what he wrote for the workshops :
“The object of these workshops is to provide frameworks for the development in the therapist of the skill of “learning how to learn.” The content will emerge from the particular people, place, time and circumstances. More akin to jazz than classical form, the work itself will provide the basis for either fitting into existing narratives (theory) or creating new ones. This will involve a commitment to developing one’s self as a vehicle for doing therapy from his or her own uniqueness. We are changing and our understanding of our self and our clients changes as we do.
The art of experiencing oneself simultaneously with experiencing the client, the art of revealing ourselves as mutual participants is opposed to the more classical posture of onlookers who ‘know a lot but understand little’.
The workshop aims at the improvement of this art.

Registrations :

New demands will be registered on a waiting list. The engagement and participation at the training is effective with the reception of the check covering the cost of the session on one hand and on the other hand with the agreement of the actual group members.

payment :

The checks will be debited two weeks before the beginning of the workshop.

Cost :

  • Individual cost : 550 € / session
  • Cost covered by institution : 675 € / session

Absence during the engagement :
There is no refund of the fee when missing part or the whole of the session.

Contact : Dominik.Reinecke@wanadoo.fr