Ron Dowd - Psychotherapist: January 2008

Monday, 28 January 2008

Some recent linocuts

Some recent linocuts of that investigate energies and the figure in a field.

Ron Dowd
meteors over a field
linocut, collage 2008, 30 x 30 cm


Ron Dowd
meteor falling on a slope
linocut, collage 2008, 39 x 30 cm


Ron Dowd
figure on a land/water axis
linocut, collage 2008, 30cm x 5cm

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Friday, 4 January 2008

Reflections on Self and Field in Gestalt and Elsewhere

In this article I related some art works I'd made to the Gestalt contact cycle and the modifications or disturbances of contact spoken about in Gestalt.

I described how these art works led me to wonder about various ideas of self in the Gestalt literature. I inquired about Gestalt field theory, and if and how it relates to the idea of a noumenal field, as I intuitively experienced this in relation to my art making practice.

I suggested how Gestalt phenomenological fields and the noumenal field may relate to each other, and that the idea of a noumenal field is a natural extension of Gestalt's phenomenological field.

The article appeared in the Gestalt Journal of Australia and New Zealand Vol 2 No 2 May 2006.

Download:

The article is available in Acrobat format.
Download the article (RonDowdGJArticle2006.pdf, 25 pages, 360Kb).

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Wednesday, 2 January 2008

Contact me / psychotherapy background

One of Nietzsche's favorite phrases is amor fati (love your fate): in other words, create the fate that you can love. (Irvin Yalom, Staring at the Sun, p100)

Contact details:
I practice psychotherapy in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs. You can contact me regarding psychotherapy on 0422 975 179. Alternatively, you can email me on ron.dowd.therapy@gmail.com.

Practice:
I work with individuals and with couples.

Sometimes in couples therapy it's good to have a couple working as joint therapists. I also work this way, in conjunction with my wife Amanda Gruhn (Karima), who is also a qualified Gestalt psychotherapist.

Background:
I'm recently qualified in Gestalt psychotherapy and am a Member of GANZ (Gestalt Australia and New Zealand). I studied at two schools in Sydney, Sydney Gestalt Institute and Gestalt Practitioners Training Sydney.

I've practised visual art making for the past 16 years. I've also had an interest in Jungian psychology for more than 20 years, and have called upon this in my art practice. My first profession was in computing, and I still also work as a business analyst.

Recently I've become more interested in language and poetry, and have for the past five years returned to writing poetry. (I first started writing when I was young.) I'm also influenced in my psychotherapeutic work by the Conversational Model and by current writings on intersubjectivity.

I strongly subscribe to the dictum that in psychotherapy "it's the relationship that heals".

Qualifications:
Bachelor Engineering (Hons), Master Engineering, Bachelor Fine Arts,
MA (Hons) (thesis), Advanced Dip Gestalt Therapy (GPTS), Member GANZ

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Tuesday, 1 January 2008

New blog at "rondowd.com"

Welcome to my new blog. It replaces the old www.rondowd.com, which was mainly a gallery of my visual art making since 1993.

All my art work from 1993 until 2006 is still on-line here.

In this new blog I would like to publish the occasional comment on psychotherapy, art making, poetry, and the cross-overs between them, as I encounter them in my day-to-day work.

I would also like to publish some of my own poems and linocuts.