Our History

The Istituto di Gestalt Therapy Hcc Kairos , already Istituto di Gestalt H.C.C. srl, works in the area of the Gestalt Therapy Education and Research both on the national level and international.

The institute was founded in 1979 by Giovanni Salonia and Margherita Spagnuolo Lobb, with the aim to train professionals in the human relations and psychotherapists tram a hermeneutic – faithful to the Italian cultural tradition methodological – and gestalt based on aesthetic values of ethics as reports of care and processes of creative adaptation as a principle of health. The Institute has implemented a scientific exchange and research under the new humanistic values and disseminated the results in various areas of social life.

Recognized by Miur since 1994, the first trainings in Gestalt psychotherapy in Italy

The journal “Quaderni di Gestalt”, founded in 1985, and the series of books published by the publishing house Angeli since 1995 expresses the dialogue consistently implemented by the Italian scientific community and international development of original theoretical and clinical models.

The formative experience with spouses Polster in California and then in New York with Isadore From (one of the founders of Gestalt psychotherapy), and research experience with the most significant figures in the international scene, led to the founding of the first School of Post-Graduate Gestalt psychotherapy in Italy.

The Institute’s activities – characterized from the foundation by the spirit of a community of learning / teaching, rather than an isolated leadership – has established itself first in Sicily and then in the rest of Italy and reached its specificity in 1994 , with the approval of the Ministry of University and Research (MIUR decrees 9/5/94 and 7/12/01).

Among our most innovative contributions: the elaboration of a theory on Basic Relationship Models and Psychopathology, a model of Developmental Theory and therapeutic work with Couples and Families.

In the quarter century of activity, the Institute has contributed significantly to the history and development of Gestalt psychotherapy, it has trained thousands of psychotherapists in the approved premises in Venice, Rome, Palermo, Ragusa and Siracusa.

In 2001 the Institute began a collaboration with the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, far the creation of a Second Level Masters. The scientific contributions of the teachers are now assets of Italian and foreign literature.

In 2008, with the further Ministerial decrees 24/10/2008 MIUR-Minister for the Universities and for Scientific and Technological Research, one has accepted the re-organization of the Institute which, today, as Istituto di Gestalt Therapy Hcc Kairos, works in the three approved places Ragusa, Rome and Venice, under the Scientific Direction of Giovanni Salonia and the Didactic-clinical Direction of Valeria Conte.