Faculty Member and Board Member
Educational Background
- MSS 1979 Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research
- AB 1969 Guilford College, Sociology and Psychology
- Certificate, 2018 Widener University: Advanced Training Program in Transgender Mental Health
Professional Experience
- Clinical Private Practice since 1979, Philadelphia and Haddonfield, NJ.
- Clinical Supervision since 2000
- GTIP Faculty since 1984, Board Member since 2016, Co-Executive Director 6/2017-12/2019.
About Me
Valerie first met Gestalt Therapy as a client in 1975. As she came to know herself and heal from early trauma, she began to live by Gestalt’s existential foundations and theories of growth. Already a social worker, she brought these life- changing experiences to her work; she studied, receiving training in family therapy and Gestalt Therapy Theory. She began teaching and joined the faculty of GTIP at its inception.
Now, having created her own family and having worked with hundreds of clients and trainees, she’s preparing to retire sometime in this decade. She has had a marvelous life! In these many meaningful moments of present experience, fully using her mind, her body and her spiritual and ethical beliefs, she has enjoyed vivid contact in all her relationships. Since 2017, she has participated in bringing new awareness to GTIP around our White cisgender privilege, which unquestionably diminished the learning of those present and caused significant harm. She knows that Gestalt Therapy Theory will be profoundly expanded as we include the voices and experiences of those others who always belonged.