The Excitement Point and Other Matters - Gill Caradoc-Davies interviewed by Malcolm Parlett

Abstract

"Editor’s Note: In the following interview, conducted by telephone, Gill Caradoc- Davies, psychiatrist, Gestalt therapist and trainer, speaks about her work and her love of Gestalt, and describes the training offered by Gestalt Institute of New Zealand (GINZ), of which she was one of the founders. She talks inter alia about teaching Gestalt to psychiatric registrars, ethics, play and creativity, Maori attitudes to Gestalt therapy, and the need for new thinking about ‘energy’. Gill was born in 1944, in the Northern Transvaal, South Africa. She studied medicine at the University of Cape Town Medical School, where she also met her husband (to whom she has been married for 33 years). They emigrated to New Zealand in 1978, for ethical and political reasons. She studied with Dr Fred Grosse, and others, at Gestalt Associates in Dunedin. She was the last graduate before they closed. She was also an accredited supervisor for the NZ Association of Psychotherapists. She was Clinical Head of Psychiatric Services in Dunedin from 1987 until she left in 1995 to work full-time in private practice. She has served (for 6 years) on the Continuing Education Committee (Quality Assurance) of the Royal Australian and NZ College of Psychiatrists; published research articles (on drugs in schizophrenia, methadone use, and depression in Parkinson’s, among others); written articles for the Australian Gestalt Journal, created new hybrids of disa orchids commercially, played the harp, sung, gardened, and run a family. We in the British Gestalt Journal are proud to be publishing this exciting and informative interview."