JORGE ROSNER
IN MEMORY OF JORGE ROSNER
Born March 10, 1921 – died May 14, 1994.
Jorge Rosner, American Therapist, institute
director, deceased. Member, Adult Education Council, Chicago, 1970-1972;
founding fellow, board directors, Oasis Midwest Center for Human Potential,
1966-1994; founding member, Institute of Psychiatry, Northwestern University,
Chicago, 1976. Member Contemporary Forum, Institute of Psychiatry, Northwestern
University (founding member).
Achievements
Jorge Rosner has been listed as a noteworthy
therapist, institute director by Marquis Who's Who.
Jorge Rosner, American Therapist, institute
director (deceased). Member, Adult Education Council, Chicago, 1970-1972;
founding fellow, board directors, Oasis Midwest Center for Human Potential (see
history), 1966-1994; founding member, Institute of Psychiatry, Northwestern
University, Chicago, 1976. Member Contemporary Forum, Institute of Psychiatry
Northwestern University.
Background
Jorge Rosner was born on March 10, 1921, in New
York City. Son of Samuel and Anna (Blumental) Rosner.
Spouse:
Lisbet Trier
Spouse:
Charlotte Francis Heller
Children:
Cindy Ann Rosner
Ellen Sue Rosner
Education
Master Mechanic, Academy Aeronautics, 1941;
student, Cleveland Gestalt Institute, 1967-1970.
Career
Superintendent training international division,
Trans World Airlines, Wilmington, Delaware, 1946-1948; manager store
operations, Darling Shops, Inc., New York City, 1952-1953; president. Display
by Jorge (displays and designs), Chicago, 1953-1967; founding fellow,
treasurer, member of faculty, Gestalt Institute Chicago, 1968-1994; also,
director. President, founder, The Center, Gestalt counselling, Chicago,
1970-1994; chairman, executive director, Gestalt Institute, Toronto, Ontario,
Canada, 1972-1994; chairman, director training, Gestalt Institute, Amsterdam,
Netherlands, 1973-1994; director, chairman training, Gestalt Institute
Scandinavia, Norway-Denmark-Sweden member of faculty, Northwestern University
Institute Psychiatry, 1973-1994; member of faculty, Gestalt Institute,
Brisbane, Australia, 1983; founder, executive director, International Gestalt
Institute, 1981-1994. Guest faculty, Gestalt Institute, Denver, 1970, 71, 72,
Trollegen Rehabilitation Centre, U of Stockholm, 1973.
Membership
Member, Adult Education Council, Chicago,
1970-1972. Founding fellow, board directors, Oasis Midwest Centre Human
Potential, 1966-1994. Founding member Institute of Psychiatry, Northwestern
University, Chicago, 1976.
HUMANISTIC AND TRANSPERSONAL STORY
This article is meant to provide background to
Jorge Roner's active founder and teacher years and contributions to the
development of the Humanistic Therapies field.
The humanistic and transpersonal work (along with the existential
and somatic traditions) began to become established as an organized tradition,
or rather traditions, in the 60’s and 70’s, initially in California, and
especially in and around San Francisco. Before that, Maslow (from 1954) and
Rogers (from 1940) had been primarily responsible for formulating the
humanistic tradition, along with May, Murray, Goldstein, Angyal, Allport,
Murphy, Jourard, and others in the holistic and existential fields. Maslow,
Sutich, and Grof are the primary movers of the transpersonal tradition, as it
manifested in the 60s in California, but James, Freud and Jung can be
considered precursors, while Assagioli in Italy is related, and Tart, Vaughan,
Walsh, and Wilber are later prominent figures, particularly Wilber. The
transpersonal and humanistic fields have complex, multicultural roots in
philosophy, spirituality and the arts from both Western and Eastern cultures.
The beginning of the establishment of these
fields as distinct traditions was through correspondence, meetings and then
conferences with interested individuals, initially in the 30’s and 40’s,
publication of books and papers throughout the 40’s and 50’s, then
establishment of organizations such as the Association for Humanistic
Psychology (1962) and the Association for Transpersonal Psychology (1972). Stan
and Christina Grof began to hold international transpersonal conferences in the
early 70’s, and, in 1978, the International Transpersonal Association was
established. Div 32 (Humanistic Psychology) of the American Psychological
Association was established in 1971 through the work of Gibbon, Ellis, Harari,
and others.
During the 70’s, various graduate schools were
established (such as the California Institute of Integral Studies, Institute of
Transpersonal Psychology, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Centre in San Francisco,
Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, Naropa University in Boulder),
many of whom are now fully accredited, degree granting institutions. There are
approximately 20 accredited graduate schools in the US. Some psychology
departments also began to include these themes, and some became specifically
focused on these traditions (especially the University of West Georgia, Sonoma
State University, Seattle University, Duquesne University).
Esalen was an important centre starting in the 60s,
where encounter (Schutz), gestalt (Perls), holotropic breathwork (Grof), and
other human potential traditions were established, as well as hosting people
such as Bateson and Campbell. Primal therapy became prominent in the early
70’s, with Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto being the main centres.
Bioenergetic institutes began to be established in North America and, in
Europe, Reichian and neo-Reichian training was established, Malcolm Brown being
a leading exponent. Existential psychology became prominent, both in the US,
through May, Bugental and others, and in England, where Laing extended this to
social criticism, particularly of the mental health model itself. Gestalt
centres began to be established around North America, including Toronto.
The Human Potential movement extended these
ideas into the culture in general, through an elaboration of psychotherapy and
spirituality as personal growth and consciousness expansion, into liberation of
the whole person (including liberation of the body, emotions and sexuality),
consciousness raising and feminism, activist politics, social justice concerns
and deconstructivist social change, egalitarianism, a return to nature and
environmentalism, and an appreciation of alternative ways of knowing and being
from other cultures, including Eastern and indigenous spiritual traditions and
epistemologies. Counter culture politics and social activism included a focus
on mental health, education and organizational development. Although these
themes have been carried in many ways in the North American counterculture of
growth centers and organizations such as AHP and ATP, the main academic and
theoretical work of study, writing, research has been done through graduate
schools and university departments, with publishing carried by journals such as
Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, Voices,
Gestalt Journal, and publishing houses such as Spring, JP Tarcher, Shambhala.
In the 70’s, Marilyn Ferguson’s newsletter Leading Edge brought news of
developments in systems and chaos theory and the evolutionary paradigm out from
the scientific tradition into the professional, holistic counterculture.
Toronto in the 70’s was an active center for
the gestalt, primal, encounter, bioenergetics, Jungian and Reichian traditions,
with, for example, the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry conducting encounter
groups and hosting R.D. Laing’s colleague, David Cooper. Several teaching and
professional practice centers were established. Dr. Thomas Verny was prominent
at this time, in both encounter and primal, through the Centre for Holistic
Primal Therapy. Jorge Rosner and Dr.Harvey Freedman, having trained with Perls,
established the Gestalt Institute of Toronto, and Ken Allen and Carl Moore
established the Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis. The Toronto Institute for
Human Relations extended these concerns into training for ministers. Marion
Woodman, Fraser Boa, Daryl Sharpe, Jim Shaw, and others established the C. G.
Jung Association of Ontario. Ted Mann, at York University, carried Reich’s
work. There was a chapter of AHP established in the 70’s, with Connie
Croll-Young (later Crystal Hawk) and Peter Campbell being the chief organizers.
Therafields was a therapeutic community model for this work, with participants
living together in communally operated houses that were also therapy centres.
Psychedelic therapy for alcoholics was attempted by Dr. Gordon Bell at the
Donwood Institute in the 60’s as part of his dialogical, holistic, caring
community approach that he eventually brought to Bellwood Health Services.
These traditions did not go on to become
generally established at the tertiary education level in Toronto, as they have
done in the US, with some exceptions. Les Greenberg, for example, of York
University Department of Psychology, has, with others, combined Gestalt,
Rogerian and existential models to establish Emotion Focused Therapy, which has
become an internationally recognized tradition. In the 70’s, Dr. Verny and
others, established the tradition of pre- and perinatal psychology, initially
based on experiences from the primal tradition in which clients regressed to
what seemed to be birth and womb experiences and, in the work of Farrant,
Chamberlain, and others, back to conception. Later, this tradition became
focused in a broader way on pre- and perinatal psychology and health without so
much emphasis on regressive psychotherapy. Santa Barbara Graduate Institute now
grants degrees in this field, based largely on the initiative of Verny, who
established the first degree in the field at St. Mary’s University of Minneapolis.
The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) has several programs and
departments that include a focus on transformative learning, holistic
curriculum, creativity and the arts, embodied knowing, spirituality, indigenous
culture, feminism, environmentalism, community organization, global change. The
University of Windsor graduate program in adult clinical psychology has psychodynamic,
experiential, and emotion-focused psychotherapies courses.
In the mid-70’s the Canadian Holistic Medical
Association was established in Toronto, and, later (1997), the Ontario Society
of Physicians for Complementary Medicine, to bring a more whole systems focus
into health care, with particular attention to the psychological and spiritual
dimension of health and drawing on the natural world for healing modalities.
The Ontario College of Naturopathic Medicine was established in the late 70’s
as a postgraduate program for chiropractors, medical doctors, and dentists. In
the early 80’s this became a full-time, four-year program graduating
naturopathic doctors. Naturopathy and homeopathy are now being regulated, and
the Ontario (now Canadian) College of Naturopathic Medicine has several hundred
students conducting research in many areas, such as workplace stress. There has
been an annual energy psychology conference in Toronto for the last 10 years,
organized by Sharon Cass-Toole of the Canadian Association for Integrative and
Energy Therapies (CAIET).
A poem to Jorge Rosner - died 4am May 14, 1994, Toronto, Canada
WHAT NOW?
A year of sorrow, grief and loss
Has come upon my soul
The final string is broken
Leaving no trail, no link
Alone is not a thought
It is a feeling of despair
That comes when least expected
Foolishly, I fill my glass of time
With work, adventures, and desires
While slowly creeps - closer
Like a night prowler
DEATH
