Dorothy Siminovitch, PhD, MCC is the founder of the Gestalt approach to coaching and a leading champion of Gestalt professional coach training around the world. Gestalt – a word signifying a coherent picture, pattern, or structure – is powerful because it strives to make the implicit more explicit. Or, in Dorothy’s words, to make the invisible more visible. The Gestalt approach in psychotherapy was strong during the late 1970s–1980s, but lost ground over time to more overtly “rational” approaches (e.g., Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). Dorothy was astute enough to recognize that the central concepts and models of the Gestalt approach were timeless, universal, and universally accessible. Her vision and practice of Gestalt coaching is thus a kind of “pragmatic magic”: a potentially transformative encounter between coach and client that changes a client’s everyday behavior or perception, leading to an enhanced sense of well-being and a more successful use of self in achieving desired goals.
