At the heart of this book is the author's personal journey of psychological, intellectual, and career growth, including a description of how he has "brought his unique self" into his counseling work with students and community groups from ethnically and socially diverse backgrounds. The personal development work illustrates how Gestalt Therapy methods can support people learning to know their deep emotional, thinking, and behaving selves by using awareness of the ongoing connection between body awareness in constructing a unique psychological self. What one will find in this book is an honest, practical, and educated teaching of what it means to get to know yourself and how to build a personality that reflects your true self, what the author calls our "Hand-on-Heart Self." The author shares his own personal development and his counseling of others, explaining key principles that govern Gestalt personal development work and how these can be employed to free individuals from an unaware past to an aware and enlivened present and future. The book includes a chapter summarizing many of the psychological books that have been instrumental in the author's understanding of what it means to develop or "complete" oneself. The author also shares how he has translated his doctoral studies in counseling psychology into a concrete method, "The 0-100% Competence Method and Circle of Development," for assisting persons to become aware of their unique self as well as how to assess, structure, and monitor their on-going personal development.
Mario Rivas, Ph.D., is a first-generation Latino in the USA who overcame personal and societal struggles to attain personal and career fulfillment that honors his uniqueness as an integral member of our society. Raised on welfare by a single Spanish-speaking mother who was a maid, Dr. Rivas used his mother's and brother's love and care to help him overcome initial failure in community college to eventually earn a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology at California State University, Hayward, a Master's Degree in Counseling from San Francisco State University, and a Ph.D. in Counseling and Student Personnel Psychology from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Dr. Rivas presents a self who, because of his diverse ethnic and social experiences, cares for and works for a society that supports all people to find goodness and truth in themselves and others. Dr. Rivas is an accomplished speaker who has given hundreds of presentations across the USA and Puerto Rico, specifically of the following type: conference keynote addresses, College Graduation speeches, seminars, organizational training, and teaching regarding theories and methods for advising college students to achieve success in their studies and of Gestalt Personal Development approaches to empower individuals' unique personal development. Dr. Rivas has taught Psychology and Counseling at the undergraduate levels in Community Colleges and Universities and graduate counseling at the University level. Before retiring as a tenured professor in Psychology from Merritt College in Oakland, California, where he also served as Academic Senate President for four years, Dr. Rivas held extended posts as Vice President of Student Services at Berkeley City College and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies at San Francisco State University. Dr. Rivas has and continues to do community work in Spanish and English in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area, sharing his knowledge of Gestalt psychology and personal development and mentoring students of color who wish to pursue careers in Psychology.
