Violet Oaklander, PhD (1927–2021)

We have lost one of the greats: Dr. Violet Oaklander died on September 21, 2021. Yet her amazing impact on the field continues to surge worldwide like a COVID epidemic, only positively. Before I get to her present-day influence, it is fascinating to consider the humble origins and then the exponential development of her work. Derived from her doctoral dissertation, Violet published Windows to Our Children: A Gestalt Therapy Approach to Children and Adolescents with Real People Press/Gestalt Journal in 1978. Many of us remember how this book spoke to us the first time we picked it up to read. There was something about her authentic voice, her breadth of experience, and her inspired and playful creativity that captured our attention and felt so unique, yet so essential. I remember the moment, in 1988, when I was living in Santa Barbara, California, and a woman from Germany handed me Violet’s book, with its green leafy cover. By that time, the book had already been translated into three languages: Portuguese (1980), German (1981), and Serbian (1988).Within weeks of reading it, I had the nerve to call Violet (who had recently moved to Santa Barbara) and invite her to lunch. To my great surprise, she was willing to meet me at Taffy’s Pizza, and somehow we became fast friends. Moreover, and so importantly, she was a wonderful professional mentor and soon invited me to be her assistant at the Oaklander Intensive Summer Trainings, which she ran for two (or four) weeks each year from 1981 to 2007. I was fortunate to attend ten years’ worth of those summer trainings (1994–2004). During that time, the wonder of her work crystallized for me around two questions that still intrigue and enliven my interest to this day: How does her playful and light-hearted approach to therapy become so quickly and so helpfully real and related to relevant life issues? And what is she doing in her work that obviously speaks to so many practitioners in so many languages around the world?As evidence of her international reach, the summer training program of the year 2000 had participants from Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Ireland, Taiwan, Brazil, South Africa, Canada, and many parts of the United States. By that year, her book Windows to Our Children had also been translated into six additional language editions: Spanish (1992), Hebrew (1992), Croatian (1995), Russian (1997), Chinese (1998), and Italian (1999). Windows went on to be published in five more language editions (sixteen in total), with five more tongues added between 2003 and 2014: Czech (2003), Korean (2006), Lithuanian (2007), Romanian (2007), and French (2014).Never one to rest on her laurels, Violet published a follow-up book to Windows entitled Hidden Treasure: A Map to the Child’s Inner Self (Karnac, 2006). Since its publication 15 years ago, this book too has taken off internationally and been translated into seven languages: Spanish (2008), German (2009), Russian (2012), Korean (2012), Lithuanian (2012), Romanian (2018), Italian (2021), and Brazilian is under way as I write.Which brings us almost up to the present. When the COVID pandemic hit in 2020, members of the Violet Solomon Oaklander Foundation (VSOF) board (vsof.org) began offering a monthly Zoom meeting called “Just for Now,” in which online therapy approaches using the Oaklander modality were discussed and modeled for an international audience (often with an audience exceeding 150 individuals). Violet was able and willing to participate in many of these Zoom meetings, introducing herself and her work to broad and new audiences worldwide. Those “Just for Now” meetings eventually evolved into a three-day online conference offered by the VSOF board and Violet herself in June 2021 (VSOF’s fifth annual conference). With round-the-clock workshops given by an international cast of trainers and devotees, the conference was a huge success, raising money for the VSOF Student Scholarship Fund—and, once again, allowing Violet’s unique voice to be heard by hundreds of participants around the globe. Here are the names of twenty-three of the countries I was able to count, whose citizens either participated in or presented at the 2021 virtual conference: Malaysia, Argentina, Brazil, Panama, Russia, England, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Romania, Portugal, Croatia, Italy, Colombia, Bosnia, Switzerland, Georgia, Bulgaria, Peru, Spain, Mexico, Kyrgyzstan, and United StatesPlease forgive all of the list-making in this tribute, but such lists underline and itemize the reach and impact of this remarkable woman’s work. A child of Jewish, Russian immigrants, Violet withstood many challenges, both personal and professional, and yet still flourished throughout her long life. She had the vision, courage, and confidence to integrate Gestalt therapy approaches into therapeutic work with children and adolescents at a time when such work was not taken seriously. As a woman beginning her writing career in the 1970s, she had the verve and nerve to publish two books that have been all but ignored by academics, even though they have by now been translated into more languages than the male-dominated world of the academy could dream of replicating.Violet was feisty, visionary, and simple in her approach, yet deep, profound, and dynamic in her results. She was human and approachable, yet adored as if she were mythical. She spoke, and she wrote, and we are still listening, still reading, still benefiting. And we are grateful. You can read Violet Oaklander’s obituary from the Los Angeles Times at:https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/latimes/name/violet-oaklander-obituary?pid=200216295

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