Knowing How to Be – Interview with Elisa D’Ippolito, Psychologist and Transcultural Psychotherapist, Teacher and Former Student of the GRT School
You currently teach at the GRT School of Specialization, but you were also a student there. How do you remember your training, and what impacted you the most about that experience?
I chose to pursue specialization in transcultural psychotherapy because I needed to “recognize myself.” I was not seeking a “know-how” but a “know-how-to-be.” The training allowed me to find my way of becoming an instrument for the other and with the other. I had the opportunity to see, experience, and co-construct a model that was taking shape and, in my view, guided the student toward an epistemological framework capable of freeing them from any form of potential cultural indoctrination.
What do you think distinguishes the GRT School from other psychotherapy schools?
This school does not “colonize”; it leaves space for each individual to express their own “therapeutic presence,” recognizing the student as the bearer of their own specificity, which over time will transform into their unique and unrepeatable “therapeutic lever.”
What skills or attitudes would you recommend to someone approaching the transcultural model for the first time?
One must have the courage to relinquish oneself, to let go of everything our culture has taught us as “best practice,” and the courage to observe the world as if it were a store full of tools—useful for survival, but insufficient to define the essence of being. Tools are manifold, and their beauty lies in the possibility of using them, not in claiming them as indicators of “truth.” It is important to learn to recognize and respect multiplicity, in the hope that it does not turn into a cage from which we must escape.
How can transcultural training help future therapists work in increasingly complex and multicultural contexts, and what does it mean today to work from a transcultural perspective?
Working from a transcultural perspective means working with and for human beings. Every context is transcultural, as within each of us resides an implicit diversity that is biological, spiritual, and cultural. For me, there is no alternative “scientific” stance; the world is complex, humans are complex, and to navigate complexity, one must know how to work in “complementarity.” Otherwise, our perspective would be severely limited—and limiting—for our patients.
