Books

2026
The Shame Paradox: Why We Fear Most the Emotion That Keeps Us Human
HELBIG / FieldNotes Press

Through neuroscience, a reinterpretation of Genesis, and three clinical stories, this book argues that shame is not pathology to eliminate but the neural infrastructure of consciousness itself.

Forthcoming 2026
2026
A Gestalt Approach to Couples Therapy: The Dance of Difference
Routledge

A framework for understanding how genuine connection emerges from embracing individuality — integrating Gestalt therapy principles with cross-cultural perspectives.

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Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

2026 · Forthcoming
Shame as the Last Human Frontier: Why AI Cannot Risk and Psychotherapy Cannot Forget
European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling
2023
A Psychotherapist's Lived Experience In-Session with an Asylum Seeker and Translator: An Autoethnographic Case Study
European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling, 25(1–2), 44–59

A psychotherapy case study using Therapeutic Autoethnography, recounting the experience of working with an Afghan asylum seeker through a translator. The method makes palpable the atmosphere of an otherwise linguistically challenging therapeutic situation.

View at Taylor & Francis →
2022
Understanding Salomo Friedlaender's Creative Indifference: A Psychotherapy Case Study
Geštalt Zbornik, 9, 5–15

A case study of a client diagnosed with Major Depression and Atypical Anorexia Nervosa, written using Therapeutic Autoethnography. Story and theory are interwoven to illuminate how Friedlaender's philosophy of Creative Indifference — the centering in the here-and-now, the fertile void, the zero point — applies in clinical practice.

2022
Writing Evocative Case Studies: Applying Autoethnography as a Research Methodology for the Psychotherapist
The British Gestalt Journal, 31(1), 35–42

An introduction to Therapeutic Autoethnography as a qualitative research method — an aesthetic inquiry into the psychotherapy process. Demonstrates the method through a case study of an online Gestalt therapy session with a male client diagnosed with depression and borderline personality disorder.

2022
Dialogue Analysis of a Filmed Gestalt Therapy Session: An Introduction to a Method
The British Gestalt Journal, 28(2), 40–49

Introduces the Helbig Method of Dialogue Analysis (HELDA) — a method for micro-analysing dialogical turns within the therapeutic session, founded on four pillars concerning implicit action, relational patterns, intersubjective process, and the researcher's phenomenological involvement.

Doctoral Research

PhD · Sigmund Freud University, Vienna
Therapeutic Autoethnography
Doctorate in Psychotherapy Science

Developed a practice-based research methodology that positions the therapist as researcher-autoethnographer within the field of the therapy situation. The method draws on the conviction that clinical knowledge is transmitted through story — as healers have always done for their apprentices.

MA · Sigmund Freud University, Vienna
Analyzing a Gestalt Psychotherapy Session Using the Helbig Method of Dialogue Analysis (HELDA)
Master's Thesis, Psychotherapy Science

Analysis of Bob Resnick's video-recorded Gestalt therapy session using a novel method of dialogue analysis, producing quantified graphical representations of the developing therapeutic relationship.

Conference Presentations

2022
Therapeutic Autoethnography: A Research Method for Psychotherapy
CPN/SAFPAC Conference, Singapore

Research Profiles

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Occasional writing on consciousness, relationship, and what it means to be human.

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