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Fritz Perls was born in 1893 in Germany. He earned his M.D. degree in 1926, and then worked at the Institute for Brain Damaged Soldiers in Frankfurt. Here he was influenced by Gestalt psychologists, and existential philosophers. He was also influenced by Karen Horney, and eventually became a psychoanalyst.
Perls and his wife, Laura Posner Perls, founded Gestalt therapy. They were not satisfied with psychoanalysis and wanted something different to help patients. Gestalt psychology, with its emphasis on the whole person, was a useful principle for the development of this new type of therapy. Perls moved to South Africa in the early 1940s, where he wrote Ego, Hunger, and Aggression: A Revision of Freud's Theory and Method (1946). In the early 1950s, he moved to New York City, where he wrote The Beginning of Gestalt Therapy (with Ralph Hefferline and Paul Goodman) in 1951. Perls and his wife organized the New York Institute of Gestalt therapy in New York. He moved to California in 1960, where he continued to offer Gestalt therapy workshops until his death in 1970. Among Perls' important publications were his 1969 autobiography In and Out of the Garbage Pail (1969) and Gestalt Therapy Verbatim (1969), which is a description of his therapy. |
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