FRITZ PERLS: BIOGRAPHY AND GESTALT THEORY - PSYCHOLOGY - 2025

Fritz Perls (1893-1970) was a German neuropsychiatrist and psychoanalyst of Jewish origin. He is known for being the creator of Gestalt therapy with his wife Laura Perls and the sociologist Paul Goodman. Although he began to learn psychoanalysis, he was discredited as a psychoanalyst and began to be critical of Freud's theory.

Gestalt therapy was created in the 1940s. As Perls wrote at the end of his life, it is one of the methods of psychological therapy that are inserted within the existentialist current. This new form of therapy gathers its theoretical bases in the book Gestalt Therapy. Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, published in 1951.

A young Fritz Perls.

Fritz Perls was a person with a strange character who lived in a very difficult historical-social and family context. These personal experiences also marked his professional life.

Perls, despite his additions to Gestalt psychology, never considered himself a gestalist in the pure sense of the word.

Childhood and early years

Fritz Perls was born as Friedrich or Frederick Saloman Perls on July 8, 1893 in Berlin. He was the third child of the Jewish marriage formed by Nathan Perls and Amelia Rund.

According to Petruska Clarkson (1993), the birth of Perls was not easy, as his mother had trouble feeding him. To this were added the growing problems of the couple due to the dominant character of Nathan Perls. Fritz lived in a context of verbal and physical fights. This environment marked the relationship with his father, with whom he never got along.

Brothers

Fritz had two older sisters, Else, three years older than him, and Grete, just a year and a half older than him. The relationship with his sisters was uneven, he never got along with Else, but he did maintain a close relationship with his middle sister.

Religion

One aspect that marked the life of the Perls was undoubtedly religion. Keep in mind that the context in which Fritz lived is the period of world wars, anti-Semitism and the consolidation of the Nazi movement.

His father was always against religion, and when Fritz began to shape his personality, during puberty, he declared himself an atheist.

Education

Clarkson, quoting Grete Gutfreund (1979), states that Fritz Perls was a very wild child.

Fritz's mischievous behavior deteriorated his family life and his school performance. This deterioration was further during secondary education, where most teachers did not hide their anti-Semitism.

Theater

Soon he began to practice theater, where he met Max Reinhardt (1873-1943), director of the Deutsche Theater. Reinhardt was a man who had an important influence on Fritz, teaching him the importance of non-verbal communication and the process of communication, an aspect that will have an important place in his later psychological theory.

Max Reinhardt. Nicola perscheid

Fritz Perls finished his high school studies at the Askanasische Gymnasium, putting his relationship with his mother back on track.

University, World War I and New York

Although he was initially interested in law, he eventually entered the University of Berlin to study medicine.

During World War I, he served as a medic to one of the battalions. After the end of the conflict, in 1923 he left Germany to work as a neurologist in New York. Although the difficulty in learning English, among other factors, accelerated his return to Berlin.

Receiving therapy

It is then that he decides to receive therapy for self-esteem problems and goes to Karen Horney, from whom he received enormous influences and who introduced him to the world of psychoanalysis.

Study of psychoanalysis

In 1926 Perls moved to Frankfurt to continue his studies on psychoanalysis. There he meets his wife, the psychologist Lore Posner, better known as Laura Perls. With her, he would marry in 1930 and have two children: Renate and Stephen.

It is in Frankfurt where Fritz Perls comes into contact with other psychologists such as Goldstein who introduced him to the world of Gestalt psychology. There he learned the theories of the greatest exponents of this school; Wertheimer, Koffka, and Köhler.

His future wife, Laura Perls, also had a great influence. As stated in his biography, Professor Petruska Clarkson, Fritz learned about the ideas of the existential and phenomenological currents of the time through Laura Perls.

Vienna

In 1927, Fritz moved to Vienna to continue training in the world of psychoanalysis. After completing the training, accredited by Sigmund Freud and other experts in the field of psychoanalysis, he decides to establish his own therapeutic method in Germany, where he will work as a psychoanalyst until 1933.

In 1933, as a result of the rise of Hitler and fascism in Germany, Laura and Fritz had to emigrate. This exile is not only due to her Jewish origin, but also because of her political activism and her connection with the Anti-Fascist League.

At first, they were living as refugees in the Netherlands where they experienced a great shortage, until finally they moved to South Africa. There, Perls wanted to continue as a psychoanalyst, but Freud and the International Psychoanalytic Association ended up discrediting him. This caused Perls to become a reactionary to Sigmund Freud and his theory on psychoanalysis.

Sigmund Freud, one of Perls's greatest retractors. Source: Max Halberstadt

Creation of the Gestat

After the end of World War II, the Perls moved to New York. There Fritz meets again with Karen Horney and with other psychoanalysts such as Clara Thompson, Erich Fromm or Harry Stack Sullivan.

It is during his time in the United States, when Friz Perls' career reaches its peak. There he created Gestalt therapy, with his wife and Paul Goodman as co-founders.

In 1952, the Perls couple founded the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. Soon other experts in the field such as Isadore Fromm, Paul Goodman, Elliot Saphiro, Paul Weiss or Richard Kitzler would join. This organization would end up questioning their marriage.

Miami

In 1956, Fritz was diagnosed with heart problems. The disease together with the discrepancies he had with Laura and Goodman, made him leave New York and go to live in Miami.

It is unclear whether or not the Perls marriage ended with the separation. Clarkson speaks in her book of another woman, Marty Fromm, with whom Fritz would maintain a relationship of lovers.

During these years, Fritz continued to write. He was in different parts of the United States consulting, practicing and disseminating Gestalt therapy and attending conferences. He passed through Ohio, Los Angeles and California.

Death

Little by little, the health problems got worse. In 1969, in addition to heart problems, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Fritz Perls died at the age of 76. The death took place on March 14, 1970, due to a cardiac arrest after undergoing surgery at the Louis A. Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Gestalt therapy

This therapeutic method designed by Fritz Perls aims to make the individual aware of himself, his thoughts and his experiences and become responsible for his actions. It is what is known as the process of "awareness", to realize.

To understand Gestalt therapy, some key aspects must be taken into account, such as the holistic vision that this psychological school has about the individual.

To better understand this vision of the whole, one usually resorts to a phrase that appears in Aristotle's Metaphysics: "the whole is more than the sum of the parts." In that whole, the parts are interrelated with each other. In fact, the word Gestalt means structure.

Perls defined Gestalt as "the ultimate set of experiences." This does not mean that Fritz Perls conceives of man as a whole, but rather as a complete and unified whole in his existence. That is, the individual is indivisibly related to their biological circumstances and their social experiences, forming a unit.

For Gestalt, the experiences of the patient, how he relates to the outside and to himself, are very important more than the internal thought processes.

Gestalt therapy, unlike other models of psychotherapy, is characterized by the aspect or question where it puts the focus of attention. This psychotherapeutic method focuses on the process, on what is happening at the same moment, on the behavior that the patient is having, rather than on the conjectures or ramblings that the patient or the psychoanalyst may make.

Premises of the Gestalt approach

Fritz Perls collects in his book The Gestalt Approach & Eye Witness to Therapy (The Gestalt Approach and Witness Therapy) a series of premises on which the Gestalt approach is based:

Joint perception of things

Man perceives things in the form of sets or wholes and thus lives his reality, which can only be understood from the sets in which it is composed. The things that man perceives are not isolated entities but are related to each other. These elements can stand out from others according to the approach that the individual gives them.

Homeostasis

Behavior is governed by the process of homeostasis. That is, the body has to be in balance. To achieve this balanced situation, the body regulates itself, interacting with the environment around it to satisfy its needs. If it does not satisfy them or is in a state of imbalance for a long time, the organism dies.

Holism

Man is a unified organism. Traditionally, in psychology and in other disciplines such as philosophy, there has been a divided conception of man in mind and body.

Gestalt therapy conceives man as a whole. What do exist are different types of activity: physical and mental. Both processes are parts of the same whole: man. Therefore, Gestalt therapy not only takes into account what man says and thinks but also what he does, how he behaves.

Contact limit

This premise states that no individual is self-sufficient. It can only live in an environment or with circumstances that determine its behavior.

However, the environment does not create the individual, while the individual does not create the environment, each one has its own particular character depending on the way it relates to itself and what surrounds it.

Although they are a set that cannot be separated, they can be studied in isolation. In this way, the isolated study of the individual belongs to anatomy and physiology, while the study of the environment refers to the physical, geographical and social sciences.

Ranking of priorities

The individual and the environment are reciprocally related. That relationship marks the behavior of the individual. If it is positively related to the environment that surrounds it, it satisfies its needs by reaching balance.

If on the contrary, it is related in a negative way, its behavior will be disorganized and not satisfactory with respect to the needs of the individual.

This happens, for example, when we set two points of interest to look at, a concentration that allows us to see both objects in a complete and focused way is impossible. Needs must be prioritized in order to act consistently and achieve mental and physical balance.

Plays

- Ego, Hunger and Agression (1942-1947). It was Perls's first book. She published it during her stay in South Africa in the 1940s with the subtitle "A Revision of Freud's Theory and Method." This is a direct attack on the father of psychoanalysis and her theory.

- Gestalt Therapy. Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (1951). It is the book that lays the theoretical foundations on Gestalt therapy.

- Gestalt Therapy Verbatim (1969). Translated into Spanish as Dreams and Existence. It was the book that made Perls famous at the Esalen Institute in California. Collect talks and seminars on Gestalt therapy.

- In and Out the Garbage Pail (1969). Autobiographical novel in which Fritz Perls applies his own theory.

- The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy (1973). It emphasizes the novel aspect that Gestalt therapy supposes for theories about human behavior.

"Ego, Hunger and Aggression", first publication of Perls. Source: amazon.es

References

1. American Psychological Association.

2. Clarkson, P. & Mackewn, J. (1993) Fritz Perls. SAGE Publications.

3. Nelson-Jones, R. (2000) Six Keys Approaches to Counseling and Therapy. London, Continuum. Accessed 2017, January, 16 from Google Books.

4. New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy.

5. Perls, F. (1973) The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy. Version translated into Spanish by Francisco Hunneus. Santiago de Chile. Ed: Four Winds. Consulted in 2017, January, 17 from Google Books.

6. Perls, F. & Baumgardner, P. (1994) Gestalt Therapy. Theory and Practice, Fritz Perls. An interpretation, Patricia Baumgardner. Editorial Tree. Accessed 2017, January, 16 from Google Books.

7. The Gestalt Therapy Page.