Fritz Perls

Friedrich (Frederick) Salomon Perls (July 8 1893, Berlin – March 14 1970, Chicago), better known as Fritz Perls, was a noted German-born psychiatrist and psychotherapist of Jewish descent.

He coined the term 'Gestalt Therapy' for the approach to therapy he developed with his wife Laura Perls from the 1940s, and he became associated with the Esalen Institute in California in 1964. His approach is related but not identical to Gestalt psychology and the Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy of Hans-Jürgen Walter.

At Gestalt Therapy's core is the promotion of awareness, the awareness of the unity of all present feelings and behaviors, and the contact between the self and its environment.

Perls has been widely evoked outside the realm of psychotherapy for a quotation often described as the "Gestalt prayer." This was especially true in the 1960s, when the version of individualism it expresses received great attention.

Life

Fritz Perls was born in Berlin in 1893. He was expected to go into law like his distinguished uncle Herman Staub, but instead studied medicine. After a time spent in the German Army in the World War I trenches, he graduated as a doctor. Perls gravitated to psychiatry and the work of Freud and the early Wilhelm Reich.

In 1930 he married Lore Posner, they had two children together, Renate and Stephen.

In 1933, soon after the Hitler regime came into power, Fritz Perls, Laura and their eldest child Renate fled to the Netherlands, and one year later they emigrated to South Africa, where Fritz Perls wrote Ego, Hunger, and Aggression in 1941 (published 1942). His wife Laura contributed to the book, but she is usually not mentioned. In 1942 Fritz went into the South African army where he served as an army psychiatrist with rank of captain until 1946.

The Perls moved to New York in 1946, where Fritz Perls first worked briefly with Karen Horney, and then with Wilhelm Reich. Around 1947, Perls asked author Paul Goodman to write up some hand-written notes, which together with contributions from Ralph Hefferline and Goodman, were published as Gestalt Therapy.

Fritz Perls moved to California in 1960. In 1964 Fritz Perls started a long-term residency at Esalen and became a major and lasting influence there. Perls led numerous Gestalt Therapy seminars at Esalen, and he and Jim Simkin led Gestalt Therapy training courses there. Dick Price became one of Perls' closest students during Perls' time at Esalen. Perls continued to offer his workshops as a member of the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, until he left the USA to start a Gestalt community at Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island, Canada, in 1969. Fritz Perls died almost a year later on 14th March 1970 in Chicago of heart failure after surgery at the Louis A. Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Work

Gestalt Therapy, co-founded by Fritz Perls, Laura Perls and Paul Goodman in the 1940s–1950s, is an existential and experiential psychotherapy that focuses on the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts in which these things take place, and the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of the overall situation. It emphasizes personal responsibility.

Overview of main premises

Edwin Nevis described gestalt therapy as "...a conceptual and methodological base from which helping professionals can craft their practice" (Nevis, E., 2000, p.3). In the same volume Joel Latner asserted that gestalt therapy is built around two central ideas: that the most helpful focus of psychology is the experiential present moment and that everyone is caught in webs of relationships; thus, it is only possible to know ourselves against the background of our relation to other things (Latner, 2000). The historical development (see below) of gestalt therapy shows the influences that have resulted in these two foci. Expanded, they result in the four chief theoretical constructs (see below under the theory and practice section) that comprise gestalt theory and guide the practice and application of gestalt therapy.

Gestalt therapy was forged from various influences in the times and lives of the founders: physics, Eastern religion, existential phenomenology, gestalt psychology, psychoanalysis, theatrical performance, systems and field theory (Mackewn, 1997).

Gestalt therapy rose from its beginnings in the middle of the 20th century to rapid and widespread popularity during the decade of the 1960s and early 1970s. During the 70s and 80s gestalt therapy training centers spread globally, but they were, for the most part, not aligned with formal academic settings. As the cognitive revolution eclipsed gestalt therapy in psychology, many came to believe gestalt was an anachronism. In the hands of gestalt practitioners gestalt therapy became an applied discipline in the fields of psychotherapy, organizational development, social action, and eventually coaching. Until the turn of the century gestalt therapists disdained the positivism underlying what they perceived to be the concern of research, and so, largely, ignored the need to utilize research to further develop gestalt therapy theory and support gestalt therapy practice. That has begun to change.

Gestalt therapy focuses more on process (what is happening) than content (what is being discussed). The emphasis is on what is being done, thought and felt at the moment rather than on what was, might be, could be, or should be.

Gestalt therapy is a method of awareness, by which perceiving, feeling, and acting are understood to be separate from interpreting, explaining and judging using old attitudes. This distinction between direct experience and indirect or secondary interpretation is developed in the process of therapy. The client learns to become aware of what they are doing psychologically and how they can change it. By becoming aware of and transforming their process they develop self acceptance and the ability to experience more in the "now" without so much interference from baggage of the past.

The objective of Gestalt Therapy, in addition to helping the client overcome symptoms, is to enable him or her to become more fully and creatively alive and to be free from the blocks and unfinished issues that may diminish optimum satisfaction, fulfillment, and growth. Thus, it falls in the category of humanistic psychotherapies.

Historical development

The seminal book

The seminal work was Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, published in 1951; co-authored by Fritz Perls, Paul Goodman, and Ralph Hefferline (a university psychology professor, and sometime patient of Fritz Perls). As it turns out, most of the original part II of the book was written by Paul Goodman from the notes of Fritz Perls, and contains the meat of the theory. It was supposed to go first. The publishers decided that Part II, written by Hefferline, fit more into the nascent self-help ethos of the day, and made it Part I, making for a less interesting introduction to the theory. Isadore From, a leading early theorist of Gestalt Therapy, taught Part II for an entire year to his students, going through it phrase by phrase.

First instances of practice

Fritz and Laura founded the first Gestalt Institute in New York City in 1952. Isadore From became a patient, first of Fritz and then of Laura. Fritz soon anointed Isadore a trainer and also gave him some patients. Isadore lived in New York until his death, at 75 in 1993, and was known world-wide for his philosophical and intellectually rigorous take on Gestalt Therapy. A brilliant, witty and sometimes caustic man, From was very much the philosopher of the first-generation Gestalt therapists. Acknowledged as a supremely gifted clinician, he was unfortunately phobic of writing and the few things committed to paper are transcriptions of interviews.[1]

Jim Simkin was a psychologist who also became a client of Perls and then a co-trainer with Perls in California. Simkin was responsible for Perls coming to California where he attempted to begin a psychotherapy practice. Ultimately, being a peripatetic trainer and workshop leader was a better fit for Fritz' personality. Jim and Fritz co-led some of the early (for California) training groups at Esalen.

The schism

In the 1960s Perls became infamous for his public workshops at Esalen Institute in Big Sur. Isadore From referred to some of Fritz' several day workshops as "hit-and-run" therapy because of its emphasis on showmanship with little or no follow-through, but Perls never considered these workshops to be true therapy. Jim Simkin went from co-leading training groups with Fritz to purchasing a property next to Esalen and starting his own training center, which he ran until his death in 1984. Here he refined his precise laser-like version of Gestalt Therapy, training psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors and social workers within a very rigorous residential training model.

When Fritz Perls left New York City for California, there began to be a split between those who saw Gestalt Therapy as a therapeutic approach with great potential (this view was best represented by Isadore From, who practiced and taught mainly in New York, and by the members of the Cleveland Institute, co-founded by From) and those who saw Gestalt Therapy not just as a therapeutic modality but as a way of life. The East Coast, New York-Cleveland axis was often appalled by the notion of Gestalt Therapy leaving the consulting room and becoming a way-of-life (see Gestalt prayer) in the West Coast of the 1960s.

The split continues between what has been called "East Coast" GT and "West Coast" GT. However, the way-of-life view seems to be fading as people move on from the 1960s. Esalen is still functioning in Big Sur. The widow of Esalen's co-founder Dick Price, Christine Price, continues to hold Gestalt workshops there.

Influences forming GT

Notable examples

Gestalt therapy had a variety of psychological and philosophical influences, and in addition was a response to the social forces of its day. It is a therapeutic approach that is holistic (mind/body/culture) present-centered, and related to existential therapy in its emphasis on personal responsibility for action, and on the valuing of the I-thou relationship in therapy. (In fact, its creators considered calling Gestalt Therapy existential-phenomenological therapy.) "The I and thou in the Here and Now," was one Gestalt therapist's semi-humorous mantra.

Both Perls were students and admirers of the neurologist Kurt Goldstein. Gestalt Therapy was based on Goldstein's understanding called "Organismic theory." Goldstein viewed a person in a situation in terms of a holistic and unified experience. He encouraged a big picture perspective, taking in to account the context of a person's experience. The word Gestalt means whole, or contextual. Goldstein taught the Perls that self actualization could only be achieved by self transcendence, that is, viewing the self as part of a greater whole. Laura Perls, in an interview denotes the "Organismic theory" as the base of Gestalt therapy.

Psychoanalysis

Gestalt therapy was influenced by psychoanalysis. It was part of a continuum moving from the early work of Freud, to the later Freudian ego analysis, to Wilhelm Reich and his notion of character armor, where they gave attention to nonverbal behavior (This was consonant with Laura Perls' background in dance and movement therapy). To this was added the insights of academic gestalt psychology about perception, gestalt formation and the tendency of organisms to complete the incomplete gestalt, to form "wholes" in experience.

Central to Fritz and Laura Perls' modifications of psychoanalysis was the concept of "dental or oral aggression." In "Ego, Hunger and Aggression" (1944), Fritz Perl's first book, to which Laura Perls contributed^[1], the Perls suggested that when the infant develops teeth, he/she has the capacity to chew, to break apart food, and by analogy experience, to taste, accept, reject, assimilate. This was opposed to Freud's notion that only introjection takes place in early experience. Thus the Perls made "assimilation," as opposed to "introjection," a focal theme in their work, and the prime means by which growth occurs in therapy.

In contrast to the psychoanalytic stance in which the "patient" introjects the (presumably more healthy) attitudes/interpretations of the analyst, in Gestalt Therapy the client must "taste" his/her experience, and either accept or reject, but not introject, or "swallow whole." Hence, the emphasis is on avoiding interpretation and encouraging discovery. This is the key point in the divergance of GT from traditional psychoanalysis—growth occurs through gradual assimilation of experience in a natural way, rather than by accepting the interpretations of the analyst; thus, the therapist should not interpret, but lead the client to discover for him or herself.

The Gestalt therapist contrives experiments that lead the client to greater awareness and fuller experience of his/her possibilities. Experiments can be focussed on undoing projections or retroflections. They can work to help the client with closure of unfinished gestalts ("unfinished business" such as unexpressed emotions towards somebody in the client's life). There are many kinds of experiments that might be therapeutic. But the essence of the work is that it is experiential rather than interpretive, and in this way distinguishes itself from the psychoanalytic.

Current status

Although Gestalt Therapy reached its zenith in the late 1970s and early 1980s and has since waned in popularity, its contributions have become assimilated into current schools of therapy, sometimes in unlikely places. For example, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) shares much from Gestalt Therapy yet is considered to be a cognitive behavioral approach. Also, mindfulness is a buzzword as of 2006, yet much of mindfulness work is connected to Gestalt Therapy's emphasis on the flow of experience and awareness.

Dan Rosenblatt led Gestalt training groups in Japan for 7 years and Stewart Kiritz followed with public workshops and training workshops in Tokyo from 1997 through 2005. Rosenblatt (b. 1925) was part of the early group around Laura. A Harvard-trained psychologist and intellectual, he practiced Gestalt therapy for over 35 years in Manhattan, seeing 30 patients a week in individual therapy and doing groups almost every evening. He did training workshops in Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, New Zealand, Italy for many years. Rosenblatt, who also wrote several books on Gestalt therapy, exemplifies the Gestalt therapist as practicing clinician, rather than would-be guru.

All of these therapists had their own distinctive styles, but always with Gestalt Therapy's focus on immediate experience as a central theme. And unlike Fritz Perls, whom Isadore From persisted in calling Frederick Perls, these first generation Gestalt therapists maintained thriving therapy practices, mostly in one location, for many years. Gestalt Therapy is a very useful process for therapists-in-training of any persuasion because of its focus on the person of the therapist, barriers to full contact with others, self-awareness. And graduate students still seem to seek it out, even though it is not as recognized by the establishment as it once was.

Legacy

Influenced by Laura and Fritz Perls (students)

• Jack Lee Rosenberg
• IBP Integrative Body Psychotherapy
• Claudio Naranjo
• Pat Korb
• Gordon Wheeler
• Richard Bandler - co-founder of Neuro-Linguistic Programming
• John Grinder - co-founder of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. The co-founders of NLP, Bandler and Grinder, started by observing and replicating three successful psychotherapists, Milton Erickson, Virginia Satir, and Fritz Perls. Fritz Perls was one of the founders of Gestalt therapy. Virginia Satir was the leading developer of family therapy. Milton Erickson was the founder of modern hypnosis and founding member of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis. Bandler and Grinder participated in collaborative studies with these individuals and reviewed many hours of audio and video material. In Frogs into Princes, Bandler and Grinder stated: '[we] build a model of what they do...we know that our modeling has been successful when we can systematically get the same behavioral outcome as the person we have modeled'.. In their studies, Bandler and Grinder aimed to identify the key strategies that set these therapists apart from their peers.
• Music Therapy: Fritz Hegi (Switzerland) "Improvisation und Musiktherapie," Junfermann, 1997
• Movement / Dance Therapy: Gindl, Barbara (Switzerland) ; Anklang. Die Resonanz der Seele - Über ein Grundprinzip therapeutischer Beziehung; Junfermann, 1. Auflage, 2002 ; ISBN 13: 978-3-87387-515-9; 304
• Massage: Anna Maurer, Integrative Gestalt Massage (IGM) in Germany and Switzerland
• Massage: Margret ELKE, Sensitive Gestalt Massage (SGM) / Massage Sensitif ® [2]
• Gestalt Bodywork: James I. Kepner, Body Process: Working With the Body in Psychotherapy, 1993
• Gestalt Leadership: Timothy H. Warneka, Leading People the Black Belt Way: Conquering the Five Core Problems Facing Leaders Today, 2005. http://www.asogomi.com
• Gestalt Leadership: Patrick J. Warneka & Timothy H. Warneka, The Way of Leading People: Unlocking Your Integral Leadership Skills with the Tao Te Ching, 2007. http://www.wayofleadingpeople.com

Major publications

• Ego, Hunger and Aggression. [1942] 1992. Gestalt Journal Press; New Ed. ISBN 0939266180 ISBN 978-0939266180.
• Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality [1951] 1977. New York, NY: Julian. ISBN 0-939266-24-5.
• Gestalt Therapy Verbatim (1968). Real People Press. ISBN 0911226028 ISBN 978-0911226027.
• The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy (1973) ISBN 0-8314-0034-X.
• In and Out the Garbage Pail (1981) ISBN 0-553-20253-7
• Ego, hunger, and aggression: The beginning of gestalt therapy. [1947] 1969. New York, NY: Random House.
• Perls, F., Hefferline, R., & Goodman, P. (1951) Gestalt therapy: Excitement and growth in the human personality. New York, NY: Julian.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Petruska Clarkson, Jennifer Mackewn: "Fritz Perls," 1993, SAGE Publications.

• Latner, J. (2000) The theory of gestalt therapy, in Gestalt therapy: Perspectives and Applications. Edwin Nevis (ed.). Cambridge, MA: Gestalt Press.
• Melnick, J., March Nevis, S. (2005) Gestalt therapy methodology in Gestalt Therapy, History, Theory, and Practice. Ansel Woldt & Sarah Toman (eds). London, UK: Sage Publications
• Nevis, E. (2000) Introduction, in Gestalt therapy: Perspectives and Applications. Edwin Nevis (ed.). Cambridge, MA: Gestalt Press.

Woldt, A. (2005) Pre-text: Gestalt pedagogy: Creating the field for teaching and learning, in Ansel Woldt & Sarah Toman (eds), Gestalt Therapy, History, Theory, and Practice. London, UK: Sage Publications.

External links

• A Life Chronology, by Frederick Perls
• Frederick Perls: A Son's Reflections, by Stephen Perls
• Growing Up Rugged: Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy by National Book Award winner Ernest Becker. Delivered as a talk shortly after Perls's death in 1970.
• Obituary at the New York Times

• Psychiatry in a New Key from the Unpublished Manuscripts of Fritz Perls
• Finding Self Through Gestalt Therapy, a transcript of a talk given at the Cooper Union by Frederick Perls in 1957
• Planned Psychotherapy by Frederick Perls. A talk given in the late 1940s at the William Alanson White Institute in New York City, "Planned Psychotherapy" predates the articulation of Gestalt therapy by a few years. Perls discusses in detail his developing use of focusing on the "here and now."

• Fritz Perls: Gestalt Therapy A nearly forgotten interview with Fritz Perls (the co-founder of Gestalt Therapy) by Adelaide Bry

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