Fritz Perls

Friedrich "Fritz" Saloman Perls was born to Amelia (Rund) and Nathan Perls. He grew up in a middle-class Jewish home, the youngest of three children and the only son. His sister, Grete Gutfreund, would remember him as a "wild child". The family life was always stormy and Fritz never got along with his father. His early interests in philosophy, art, and theater influenced his later role as the chief evangelist for Gestalt therapy, which he would invent in the 1940s along with his wife, Laura Perls. Among the influences on him during his youth was Max Reinhardt, director of the Deutsche Theater in Berlin. Reinhardt impressed upon Perls the importance of non-verbal communications. Perls was expected to follow his uncle into the practice of law, but he instead went to medical school, and after serving in the German Army in World War I, he became a neuropsychiatrist. In the 1920s, he underwent psychoanalysis with Karen Horney. He also worked as an assistant to Kurt Goldstein who treated and did research on brain-injured veterans. Goldstein was strongly influenced by Gestalt psychology and existentialism, and his integration of these ways of viewing human experience would influence Perls' approach to psychotherapy. Another assistant to Goldstein was psychologist Lore Posner, whom Perls married in 1930. (She would go by the name "Laura" after emigrating from Germany.) Perls subsequently became a psychoanalyst. His training and supervising analysts included Sandor Rado and Wilhelm Reich who both encouraged Perls to attend technical seminars where Reich taught character analysis, an approach that focused on the patient's current psychological state rather than on an analysis of complexes of which the patient might not be aware or ready to confront. Reich's approach dovetailed with Reinhardt's teaching by emphasizing the importance of non-verbal communication. The Perlses fled Germany with the rise of the Nazis to power in 1933. After living in the Netherlands, they moved to South Africa where Perls would join the army during World War II, serving as a physician. There, too, Fritz and Laura wrote the book "Ego, Hunger, and Aggression," generally considered to be the beginning of what Perls would dub "Gestalt therapy". (Laura, who was never happy with that designation, is said to have written--without credit--two chapters of the book.) Arriving in the United States in 1946, Fritz and Laura launched Gestalt therapy by founding an institute in their living room. They led an active social life and met many actors and writers, including poet, social critic, and amateur psychologist Paul Goodman. Perls' 1951 book, "Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality", was co-written with psychologist Ralph Hefferline and Goodman (who is said to have written much of the book based on Perls' notes). Perls founded other Gestalt institutes, first in Cleveland, Ohio, and then in other cities. By 1960, Fritz and Laura not only were estranged, but their ways of practicing Gestalt therapy significantly diverged. Fritz used Reich's notions about body language in psychotherapy to observe behavior and encourage bodily expression, while Laura moved toward a more hands-on, body-oriented approach that was also influenced by Reich. (Her chief collaborator on this project was Fritz's former writing partner, Goodman.) Perls left New York and lived in various cities including Miami, Los Angeles, Big Sur, California, and Vancouver. He had a girlfriend named Marty Fromm after (if not before) leaving his wife. He traveled widely, including to Japan where he briefly studied with a Zen Buddhist master. (Later he identified his religious affiliation as "Zen Judaist".) His primary activities became teaching and conducting workshops where he demonstrated Gestalt therapy to both professional and lay audiences. He made several short films and participated in others, demonstrating his therapy in action. Some of Perls' critics within Gestalt therapy consider that while brilliant, he settled for a cookie-cutter approach in his therapy demonstrations, which led critics outside of Gestalt to conclude that Gestalt therapy is little more than a bag of tricks rather than a coherent approach backed by a comprehensive psychological theory that could be used more widely than Perls' performances suggested. His theatrical roots often showed in the often short films he made on his own or with others. He would spar verbally with those he counseled and even when he was too infirm to act dramatically himself, he was able to elicit drama from others. (See, for example, the 1970 short entitled "Memory Vs. Pride ". While on a demonstration tour in 1970, he died in Chicago from heart disease complicated by pancreatic cancer .