Awareness (Fritz Perls, M.D. Founder of Gestalt Therapy)

Friedrich (Fritz) Perls was born in 1893 in Berlin. Against his family’s wishes, Perls served in the army during World War I. After the war, Perls studied medicine and began treating soldiers with brain injuries. He was drawn to the work of Sigmund Freud as a teenager, and his experiences treating patients pulled him further down the path toward Freudian psychoanalysis. He studied at the Berlin Institute of Psychoanalysis and in Vienna.

In 1930, Perls married Lore Posner, later known as Laura Perls; the couple had two children and fled the Hitler regime by relocating to Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1933. There, Perls founded a training institute to serve the psychoanalytical community. During World War II, Perls again joined the military and became a psychiatrist with the South African army.

In 1946, the Perls family moved to New York where Perls worked briefly with Wilhelm Reich and Karen Horney. Perls eventually settled in Manhattan and began working with the intellectual Paul Goodman. In 1951, in collaboration with Ralph Hefferline, Goodman and Perls produced the book Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, based mostly on Perl’s own research and clinical notes. Shortly after the publication in 1951, the Perls founded the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy and began conducting training from their apartment in Manhattan. Perls began sharing his theories with all of North America and began traveling extensively to conduct seminars and training workshops.

Later in life, Perls moved to California and became affiliated with the Esalen Institute, in 1964, where he provided workshops and continued to practice and develop Gestalt therapy. In 1969, Perls moved to Vancouver Island, Canada, to establish a training community for therapists. He died the following year in Chicago.

(Excerpts taken from GoodTherapy.org.)