History:
Influences that shaped Gestalt psychology:
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory
Psychodrama and the work of Jacob Moreno
Frederick Perls (1893–1970) was the founder and chief designer of Gestalt therapy. He joined the German army in 1916 and served as a doctor in the First World War. His experience with soldiers who had been gassed on the front line turned his interest towards psychological functioning, which led to Gestalt psychology.
After the war Perls worked with Kurt Goldstein at the Goldstein Institute in Frankfurt, which cared for brain-injured soldiers, and through this collaboration came to see the importance of viewing people as wholes rather than as collections of separately functioning parts. He later moved to Vienna and began his training in psychoanalysis.
In 1952 Perls and several colleagues founded the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. He eventually left New York and settled in Big Sur, California, where he ran workshops and seminars at the Esalen Institute and made his name as an innovator in psychotherapy. There he had a great influence on people, partly through his professional writing but mainly through personal contact in his workshops.
Perls himself was a lively and astonishing man. People usually responded to him with a mixture of fear and respect, or saw him as a harsh confronter who met his own needs through a talent for acting. He had loved the theatre since childhood. For a first-hand account of Fritz Perls’s life, we recommend his autobiography In and Out the Garbage Pail (1969); for the history of Gestalt therapy, Bowman (2005) is recommended.
Source: Gerald Corey, Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy, Persian translation by Yahya Seyed Mohammadi, Arasbaran Publishing, 2013
For those interested in this approach, Moeen Counselling Centre plans to run workshops and specialist Gestalt therapist training courses taught by Dr Amir Askari. To hear when workshops are held, join our network.
Leave a Reply