Contents
A real big psychologist is rarely anyone’s faithful follower. The brightest trace in the history of psychological thought was left by those scientists who, having critically rethought traditional ideas, managed to go beyond the usual framework and say their own word not only in addition, but sometimes also in opposition to the opinion of authorities. This applies to Fritz Perls in the highest degree.
Freudian, nurtured by leading psychoanalysts, in his declining years spoke of «Freudian nonsense.» A psychologist who, by his own admission, has not read a single textbook on Gestalt psychology, but created a direction called Gestalt therapy. An ally of many prominent figures in humanistic psychology, never assigned to this trend. Such is Perls, the legendary figure of world psychology.
FAMILY ATMOSPHERE
Fritz (Frederick Solomon) Perls was born in Berlin to a petty-bourgeois Jewish family. His father was a traveling salesman who sold Palestinian wines with varying success. This was a man who sometimes knew how to be caring and cordial, but more prone to pathetic moralizing, behind which Fritz from an early age began to divine hypocrisy. Moreover, he and his two sisters constantly had to observe fierce skirmishes between their parents, often ending in assault. Fritz himself also got it — mainly from his mother, who used a stick for beating carpets for «pedagogical» purposes more often than for its intended purpose.
In such an atmosphere, children often grow up timid and downtrodden. Fritz, on the contrary, grew up desperate and rebellious, was at enmity with his parents, broke the sticks with which he was beaten. He never pleased, reacted sharply to hypocrisy and insincerity. Probably, it was in his childhood that his difficult, rebellious character with a pronounced desire for self-disclosure was formed. He was an unimportant student, spent two years in the seventh grade, after which he was completely expelled from school. However, he eventually graduated from school and continued his education at the medical department of Freiburg, then Berlin University.
MEDICAL PRACTICE
During the First World War, Perls served as a military doctor. Returning from the war in 1920, he received his medical degree from the University of Berlin. In general, medical practice did not have a significant impact on his scientific outlook, except for cooperation with Kurt Goldstein, for whom Perls worked as an assistant at the Frankfurt Neurological Institute. Goldstein did not belong to any psychological school, but historians of science find his views consonant with the teachings of Gestalt psychology, and sometimes call him one of the forerunners of humanistic psychology. Under his influence, Perls was imbued with the feeling that the human body should be considered as a whole, and not as a conglomeration of separately functioning parts. Subsequently, formulating the essence of his own approach, Perls pointed out that he was characterized by «an analysis not only of symptoms or character structure, but of the whole existence of a person.»
In the late twenties, Perls became interested in psychoanalysis. At that time he did not manage to personally meet Z. Freud, but he managed to establish contacts with many prominent representatives of the psychoanalytic movement. Initially, he studied training analysis with Wilhelm Reich. Perls took full advantage of his right to choose and change an analyst for training analysis: for several months he was analyzed by Helen Deutsch, Karen Horney and Otto Fenichel. He later recalled the results of this training as follows: “From Fenichel I received a disorientation, from Reich — impudence, from Horney — the ability to participate without abusing special terminology.”
A RISK FLIGHT TO FREUD
After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Perls left for Holland, and a year later, on the recommendation of Ernst Jones, a close friend and biographer of Freud, he moved to South Africa, to Johannesburg, where he founded the South African Institute of Psychoanalysis. In South Africa, in 1942, his first book, Ego, Hunger and Aggression, was published together with his wife. Laura Perls had a great influence on her husband and made a significant contribution to the creation and development of his theory. Perls’ first book was subtitled A Revision of Freud’s Theory and Method. It was reprinted in America in 1966 with a new subtitle, The Beginning of Gestalt Therapy.
In 1936, Perls returned briefly to Europe. It is interesting that he traveled the whole long way by air, piloting a private plane. He intended to make a presentation at an international psychoanalytic congress, and most importantly, to finally meet with the founder of psychoanalysis. This meeting took place, but did not bring Perls anything but disappointment. He recalls that the meeting lasted about four minutes: Freud froze in the doorway and did not even go into the room in which the guest was. The short conversation was limited to a few general phrases. There was no way to talk about Freud’s ideas, which Perls had dreamed about for years. Perhaps this unfortunate meeting was the drop that overflowed the cup of disappointment in psychoanalysis. Perls wrote: “My break with the Freudians came a few years later… I tried to make psychoanalysis a spiritual home, a religion. Later, enlightenment came: I must take full responsibility for my existence on myself. Nevertheless, Perls always retained respect for Freud as a great scientist. He emphasized: “Only Freud’s philosophy and technique are outdated, not his discoveries.”
ACTIVE MOVEMENTS
In 1946, Perls emigrated to the United States and opened a private practice in New York, trying to experiment with a combination of various psychotherapeutic techniques. In 1951, with Ralph Hefferlin and Paul Goodman, he published Gestalt Therapy, in which he formulated the beginnings of his own therapeutic approach. Shortly thereafter, the New York Institute of Gestalt Therapy was organized, the center of which was in Perls’ apartment. Perls turned his home into a workshop where seminars and group classes were held.
The Cleveland Institute for Gestalt Therapy was also formed in 1954, and by the late 50s, Gestalt Therapy groups were organized across the country.
In 1960, Perls moved to the West Coast of the United States and lived and worked in Los Angeles for some time. In 1964 he joined the staff of the famous Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.
In 1969, Perls moved to British Columbia, where he founded a Gestalt community on Vancouver Island. In the same year, he published two of his most famous works, Gestalt Therapy Verbatum and In and Out of the Garbage Pail. The latter is a scientific autobiography, written in a very specific literary manner. Many teachers recommend that students begin their acquaintance with Perls’s theory from the last work, since in it the figure of the creator of Gestalt therapy appears most prominently and visibly, outside of which it is difficult to imagine his innovative ideas. In the end, «Perls’s best specialist» was and still is Perls himself. Perhaps the same can be said about his teachings.
VARIOUS INFLUENCES
Of course, psychoanalysis, although critically rethought, had a significant influence on the formation of Perls’s ideas. Of particular importance was probably Reich’s concept, in particular his idea that the individual has a «protective shell», thanks to which resistance becomes a general function of the organism. (It should, however, be noted that the odious theory of orgone, later put forward by Reich, was taken by Perls with skepticism.)
The work of Gestalt psychologists also had a strong influence on Perls — although he did not delve into the study of their theory, he carefully read some articles by Wertheimer, Koehler and Levin. In general, Perls, according to him, developed a specific relationship with Gestalt psychology: while admiring many of the ideas of the Gestaltists, he, however, found it impossible to follow them completely. Perls noted, «Most important to me was the idea of an unfinished situation rather than an incomplete gestalt.»
The problem of the relationship between figure and ground, developed by the Gestaltists in the field of cognitive processes, was transferred by Perls to the field of perception of the world as a whole. Academic Gestalt psychologists did not accept such an extension. However, one cannot but admit that today the concept of gestalt appears in psychology mainly due to the innovative interpretations of Perls.
It is also important to note a certain influence on the development of Gestalt therapy of the ideas of J. Moreno: some of Perls’ therapeutic techniques are indirectly drawn from the practice of psychodrama.
SELF-REGULATION, GAMES AND DREAMS
The main theoretical principle of Gestalt therapy is the belief that nothing can adequately replace an individual’s ability to self-regulate. Therefore, special attention is paid to the development of the patient’s willingness to make decisions and make choices. Since self-regulation is carried out in the present, the gestalt arises at the “present moment”, then psychotherapeutic work is carried out purely in the situation “here and now”. The psychotherapist closely monitors changes in the functioning of the patient’s body, encourages him to expand his awareness of what is happening to him at the moment. Much attention is paid to the psychotherapist «body language», which is more informative than verbal language, which is often used for rationalization, self-justification and avoidance of solving problems. Technical procedures in Gestalt therapy are called games. These are a variety of activities performed by patients at the suggestion of a psychotherapist, which contribute to a more direct confrontation with significant experiences. Games provide an opportunity to experiment with yourself and other members of the group. In the process of games, patients «try on» different roles, enter into different images, identify with significant feelings and experiences, alienated parts of the personality. The purpose of the experimental games is to achieve emotional and intellectual enlightenment, leading to the integration of the personality.
Much attention in Gestalt therapy is also paid to working with the dreams of patients. But, unlike psychoanalysis, dreams in Gestalt therapy are not interpreted. They are used to integrate the personality. Perls believed that the various parts of the dream act as fragments of the personality. By playing the objects of a dream, its individual fragments, the hidden content of the dream can be revealed through its experience, and not through its analysis. Perls first applied his method in the form of individual psychotherapy, but subsequently switched completely to the group form, finding it more effective and economical.
Group psychotherapy is carried out as centered on the patient, while the group is used only instrumentally like a choir, which in the background proclaims its opinion about the actions of the protagonist. During the work of one of the group members who occupies the «hot chair» next to the psychotherapist’s chair, the other members of the group identify with him and do a lot of silent autotherapy, becoming aware of the fragmented parts of his «I» and completing unfinished situations.
COMMUNATED WORDS
Perls himself, in the opinion of those who knew him, was by no means always as responsible as, in his opinion, a person should become after completing a course of Gestalt therapy. This, however, did not prevent him from being an extremely cheerful person and, as they would say today, charismatic. Fritz Perls died at the age of 76 on March 14, 1970 after a short illness. Shortly before his death, he worked on two books — The Gestalt Approach and Witness Therapy. These works were published posthumously in 1973. In the works of this original theoretician and practitioner to this day, new generations of psychologists continue to draw inspiration, repeating in their own way his peculiar commandment:
I do mine and you do yours.
I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations
And you are not in this world to live up to my expectations.
You are you and I am me.
If we happen to find each other, that’s great.
If not, then there’s nothing you can do.