From Planned Psychotherapy to Gestalt Therapy: Essays and Lectures — 1945 to 1965 Frederick Salomon Perls, M.D.

by Frederick Perls, Peter Philippson (Introduction)

Overview

From the introduction:

So I would commend these formative writings of Fritz Perls to those who would get a fuller sense of the original ideas of Gestalt therapy, a work in progress, but already a fairly consistent field-relational approach to psychology and therapy. My hope is that, with more people reading these papers and our ‘Bible,’ Perls, Hefferline and Goodman, the discussion of what is useful and what needs reworking can be grounded in a rediscovery of what is exciting and unique in Perls’ ideas.

Peter Philippison
January, 2012

Contents:

Planned Psychotherapy
Frederick Perls delivered this talk at the William Alanson White Institute in late 1947 or early 1948.

Theory and Technique of Personality Integration
Reprinted from American Journal of Psychotherapy, October 1948

The Theory of "The Removal of Inner Conflict
(co-authored with Paul Goodman)
Reprinted from Resistance

Introduction to A Doctor's Report on Dianetics: Theory and Therapy by J. A. Winter (1951)


Psychiatry in a New Key
"Psychiatry in a New Key" is a manuscript Perls started sometime in the early 1950's. It was first published in The Gestalt Journal in 1977.


Morality Ego Boundary, and Aggression
Reprinted from Complex, #9, 1955.

Finding Self Through Gestalt Therapy
Fritz Perls delivered this talk as part of the Cooper Union Forum Lecture Series: "The Self" in New York City on March 6, 1957.

Gestalt Therapy and Cybernetics
In 1958, Jacob L. Moreno invited Frederick Perls to write an article discussing the similarities between Gestalt therapy and Cybernetics for publication in Moreno's publication, Sociometry: A Journal of Interpersonal Relations. Moreno decided not to publish the article.

Resolution
This paper was given as a talk at Mendocino State Hospital, Talmage, California, in 1959 as the conclusion of a series of talks and demonstrations

Gestalt Therapy and Human Potentialities. Reprinted from Explorations in Human Potentialities, edited by Herbert A. Otto in 1966

Group vs. Individual Therapy
Reprinted from Etc: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. 34, No. 3,1967

Product Details

BN ID:	2940014061292
Publisher:	The Gestalt Journal Press
Publication date:	01/27/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	508 KB

About the Author

Frederick (Fritz) Perls initially trained as a psychiatrist in Germany. In the 1920s, he worked with brain-injured war veterans, as assistant to the famous humanistic psychologist Kurt Goldstein.

He also trained with Karen Horney, Otto Rank, and Wilhelm Reich.

Perls fled Germany in 1933. After living in Amsterdam, he moved to South Africa,
where he and his wife, Laura (Lore) established a psychoanalytic training institute and began to develop the core ideas of Gestalt Therapy. While in South Africa, Perls wrote his first book, "Ego, Hunger and Aggression," which challenged and expanded upon traditional psychoanalytic thought.

Perls moved to New York City in 1947 and started a small study group where the theory of Gestalt Therapy was shaped and then put forth in 1951 in the seminal work "Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality" which he coauthored with writer and social critic Paul Goodman and Columbia University psychologist Ralph Hefferline. The first Gestalt therapy institute, the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy was established by the original study group shortly after the book's publication.

In 1960, Fritz Perls moved to California and later held the first West Coast Gestalt Therapy training seminars at the Esalen Institute. The approach, with its emphasis on directness and experiential method, became a central part of the human potential movement. In 1969 Perls left the USA to start a Gestalt community at Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island, Canada. He died March 14, 1970.