Fritz Perls - Life

Life

Fritz Perls was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1893. Perls “grew up” on the bohemian scene in Berlin, participated in Expressionism and Dadaism, and experienced the turning of the artistic avant-garde toward the revolutionary left. Deployment to the front line, the trauma of war, anti-Semitism, intimidation, escape, and the Holocaust are further key sources of biographical influence.

He was expected to practice law like his distinguished uncle Herman Staub, but instead he studied medicine. Perls joined the German Army during World War I, and spent time in the trenches. After the war he graduated as a medical doctor, and became an assistant to Kurt Goldstein, who worked with brain injured soldiers. Perls gravitated toward psychoanalysis. He had a brief and unsatisfactory meeting with Freud, and went through an analysis with Wilhelm Reich.

In 1930 Fritz Perls married Laura Perls (born, Lore Posner), and they had two children together, Renate and Stephen. In 1933, soon after the Hitler regime came to power, Fritz Perls, Laura and their eldest child Renate fled to the Netherlands, and one year later they emigrated to South Africa, where Fritz Perls started a psychoanalytic training institute. In 1942 he joined the South African army, and served as an army psychiatrist with the rank of captain, until 1946. While in South Africa, Perls was influenced by the "holism" of Jan Smuts. During this period Fritz Perls wrote his first book, Ego, Hunger, and Aggression (published in 1942 and re-published in 1947). Laura Perls wrote two chapters of the book, but she was not given any recognition for her work when it was re-published in the United States.

Fritz and Laura Perls left South Africa in 1946 and ended up in New York, where Fritz Perls worked briefly with Karen Horney, and Wilhelm Reich. After living through a peripatetic episode, during which he lived in Montreal and served as a cruise ship psychiatrist, Perls finally settled in Manhattan. Perls wrote his second book with the assistance of New York intellectual and author, Paul Goodman, who drafted the theoretical second part of the book based upon Perls' hand-written notes. Perls and Goodman were influenced by the work Kurt Lewin and Otto Rank. Along with the experiential first part, written with Ralph Hefferline, the book was entitled Gestalt Therapy and published in 1951. Thereafter, Fritz and Laura Perls started the first Gestalt Institute in their Manhattan apartment, and Fritz Perls began traveling throughout the United States in order to conduct Gestalt workshops and training.

In 1960 Fritz Perls left Laura Perls behind in New York and moved to Los Angeles, where he practiced in conjunction with Jim Simkin. He started to offer workshops at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, in 1963. Perls became interested in Zen during this period, and incorporated the idea of mini-satori (a brief awakening) into his practice. He also traveled to Japan, where he stayed in a Zen monastery. Eventually, he settled at Esalen, and even built a house on the grounds. One of his students at Esalen was Dick Price, who developed Gestalt Practice, based in large part upon what he learned from Perls. In 1969 Perls left Esalen and started a Gestalt community at Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island, Canada. Fritz Perls died of heart failure in Chicago, on March 14, 1970, after heart surgery at the Louis A. Weiss Memorial Hospital.