Fritz Perls (Frederick Salomon Perls): life, quotes, Gestalt therapy
- Ryszard Skarbek
- Nov 22, 2020
- 10 min read
Updated: Jul 12
Fritz Perls, actually Friedrich Salomon Perls (July 8, 1893 - March 14, 1970), a German-born psychiatrist and Gestalt therapist of Jewish origin, is, without a doubt, one of the greatest psychotherapists in history.
His legacy as a pioneer of psychotherapy and his contributions to the development of therapeutic methods continue to be appreciated and studied by psychologists and therapists worldwide.
We present a short biography of Perls that embraces key events in his life. Let's examine the new approach to therapy and the Gestalt psychology he developed.
Frederick Salomon Perls: A Short Biography.
Fritz Perls was born in Berlin, Germany. His full name was Frederick Salomon Perls. Raised by an autocratic, strict father and a mother who had very high aspirations for him, he lived torn between two beliefs:
"I'm a piece of shit" and "I must be great."
This gave him the drive, led him to rebel, and made him understand the suffering of others.
Early years and youth.
He completed his secondary education in Berlin at a gymnasium known for its extremely strict rules, dominated by the widespread anti-Semitism of the time. It was there that he met Max Reinhardt, a theater director, who instilled in Fritz a love of theater and art.
Despite family pressure to study law (to follow Uncle, Herman Staub, the greatest lawyer in Germany), Fritz enrolled in a medical university to study medicine. The studies were interrupted by World War I. As a soldier in the German army, he fought in the trenches and experienced the horrors of the war firsthand.
After the war in 1918, he returned to his medical studies, graduating two years later. As a medical doctor, he specialized in neuropsychiatry and then became an assistant to Kurt Goldstein, who worked with brain-injured soldiers. Perls gravitated toward psychoanalysis.
After graduating from the Medical Academy, he also studied psychology and practised his psychoanalysis under the tutelage of the famous Wilhelm Reich.
Adulthood and escape from Germany.
In 1930, Perls married Lore Posner. They had two children (Stephen and Renate) and lived a good life in Berlin. Unfortunately, in 1933, soon after the Hitler regime came to power, due to their Jewish origin, the family had to leave Germany, and traveling through Holland, they ended up in South Africa.
In 1942, Fritz joined the South African army and served as a military psychiatrist. During this period, Fritz Perls worked on his first book, Ego, Hunger, and Aggression (published in 1942).
Middle years and life in the USA.
The next chapter in his life began in 1946 when Fritz and his wife, Laura, moved to New York, where Perls worked briefly with Karen Horney and the famous psychotherapist Wilhelm Reich. This was the period when Fritz and Laura Perls developed a new form of psychotherapy, and he coined the term Gestalt Therapy. He was also fascinated by the theater and joined The Living Theater in New York.
He wrote his second book with the assistance of New York intellectual and author Paul Goodman and Ralph Hefferline, a psychology professor at Columbia University. Goodman drafted the theoretical second part of the book based on Perls' handwritten notes, and Hefferline wrote the first experiential part. The book titled Gestalt Therapy was published in 1951.
Thereafter, Fritz and Laura settled in Manhattan and started the first Gestalt Institute in their apartment. However, their activities were not limited to New York City. Perls began traveling throughout the United States to deliver numerous workshops, seminars, and training on the newly developed Gestalt psychotherapy.
Late years and death.
The third chapter of his life began in 1960 and covered significant events, professionally and privately. Fritz left Laura and moved to Los Angeles. He founded the Esalen Institute in Big Sur in 1964, where he offered Gestalt workshops. At Esalen Institute, he collaborated with Ida Rolf, the founder of the Rolfing Method, to examine the relationship between the mind and the body.
Perls became interested in Zen during this period and traveled to Japan, where he stayed in a Zen monastery. In addition to Zen Buddhism, he also studied Taoism.
In 1969, Perls left Esalen and moved to Vancouver Island, Canada, where he started a Gestalt community. He hosted eight educational films on Gestalt therapy.
Perls died of heart failure in Chicago on March 14, 1970, after heart surgery at the Louis A. Weiss Memorial Hospital.
Erving Polster, psychologist and Gestalt therapist, founding faculty member of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland in 1953, said about his master:
“From Fritz, I got the realization that a person could have an incredible range in characteristics. I could experience Fritz as the most cutting and as the most tender of all people.”
What was unique about Fritz Perls's therapeutic approach? How did it differ from psychoanalysis?
Psychoanalysis focuses on the unconscious, analyzing the past, and interpreting defense mechanisms. Perls rejected theoretical analyses and interpretations, considering them worthless in therapy. According to him, therapy is not about unearthing the past but about experiencing life in the present.
Instead of asking the questions:
"Why, where from, what for?"
He asked:
"What is happening as it is?"
What matters is the here and now. Both looking to the future and the past deviate from authentic living. And while F. Perls undoubtedly understood the influence of childhood on who we are; he, along with the existentialists, held us fully responsible for our lives.
Sartre said:
"It is not important what has been done to me, but what I have done myself with what has been done to me."
Perls also recognized the full human responsibility for the choices made. Neither the difficult past nor external circumstances can take it away from us. One of the key messages he tried to convey was "live up to your expectations".
What is Gestalt therapy?
In German, "Gestalt" means whole, figure, shape, and form. This therapy is based on two key assumptions:
The indivisible wholeness of the human being.
The body's ability to maintain balance in changing conditions (homeostasis).
Every need disrupts this balance, and its satisfaction is called closing the figure. However, when this is not achieved, we leave the figures open.
The main goal of Gestalt therapy is to close open figures.
When is the Gestalt approach used?
This method helps with issues such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and relationship difficulties. It helps to understand the role a person plays in their own suffering or discomfort.
Interestingly, Gestalt techniques are often used in conjunction with bodywork, dance, art, and drama. It sounds as if we're hearing an echo of Perls's personal life experiences and his own psychotherapy under the guidance of the renowned Wilhelm Reich.
What does the Gestalt Decalogue sound like?
Here are the ten commandments created by Fritz Perls:
Live Now - Pay attention to the present rather than the past and the future.
Live here - take care of what is present, not what is not.
Experience yourself and accept yourself as you are.
Stop thinking unnecessarily - instead, look and taste, perceive the environment as it is, and make contact with it.
Express yourself - don't manipulate, don't explain, don't justify, don't judge.
Surrender to the experience of unpleasantness and pain as you surrender to the experience of pleasure. Don't limit your awareness.
Accept no "should" except what is truly yours.
Take full responsibility for your actions, feelings, and thoughts.
Be open to change and development - be ready to experiment to meet new situations.
Be yourself and let others be themselves.
In this decalogue, one can find invaluable and universal hints about the great question: HOW TO LIVE? Also, in today's difficult times of the COVID-19 pandemic.
What does Gestalt Prayer sound like?
One of the most famous Perls' quotes, known not only in the world of psychotherapy, is the so-called Gestalt Prayer:
"I do my thing, and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, And you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and, if by chance, we find each other, it's beautiful. If not, it can't be helped." - „Gestalt Therapy Verbatim”, 1969.
Fritz Perls: quotes, famous and lesser-known.
Many golden thoughts deserve recognition. I want to present my list of quotes by Fritz Perls. These quotes are wise and full of love for man. They are largely quotes about being yourself and realizing your human potential.
Among these quotes, I would like to highlight the one at the top of the list below. However, the last one on this list is, in a sense, a neat presentation of the essence of coaching.
The list is arranged alphabetically.
A hundred plastic flowers can not make the desert bloom.
All emotions are expressed in the muscular system. You can not visualize anger without muscle movement. You can not visualize the joy, which is more or less identical when dancing, without muscle movements. In grief, there are sobs and tears, and in sex, there are also.
Anguish is the gap between "now" and "after".
Anxiety is always the result of moving away from the now.
Anxiety is excitement without breathing.
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who have a problem with it don't matter, and those who matter don't have a problem with it.
Be who you are and then you will see who you are and how you are. Allow yourself a moment or two to do what you want to do and discover what you are actually doing. Take a little risk if you can. Feel your own feelings. Speak your own words. Think your own thoughts. Be yourself. Explore. Plan your development by experiencing yourself.
Being in the world with its ups and downs, alone or accompanied, is part of the same thing: existing in the here and now.
By not living needs and impulses, organismic self-regulation deteriorates, needing to rely on moralistic regulations.
Consciousness is subjective. We become aware of ourselves through our body and our emotions. We are aware of the world through the senses.
Don't push the river, it flows on its own.
Emotions are not discomfort that needs to be relieved. Emotions are the most important driver of our behavior: emotions in the broadest sense of the word - they are expectation, pleasure, and hunger. This emotion, or basic energy, is a life force.
Every time you refuse to answer a question, you are helping the other person use their own resources.
Fear of death means fear of life.
Friend, don't be a perfectionist. Perfectionism is a curse.
Guilt feels much nobler than resentment and much more courage is needed to express resentment than guilt. By expressing guilt you hope to pacify your opponent; with resentment, you can awaken their hostility.
Happiness is a matter of awareness. Or, is it that you are becoming Freudian by saying: I am unconsciously happy.
If one feels persecuted by an ogre and becomes the ogre, the nightmare disappears.
If you feel uncomfortable with someone you can be sure there is no real communication. As soon as one is genuinely expressed, all discomfort disappears.
If you need encouragement, flattery, and patting on everyone's back, then you are making everyone your judge.
Illness, pretending to be sick is a big part of this going crazy, and is nothing more than a search for environmental support. We are sick in bed: someone takes care of us, feeds us, and gives us shelter, we do not have to go out and make a living, it is total regression. But regression is not, as Freud thought, a purely pathological phenomenon. Regression means retreating to a position where one can provide one's own support, and where one feels safe.
It is very rare that people can talk and listen. Very few listen without speaking.
Learning is nothing more than discovering that something is possible. Teaching means showing someone that something is possible.
Loneliness is actually the place where you can connect with the feeling of belonging to the human.
Maturity means taking responsibility for your life, and living on your own.
Most modern men live in a "verbal trance." They do not see or hear, and the awakening takes a long time.
Nothing has meaning without its context. The meaning does not exist.
No one can bear the truth if it is told to him. The truth can only be tolerated when you discover it for yourself because then the pride of discovery makes it palatable.
Only one phenomenon can occupy the foreground every time.
There are two big lies: "I want" and "I try to".
There is a lot of potential in people, but knowing how to detect it also requires talent.
Things do not exist; every event is a process; the thing is merely a transient form of an eternal process. Everything is in a flow.
The body knows everything. We know very little. Intuition is the body's intelligence.
The person who is most in control is the one who can give up control.
To be present now is to unite our attention and our conscience.
Trying is lying. I'll try it means you have no serious intention to do so. If you really think about doing it, say: "I will do it"; and if not, say: "I will not do it". You have to speak clearly to think clearly and act clearly.
Waiting for the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is the same as waiting for a bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian.
You can not achieve happiness. Happiness happens and it is a transitory stage.
The list of the most important books written by F. Perls, with the dates of their publication:
Ego, Hunger and Aggression (1942, 1947) - co-written with Laura.
Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (1951) - the flagship work written together with R. Hefferline and P. Goodman.
Gestalt Therapy Verbatim (1969).
In and Out of the Garbage Pail (1969).
The Gestalt Approach and Eyewitness to Therapy (1973).
See also related reading:
Check biographies and achievements of other key figures who contributed to the development of psychology:
What is kinesiology?
Viktor Frankl and his logotherapy
Carl Rogers and humanistic psychology
What is Maslow's pyramid?
50 minds that changed the world
About the author:
Ryszard Skarbek is a certified business coach, mentor, and HR advisor with over 30 years of professional experience, including over 22 years of work in an international corporation present on six continents.
As a coach and mentor, Ryszard mostly works with middle and senior managers as well as business owners.
His specializations are 21st-century leadership, interpersonal communication, self-awareness, HR, IT, and Project Management.