Laura Perls, born Lore Posner, 1905 in Pforzheim, Germany; died 13th July 1990 in Pforzheim, was a noted German-born psychologist and psychotherapist who helped establish the gestalt school of psychotherapy. Pforzheim city center, Wallberg (on rubble mound) in background. ... Gestalt Therapy is an existential and experiential psychotherapy that focuses on the individuals experience in the present moment, the therapist-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts in which these things take place, and the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of the overall situation. ... Psychotherapy is an interpersonal, relational intervention used by trained psychotherapists to aid clients in problems of living. ...

She became interested in psychology when she was 16 (Fadiman & Frager, 2002). Like many before and after her, her interest began after reading Freud's 1899 The Interpretation of Dreams (Fadiman & Frager, 2002). Sigmund Freud His famous couch Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 - September 23, 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology, a movement that popularized the theory that unconscious motives control much behavior. ... A modern English edition of The Interpretation of Dreams. ...

In 1930 she married Frederick Perls. They had met while working at the Frankfurt Psychological Institute. In 1933 the Perls had to flee Germany during the rise of Nazi power. They then spent ten years in South Africa. It was there that the Perls wrote their first book together, Ego, Hunger and Aggression, published in 1942. This work held the beginnings for their new theory of psychotherapy, Gestalt Therapy, which consisted of facing the client to notice his or her postures and gestures (Fadiman & Frager, 2002).

In 1951, having moved to New York, the Perls, together with Paul Goodman and Ralph Hefferline published Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. By 1952, with the help of Paul Goodman, they had established The New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy (Fadiman & Frager, 2002). There have been multiple well-known individuals named Paul Goodman: Paul Goodman (writer), US author, freethinker, anarchist and Gestalt Therapy contributor (see Paul Goodman page in the Anarchist Encyclopedia) Paul Goodman (sound engineer), winner of multiple Grammy Awards) Paul Alexander Cyril Goodman (United Kingdom politician) Paul Goodman an NHL hockey... Ralph Franklin Hefferline (1910 to 1974) was a psychology professor at Columbia University, who was one of the founders of Gestalt Therapy. ...

When Frederick Perls started travelling more often to the Esalen Institute in California in the early 60s, Laura stayed on in New York to continue running the original institute. Esalen Institute is a center for humanistic alternative education, a nonprofit organization devoted to multidisciplinary studies ordinarily neglected by traditional academia. ...

Laura Perls died in 1990, at the age of 85.

External links

• Edward Rosenfeld: AN ORAL HISTORY OF GESTALT THERAPY. Part 1. A conversation with Laura Perls

• The New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy, USA, founded by Fritz and Laura Perls, 1952