Laura Perls

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Laura Perls (born August 15, 1905 as Lore Posner in Pforzheim ; † July 13, 1990 there ) was a German psychoanalyst . Together with her husband, the psychoanalyst Fritz Perls , and the social philosopher and writer Paul Goodman, she founded Gestalt therapy .

Life

Laura Posner grew up in a Jewish jeweler family in Pforzheim. She attended the Reuchlin-Gymnasium (the only girl in the class) and began studying law in Frankfurt / Main in 1923. In 1926 she switched from law to psychology and philosophy. She attended courses with the Gestalt psychologists Max Wertheimer , Kurt Goldstein and Adhémar Gelb , with whom she wrote her doctoral thesis, and with Edmund Husserl , Paul Tillich and Martin Buber .

In 1927 she began training in psychoanalysis with Karl Landauer . This was followed by a training analysis with Frieda Fromm-Reichmann . From 1931 she had her own psychoanalytic practice; her supervisor was Otto Fenichel .

She met her future husband, the psychoanalyst Fritz Perls, in a course given by Goldstein and Gelb. They married in 1930 and moved to Berlin. The couple had two children: Renate (* 1931) and Steve (* 1935).

Laura Perls had dance and movement lessons from childhood. Since 1931 she practiced and learned sensitive body and movement work with Elsa Gindler .

After the handover of power to the National Socialists in 1933, she was active in the anti-fascist resistance and was soon forced to flee to the Netherlands. In 1934 she and her husband went into exile in South Africa. There they founded the first psychoanalytic institute in the country. During this time the first preparatory work on Gestalt therapy began - which her husband published in his first book Das Ich, der Hunger und die Aggression (1942).

In 1947 Laura and Fritz Perls emigrated to the USA. From then on she lived and worked mainly in New York and, after her husband moved to the American West Coast, headed the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy , which she had co-founded in 1952. In 1976 she gave up the private practice and devoted herself exclusively to training.

She died in 1990 in the Siloah Hospital in Pforzheim and is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Pforzheim with her husband Fritz Perls.

Appreciation

Laura Perls stands for a special style of Gestalt therapy - for a very down-to-earth and dedicated therapeutic work with the client, for commitment with the client and for unspectacular work of small steps.

Her influence on the development of theory and practice of Gestalt therapy is enormous, but she published little herself throughout her life. Her participation in the basic book on Gestalt therapy (by Fritz Perls, Paul Goodman and Ralph F. Hefferline , 1951) was not mentioned.

The International Laura Perls Conference took place from June 3rd to 5th, 2005 in Munich.

literature

  • The phenomena of simultaneous contrast and the impression of the field lighting . Dissertation 1932 with Adhémar Gelb, Frankfurt (full text see web links)
  • Life on the border. Essays and Notes on Gestalt Therapy. Edited by Milan Sreckovic. Edition Humanistische Psychologie, Cologne 1989 (3rd edition 2005), ISBN 3-926176-11-3 .
  • My wilderness is the soul of the other. The way to Gestalt therapy. Laura Perls in conversation. Edited by Anke and Erhard Doubrawa. Peter Hammer Verlag, Wuppertal 2005, ISBN 3-7795-0031-0 .
  • Uwe Henrik Peters : Psychiatry in exile: the emigration of dynamic psychiatry from Germany 1933-1939 , Düsseldorf: Kupka 1992, ISBN 3-926567-04-X

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dissertation (1932) in full text: The phenomena of the simultaneous contrast and the impression of the field lighting
personal data
SURNAME Perls, Laura
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Posner, Lore (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychoanalyst and co-founder of Gestalt therapy
DATE OF BIRTH August 15, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Pforzheim
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 1990
Place of death Pforzheim