An Origin Story (Part One): Fritz Perls's relationship to Freud and some implications for the Gestalt therapist’s sense of identity

Abstract

Fritz Perls features centre stage in any Gestalt training, yet his life and the influences working on him have, until recently, remained relatively obscure and unelaborated. His relationship to Freud and psychoanalysis was of enormous significance, a fact that is often given only cursory attention when considering the evolution of ideas which would eventually lead to the publication of Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality in 1951. Following my reading of Bernd Bocian’s profoundly illuminating 2010 publication, Fritz Perls in Berlin 1893 – 1933: Expressionism - Psychoanalysis - Judaism, I at last felt sufficiently informed to attempt to describe my own relationship to Fritz Perls and to certain puzzling aspects of his story as given in his first-person texts, and this paper is the result. Keywords Perls, Freud, psychoanalysis, transference, trauma, enactment