Gestalt Therapy
The founding text of Gestalt. Half theory, half exercises the reader is meant to do.
Experience occurs at the boundary between the organism and its environment, primarily the skin surface and the other organs of sensory and motor response.
Gestalt Therapy sets out the theory of contact that gives the approach its name, and pairs it with a course of exercises the reader works through in sequence. Goodman built the theoretical volume from Perls's notes; Hefferline supplied the experiments, drawn from a class he taught at Columbia. The two volumes are meant to be read together, argument tested against first-hand observation.
The theory locates all experience at the meeting point of person and surroundings, and treats health as the capacity to make fresh contact rather than repeat fixed patterns. Awareness, not insight, is the working material. The exercises ask the reader to attend to sensation, to breathing, to the ways attention narrows and stalls.
For the consulting room it supplies a vocabulary for what happens between therapist and client in the present moment, and a set of interventions grounded in attention rather than interpretation. First published in 1951, it has stayed in print since.
About the authors
Frederick Perls
Frederick Perls, known as Fritz Perls, was a German-born psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who helped found Gestalt therapy. Trained in the Freudian tradition, he later moved away from its focus on the past toward present-centred work, emphasising awareness, contact between person and environment, and attention to the here and now. With Ralph Hefferline and Paul Goodman he wrote Gestalt Therapy (1951), the field's founding text. He developed the approach alongside his wife, Laura Perls.
Ralph Hefferline
Ralph Hefferline (1910 to 1974) was an American psychologist and a professor at Columbia University, where his experimental work included studies of learning and conditioning. He was the third co-author of Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (1951), written with Fritz Perls and Paul Goodman. Hefferline contributed the section of practical exercises intended to let readers apply the book's ideas to their own awareness and experience.
Paul Goodman
Paul Goodman (1911 to 1972) was an American writer, social critic, and lay analyst. He wrote widely on education, politics, and society, and practised as an unlicensed psychotherapist. Working with Fritz Perls and Ralph Hefferline, he co-authored Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (1951), contributing its theoretical chapter. That volume set out much of the conceptual foundation of Gestalt therapy. Goodman was also known for his social commentary, including his book Growing Up Absurd (1960).
Details
- 1951
- English
- Souvenir Press
- Souvenir Press, 1951
- 470
- 9780285626652