Laura Perls
Laura Perls ( born August 15, 1905 Lore Posner in Pforzheim, † July 13, 1990 ibid ) was a German psychoanalyst. She founded with her husband, the psychoanalyst Fritz Perls, and the social philosopher and writer Paul Goodman, Gestalt therapy.
Life
Laura Posner grew up in Pforzheim in a Jewish family of jewelers. She attended the Reuchlin -Gymnasium ( as the only girl in the class) and began in 1923 to study law in Frankfurt / Main. In 1926 she moved from law to psychology and philosophy. She attended courses at the Gestaltpsychogen Max Wertheimer, Kurt Goldstein and Adhemar Yellow, in which she wrote her doctoral thesis, also in Edmund Husserl, Paul Tillich and Martin Buber.
In 1927 she started a psychoanalytic training at Karl Landauer. There followed a training analysis with Frieda Fromm- Reichmann From 1931 she had her own psychoanalytic practice; her supervisor was Otto Fenichel.
Your future husband, the psychoanalyst Fritz Perls, she learned in a course of Gelb and Goldstein know. They married in 1930 and moved to Berlin. The couple had two children: Renate (* 1931) and Steve (* 1935).
Even from childhood had Laura Perls dance and movement classes. Since 1931, practiced and learned they sensitive body and movement work with Elsa Gindler.
After the transfer of power to the Nazis in 1933 she was in the anti-fascist resistance active and soon forced to flee to the Netherlands. 1934 she and her husband went into exile in South Africa. They founded the first psychoanalytic institute in the country. During this time, preparations began for the first Gestalt therapy - the published her husband in his first book, Ego, Hunger, and Aggression (1942 ).
1947 Laura and Fritz Perls emigrated to the United States. She lived and worked from there mainly in New York and headed after her husband moved to the American West Coast, the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy, which she had co-founded in 1952. In 1976 she gave up private practice and devoted himself exclusively nor the training activity.
She died in 1990 at the Siloam Hospital in Pforzheim and is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Pforzheim, together with her husband Fritz Perls.
Appreciation
Laura Perls represents a particular style of Gestalt therapy - for a very down to earth and facing therapeutic work with the client, for commitment with the client and for an unspectacular work of small steps.
Their influence on the development of theory and practice of Gestalt therapy is enormous, but it published itself for life only slightly. Your participation in the basic book Gestalt therapy ( Perls, Paul Goodman, and Ralph F. Hefferline, 1951) was not mentioned.
From 3 to 5 June 2005, the International Laura Perls meeting was held in Munich.