Laura Perls


Laura Perls was a noted German-born psychologist and psychotherapist who helped establish the Gestalt school of psychotherapy. She is the wife of Friedrich Perls, also a renowned psychotherapist and psychiatrist.

Background

Posner was born to a wealthy family in 1905. By the age of five, she was taught how to play piano and demonstrated professional mastery when she was 18. Later, music and dance would be integrated into her therapy. She became interested in psychology when she was 16. Like many before and after her, her interest began after reading Freud's 1899 The Interpretation of Dreams. When she became a psychoanalyst, she was already prepared to pursue a career as a pianist, attended law school, and completed a degree in Gestalt psychology. She also obtained a doctorate in science from Frankfurt University in Germany.
In 1930 she married Friedrich Perls. They had met while working at the Frankfurt Psychological Institute. The couple had four children, including daughter Renate Perls and Stephen Perls, who is also a psychologist.
In 1933 the Perls had to flee Germany during the rise of Nazism. 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. The Perls also established the South African Institute for Psychoanalysis in 1935 and, worked for the South African army in the war against the Nazis.
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. Perls ran the institute for almost 40 years, long after her husband's death.
When Frederick Perls started travelling more often to the Esalen Institute in California in the early 1960s, Laura stayed on in New York to continue running the original institute.
Laura Perls died in 1990 due to complications with her thyroid, one month before her 85th birthday.