Laura Perls

Laura Perls (1905–1990) was a German-American psychotherapist who co-founded Gestalt therapy with Fritz Perls and Paul Goodman, emphasizing embodied awareness and dialogue.

Gestalt therapy: A psychotherapy emphasizing present-moment awareness, personal responsibility, and integration of thought, feeling, and action. Laura Perls helped establish this approach and its emphasis on embodied awareness.
Phenomenological method: A disciplined description of experience that sets aside assumptions about its causes. Therapists use careful description to attend to what is happening in the present.
Fritz Perls: A German-born psychiatrist and psychotherapist who co-founded Gestalt therapy with Laura Perls and Paul Goodman. He was her husband and close collaborator in developing the therapy.
Frankfurt School: A group of German social theorists associated with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. Laura Perls studied in Frankfurt amid the intellectual culture that also shaped her collaborators.
Gestalt Institute of Cleveland: A psychotherapy training institute founded in Cleveland in 1954 by Gestalt therapy practitioners. Its early development helped spread the approach she had helped create.
Gestalt psychology: A school of psychology that studies how minds organize experience into meaningful wholes. Its account of organized experience informed the therapeutic tradition she helped develop.
Contact boundary: The shifting boundary at which an organism encounters and relates to its environment in Gestalt theory. This concept frames the relational process central to Gestalt therapy.
Paul Goodman: An American writer and social critic who helped formulate Gestalt therapy’s theoretical foundations. His collaboration with Laura and Fritz Perls produced the movement’s foundational book.
Institute for Gestalt Therapy: A New York training institute established by Laura Perls and colleagues to teach Gestalt therapy. She founded this institute in 1952 and taught there for decades.
Gestalt therapy in the United States: The development and practice of Gestalt therapy across the United States. Her New York teaching became a lasting center of American Gestalt therapy.

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