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1893-1970
German-American psychotherapist who co-founded Gestalt therapy.

Frederick S. Perls, known to his friends and colleagues as Fritz, was the co-founder with his wife Laura (1905-1990) of the Gestalt school of psychotherapy. Trained as a Freudian, Perls felt that Freud's ideas had limitations, in part because they focused on past experiences. One of the key elements of Gestalt therapy is its focus on what Perls called the "here and now." During the 1960s, Gestalt therapy gained a reputation as yet another of the "feel-good" therapeutic techniques then so common. Today, Gestalt is recognized as one of several standard approaches (often part of what is called an "eclectic" approach) to modern therapy.

Perls was born in Berlin in 1893 into a middle class