The purpose of this paper is to try to set the historical record straight while
the history in question is still in the making. lt seeks to clarify the relations
between gestalt therapy and Gestalt psychology, from which the therapy claims
to derive. In considering gestalt therapy, I will confine myself to the work
of Fritz Perls, the finder, as he calls himself, of this therapy (Perls 1969/1971:16),
with emphasis on his later books. Perls himself writes, in his introduction
to the 1969 reprint of Ego, Hunger and Aggression, that much of the material
in it is obsolete. About this first book of his he remarks in another place
that he wrote it because he wanted to learn typewriting and was bored with exercises
(1969/1972:39). About the next book, Gestalt Therapy, by Perls, Ralph
E. Hefferline, and Paul Goodman (1951/n.d.), his editor states that Perls regarded
it, too, as outdated (Perls 1973:ix). Perls' own comment is in reply to a student
who finds its language too technical: 'When did I write that book? In 1951.
No, I am much more in favor now of making films and so on to bring this across,
and I believe I have found a more simple language' (Perls 1969/1971:233). (In
light of this statement, no objection can reasonably be made to the use of transcripts
of films and of therapy sessions for an analysis of Perls' work.) My major sources
will therefore be Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, In and Out the Garbage Pail
, and The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy. In
and Out the Garbage Pail might seem somewhat frivolous to the scholar, but
Perls, in a conversation with himself, describes it as a serious scientific
book (1969/1972:172), which means at the very least, I think, that he would
not object to its use as a source in an analysis of his work. (It should be
added that one side of the author questions the seriousness of his book.)
Now one more point about the limits of my topic. I will not be concerned with
the merits of gestalt therapy as practice, but only with what Perls has written.
And I will be concerned with it only insofar as it relates to Gestalt psychology.
I will omit discussion of its relations to psychoanalysis, to existentialism,
and to other systems of thought, although there is much to say about these too.
lt seems fair at the outset to identify my own point of view,
which is that of Gestalt psychology. I do not presume to represent my remarks
as what Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, or Kurt Koffka would have said
about gestalt therapy. The only Gestalt psychologist who, to my knowledge, has
written about this therapy is Rudolf Arnheim. His
one-paragraph letter to Contemporary Psychology, of course, had no
room for analysis (Arnheim 1974: 570). lf the others have maintained silence,
why do I now break it? I do so because there are today psychologists and students
of psychology - I suspect there are many of them - who believe that gestalt
therapy is Gestalt psychology, or, more moderately, that it is an extension
of Gestalt psychology. I hope to disabuse them of this belief.
I was astonished to read the statement of Perts' biographer,
Martin Shepard (1975: 198) , that traditional Gestaltists claim him. Certainly
Arnheim does not claim him when he writes, 'I can see Max Wertheimer fly
into one of his magnificent rages, had he lived to see one of the more influential
tracts of the therapeutic group in question dedicated to him as though he were
the father of it all' (1974:570). Perls
himself is at times clearer than his biographer about his relation to Gestalt
psychology. 'The academic Gestaltists of course never accepted me,' he wrote.
'I certainly was not a pure Gestaltist' (1969/1972:62). He admits not having
read any of their textbooks, only some papers of Kurt Lewin, Wertheimer, and
Köhler (ibid). Nevertheless, he claims that his perspective comes 'from
a science which is neatly tucked away in our colleges; it comes from an approach
called Gestalt psychology' (1969/1972:61). He continues by saying that he admired
a lot of the work of the Gestalt psychologists, 'especially the early work of
Kurt Lewin' (1969/1972:62).
First may I state the hard facts about his relation to Gestalt psychology. Perls
tells us that he was Kurt Goldstein's assistant in Frankfurt in 1926 (1969/1972:4);
he apparently also heard lectures by Adhemar Gelb (1969/1972:62). In this connection
it may be pointed out that, while Goldstein did not view most of his differences
with Gestalt psychology as 'insurmountable discrepancies,' he did not regard
himself as a Gestalt psychologist but, rather, a holist or organismic psychologist.
And now the issues. Gestalt psychology arose in Germany around 1910 out of what
was called the Crisis of Science. Not only science, but academic knowledge in
general, was losing the confidence of more and more people, intellectuals included,
because it could not deal with major human concerns, for example such problems
as value or meaning, and, indeed, seemed uninterested in them. In psychology,
in opposition to the traditional experimental psychology, there arose a speculative
psychology whose goal was to understand rather than to explain. Let the experimental
psychologists find causal laws in their narrow domain, so the argument went.
The really central human issues must be dealt with outside the natural science
tradition, in the tradition called Geisteswissenschaft - a word for which
we have no contemporary English counterpart, although it is itself a translation
of John Stuart Mill's expression, the mental and moral sciences.
Gestalt psychologists did not accept this split within their discipline. They
believed that the shortcomings of the traditional psychology arose, not because
it was scientific, but because it misconceived science. Scientific analysis,
it was simply taken for granted at the time, was atomistic. The model of the
traditional psychology was an atomistic, mechanistic conception of the physical
sciences. Gestalt psychologists held that scientific analysis need not be atomistic.
Using physical field theory as their model, they worked to develop a nonatomistic
psychology within the tradition of natural science.
Here is a first issue: natural science vs. Geisteswissenschaft, explaining
vs. understanding. Gestalt psychology is clearly an explanatory natural science.
What about gestalt therapy?
Perls equally clearly supports an understanding psychology. Here are a few quotations:
In scientific explanation, you usually go around and around and
never touch the heart of the matter. (1969/1971:16)
Aboutism is science, description, gossiping, avoidance of involvement, round
and round the mulberry bush. (1969/1972:210)
If we explain, interpret, this might be a very interesting intellectual game,
but it's a dummy activity, and a dummy activity is worse than doing nothing.
If you do nothing, at least you know you do nothing. (1969/1971:70)
I reject any explanatoriness as being a means of intellectualizing and preventing
understanding. (1969/1972:169)
This theme appears again and again in Perls' books.
It might be supposed that he is talking here about technique, about avoiding
interpretations in therapy. He is, of course, also talking about technique,
but some of these quotations go much farther. There are other indications of
Perls' rejection of scientific psychology. He regards his approach as existential
and asserts: 'Existentialism wants to do away with concepts, and to work on
the awareness principle, on phenomenology' (1969/1971:16). Again, his approach
is described as 'an ontic orientation where Dasein - the fact and means
of our existence - manifests itself, understandable without explanatoriness;
a way to see the world not through the bias of any concept' (1969/1972:61).
Science, of course, is conceptual.
In other connections, too, we see that Perls is operating outside
the sphere of natural science. The structure of our lifescript, he says, is often
called karma or fate (1973:120), by no means a scientific concept. Nor is satori
(1970/1973.-13), nor 'mini-satori' (1973:131). Hints of vitalism appear in his writing.
For example, Perls identifies his 'excitement' with Henri Bergson's élan
vital (1970/1973:38). Again, he describes a tree whose roots grow in the direction
of fertilizer and shift if the fertilizer is shifted; he comments: 'We cannot possibly
explain / By calling this 'mechanics'' (1969/ 1972:28). In this connection, it is
interesting to recall a remark by Koffka, 'I believe that the mechanist has no better
friend than the vitalist' (1938:226). Perls, unable to account mechanistically for
the phenomena of growth and regulation, resorts to vitalism. But science, as the
Gestalt psychologists in particular have pointed out, need not be mechanistic; thus
the failure of mechanism does not exclude a scientific approach.
In short, we find that Gestalt psychology is a natural science, while Perls
- whether he knows it or not - stands in the Tradition of Geisteswissenschaft.
It would be interesting to know what science he has in mind when he modestly
acknowledges, 'The crazy Fritz Perls is becoming one of the heroes in the history
of science, as someone called me at the convention, and it is happening in my
lifetime' (1969/1972:265). Gestalt psychology is an explanatory science, while
Perls chooses understanding psychology. The difference is so crucial that I
could conclude at this point that there is no substantive relation between Gestalt
Psychology ind gestalt therapy. Other important issues remain, however.
A related point is the anti-intellectualism that pervades gestalt therapy. 'Intellect,'
says Perls, 'is the whore of intelligence - the computer, the fitting game'
(1969/1971:24). 'It might sound a bit peculiar,' he concedes, 'that I disesteem
thinking, making it just a part of role-playing' (1969/1971:37). 'The intellect
. . . [is] a drag on your life' 1969/1971:76). 'Each time you use the question
why, you diminish in stature. You bother yourself with false, unnecessary information'
(ibid). I could multiply quotations. Gestalt psychologists, on the contrary,
have the highest respect for disciplined thinking, one of whose finest achievements
is science.
Let us now consider the mind-body problem. Gestalt psychology
has formulated the hypothesis of psychophysical isomorphism, both as a position
on the mind-body question and as a heuristic. Isomorhism starts from the prima
facie dualism of mind and matter but hypothesizes that molar events in experience
are structurally identical to the corresponding molar physiological events in
the brain. This is a kind of parallelism, but more specific than mere parallelism;
it is this specificity that has made isomorphism a powerful heuristic. Parallelism
of any kind is, of course, a dualistic hypothesis.
How does Perls stand on this issue? He dismisses the mind-body
dichotomy as a superstition (1969/1972:8) and comes out for monism: we do not
have a body, he maintains, 'we are a body, we are somebody' (1969/1971:6). 'Thoughts
and actions are made of the same stuff' (1973:14). Again, 'If mental and physical
activity are of the same order, we can observe both as manifestations of the
same thing: man's being' (1973:15). On the whole, he seems to adopt a double
aspect theory, though at times his formulation sounds idealistic:
Reality is nothing but
The sum of all awareness
As you experience here and now. (1969/1972:30)
'Philosophizing is a drag,' Perls asserts (ibid). Of course it
is if you do it so badly. But the present point is that, with regard to their positions
on the relation of the mind and body, Gestalt psychology and gestalt therapy have
nothing in common.
'Figure/ground, unfinished situation and Gestalt are the terms which we have
borrowed from Gestalt psychology,' say Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman (1951/n.d.:ix-x).
lt is time to examine the meanings of these terms in the two contexts.
For the meaning of Gestalt, I quote Köhler:
In the German language ... the noun 'Gestalt'
has two meanings: besides the connotation of shape or form as an attribtite
of things, it has the meaning of a concrete entity per se, which has, or may
have, a shape as one of its characteristics. Since Ehrenfels' time the emphasis
has shifted from the Ehrenfels qualities to the facts of organization, and thus
to the problem of specific entities in sensory fields. (
Gestalt Psychology, 1947:177-178)
Perls' use of the term Gestalt is much vaguer. His attitude toward it he describes
as an article of faith (1969/1972- 35). A gestalt is an essence, he says (1969/1972-63).
Again, he describes it as 'the irreducible phenomenon of all awareness' (1969/1972:30).
Perls recognizes that a gestalt is a unit of experience, that 'as soon as you
break up a gestalt, it is not a gestalt any more' (1969/1971:16). But he does
not go any farther into the description of its properties. Neither Perls' Gestalt
Manifesto (1969/1972:213) nor his old Gestalt Prayer has any relation to any
known meaning of the word Gestalt.
A segregated entity possesses figural characteristics: shape and the substantiality
of a thing by contrast with its background, which usually has no shape and is
less compact. It owes its shape to the one-sided function of the contour, which
ordinarily belongs to the figure, but not to the ground. There are other functional
differences, too, between figure and ground. Although perceptual figures may
be reversible under certain circumstances, this is not the rule.
Edgar Rubin's terms "figure" and "ground" were eagerly adopted
by Perls. For example, "The dorminant need of the organism, at any time,
becomes the foreground figure, and the other needs recede, at least temporarily,
into the background" (1973-8). lt may be that needs possess the characteristics
of shaped figures, but if so, this must be shown, not simply assumed. (More
likely, it is the need-object organization that should be subjected to such
analysis; the goal, as end, is comparable to the edge of a closed figure, as
Köhler [1939:79] has pointed out.) Without any analysis, Perls seems simply
to be using the distinction between figure and ground as equivalent to that
between important and unimportant. While the figure is important in the perceptual
field, it has its own specific properties that are lost in the equation. And
why do you need figure-ground terminology to say that something is important?
'
To change a habit involves pulling that habit out of the background again and
investing energy . . . to disintegrate or to reorganize the habit' (1969/1972:66).
This time Perls apparently means - focus attention on the activity usually performed
automatically. I have no doubt that it is possible to conceptualize an activity
sequence in Gestalt terms, but Perls has not done it - he has merely used the
words. lf his expression is equivalent to Rubin's distinction, this remains
to be shown.
Perls asserts that ritual 'makes the gestalt clearer, makes, the
figure stand out more sharply' (1973:29). The meaning is apparently once more that
the special importance of something is being emphasized. I need not repeat my remarks
about importance. But what is the figure that is made to stand out by a handshake
or a toast? Perhaps the handshake emphasizes the beginning or the end of an encounter,
but what is the structure of the encounter? The use of figure-ground terminology
is no substitute for specifying the characteristics of a social event.
At one point Perls tells us that he is bogged down in his writing and remarks,
'I would not be a Gestaltist if I could not enter the experience of being bogged
down with confidence that some figure will emerge from the chaotic background'
(1969/1972:37-38). What he means, it would seem, is that he is sure he will
find something to say. Again, what is gained by speaking of figure? What is
lost, I repeat, is the specific meaning of figure and ground. Incidentally,
a chaotic background is hardly conducive to the segregation of a figure.
Perls finds it important that figure and background be easily interchangeable.
'Otherwise we get a disturbance in the attention system-confusion, loss of being
in touch, inability to concentrate and to get involved' (1969/1972:93). lt has
been pointed out earlier that in perception reversible figures are the exception.
From the context it appears the Perls means that, for optimal functioning, there
must be an alternation between what he calls coping and withdrawal, there must
be flexibility of the personality, and the like; but what these have in common
with figure and ground in the sense of Rubin and the Gestalt psychologists is
never made clear.
In all these examples, and many others that might be discussed,
it seems to me that the figure-ground terminology is used so loosely by Perls that
it conceals problems rather than clarifies them.
Since Gestalt psychologists emphasize organization, let us turn to that problem.
As Köhler puts it, organization 'refers to the fact that sensory fields
have in a way their own social psychology' (1947:120). That is, certain units
or groups exist which are relatively segregated from their environment: certain
parts of, say, the visual field belong together and are segregated from others.
Wertheimer investigated the factors that govern perceptual organization: similarity,
proximity, good continuation, closure, etc.
Of Wertheimers factors of orginization, the only one in which Perls shows any
interest is closure and lack of closure. The latter term he uses interchangeably
with 'unfinished situation' - a technique, not a concept, derived from Lewin.
Let us consider some examples of unclosed gestalts as they are used in gestalt
therapy.
'Our life is basically practically nothing but an infinite number
of unfinished situations-incomplete gestalts.' writes Perls. 'No sooner have we
finished one situation than another comes up' (1969/1971:15). The neurotic 'indivual
somehow interrupts the ongoing processes of life and saddles himself with so many
unfinished situations that he cannot satisfactorily get on with the process of living'
(1973:23). These unfinished situations from the past compel him to repeat them in
everyday life (1973:91). (Incidentally, Freud's repetition compulsion is here made
a matter of unclosed gestalts without, so far as I can see, shedding any light on
it.) If we find a certain plausibility, along with a disdain for specific analysis,
in the treatment of unsatisfied needs as unclosed gestalts, this plausibility is
lost in further examples. In the case of one patient, Perls remarks, that he was
unable in one session to 'achieve full closure, milk the symptom dry' (1969/1972:
139). War, with its frustrations, is apparently an incomplete gestalt; at any rate,
peace is the possible closure (1969/1972:87).
Here is a final example of the many Perls provides: 'We . . . have to fill in
the holes in the personality to make the person whole and complete again' (1969/1971:2).
I happen to believe that the phenomenal personality, like other percepts, can
he conceptualized as an organized whole, though the theoretical problems involved
are extraordinarily difficult and only the most primitive beginnings have been
made - not, by the way, by gestalt therapists. Until we can say something specific
about this organization, it does not add to our knowledge to say that 'the neurotic
man of our time' is an 'incomplete, insipid personality with holes' (Perls 1969/1972:294).
As I have indicated, in some of these instances there is a certain vague plausibility
about Perls' use of complete and incomplete situations, closed and unclosed
gestalts. But vague plausibility is not enough for a theory of neurosis or therapy
or personality - or of anything. lt is necessary to be clear about the specific
characteristics of the structure we are calling neurosis or personality, about
the nature of the processes involved, and the nature of the closure demanded
by that structure. Such questions are never found in the material I am considering,
and we are left with a terminology so vague as to defy any specific use. A concept
loosely applied to a perceived figure, to a neurotic personality, and to war
does not shed any specific light on any of these phenomena. For a theory, we
must also be able to say in what ways the perceived figure, the personality,
and the war are different, not merely stretch the same term to include them
all.
The following is a passage from Köhler on the extension of the concept
of Gestalt:
The concept 'Gestalt' may be applied far beyond the limits of
sensory experience. According to the most general functional definition of the
term, the processes of learning, of recall, of striving, of emotional attitude,
of thinking, acting, and so forth, may have to be included.... By no means is
it believed, however, that any of those larger problems can actually be solved
by the application merely of general principles. On the contrary, whenever the
principles seem to apply, the concrete task of research is only beginning; because
we want to know in precisely what manner processes distribute and regulate themselves
in all specific instances. (
Gestalt Psychology, 1947:178-179).
lt is this crucial step - the working out of the Gestalt concept
in connection with specific problems - that Perls has omitted. He does have some
things to say - at times, it seems, almost inadvertently - about how organization
occurs, and it is interesting to compare these remarks, with the forrnulations of
the Gestalt psychologists. The conditions of organization suggest to the Gestalt
psychologist what processes must be responsible for them. In accordance with the
principle of isomorphism, the demonstrated relational properties of perception (and
of other psychological phenomena which I will not discuss here) suggest corresponding
physical interactions in the nervous system, particularly in the cerebral cortex.
These interactions depend on the properties of the cortical events in relation to
each other (Köhler 1940:55); and these properties, in turn, are ultimately
largely a consequence of the nature of the stimulation that starts the chain of
events leading to perception.
For Perls, interest, cathexis, motivation, or attention produces organization.
This view appears in his first book (1947/1969:53) and is more explicit in Gestalt
Therapy. We read, 'The figure/ ground contrast . . . is . . . the work of
spontaneous attention and mounting excitement' (Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman
1951/n.d.:73). Again,''Objects' of sight and hearing exist by interest, confrontation,
discrimination, practical concern' (1951/n.d.: 372n). What would seem to be
a motor theory of perception is, at times, assumed: 'The eyes and fingers cooperate
in drawing outlines, so that the animal learns to see more shapes and to differentiate
objects in his field. By outlining one differentiates experience into objects'
(1951/n.d.:312). In another place Perls suggests that 'we start with the impossible
assumption that whatever we believe we see in another person or in the world
is nothing but a projection. Might be far out, but it's just unbelievable how
much we project and how blind and deaf we are to what is really going on' (1969/1971:72).
Although he does not hold with it completely, Perls seems to be saying that
this assumption has something to it. The statement is less radical, but the
meaning essentially unchanged, when he tells us that cathected objects become
figure (1973:19). Once more, it is asserted that things-by which I assume he
means phenomenal things - 'come about, more or less, by man's need for security'
(1970/1973:20).
It is difficult to discuss Perls' theory because we are not told on what the
interest, attention, and cathexis are acting to produce percepts. lt is certainly
not on organized entities, since they do the organizing. Presumably, therefore,
they are acting on sensory data. If this is the case, Perls' (partially implicit)
theory is not only not Gestalt psychology; it is formally similar to the theories
that Gestalt psychologists have criticized again and again, ever since Köhler's
paper of 1913, 'On Unnoticed Sensations and Errors of Judgment' (1913/1971).
lndeed, Perls' theory, if it were spelled out, would seem to be very similar
to those put forth by G. E. Müller and Eugenio Rignano in the 1920s, both
of which were criticized by Köhler. About such theories it may be said
that neither attention nor interest creates form; rather, a form must be perceived
before it can be attended to or cathected. In both cases, the directional process
presupposes the organization; the argument is thus circular. A similar problem
arises if a motor theory is really meant: if visual organization comes from
kinaesthesis, then that kinaesthetic organization remains to be explained. All
the theory has succeeded in doing has been to push the problem into another
sensory modality.
lt is not necessary, so far as I can see, that a theory of therapy
include a theory of perception. But if the author insists on such a theory, there
are certain known pitfalls he would do well to avoid. If he believes that his theory
is a Gestalt theory, he would be well advised to look into what the Gestalt psychologists
have to say.
Gestalt psychology is most developed in perception and cognition,
while gestalt therapy is concerned with personality, psychopathology, and psychotherapy.
Comparison of approaches to such different areas is often difficult. Nevertheless,
in the present case, additional issues invite comparison. As it happens, none of
them is trivial.
Gestalt psychology has, from its inception, been interested in value. Challenging
the widely held view of ethical relativism, the view that what is right and
wrong changes with time and place, it has tried to understand values in terms
of relations within happenings themselves. The value of an action is seen as
depending on its appropriateness to the demands of the given situation. Thus,
Gestalt psychologists have held that values are not arbitrarily attached to
objects or actions, depending on subjective evaluation or on the individual's
history of rewards and punishments. An analogy of Wertheimer's will perhaps
be helpful:
Someone in adding makes seven plus seven equal fifteen. ... And he says, I call
it good because I love the number fifteen.... The determination of the fifteen
is ... in violation of that which is demanded by the structure of the objective
situation. If I prefer the fifteen in this case ... this is irrelevant to the
fact that the fifteen is wrong. 1935:360-361)
What about Perls? In Ego, Hunqer andAggression, ethical relativism is
simply taken for granted, and good and bad are derived from feelings of comfort
and discomfort (1947/1969:59). The next book, Gestalt Therapy, describes
two ingredients of moral evaluations: ' (a) On the one hand, they are simply
technical skills that one has learned, guesses as to what leads to success'
and '(b) On the other hand, they are group-loyalties . . . : one acts in a certain
way because it is the social expectation, including the expectation of one's
formed personality' (Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman 1951/n.d.:424). Here values
are obviously regarded as external to the events in question. They might just
as well be reversed if the individual's personal history had been different
or if he belonged to a different group.
The same relativism, more baldly and more cynically expressed, is to be found
in Gestalt Therapy Verbatim: 'The whole idea of good and bad, right and
wrong, is always a matter of boundary, of which side of the fence I am on' (1969/1971:9).
Perls distinguishes three kinds of philosophy: in addition to existentialism,
which includes gestalt therapy, we have already encountered aboutism, encompassing
science, gossiping and other futile activities, and then there is shouldism
or moralism, in which we find topdog and underdog engaged in self-torture games
(1969/1971:16-18). Shoulds are internalized external controls, and they interfere
with the healthy functioning of the organism (1969/1971:20).
It would be difficult to find a view of values farther from that of the Gestalt
psychologists than Perl's view. The Gestalt psychologists have shown that '"value-sitiuations
fall under the category of gestalt' (Köhler 1938:86). Perls has treated
them without regard for this category, indeed without regard for values.
A word about truth. Apart from calling it one of the fitting
games, Perls says that 'by 'truth' I mean nothing but the assertion that a statement
we make fits the observable reality' (1970/ 1973:13). This conception is precisely
the one that Wertheimer has shown to be inadequate. For the same statement may,
in one context, be true, in another false, in a third unintelligible. Nor does
Wertheimer regard truth as a game: 'Science is rooted in the will to truth.
With the will to truth it stands or falls. Lower the standard even slightly
and science becomes diseased at the core. Not only science, but man' (1934:135).
I have allready mentioned the relation between mechanism and vitalism.
Gestalt psychology has consistently rejected both. Machine theories of the nervous
system have been its particular target: Gestalt psychology has emphasized free dynamics
within the limits imposed by anatomical constraints. Perls, quite the contrary,
refers to the organism as a machine (1969/1971:15), and to the 'thinking system,'
as he calls it, as a computer (1970/1973:28-29).
I would now like to say a word about phenomenology as it figures in Gestalt
psychology and in gestalt therapy. (I am using the term 'phenomenology' as psychologists
generally do, to refer to the unbiased description of the phenomenal world,
not to refer to Edmund Husserl's theory of intentionality.) For Gestalt psychology,
phenomenology is a first step, a propaedeutic to experimental research and to
a science of functional relations that transcends phenomenology. Perls calls
himself a phenomenologist (1969/1972:37)-, for him this method plays a different
role than in Gestalt psychology. Phenomenology, he says, 'is the primary and
indispensable step towards knowing all there is to know' (1969/1972:69).
I have by no means exhausted my material. For example, Perls' misuse
of the equilibrium concept might be discussed. His understanding of heredity and
of evolution might be culled from his writings and contrasted with that of Gestalt
psychology. His view of person perception, like that of object perception, could
be shown to differ from that of the Gestalt psychologists. His mostly implicit conception
of the thinking process might be examined, and so on.
From the material already discussed, it is not difficult to reach a conclucion.
What Perls has done has been to take a few terms from Gestalt psychology, stretch
their meaning beyond recognition, mix them with notions-often unclear and often
incompatibible - from the depth psychologies, existentialism, and common sense,
and he has called the whole mixture gestalt therapy. His work has no substantive
relation to scientific Gestalt psychology. To use his own language, Fritz Perls
has done 'his thing'; whatever it is, it is not Gestalt psychology.
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