Fritz & Laura
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“Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge.” |
Perls first book, Ego, Hunger and Aggression, originated as a position paper to be presented at the 1936 Conference in Czechoslovakia. Perls hoped to expand upon the fundamental theories of psychoanalysis, particularly the theory of anal development and the concepts forming libido theory. His expectations, according to Laura, were that his arguments would be readily accepted and in fact, would serve to support his effort in becoming well-known in the psychoanalytic community. Perls' radical ideas were totally rejected by the Freudian community.
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Laura's experimental work at the Institute for Brain-Injured Veterans in Berlin, under the guidance of her mentor, Kurt Goldstein, led her to fully embrace the organismic view of existence. She saw the basic human experiences of movement, eating, study, play, etc, as the teachers of other human qualities such as patience, awareness, and assimilation. Laura Perls was the first to place emphasis on the body process as a primary variable of the Gestalt experience.
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"Real creativeness, in my experience, is inextricably linked with the awareness of mortality. The sharper this awareness, the greater the urge to bring forth something new, to participate in the infinitely continuing creativeness in nature. This is what makes out of sex, love; out of the herd, society; out of wheat and fruit, bread and wine; and out of sound, music. This is what makes life livable and incidentally makes therapy possible." ~Laura Perls |