What Is Gestalt Therapy

Gestalt therapy first moved to center stage in the early 1950s with the publication of Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality written by Frederick Perls, Ralph Hefferline, and Paul Goodman. It is one of a handful of seminal texts published shortly after World War II that opened the pathways for new approaches to psychotherapy that remain in print today, over a half-century later. Interest in Gestalt therapy was limited primarily to mental health practitioners for almost twenty years when it suddenly captured the interest of many diverse groups outside the healing professions including educators, members of the clergy, and the general public. When a photograph of one of its founders, Frederick (Fritz) Perls, was featured in a story and a full-page color photograph in Life magazine, it became the "in" therapeutic method of the moment.