Perls, Fritz

Perls, (Frederick Salomon) Fritz (1893–1970) psychiatrist; born in Berlin, Germany. He left Germany in 1933, but did not settle in the U.S.A. until 1946. He was a founder and the most influential practitioner of Gestalt psychotherapy, which he explained in Ego, Hunger, and Aggression (1947), Gestalt Therapy (1951), Gestalt Therapy Verbatim (1969), and other books. In the 1960s, he was resident psychiatrist at the Esalen Institute at Big Sur, Calif., in which role he gained the reputation of being something of a faddish "guru," although he was in fact a most serious professional.