Laura Perls
Co-founded Gestalt therapy and kept it alive in New York.
Co-creator of Gestalt therapy, an experiential approach centered on present-moment awareness, contact between person and world, and the body.
techniques
The only way to be more secure is to put your roots deeper.
Who they were
Born Lore Posner in Germany, Laura Perls earned a doctorate in psychology and studied with Gestalt psychologists and phenomenologists. With her husband Fritz Perls and writer Paul Goodman she co-developed Gestalt therapy in the 1940s and 1950s. After Fritz moved west, she ran the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy for nearly three decades, emphasizing support, contact and the body.
Terms they cared about
Ideas worth knowing
Their techniques
How the work was done
Their big idea
Gestalt Psychology
Max Wertheimer argued that the mind grasps whole patterns before it notices the parts, so that an experience is more than the sum of its pieces. We see motion in still frames and shape in scattered dots because perception naturally organizes the world into meaningful wholes.
The approach they founded
Gestalt Therapy
Lives in the present moment — awareness, the body, and the unfinished business you keep avoiding.
Questions in their spirit
What they’d ask you
Sit with one. Answer online, or in the app.
Carry the idea forward
Perls — What they’d ask you
Psipas asks you one small, honest question at a time — and builds the picture from your answers.