Ego, Hunger and Aggression: A Revision of Freud's Theory and Method

by Frederick (Fritz) Perls, Joe Wysong (Introduction)

Overview

Essential reading for any serious student of Gestalt therapy, Frederick (Fritz) Perls's first book (originally published in South Africa in 1942) contains the seeds of Gestalt therapy's theoretical foundations and introduces such concepts as the "hunger instinct" and "oral aggression" and "oral resistance."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940013837775
Publisher:	The Gestalt Journal Press
Publication date:	12/12/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Frederick (Fritz) Perls initially trained as a psychiatrist in Germany. In the 1920s, he
worked with brain-injured war veterans, as assistant to the famous humanistic
psychologist Kurt Goldstein.

He also trained with Karen Horney, Otto Rank, and Wilhelm Reich.

Perls fled Germany in 1933. After living in Amsterdam, he moved to South Africa,
where he and his wife, Laura (Lore) established a psychoanalytic training institute and
began to develop the core ideas of Gestalt Therapy. While in South Africa, Perls wrote
his first book, "Ego, Hunger and Aggression," which challenged and expanded upon
traditional psychoanalytic thought.

Perls moved to New York City in 1947 and started a small study group where the theory
of Gestalt Therapy was shaped and then put forth in 1951 in the seminal work "Gestalt
Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality" which he coauthored with
writer and social critic Paul Goodman and Columbia University psychologist Ralph
Hefferline. The first Gestalt therapy institute, the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy
was established by the original study group shortly after the book's publication.

In 1960, Fritz Perls moved to California and later held the first West Coast Gestalt
Therapy training seminars at the Esalen Institute. The approach, with its emphasis on
directness and experiential method, became a central part of the human potential
movement. In 1969 Perls left the USA to start a Gestalt community at Lake Cowichan
on Vancouver Island, Canada. He died March 14, 1970.