1. Name of the psychologist & period of his life . ( 100-150 words )

Friedrich (Frederick) Salomon Perls (July 8, 1893 March 14, 1970) born in Berlin, better known as Fritz Perls, was a noted German born psychiatrist and psychotherapist of Jewish descent. Perls served in the army during World War I. He studied at the Berlin Institute of Psychoanalysis and in Vienna.

In 1930, Perls married Lore Posner, later known as Laura Perls; the couple had two children and fled the Hitler regime by relocating to Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1933. During World War II, Perls again joined the military and became a psychiatrist with the South African army.

In 1946, the Perls family moved to New York. In 1951, in collaboration with Ralph Hefferline, Goodman and Perls produced the book Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, based mostly on Perls own research and clinical notes. Perls began sharing his theories with all of North America and began traveling extensively to conduct seminars and training workshops.

Later in life, Perls moved to California and became affiliated with the Esalen Institute, in 1964, where he provided workshops and continued to practice and develop gestalt therapy. In 1969, Perls moved to Vancouver Island, Canada, to establish a training community for therapists. He died the following year in Chicago.

2.Summary of his contribution. (200-250 words)

Developed by Fritz and Laura Perls, gestalt therapy derives many of its theories from Gestalt psychology, although gestalt therapy does not completely mirror Gestalt psychology. Gestalt psychology emphasizes that the brain is a self-organizing, holistic unit that is greater than the sum of its parts, while gestalt therapy emphasizes the present moment and personal responsibility.

He believed that people split off from the experiences, thoughts, sensations, and emotions that are uncomfortable. The splitting off creates a fragmentation of the personality. His focus was to assist people in owning their experiences and developing a healthy gestalt or wholeness.

Gestalt therapy is considered a humanistic psychotherapy and emphasizes the present moment. The practice uses cognitive insight into current experiences, and stresses mindfulness, encouraging a client to explore creativity to achieve satisfaction in areas of life that may have otherwise been blocked. The basis of gestalt therapy is the clients own awareness of behavior, emotion, feelings, perception, and sensation.

The focus of gestalt therapy is on relationshipsrelationships with the world, with other people, and with oneself.

Fritz Perls co-founded the first Gestalt Institute in New York City in 1952. In the 1960s Perls became infamous for his public workshops at Esalen Institute in Big Sur. When Fritz Perls left New York City for California, there began to be a split between those who saw Gestalt Therapy as a therapeutic approach with great potential (this view was best represented by Isadore From, who practiced and taught mainly in New York, and by the members of the Cleveland Institute, co-founded by From) and those who saw Gestalt Therapy not just as a therapeutic modality but as a way of life.

In 1969 Fritz Perls left the USA to start a Gestalt community at Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island, Canada.

Books by Fritz Perls:

Ego, Hunger and Aggression (1942)

Gestalt Therapy Verbatim (1969)

In and Out the Garbage Pail (1969)

3.Details of important contribution. (800-900 words)

Fritz Pearls and his wife Laura founded Gestalt Therapy in the early 1940s. Gestalt therapy seeks to resolve conflict and ambiguity, through providing framework, which integrates the total experience of life.

Gestalt psychology emphasizes that the brain is a self-organizing, holistic unit that is greater than the sum of its parts, while gestalt therapy emphasizes the present moment and personal responsibility. Perls believed that characters and objects in our dreams are in fact projections of ourselves. They are in fact parts of our personality that we do not accept or acknowledge as well as our view of others. In 1941 Perls wrote his book Ego, Hunger, and Aggression, which was published a year later. Though the name of his wife was not mentioned as a co-author, but she also made her contribution to the book. From 1942 to 1946 Fritz Perls served in the South African Army as a psychiatrist. He was ranked a captain.

In 1946, he was discharged from the army and went to the States. Allen & Unwin published the book, but it was premature again, and did not get much response. The first Gestalt institute was established in New York in the early 1950s.It was a small underground group of radical therapist going against the grain of American psychiatry & society.

One of the Pearls major contributions to the psychology of the second half of the 20th Century is that he offers an alternative to the dominantion.

In 1951, in collaboration with Ralph Hefferline, Goodman and Perls produced the book Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, based mostly on Perls own research and clinical notes. Shortly after the publication in 1951, the Perls founded the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy and began conducting training from their apartment in Manhattan. Perls began sharing his theories with all of North America and began traveling extensively to conduct seminars and training workshops.

The publications of Fritz Perls present his theory, his teaching, and his experience. He contributed much to the field of psychotherapy, including moving the client off the couch, to face the therapist on equal footing. According to Perls, there are six factors causing psychological discomfort. The six factors are:

1) The lack of contact: no social support.

2) Confluence: the environment takes control.

3) Unfinished business: inability to gain closure.

4) Fragmentation: Denied or fragmented self.

5) Winner/Loser: conflict of values and expectations.

6) Polarities: never seeing gray, always black or white.

By 1964, Perls was the Esalen Institutes resident psychiatrist in Big Sur, California. Here, he used dream workshops where a patient would be provided with a forum to discuss their sleeping dreams. This also included the use of role-play and characterization. The popularity of the Gestalt model grew and institutes and centers were opened across the country, with a much larger number of therapist workshops being conducted.

Fritz Perls brought on a revolution in psychiatry. He provided a foundation from which humanistic and transpersonal psychology was built.

4.Comparison Similarity or contrast with at least one psychologist. (100-150 words) There are several known Humanistic Psychologists. One of these psychologists was Carl Rogers. He developed a therapy method called the Person-Centered Counseling which is based on the idea that every person has the capacity for self-actualization. This means that every person has the capacity to achieve his potential and become a better individual. Rogers Person-Centered Counseling was similar to Pearls Gestalt therapy in the sense that they both believed in the intrinsic capacity of an individual to achieve greater freedom and independence. They both believed in the intrinsic ability of every human being to achieve self-actualization.

In contrast to the Person-Centered Counseling which limits the role of the counselor to a mere passive receiver of information, Gestalt Therapy believes that the counselor has a more active role in counseling. In Gestalt Therapy, the role of the counselor is not merely to listen to what the individual reveals about himself. Rather, the counselor engages the individual into a continued dialogue. By engaging in a dialogue the individual starts to see himself from the perspective of the counselor. In so doing he becomes more aware of what he is doing, how he is doing it and how he can change himself.

Gestalt Therapy is also different from the Person-Centered Counseling in the sense that it does not give emphasis on what the individual should do. Person-Centered Counseling believes that every individual already knows what he should do and what should be done. Gestalt Therapy only helps the individual become aware of the present situation. It only helps to stress awareness of what is. For example, the counselor who is counseling a married couple does not tell the couple what to do to save the marriage. Rather, the counselors role is merely to make the married couple become aware of what they are doing as married couples. He does not tell the married couple what is wrong with the marriage. He also does not advice them what to do to correct their mistakes. He simply helps them realize what the married couples have been doing so that they could figure things out for themselves and modify their behavior for the purpose of saving the marriage.

In Gestalt Therapy, the counselor does not need to empathize with the individual. The counselor does not need to understand the thoughts and feelings of the individual from his perspective. It is the role of the counselor to make the individual become aware of things that he may have been unconscious of. The counselors role is to point out the perceptions and behaviors which may serve as obstacles to achieving self-actualization.

5.Summary of knowledge o the issue gathered by my one friend. (approx. 150 words )

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the famous psychologist about whom my friend Mohammad Mujeeb Beg was reading about and gathering information . In short he has collected that, According to Mihaly there is a state of consciousness in which people find real happiness and genuine satisfaction. Mihaly named this state as flow. Flow as he said is a state where people are involved in an activity in such a way that nothing else seems to matter them. The experience of being in flow is such that people would love to do it even at great cost for just doing it. Mihaly points to ways in which humans have tried to find happiness through external sources. Mihaly says that when we focus our attention on a consciously chosen goal, our psychic energy literally flows in the direction of that goal, resulting in a re-ordering and harmony within consciousness.