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FrancoAngeli Journals

Storie e identità/History and identity

No. 2 (2024)

In Celebration of the First Polish Edition of the Practical Volume of Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (1951) by F.S. Perls, R.H. Hefferline and P. Goodman

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/qg2024-2oa18741
Submitted
ottobre 28, 2024
Published
2024-12-18

Abstract

This is an excerpt from an article announcing the publication of the first Polish language edition of the practical volume of Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (1951), with the aim of reflecting on the socio-political and biographical roots of the founders of Gestalt Therapy and exposing the timeless value of its founding text. The article was originally written in Polish and published online in January 2024. The author asserts that Gestalt Therapy approach to psychotherapy arose in response to the catastrophic breakdown of the very core human contact functions in the time of the rise of totalitarian regimes, with its aim of promoting the growth and development of healthy capacities to contact the other and in hope that the disaster of another world war could be avoided. Contemporary Gestalt psychotherapy is therefore the fruit of the very personal traumatic stories of its founders, Frederick and Laura Perls, and their immense desire to engage in the here and now of their new life and of the balance which, destroyed by the trauma of war, was recreated by them and integrated with psychotherapeutic theory and practice to be then passed on to the subsequent generations.

References

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