Gestalt Psychology and Gestalt Therapy

Mary Henle

[This paper was a presidential address to Division 24 at the meeting of the American Psychological
Association, Chicago, September 1975. It was first published in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral
Sciences,14, pp. 23-32, then republished in M. Henle, 1879 and all that: Essays in the Theory and History of
Psychology, Columbia University Press, New York 1986, pp. 22-35.  Have a look at the Behavior Online Forum
where a critical discussion on this topic was led and to the Archives of the Gestalt Journal, New York, where
some articles of Gestalt therapists replying to Henle's critical remarks can be read.]

The purpose of this paper is to try to set the historical record straight while the history in question is still in the
making. lt seeks to clarify the relations between gestalt therapy and Gestalt psychology, from which the therapy
claims to derive. In considering gestalt therapy, I will confine myself to the work of Fritz Perls, the finder, as he
calls himself, of this therapy (Perls 1969/1971:16), with emphasis on his later books. Perls himself writes, in his
introduction to the 1969 reprint of Ego, Hunger and Aggression, that much of the material in it is obsolete.
About this first book of his he remarks in another place that he wrote it because he wanted to learn typewriting
and was bored with exercises (1969/1972:39). About the next book, Gestalt Therapy, by Perls, Ralph E.
Hefferline, and Paul Goodman (1951/n.d.), his editor states that Perls regarded it, too, as outdated (Perls
1973:ix). Perls' own comment is in reply to a student who finds its language too technical: 'When did I write that
book? In 1951. No, I am much more in favor now of making films and so on to bring this across, and I believe I
have found a more simple language' (Perls 1969/1971:233). (In light of this statement, no objection can
reasonably be made to the use of transcripts of films and of therapy sessions for an analysis of Perls' work.) My
major sources will therefore be Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, In and Out the Garbage Pail, and The Gestalt
Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy. In and Out the Garbage Pail might seem somewhat frivolous to the
scholar, but Perls, in a conversation with himself, describes it as a serious scientific book (1969/1972:172),
which means at the very least, I think, that he would not object to its use as a source in an analysis of his work. (It
should be added that one side of the author questions the seriousness of his book.)

Now one more point about the limits of my topic. I will not be concerned with the merits of gestalt therapy as
practice, but only with what Perls has written. And I will be concerned with it only insofar as it relates to Gestalt
psychology. I will omit discussion of its relations to psychoanalysis, to existentialism, and to other systems of
thought, although there is much to say about these too.

lt seems fair at the outset to identify my own point of view, which is that of Gestalt psychology. I do not presume
to represent my remarks as what Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, or Kurt Koffka would have said about
gestalt therapy. The only Gestalt psychologist who, to my knowledge, has written about this therapy is Rudolf
Arnheim. His one-paragraph letter to Contemporary Psychology, of course, had no room for analysis (Arnheim
1974: 570). lf the others have maintained silence, why do I now break it? I do so because there are today
psychologists and students of psychology - I suspect there are many of them - who believe that gestalt therapy
is Gestalt psychology, or, more moderately, that it is an extension of Gestalt psychology. I hope to disabuse
them of this belief.

I was astonished to read the statement of Perts' biographer, Martin Shepard (1975: 198), that traditional
Gestaltists claim him. Certainly Arnheim does not claim him when he writes, 'I can see Max Wertheimer fly into
one of his magnificent rages, had he lived to see one of the more influential tracts of the therapeutic group in
question dedicated to him as though he were the father of it all' (1974:570). Perls himself is at times clearer
than his biographer about his relation to Gestalt psychology. 'The academic Gestaltists of course never
accepted me,' he wrote. 'I certainly was not a pure Gestaltist' (1969/1972:62). He admits not having read any of
their textbooks, only some papers of Kurt Lewin, Wertheimer, and Köhler (ibid). Nevertheless, he claims that his
perspective comes 'from a science which is neatly tucked away in our colleges; it comes from an approach
called Gestalt psychology' (1969/1972:61). He continues by saying that he admired a lot of the work of the
Gestalt psychologists, 'especially the early work of Kurt Lewin' (1969/1972:62).

First may I state the hard facts about his relation to Gestalt psychology. Perls tells us that he was Kurt
Goldstein's assistant in Frankfurt in 1926 (1969/1972:4); he apparently also heard lectures by Adhemar Gelb
(1969/1972:62). In this connection it may be pointed out that, while Goldstein did not view most of his
differences with Gestalt psychology as 'insurmountable discrepancies,' he did not regard himself as a Gestalt
psychologist but, rather, a holist or organismic psychologist.

And now the issues. Gestalt psychology arose in Germany around 1910 out of what was called the Crisis of
Science. Not only science, but academic knowledge in general, was losing the confidence of more and more
people, intellectuals included, because it could not deal with major human concerns, for example such problems
as value or meaning, and, indeed, seemed uninterested in them. In psychology, in opposition to the traditional
experimental psychology, there arose a speculative psychology whose goal was to understand rather than to
explain. Let the experimental psychologists find causal laws in their narrow domain, so the argument went. The
really central human issues must be dealt with outside the natural science tradition, in the tradition called
Geisteswissenschaft - a word for which we have no contemporary English counterpart, although it is itself a
translation of John Stuart Mill's expression, the mental and moral sciences.

Gestalt psychologists did not accept this split within their discipline. They believed that the shortcomings of the
traditional psychology arose, not because it was scientific, but because it misconceived science. Scientific
analysis, it was simply taken for granted at the time, was atomistic. The model of the traditional psychology was
an atomistic, mechanistic conception of the physical sciences. Gestalt psychologists held that scientific
analysis need not be atomistic. Using physical field theory as their model, they worked to develop a
nonatomistic psychology within the tradition of natural science.

Here is a first issue: natural science vs. Geisteswissenschaft, explaining vs. understanding. Gestalt psychology
is clearly an explanatory natural science. What about gestalt therapy?

Perls equally clearly supports an understanding psychology. Here are a few quotations:

In scientific explanation, you usually go around and around and never touch the heart of the matter.
(1969/1971:16)

Aboutism is science, description, gossiping, avoidance of involvement, round and round the mulberry bush.
(1969/1972:210)

If we explain, interpret, this might be a very interesting intellectual game, but it's a dummy activity, and a dummy
activity is worse than doing nothing. If you do nothing, at least you know you do nothing. (1969/1971:70)

I reject any explanatoriness as being a means of intellectualizing and preventing understanding.
(1969/1972:169)

This theme appears again and again in Perls' books.

It might be supposed that he is talking here about technique, about avoiding interpretations in therapy. He is, of
course, also talking about technique, but some of these quotations go much farther. There are other indications
of Perls' rejection of scientific psychology. He regards his approach as existential and asserts: 'Existentialism
wants to do away with concepts, and to work on the awareness principle, on phenomenology' (1969/1971:16).
Again, his approach is described as 'an ontic orientation where Dasein - the fact and means of our existence -
manifests itself, understandable without explanatoriness; a way to see the world not through the bias of any
concept' (1969/1972:61).

Science, of course, is conceptual.

In other connections, too, we see that Perls is operating outside the sphere of natural science. The structure of
our lifescript, he says, is often called karma or fate (1973:120), by no means a scientific concept. Nor is satori
(1970/1973.-13), nor 'mini-satori' (1973:131). Hints of vitalism appear in his writing. For example, Perls
identifies his 'excitement' with Henri Bergson's élan vital (1970/1973:38). Again, he describes a tree whose
roots grow in the direction of fertilizer and shift if the fertilizer is shifted; he comments: 'We cannot possibly
explain / By calling this 'mechanics'' (1969/ 1972:28). In this connection, it is interesting to recall a remark by
Koffka, 'I believe that the mechanist has no better friend than the vitalist' (1938:226). Perls, unable to account
mechanistically for the phenomena of growth and regulation, resorts to vitalism. But science, as the Gestalt
psychologists in particular have pointed out, need not be mechanistic; thus the failure of mechanism does not
exclude a scientific approach.

In short, we find that Gestalt psychology is a natural science, while Perls - whether he knows it or not - stands in
the Tradition of Geisteswissenschaft. It would be interesting to know what science he has in mind when he
modestly acknowledges, 'The crazy Fritz Perls is becoming one of the heroes in the history of science, as
someone called me at the convention, and it is happening in my lifetime' (1969/1972:265). Gestalt psychology
is an explanatory science, while Perls chooses understanding psychology. The difference is so crucial that I
could conclude at this point that there is no substantive relation between Gestalt Psychology ind gestalt therapy.
Other important issues remain, however.

A related point is the anti-intellectualism that pervades gestalt therapy. 'Intellect,' says Perls, 'is the whore of
intelligence - the computer, the fitting game' (1969/1971:24). 'It might sound a bit peculiar,' he concedes, 'that I
disesteem thinking, making it just a part of role-playing' (1969/1971:37). 'The intellect . . . [is] a drag on your life'
1969/1971:76). 'Each time you use the question why, you diminish in stature. You bother yourself with false,
unnecessary information' (ibid). I could multiply quotations. Gestalt psychologists, on the contrary, have the
highest respect for disciplined thinking, one of whose finest achievements is science.

Let us now consider the mind-body problem. Gestalt psychology has formulated the hypothesis of
psychophysical isomorphism, both as a position on the mind-body question and as a heuristic. Isomorhism
starts from the prima facie dualism of mind and matter but hypothesizes that molar events in experience are
structurally identical to the corresponding molar physiological events in the brain. This is a kind of parallelism,
but more specific than mere parallelism; it is this specificity that has made isomorphism a powerful heuristic.
Parallelism of any kind is, of course, a dualistic hypothesis.

How does Perls stand on this issue? He dismisses the mind-body dichotomy as a superstition (1969/1972:8)
and comes out for monism: we do not have a body, he maintains, 'we are a body, we are somebody'
(1969/1971:6). 'Thoughts and actions are made of the same stuff' (1973:14). Again, 'If mental and physical
activity are of the same order, we can observe both as manifestations of the same thing: man's being'
(1973:15). On the whole, he seems to adopt a double aspect theory, though at times his formulation sounds
idealistic:

Reality is nothing but

The sum of all awareness

As you experience here and now. (1969/1972:30)

'Philosophizing is a drag,' Perls asserts (ibid). Of course it is if you do it so badly. But the present point is that,
with regard to their positions on the relation of the mind and body, Gestalt psychology and gestalt therapy have
nothing in common.

'Figure/ground, unfinished situation and Gestalt are the terms which we have borrowed from Gestalt
psychology,' say Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman (1951/n.d.:ix-x). lt is time to examine the meanings of these
terms in the two contexts.

For the meaning of Gestalt, I quote Köhler:

In the German language ... the noun 'Gestalt' has two meanings: besides the connotation of shape or form as an
attribtite of things, it has the meaning of a concrete entity per se, which has, or may have, a shape as one of its
characteristics. Since Ehrenfels' time the emphasis has shifted from the Ehrenfels qualities to the facts of
organization, and thus to the problem of specific entities in sensory fields. (1947:177-178)

Perls' use of the term Gestalt is much vaguer. His attitude toward it he describes as an article of faith
(1969/1972- 35). A gestalt is an essence, he says (1969/1972-63). Again, he describes it as 'the irreducible
phenomenon of all awareness' (1969/1972:30). Perls recognizes that a gestalt is a unit of experience, that 'as
soon as you break up a gestalt, it is not a gestalt any more' (1969/1971:16). But he does not go any farther into
the description of its properties. Neither Perls' Gestalt Manifesto (1969/1972:213) nor his old Gestalt Prayer
has any relation to any known meaning of the word Gestalt.

A segregated entity possesses figural characteristics: shape and the substantiality of a thing by contrast with its
background, which usually has no shape and is less compact. It owes its shape to the one-sided function of the
contour, which ordinarily belongs to the figure, but not to the ground. There are other functional differences, too,
between figure and ground. Although perceptual figures may be reversible under certain circumstances, this is
not the rule.

Edgar Rubin's terms "figure" and "ground" were eagerly adopted by Perls. For example, "The dorminant need
of the organism, at any time, becomes the foreground figure, and the other needs recede, at least temporarily,
into the background" (1973-8). lt may be that needs possess the characteristics of shaped figures, but if so, this
must be shown, not simply assumed. (More likely, it is the need-object organization that should be subjected to
such analysis; the goal, as end, is comparable to the edge of a closed figure, as Köhler [1939:79] has pointed
out.) Without any analysis, Perls seems simply to be using the distinction between figure and ground as
equivalent to that between important and unimportant. While the figure is important in the perceptual field, it has
its own specific properties that are lost in the equation. And why do you need figure-ground terminology to say
that something is important?

'To change a habit involves pulling that habit out of the background again and investing energy . . . to
disintegrate or to reorganize the habit' (1969/1972:66). This time Perls apparently means - focus attention on
the activity usually performed automatically. I have no doubt that it is possible to conceptualize an activity
sequence in Gestalt terms, but Perls has not done it - he has merely used the words. lf his expression is
equivalent to Rubin's distinction, this remains to be shown.

Perls asserts that ritual 'makes the gestalt clearer, makes, the figure stand out more sharply' (1973:29). The
meaning is apparently once more that the special importance of something is being emphasized. I need not
repeat my remarks about importance. But what is the figure that is made to stand out by a handshake or a
toast? Perhaps the handshake emphasizes the beginning or the end of an encounter, but what is the structure
of the encounter? The use of figure-ground terminology is no substitute for specifying the characteristics of a
social event.

At one point Perls tells us that he is bogged down in his writing and remarks, 'I would not be a Gestaltist if I
could not enter the experience of being bogged down with confidence that some figure will emerge from the
chaotic background' (1969/1972:37-38). What he means, it would seem, is that he is sure he will find something
to say. Again, what is gained by speaking of figure? What is lost, I repeat, is the specific meaning of figure and
ground. Incidentally, a chaotic background is hardly conducive to the segregation of a figure.

Perls finds it important that figure and background be easily interchangeable. 'Otherwise we get a disturbance
in the attention system-confusion, loss of being in touch, inability to concentrate and to get involved'
(1969/1972:93). lt has been pointed out earlier that in perception reversible figures are the exception. From the
context it appears the Perls means that, for optimal functioning, there must be an alternation between what he
calls coping and withdrawal, there must be flexibility of the personality, and the like; but what these have in
common with figure and ground in the sense of Rubin and the Gestalt psychologists is never made clear.

In all these examples, and many others that might be discussed, it seems to me that the figure-ground
terminology is used so loosely by Perls that it conceals problems rather than clarifies them.

Since Gestalt psychologists emphasize organization, let us turn to that problem. As Köhler puts it, organization
'refers to the fact that sensory fields have in a way their own social psychology' (1947:120). That is, certain units
or groups exist which are relatively segregated from their environment: certain parts of, say, the visual field
belong together and are segregated from others. Wertheimer investigated the factors that govern perceptual
organization: similarity, proximity, good continuation, closure, etc.

Of Wertheimers factors of orginization, the only one in which Perls shows any interest is closure and lack of
closure. The latter term he uses interchangeably with 'unfinished situation' - a technique, not a concept, derived
from Lewin. Let us consider some examples of unclosed gestalts as they are used in gestalt therapy.

'Our life is basically practically nothing but an infinite number of unfinished situations-incomplete gestalts.' writes
Perls. 'No sooner have we finished one situation than another comes up' (1969/1971:15). The neurotic 'indivual
somehow interrupts the ongoing processes of life and saddles himself with so many unfinished situations that
he cannot satisfactorily get on with the process of living' (1973:23). These unfinished situations from the past
compel him to repeat them in everyday life (1973:91). (Incidentally, Freud's repetition compulsion is here made
a matter of unclosed gestalts without, so far as I can see, shedding any light on it.) If we find a certain
plausibility, along with a disdain for specific analysis, in the treatment of unsatisfied needs as unclosed gestalts,
this plausibility is lost in further examples. In the case of one patient, Perls remarks, that he was unable in one
session to 'achieve full closure, milk the symptom dry' (1969/1972: 139). War, with its frustrations, is apparently
an incomplete gestalt; at any rate, peace is the possible closure (1969/1972:87).

Here is a final example of the many Perls provides: 'We . . . have to fill in the holes in the personality to make the
person whole and complete again' (1969/1971:2). I happen to believe that the phenomenal personality, like
other percepts, can he conceptualized as an organized whole, though the theoretical problems involved are
extraordinarily difficult and only the most primitive beginnings have been made - not, by the way, by gestalt
therapists. Until we can say something specific about this organization, it does not add to our knowledge to say
that 'the neurotic man of our time' is an 'incomplete, insipid personality with holes' (Perls 1969/1972:294). As I
have indicated, in some of these instances there is a certain vague plausibility about Perls' use of complete and
incomplete situations, closed and unclosed gestalts. But vague plausibility is not enough for a theory of neurosis
or therapy or personality - or of anything. lt is necessary to be clear about the specific characteristics of the
structure we are calling neurosis or personality, about the nature of the processes involved, and the nature of the
closure demanded by that structure. Such questions are never found in the material I am considering, and we
are left with a terminology so vague as to defy any specific use. A concept loosely applied to a perceived figure,
to a neurotic personality, and to war does not shed any specific light on any of these phenomena. For a theory,
we must also be able to say in what ways the perceived figure, the personality, and the war are different, not
merely stretch the same term to include them all.

The following is a passage from Köhler on the extension of the concept of Gestalt:

The concept 'Gestalt' may be applied far beyond the limits of sensory experience. According to the most
general functional definition of the term, the processes of learning, of recall, of striving, of emotional attitude, of
thinking, acting, and so forth, may have to be included.... By no means is it believed, however, that any of those
larger problems can actually be solved by the application merely of general principles. On the contrary,
whenever the principles seem to apply, the concrete task of research is only beginning; because we want to
know in precisely what manner processes distribute and regulate themselves in all specific instances.
(1947:178-179).

lt is this crucial step - the working out of the Gestalt concept in connection with specific problems - that Perls
has omitted. He does have some things to say - at times, it seems, almost inadvertently - about how
organization occurs, and it is interesting to compare these remarks, with the forrnulations of the Gestalt
psychologists. The conditions of organization suggest to the Gestalt psychologist what processes must be
responsible for them. In accordance with the principle of isomorphism, the demonstrated relational properties of
perception (and of other psychological phenomena which I will not discuss here) suggest corresponding
physical interactions in the nervous system, particularly in the cerebral cortex. These interactions depend on the
properties of the cortical events in relation to each other (Köhler 1940:55); and these properties, in turn, are
ultimately largely a consequence of the nature of the stimulation that starts the chain of events leading to
perception.

For Perls, interest, cathexis, motivation, or attention produces organization. This view appears in his first book
(1947/1969:53) and is more explicit in Gestalt Therapy. We read, 'The figure/ ground contrast . . . is . . . the work
of spontaneous attention and mounting excitement' (Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman 1951/n.d.:73).
Again,''Objects' of sight and hearing exist by interest, confrontation, discrimination, practical concern'
(1951/n.d.: 372n). What would seem to be a motor theory of perception is, at times, assumed: 'The eyes and
fingers cooperate in drawing outlines, so that the animal learns to see more shapes and to differentiate objects
in his field. By outlining one differentiates experience into objects' (1951/n.d.:312). In another place Perls
suggests that 'we start with the impossible assumption that whatever we believe we see in another person or in
the world is nothing but a projection. Might be far out, but it's just unbelievable how much we project and how
blind and deaf we are to what is really going on' (1969/1971:72). Although he does not hold with it completely,
Perls seems to be saying that this assumption has something to it. The statement is less radical, but the
meaning essentially unchanged, when he tells us that cathected objects become figure (1973:19). Once more, it
is asserted that things-by which I assume he means phenomenal things - 'come about, more or less, by man's
need for security' (1970/1973:20).

lt is difficult to discuss Perls' theory because we are not told on what the interest, attention, and cathexis are
acting to produce percepts. lt is certainly not on organized entities, since they do the organizing. Presumably,
therefore, they are acting on sensory data. If this is the case, Perls' (partially implicit) theory is not only not
Gestalt psychology; it is formally similar to the theories that Gestalt psychologists have criticized again and
again, ever since Köhler's paper of 1913, 'On Unnoticed Sensations and Errors of Judgment' (1913/1971).
lndeed, Perls' theory, if it were spelled out, would seem to be very similar to those put forth by G. E. Müller and
Eugenio Rignano in the 1920s, both of which were criticized by Köhler. About such theories it may be said that
neither attention nor interest creates form; rather, a form must be perceived before it can be attended to or
cathected. In both cases, the directional process presupposes the organization; the argument is thus circular. A
similar problem arises if a motor theory is really meant: if visual organization comes from kinaesthesis, then that
kinaesthetic organization remains to be explained. All the theory has succeeded in doing has been to push the
problem into another sensory modality.

lt is not necessary, so far as I can see, that a theory of therapy include a theory of perception. But if the author
insists on such a theory, there are certain known pitfalls he would do well to avoid. If he believes that his theory
is a Gestalt theory, he would be well advised to look into what the Gestalt psychologists have to say.

Gestalt psychology is most developed in perception and cognition, while gestalt therapy is concerned with
personality, psychopathology, and psychotherapy. Comparison of approaches to such different areas is often
difficult. Nevertheless, in the present case, additional issues invite comparison. As it happens, none of them is
trivial.

Gestalt psychology has, from its inception, been interested in value. Challenging the widely held view of ethical
relativism, the view that what is right and wrong changes with time and place, it has tried to understand values in
terms of relations within happenings themselves. The value of an action is seen as depending on its
appropriateness to the demands of the given situation. Thus, Gestalt psychologists have held that values are
not arbitrarily attached to objects or actions, depending on subjective evaluation or on the individual's history of
rewards and punishments. An analogy of Wertheimer's will perhaps be helpful:

Someone in adding makes seven plus seven equal fifteen. ... And he says, I call it good because I love the
number fifteen.... The determination of the fifteen is ... in violation of that which is demanded by the structure of
the objective situation. If I prefer the fifteen in this case ... this is irrelevant to the fact that the fifteen is wrong.
1935:360-361)

What about Perls? In Ego, Hunqer andAggression, ethical relativism is simply taken for granted, and good and
bad are derived from feelings of comfort and discomfort (1947/1969:59). The next book, Gestalt Therapy,
describes two ingredients of moral evaluations: ' (a) On the one hand, they are simply technical skills that one
has learned, guesses as to what leads to success' and '(b) On the other hand, they are group-loyalties . . . : one
acts in a certain way because it is the social expectation, including the expectation of one's formed personality'
(Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman 1951/n.d.:424). Here values are obviously regarded as external to the events
in question. They might just as well be reversed if the individual's personal history had been different or if he
belonged to a different group.

The same relativism, more baldly and more cynically expressed, is to be found in Gestalt Therapy Verbatim:
'The whole idea of good and bad, right and wrong, is always a matter of boundary, of which side of the fence I
am on' (1969/1971:9). Perls distinguishes three kinds of philosophy: in addition to existentialism, which
includes gestalt therapy, we have already encountered aboutism, encompassing science, gossiping and other
futile activities, and then there is shouldism or moralism, in which we find topdog and underdog engaged in
self-torture games (1969/1971:16-18). Shoulds are internalized external controls, and they interfere with the
healthy functioning of the organism (1969/1971:20).

lt would be difficult to find a view of values farther from that of the Gestalt psychologists than Perl's view. The
Gestalt psychologists have shown that '"value-sitiuations fall under the category of gestalt' (Köhler 1938:86).
Perls has treated them without regard for this category, indeed without regard for values.

A word about truth. Apart from calling it one of the fitting games, Perls says that 'by 'truth' I mean nothing but the
assertion that a statement we make fits the observable reality' (1970/ 1973:13). This conception is precisely the
one that Wertheimer has shown to be inadequate. For the same statement may, in one context, be true, in
another false, in a third unintelligible. Nor does Wertheimer regard truth as a game: 'Science is rooted in the will
to truth. With the will to truth it stands or falls. Lower the standard even slightly and science becomes diseased
at the core. Not only science, but man' (1934:135).

I have allready mentioned the relation between mechanism and vitalism. Gestalt psychology has consistently
rejected both. Machine theories of the nervous system have been its particular target: Gestalt psychology has
emphasized free dynamics within the limits imposed by anatomical constraints. Perls, quite the contrary, refers
to the organism as a machine (1969/1971:15), and to the 'thinking system,' as he calls it, as a computer
(1970/1973:28-29).

I would now like to say a word about phenomenology as it figures in Gestalt psychology and in gestalt therapy. (I
am using the term 'phenomenology' as psychologists generally do, to refer to the unbiased description of the
phenomenal world, not to refer to Edmund Husserl's theory of intentionality.) For Gestalt psychology,
phenomenology is a first step, a propaedeutic to experimental research and to a science of functional relations
that transcends phenomenology. Perls calls himself a phenomenologist (1969/1972:37)-, for him this method
plays a different role than in Gestalt psychology. Phenomenology, he says, 'is the primary and indispensable
step towards knowing all there is to know' (1969/1972:69).

I have by no means exhausted my material. For example, Perls' misuse of the equilibrium concept might be
discussed. His understanding of heredity and of evolution might be culled from his writings and contrasted with
that of Gestalt psychology. His view of person perception, like that of object perception, could be shown to differ
from that of the Gestalt psychologists. His mostly implicit conception of the thinking process might be examined,
and so on.

From the material already discussed, it is not difficult to reach a conclucion. What Perls has done has been to
take a few terms from Gestalt psychology, stretch their meaning beyond recognition, mix them with
notions-often unclear and often incompatibible - from the depth psychologies, existentialism, and common
sense, and he has called the whole mixture gestalt therapy. His work has no substantive relation to scientific
Gestalt psychology. To use his own language, Fritz Perls has done 'his thing'; whatever it is, it is not Gestalt
psychology.