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

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.

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.