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Meet Fritz Perls, the father of gestalt therapy.
Better yet, meet the many different men who were Fritz Perls.

To his associates, he was brilliant and innovative; to his students he was brash and egotistical; to his children he was cruel and unfeeling; to his lovers he was unforgetable. Whatever he was, he was never dull.

This oral biography follows Perls from Europe to South Africa to the United States as he develops and strives to gain acceptance of gestalt therapy, the theory of "the here and now."

We meet Fritz Perls through his associates in the humanistic psychology movement: Virginia Satir, Wilson Van Dusen, Bernie Gunther, Stanley Keleman, George Leonard, Alexander Lowen, Rollo May, Michael Murphy, Claudio Naranjo, Laura Perls, Richard Price, Ida Rolf, Will Schutz, Charlotte Selver, Barry Stevens, and many others. His time as "guru" at Esalen is brought into focus by the co-founders of the Big Sur center and the participants in its many workshops. The result is a multi-faceted portrait of a brilliant, complex man.
 

        FRITZ PERLS, Here & Now
          by Jack Gaines
          Illustrated by Russ Youngreen
          450 pages - 24 pages of rare pictures
 

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Jack Gaines says, "I never met Fritz Perls.  I'd gone to Esalen a short time after he died.  And for awhile after that, although gone, he was still as present as the majestic mountains, the hot sulfur springs of Big Sur and the talk of the drug times that had more or less also just passed.  In the dining hall I'd hear someone say, "didjahear what Fritz said?" - as though he had just said it - and then after a muffled rumbling that I couldn't hear, they'd guffawed."

"...Jack Gaines, an ex-corporation president, has concocted another sort of Mr. Natural by putting togethera biographical collage which is as innovative and contrary as Perls himself.  Conventional biographies attempt to describe and analyze words and deeds and thereby arrive at a net assessment, much like Freudian psychotherapy.  In keeping with Perls lifelong effort to reveal the whole of a person, including elements such as stance and gesture, facial expression and skin tone, timbre of voice, physical build, patterns of  mood-change, and that intangible something we nowadays refer to as 'vibes'. Gaines suspends final analysis and relies almost totally on a seemingly formless  sequence of direct quotes from a variety of Perls' admirers and enemies.  Near-opposite opinions, based on near-opposite experiences, follow one after the other."

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"Gaines' method is as worthy of note as the content of his material.  A descriptive diagnostic approach to biography is inevitably incomplete, no matter how magnanimous, honest and scrupulously objective the biographer tries to be, just as the prose consistence of a novel tends to detract from the actual manysidedness of the story being told...the portrait is vivid in the way that an interview with somebody - or a play about somebody's life - is almost always more vivid than a scholarly article. In fact the book reads like a play. Not surprisingly with Perls off the set, Gaines' dramatis personae are at least as revealing of themselves and each other as they are of Perls.In addition to its biographical success, the book provides a fairly comprehensive and often funny overview of the major characters in the so-called human potential movement. The gossip is tasty...Perhaps perversely, I was pleased to find that, in general, the untrained insights ran just as deep as those of the big psychotherapeutic names. Obviously, en route to his finished product, Gaines edited down a hefty  stack of transcripts..."
     Jack Grant - S.F. Review of Books

An extraordinary rendition of gestalt psychology materialized into print.  As Sam Goldwyn might have said: "Don't miss it by all means."  A fascinating technique...it all adds up finally to a single word painting of a whole man - a very whole man...You needn't be at all interested in gestalt therapy or any psychology at all to become aware that in reading you have met a whole man you will never, never forget. 
      The Book Post

I recommend the book to everyone.  It's fascinating and gives extraordinary insights into one of the giants of the 20th Century.
      Richard Russell

A unique gestalt biography that applies Perls' own gestalt approach to create this original multi-faceted portrait of a brilliant, complex man...delightfully enhanced with line cartoons by Russ Youngreen.
      Pacific Sun

The book fairly sparkles with the gift of being alive and in so doing makes me feel very much the same way.  I was immediately taken by the liveliness and animated quality of the book.  It reminded me of the Impressionist school of painting and, like their work, continues to shimmer before me...
      Rabbi Jerry Winston, The Creative Center for American Judaism

The biography is made alive by hundreds of quotations about the old wizard.  One reads it easily moving from one anecdote to another.  The voices flow from page to page, becoming alive and giving the reader a sense of immediacy.  Gaines' lively biography brought up in me many vivid memories and strong feelings about Fritz.  Fritz encouraged me to be impeccably honest, he would not tolerate my ingratiating European politeness.  He rewarded me for my pure and passionate rage  In his work he modeled for me an uncompromisingly economical and clear vision of being in the world.  He taught me to value seeing and hearing.  He helped me to become a lovingly creative troublemaker.  He taught me that a therapist is a revolutionary...He gave us permission to accept our humanness fully...to accept our dirt, evil, as well as beauty, our devilishness and our saintliness...

      Joseph Zinker, The Gestalt Journal