Pedro de Casso

Gestalt, Therapy of Autenticity

Original title:

Gestalt, terapia de autenticidad. La vida y la obra de Fritz Perls

About the book:

Gestalt, Therapy of Autenticity

Here is a book that is essential reading for anyone wishing to probe deeply into the personality and the writings of the creator of Gestalt Therapy, Dr. Friedrich or Frederick (Fritz) Perls.

This  meticulously compilation of biographical details from different sources – including the chaotic autobiography – is interleaved with a chronologically parallel overview, interrelation and ordering of texts and contexts of the totality of his works.  This task, unattempted until now, portrays the evolution of the figure of Perls with the maximum profiles of reality, at the same time as making clear the profound coherence in the foundations and practice of his therapy, and the close link between this and his life. The author underlines the tireless quest for the truth and the outright rejection of any sign of falsity which ran through and characterised the life and work of Fritz Perls. Hence the title of the book. 

Apart from clearing up theoretical misunderstandings which have tended to create a schism in the world of gestalt therapy into two parts, including that relating to the concept of self, it is now possible to understand why from its inception Gestalt Therapy became the therapeutic praxis characteristic of humanist and transpersonal psychology.  This new book, then,  provides a reliable map which enables us to find our way through Perl's exuberant discourse and the intricacies of his own way of doing therapy. But not forgetting, as the author warns us, that the map is not the territory, and that no amount or kind of reading can replace the transforming experience of a personal process within a therapeutic relationship.

Even so, Perls himself never tired of explaining again and again the bases and determining features of his way of working. Retrieving this legacy in its entirety and  making it available are the very notable achievements of Pedro de Caso in writing this magnificent book.

About the author:

Pedro de Casso graduated in law, philosophy, theology and psychology. He is co-author of the work in five volumes El Hombre integral (The whole man) and La psicología humanística (The Humanistic Psychology) (Marova, 1981). For years now his vocation for humanistic and transpersonal psychology, gelled into practising as a gestalt therapist and as a trainer of gestalt specialists.