Editing Fritz Perls (section)

==Reception==

Perls' approach to therapy was included in criticism by [[Jeffrey Masson]],<ref name=Masson>{{cite book |year= 1988 |title= [[Against Therapy|Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing]] |isbn= 1567510221 |oclc=17618782 |last= Masson |first= Jeffrey M. |author-link= Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson |publisher= Common Courage Press}}</ref> a psychoanalyst who feuded with journalists<ref>{{cite web |last1=Margolick |first1=David |title=Psychoanalyst Loses Libel Suit Against a New Yorker Reporter |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/03/us/psychoanalyst-loses-libel-suit-against-a-new-yorker-reporter.html |website=The New York Times |access-date=13 November 2018 |date=3 November 1984}}</ref> and with the psychoanalytic community generally over his controversial theories disputing the effectiveness of psychotherapy.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Blumenthal |first1=Ralph |title=Freud: Secret Documents Reveal Years of Strife |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/24/science/freud-secret-documents-reveal-years-of-strife.html |access-date=13 November 2018 |newspaper=The New York Times |date=24 January 1984}}</ref> Masson said that Perls was sexist, as well as physically and emotionally abusive towards women in his private life.<ref name=Masson/> Masson quoted Perls from his autobiography, ''In and Out the Garbage Pail'', where Perls wrote:<ref name=Garbage/>

<blockquote>
Once I was called to a group to calm down a girl who attacked everyone in the group physically. The group members tried to hold her and to calm her down. In vain. Again and again she got up and fought. When I came in she charged with her head down into my belly and nearly knocked me over: Then I let her have it until I had her on the floor. Up she came again. And then a third time. I got her down again and said, gasping: "I've beaten up more than one bitch in my life." Then she got up, threw her arms around me: "Fritz, I love you." Apparently she finally got what, all her life, she was asking for.

And there are thousands of women like her in the States. Provoking and tantalizing, bitching, irritating their husbands and never getting their spanking. You don't have to be a Parisian prostitute to need that so as to respect your man. A Polish saying is: "My husband lost interest in me, he never beats me any more."
</blockquote>

Therapist [[Barry Stevens (therapist)|Barry Stevens]], who met Fritz Perls for the first time in 1967, described a different impression of him. She wrote: "...&nbsp;I know that Fritz doesn't like his arrogance, and along with it, he has such a beautiful humility."<ref name=Stevens>{{cite book |last=Stevens |first=Barry |author-link=Barry Stevens (therapist) |date=1970 |title=Don't Push the River (It Flows by Itself) |location=Lafayette, Calif. |publisher=Real People Press |isbn=0911226060 |oclc=98912}}</ref>{{rp|26}} And later she said: "Fritz is almost always a very warm and gentle old gentleman now."<ref name=Stevens/>{{rp|186}}

Stevens also described another incident from a group therapy session: "...&nbsp;Fritz Perls asked us all a question and waited for answers.&nbsp;... I said nothing. He said 'Barry?' 'I'm blank," I said. He nodded and went on to someone or something else. How nice to have my blankness easily accepted."<ref>{{cite book |last=Stevens |first=Barry |date=1984 |title=Burst Out Laughing |location=Berkeley, Calif. |publisher=[[Celestial Arts]] |page=90 |isbn=0890874107 |oclc=14239529}}</ref>

Erving Polster, psychologist and Gestalt therapist, founding faculty member of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland in 1953, said about Fritz Perls: “From Fritz I got the realization that a person could have incredible range in characteristics. I could experience Fritz as the most cutting and as the most tender of all people.”<ref>Wysong, Joe / Rosenfeld, Edward (eds.): “''An Oral History of Gestalt Therapy''”, Highland, New York, 1982, p. 49.</ref>