You may be wondering (I know I am), what does a glimpse and quote from the illustrious Laura Perls have to do with suicide prevention slides for North Carolina State University?

If you have thoughts on the connection, please share. I see a connection, but maybe it’s just because I wanted to post both these things. First, here’s a bit of content from Laura Perls from our Counseling and Psychotherapy Theories text.

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Although the contributions of Laura Posner Perls to Gestalt therapy practice were immense, she never receives much credit, partly due to the flamboyant extraversion of Fritz and partly because her name, somewhat mysteriously (at least to us), is not on many publications. She does, however, comment freely on Fritz’s productivity at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy (an organization that she co-founded with Fritz).

Without the constant support from his friends, and from me, without the constant encouragement and collaboration, Fritz would never have written a line, nor founded anything. (L. Perls, 1990, p. 18)

REFLECTIONS

We hear resentment in the preceding quotation from Laura Perls. We feel it too, because we’d like to know more about Laura and for her to have gotten the credit she deserved. If you want more Laura, here’s a nice tribute webpage: https://gestalt.org/laura.htm?ya_src=serp300. And here’s a quotation from her (obtained from the webpage and compiled by Anne Leibig): “Real creativeness, in my experience, is inextricably linked with the awareness of mortality. The sharper this awareness, the greater the urge to bring forth something new, to participate in the infinitely continuing creativeness in nature. This is what makes out of sex, love; out of the herd, society; out of wheat and fruit, bread and wine; and out of sound, music. This is what makes life livable and incidentally makes therapy possible.”

Now, don’t you want to hear more from Laura?

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And here’s the North Carolina State University link: