Unknown author · Public domain

A German-born psychiatrist who broke with orthodox psychoanalysis to found Gestalt therapy, developing it with his wife Laura Perls through the 1940s and 1950s. Where Freudian analysis dug into the past, Perls's method centered on present-moment awareness of sensation, emotion, and behavior, and on the direct contact between a person and their environment. He spent his later years at the Esalen Institute, where his workshops helped carry Gestalt therapy into the American human-potential movement.