Fritz Read online

  The William Alanson White Institute, a neo-Freudian group, adhered to Harry Stack Sullivan’s theories, which stressed the importance of interpersonal relations. Fritz still had a couch but began to make ever-increasing use of face-to-face encounters (his own face now sported a moustache) as well as delving into group therapy. His exploration of and openness to interpersonal relations, both in and out of practice, was a bit too open as far as the White Institute crowd was concerned, causing that association to be short-lived.

  He started, at first, to lead a professional existence similar to that in Africa: a slave to his rigid schedule of seeing patients weekdays during the winter months and of spending the summer months in Provincetown, where he and Laura rented a cottage next to Clara Thompson, the major figure at the White Institute.

  If his physical proximity to Clara was designed to further his goal of affiliating himself with more open-minded psychoanalysts, his plans backfired. Fritz was now daring to be less devious, and he began to publicly reach out for other women in direct proportion to his loneliness, isolation, and dissatisfactions in living with Laura. Although the Freudians and neo-Freudians both proclaimed a reverence for honesty and integrity, and although each claimed sexual impulses to be a natural and acceptable part of life, neither group relished the idea of being associated with an openly sexual being. Yet, here was Fritz, acting on these feelings, virtually in Clara Thompson’s backyard.

  Dwight McDonald, the critic, recalled summers spent in Provincetown in the mid- to late forties: “Fritz had a terrible reputation . . . some ‘mad power over women’ in spite of the fact that he wasn’t terribly attractive even then. Any woman would remember him. He had ‘hand trouble.’”

  Or, as another friend, the educational innovator Elliot Shapiro, put it: “He was quick to fondle. Right away, almost without introductions.”

  The White Institute’s unwillingness to grant him full membership proved to be one of the factors that liberated him from slavery to orthodox hours and a conventional practice. The other, and more telling, influence was his association with Paul Goodman and the new bohemians around him.

  Goodman—writer, critic, teacher of literature, gadfly of the establishment, and darling of the New York intellectual set—met Fritz and Laura in late 1947, shortly after Laura’s arrival. Just as Fritz had read and admired Paul’s works while he lived in Africa, so had Paul read and admired Ego, Hunger and Aggression. The Perls provided Paul with sympathetic ears and a therapeutic setting in which he might organize his chaotic, albeit creative, life. He, in turn, drew them into his counterculture circle of writers, actors, musicians, and thinkers, giving them their first intellectually challenging and exciting company since leaving Germany.

  The group that centered around Paul consisted of several dozen people and included such future luminaries as Merce Cunningham, John Cage, George Dennison, James Agee, Dwight McDonald, and Julian Beck and his wife, Judith Malina. Most of these people were a generation removed from Fritz and Laura. Each of them was, in his or her own way, dissatisfied with the forms in which they were cast, objected to the limits placed upon their lives and their art, and struggling to achieve some breakthroughs. In this, they mirrored Fritz’s sentiments. They shared a belief that new forms might develop through honesty and experimentation. Candor was required to demonstrate the banality, bankruptcy, and hypocrisy of existing social and artistic structures. Experimentation, both in life and in art, might point the way toward richer expression and greater and more natural satisfactions.

  Paul Goodman was the “leader” (if such a group might ever be considered to have one—the “center” might be a better term) of this group of American Bauhausers because of his range and his outspokenness. He was everywhere at once, writing essays, plays, critiques, and books, being a student of music and dance, politics and education. An avowed bisexual, he thought nothing of discussing his homo/heterosexual nature either privately or publicly on a college campus or in a television interview. He felt that his outspoken candor might pave the way for others to accept their true selves without shame instead of playacting at being plastic people from some radio soap opera. Moreover, Goodman articulated the desire of this group to end the discrepancies between their professional lives and their private lives. Thus, the Becks attempted to make their Living Theater real: to involve actor and audience in actual dialogue, all the while struggling to bring artistry and dramatic truth to the casual rap, the business meeting, or the luncheon engagement.

  The stress on honesty and on exploring the limits of behavior and feeling led, as well, to a fair amount of sexual “game playing,” in which, according to Julian Beck, “whether you will or will not fuck somebody is both ambiguous and terribly interesting, and becomes a terribly important matter between any number of other people.” Along with these sexual games, there were sporadic attempts to lead open, nonpossessive sexual lives and to explore the limits of sexual pleasure—from heterosexuality through bisexuality to homosexuality—both in individual couplings and in larger groups.

  The relationship between Fritz and these young bohemians was a very positive one insofar as each gained reinforcement in their attempts to explore their limits. Whatever doubts arose in Paul’s circle concerning the rightness of their endeavors were allayed by the presence of this prototypical, older European psychoanalyst. And Fritz’s attempt to explore living/therapeutic styles beyond the scope of his psychoanalytic background were legitimized by the community.

  “I’m not just a crazy analyst going off half-cocked,” he might well have told himself, “for here are a group of very creative people exploring the same ground.”

  For Fritz, this association reinforced his belief that psychoanalytic anonymity was unnecessary and encouraged his attempts to make therapy more a part of life. He was to permit himself ever-greater freedom in reacting spontaneously and experimentally with patients—challenging and overcoming all his preexisting limits, including the taboo against sexual intimacy. He was to become Fritz, not some die-cast, type-cast, unnatural, anonymous therapist figure, but permitting his cynicism, tenderness, humor, gruffness, paranoia, and lustiness to come through with the patients he was treating just as he did outside the office.

  In social settings, he allowed himself, in ever-increasing degree, to make diagnoses, offer the same prescriptions, and proffer the same candid analysis that he previously permitted himself in his office.

  “He put me down pretty badly a couple of times,” remembers Judith Malina. “I wasn’t really afraid of him because he was a little bit on the make for me, so that I could always excuse his remarks as based on unfulfilled desire. He said that I had a horrible mouth and that I should spit at people—that I should express my venomous hostility.

  “And he always said these things in the presence of other people. He didn’t say this just to me, like in a psychological session. But he said this in a moment when I was feeling gloriously beautiful or grooving, or surrounded by my lovers, or something.”

  Similarly, he once walked up to Nina Gitano, another member of The Living Theater, during an intermission of Claude Frederick’s Idiot King, put his face right in front of hers, and told her, as she was about to go out and do her big scene, “Your performance stinks.”

  By giving people gratuitous professional analysis of their behavior in social situations, he, like the younger members of the circle, struggled to bring his “acts” together and to lead one life instead of two.

  Without doubt, these new revolutionaries overdid things at times. As Judith Malina analyzed it: “Fritz was into a kind of style that most of us were into, sort of a forties’ nastiness—the kind of clever conversational chatter that consists mostly of insulting somebody. You used to hear it on the late-night talk shows where they had bantering insults, said crushing things, or tried to outwit people. And Fritz was a great star at this sort of public bitchiness.”

  But such overreaction is the way of rev
olutions. And Fritz’s mind was such that he eventually caught the nature of the new game known as Outspoken Honesty, the new trap that the group found itself in.

  “Eventually it lost its popularity,” continued Judith. “Thank God. Also thank people like Fritz who got away from that and pushed all the rest of us away from it and gave us a little insight into our bullshit. Certainly the insights that he showed us were also insights into a former self that were only too apparent, a socially witty, domineering person with all the falseness of manner, all the game playing, who was what we used to call absolutely ‘Divine’ at parties.”

  Fascinated from early adolescence by innovative theater, Fritz spent a fair amount of time with The Living Theater. Julian Beck recalls him hanging out at rehearsals and stagings, commenting on theater in general and their acting in particular. And, of course, he spent time with them socially.

  “It became clear to us that Fritz was looking at that time and talking—with a kind of deep and moving excitement but also a great vagueness—about wanting to do some kind of directing or something with the actors. He had something in mind that was half-way between the kind of performances we were doing and therapeutic sessions.”

  In his personal life, the same dramatic sense was evident. “He was always,” added Julian, “trying to bring the meeting, the encounter, to its frontier. And the device was always honesty, frankness, and a certain shock technique. These forms of address were very important to our own work, for instance, in Paradise Now, where many of the scenes are concerned with bringing that kind of candor and that kind of honesty into a direct I-and-Thou relationship between the actor and the audience. I think that Judith and I learned much about this as concept and reality through Fritz.”

  Paul Goodman’s influence upon Fritz was not limited to introducing him to his friends, the Becks, his other social contacts, or his lifestyle. Laura took Paul on as a patient. Within two years, Paul began training as a lay therapist, joining a growing number of lay and professional people who met, as a group, with Fritz and Laura on a weekly basis. Included in this group were Elliot Shapiro (the man who later championed community-run schools in New York City as the initial principal of Intermediate School 201), Paul Weisz (a physician-turned-therapist-turned-Zen-student), Isadore From (an avowed homosexual, one of Fritz’s first American patients, and one of Fritz’s close friends), and, later on, Ralph Hefferline (a university professor and, along with Paul Goodman, a collaborator on Fritz’s second book) and Jim Simkin (the first Gestalt Therapist with a Ph.D. to work on the West Coast).

  The group was started by Laura in 1950 as a professional therapy-training group at a time when Fritz took off for Los Angeles with Isadore From, for, in spite of the social and professional stimulation he was getting, Fritz was restless. He had never liked the city of New York itself. He also felt hemmed in by his relationship with Laura, as he delved deeper and deeper into sexual exploration.

  Isadore’s twin brother, Sam, lived in Los Angeles. The brother was the lover of Christopher Isherwood. Fritz was quickly accepted by the intellectual “gay” set, which, aside from providing him with a number of patients, also provided him with a number of bed partners. Fritz, as both a sensualist and constant explorer, was not one to let any opportunity for sexual adventure pass.

  His interests, of course, went beyond finding new sexual playmates, for he could do this to a certain extent in New York. What he wanted, by this time, was to spread the word of his nascent therapy and find fellow professionals who would accept his Here and Now approach. In that regard, Los Angeles was a fiasco, for he turned most of the therapeutic community off. They objected strongly to what they considered his lack of professionalism: his solicitation of patients at social occasions, his fraternization with other patients, and his open sexual enjoyment of both men and women. His style was so offensive to them—that “honest rudeness” which he brought from the East—that his message was never attended to. Yet what other way was he to be if he dared combine his social and professional selves in one package?

  Laura came out and spent two months in Los Angeles that summer, but had no desire to play the Queen Bee to a nest of homosexuals. She returned to New York in the fall, followed in short order by Fritz.

  On reentering the New York scene, Fritz got together with Ralph Hefferline and Paul Goodman and outlined a book, which he invited them to coauthor. The work would serve as the basic tenet of their new therapeutic approach. Hefferline, who taught psychology at Columbia University, tried Fritz’s Concentration Therapy exercises with his students with good success and elaborated upon them. He was, along with Fritz, to write these up as the first part of the book. Fritz, with disheveled notes and lots of ideas, planned to complete the second and theoretical section. Paul, an experienced writer, was to do the editing.

  As it turned out, Paul wrote nearly all the second half and Ralph all the first, for Fritz, upon returning from the West Coast, continued to commute there several times a month in order to terminate his unfinished social and professional business. What Fritz did contribute were the ideas and the title for the new approach—Gestalt Therapy—over strong objections from Laura and his coauthors. To Laura, the approach had little relation to the academic Gestalt psychology she had studied in Europe. Paul thought the title too esoteric. Ralph was for calling it Integrative Therapy. Arthur Ceppos, of Hermitage House, published Gestalt Therapy in late 1951. In the beginning of 1952, Fritz and Laura established the Gestalt Institute of New York in a new home and office complex at 315 Central Park West.

  He was proud of his new therapy and hung a shingle outside the building, Dr. Frederick S. Perls/Gestalt Therapy Institute of New York, that was three times larger than the professional signs hung by any of the other practitioners in the building. Yet, pleased as he was, the inside of the Institute failed to match the Grand Plaque upon the building wall.

  “He would always look for a bargain,” according to his son, Steve. “We ate out frequently, but we always ordered the cheapest thing on the menu. He was never interested in spending a reasonable amount of money to get something—whatever that something was. When he and Laura outfitted their office, Fritz found some unfinished furniture. He sanded it and painted it and made it look reasonably okay. But my conception, if you’re trying to start a New York Institute of Gestalt Therapy, is that you do so by trying to make it look fairly well put together rather than a fly-by-night outfit. But that didn’t matter to him. Even with speakers of hi-fi components, which he really liked. Until the end of his life, he would hunt around for used bargains. Very seldom would he buy anything new. He just wouldn’t spend money.”

  Nor did he spend any more time with his children in New York than he did in South Africa. Steve, again: “I remember a few times asking him to show me how to drive. He said that I was too young to get a driver’s license. When I was finally old enough, he gave me a few dollars and said ‘Here. Take driving lessons.’ Which wasn’t a big thing, but significant to me because I felt that this was one thing he could have taught me, for he was a good driver and liked to drive. Even after I got my license, he didn’t want to lend me the car. The message I got was ‘I don’t trust you.’”

  If Fritz was uninvolved with Steve, he was doubly so with Renate. He even failed to attend her wedding to a young art student named Arthur Gold. The reason? He didn’t like him. His excuse? He had a patient. It was as if Fritz’s only progeny was his new therapy, not his flesh-and-blood offspring.

  Although the impact of Gestalt Therapy was, initially, almost nil, a few people in regions remote from New York did become aware of the new school—some through the book, some by happening to hear of the approach while at Columbia or otherwise passing through the city, and some through Paul Goodman’s larger public platform. It was not too long before Fritz began traveling from city to city on a “milk run”—to Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto, Miami—running small groups for those professionals and laymen interested in Gestal
t Therapy. In addition, he took advantage of observing, attending, and being affected by such pioneers as Charlotte Selver (body awareness) and J. L. Moreno (psychodrama), studying dianetics with Arthur Ceppos, and being turned on to Zen by Paul Weisz, his friend, confidant, and fellow Gestaltist in New York.

  In the psychological realm, Fritz’s thinking was strongly influenced by these various approaches. Fritz might be likened to a vacuum cleaner that searches out and sucks in new material, new thoughts, and new ideas. He continually absorbed useful concepts and techniques and added them to his own central core. This attitude toward new approaches is best summed up by an introduction he wrote to Dr. J. A. Winter’s A Doctor’s Report on Dianetics:

  “At the time when psychoanalysis itself was commonly dismissed as a ‘crackpot’ theory, I learned not to be intimidated by name-calling. As one who has attempted to make contributions to psychoanalytic theory, I realize now, as I realized then, that the science of psychotherapy is not a closed or finished one. The division of psychotherapists into mutually hostile ‘schools’ has been more destructive to the young science of psychotherapy than the earlier hostility of the layman; each school in its battle against the other has acted as if it had all the answers and, for the most part, has ignored insights of a rival school. Name-calling has become a substitute for independent thinking, the life-blood of any science. The interests of science (as well as those who come to its practitioners for help) demand that I remain sensitive to the ideas of others. Insights, even though badly or inadequately formulated, are worth investigating. The history of science is full of examples of valuable discoveries made by those who were not aware of their full, and most important, significance.”

  Fritz was particularly intrigued with L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics—later referred to as Scientology—and was one of the first people audited by this procedure. The dianeticist’s technique of emotional recall of past disturbing elements in the present time, as though they were happening now, in order to erase and eliminate these influences through emotional catharsis, was clearly evident in Fritz’s later work, as was their insistence on communicating, on taking responsibility for one’s own feelings. Thus, a Scientology student would say, “I feel uncomfortable when I am around you,” rather than “You make me feel uncomfortable.”