Ralph Franklin Hefferline (15 February 1910 in

Muncie, Indiana Muncie ( ) is an incorporated city and the county seat, seat of Delaware County, Indiana, Delaware County, Indiana. Previously known as Buckongahelas Town, named after the legendary Delaware Chief.http://www.delawarecountyhistory.org/history/docs ...

– 16 March 1974) was a

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

professor at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. Hefferline became a patient of

Fritz Perls Friedrich Salomon Perls (July 8, 1893 – March 14, 1970), better known as Fritz Perls, was a German-born psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist. Perls coined the term "Gestalt therapy" to identify the form of psychotherapy that he devel ...

around 1946. He joined a small training group led by Perls in 1948 in New York, and went on to contribute a chapter to the book which defined

Gestalt Therapy Gestalt therapy is a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes personal responsibility and focuses on the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist–client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person's life, ...

, ''Gestalt Therapy, Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality'', co-authored by Perls,

Paul Goodman Paul Goodman (1911–1972) was an American writer and public intellectual best known for his 1960s works of social criticism. Goodman was prolific across numerous literary genres and non-fiction topics, including the arts, civil rights, decen ...

and Hefferline, published in 1951. He was the third and junior author and provided the section containing practical exercises. He went on to join the

Behaviourist Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual ...

school of psychology.

References

*Perls, Frederick S.; Hefferline, Ralph; Goodman, Paul. ''Gestalt Therapy, Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality''. Gestalt Journal Press (This edition February, 1977, but originally published 1951). . *

External links

Citations at Getcited.org
German magazine article - auto translation People from Muncie, Indiana 20th-century American psychologists 1910 births 1974 deaths Gestalt therapy {{US-psychologist-stub