Gestalt.on.ca
Title
Gestalt Institute of Toronto
Description
Harvey Freedman was an established psychiatrist in Toronto when he met Fritz Perls at the Esalen Institute in California in 1965. At Esalen, Dr. Frederick (Fritz) Perls impressed his students with therapy training that was unique, dynamic and on the leading edge. He incorporated contact with the therapist into the client’s work and was well known for his “hot seat” method in group therapy.
Dr. Perls, originally a Freudian analyst, was influenced by the principles of Gestalt psychology and existential philosophy, and by the many new approaches developing in the late 1960’s. Dr. Freedman studied with him until September 1969, at which time Dr. Perls, then at Lake Cowichan in British Colombia, appointed Dr. Freedman as Clinical Director of his Gestalt Institute in Canada on Vancouver Island – a position he planned to take up the following year.
When Perls died in March 1970 Dr. Freedman and his family cancelled their plans to move to Vancouver Island. Instead, in September 1970, with the help of Dr. Harold Silver and Dr. Peter Brawley, he founded the Gestalt Institute of Toronto and established a space at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. The Institute was granted the last non-profit charter ever issued by the Department of Health of Ontario.
