Hans-Jürgen Walter

Hans-Jürgen P. Walter (born 25 March 1944 in Gladenbach-Weidenhausen, Germany) is a German psychologist and psychotherapist known as one of the main founders of Gestalt Theoretical Psychotherapy.

In 1977 he earned his doctorate in Darmstadt with a thesis on Die Gestalttheorie als wissenschaftliche Grundlage psychotherapeutischer Praxis und ihre Beziehung zu psychotherapeutischen Ansaetzen der Gegenwart ("The Gestalt theory as a scientific base for psychotherapy practice and its relation to contemporary approaches in psychotherapy").

This thesis shows that Gestalt theory can provide an appropriate framework to integrate the methods and merits of many other psychotherapeutic schools, especially the analytic and the humanistic ones.

[3] He has been one of the editors of the international multidisciplinary journal Gestalt Theory (Sciendo, De Gruyter), and is now a member of its Founders and Honorary Board.

Before him, other well-known representatives of Gestalt psychology of the Berlin school, especially in the U.S.A. (for example Erwin Levy, Abraham S. Luchins, Erika Oppenheimer-Fromm, Molly Harrower, Junius F. Brown and other students of Kurt Lewin) had stated their opinions and elaborated theoretically and practically on applying Gestalt theory to psychotherapeutic problems.