Gestalt psychology
School · 1910s-1930s, Germany, then the United States · Psychology, stage 2: Map the schools
Gestalt psychology began in Germany with Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Köhler, and its claim was aimed squarely at structuralism: perception is organised into wholes, and the whole is not recoverable from a list of its parts. The founding demonstration was apparent motion, in which two lights flashing in sequence are seen as one light moving, an experience with no counterpart in the stimulus elements. From this the school derived principles of grouping, such as proximity, similarity, and closure, describing how the visual system organises a scene before anything is consciously interpreted. The Nazi regime scattered its founders to the United States, where the school did not survive as an institution, but its findings passed into perception research and interface design, and Kurt Lewin carried its field-theoretic style into social psychology, where it shaped his student Leon Festinger.
What it claims
- Perception is organised into wholes, and the whole differs from the sum of its parts.
- The organising principles operate before conscious interpretation, not after it.
- Analysing experience into elementary sensations destroys the thing being studied.
Key ideas
People
Sources
- Gestalt psychology Wikipedia
- Laws of Organization in Perceptual Forms Classics in the History of Psychology, York UniversityThe English translation of Wertheimer's statement of the grouping principles.
- Max Wertheimer Wikipedia
