Gestalt psychology is a direction in psychology that originated in Germany. It allows you to study and understand the psyche from the point of view of holistic structures that are primary in relation to certain components.
This article will help to understand what the theory of gestalt psychology is and who are its representatives. Further, such moments as the history of the emergence of this area of psychology, as well as what principles are laid in its foundation, will be examined.
Definitions and concepts
Before considering ideas and principles, it is necessary to define the basic concepts of gestalt psychology. This is a psychological direction that is aimed at explaining perception, thinking and the personality as a whole.
This direction is built on gestalt - forms of organization that creates the integrity of psychological phenomena. In other words, gestalt is a certain structure that has integral qualities, in contrast to the sum of its components. For example, a portrait or photograph of a certain person includes a set of certain elements, but other people perceive the image in the aggregate (in this case, in each individual case, it is perceived differently).
The history of this psychological direction
The history of the development of the direction of gestalt psychology dates back to 1912, when Max Wertheimer published his first scientific work on this subject. This work was based on the fact that Wertheimer called into question the generally accepted idea that there are separately existing elements in the process of perceiving something. Thanks to this, the 20 years went down in history as a period of development of the school of gestalt psychology. The main personalities who appeared in the origin of this trend:
- Max Wertheimer.
- Kurt Koffka.
- Wolfgang Köhler.
- Kurt Levin.
These scientists have made an invaluable contribution to the development of this area. However, more about these representatives of Gestalt psychology will be discussed a little later. These people set themselves a difficult task. The first and main representatives of Gestalt psychology were those who wanted to transfer physical laws to psychological phenomena.
The principles of this psychological direction
Representatives of Gestalt psychology have established that the unity of perception, as well as its orderliness, is achieved on the basis of the following principles:
- Proximity (incentives that are close, tend to be perceived not separately, but collectively).
- Similarity (incentives having a similar size, shape, color or shape, taken together).
- Integrity (perception tends to simplify and integrity).
- Closedness (describes the tendency to complete a figure so that it assumes a holistic shape).
- Adjacency (close position of stimuli in time and space).
- Common zone (gestalt principles form everyday perception in the same way as past experience).
- The principle of a figure and background (everything that is endowed with meaning acts as a figure that has a less structured background).
Guided by these principles, representatives of gestalt psychology were able to determine the main provisions of this area of psychology.
Key Points
Based on the principles, you can describe the main points as follows:
- All processes of psychology are integral processes that have their own structure, which has its own set of specific elements, which will always be secondary to it. Based on this, the subject of Gestalt psychology is consciousness, which has a structure filled with closely related elements.
- Perception has such a feature as constancy. This suggests that the constancy of perception is the relative immutability of certain properties that objects possess (in the presence of changes in the conditions of perception). For example, it can be a constant lighting or color.
Fundamental ideas of gestalt psychology
Representatives of this school identified such basic ideas of this area of psychology:
- Consciousness is a holistic and dynamic field in which all its points are in constant interaction with each other.
- Creation is analyzed using gestalt.
- Gestalt is a holistic structure.
- Gestals are studied by objective observation and description of the contents of perception.
- Sensations are not the basis of perception, since the first cannot exist physically.
- The main mental process is visual perception, which determines the development of the psyche and is subordinate to its laws.
- Thinking is a process that is not formed on the basis of experience.
- Thinking is the process of solving certain problems, which is carried out through "insight."
Having determined what kind of direction this is in psychology, and also having understood its basics, it is necessary to describe in more detail who are representatives of gestalt psychology, as well as what contribution they made to the development of this scientific field.
Max Wertheimer
As noted earlier, Max Wertheimer is the founder of gestalt psychology. A scientist was born in the Czech Republic, but he conducted his scientific activities in Germany.
According to historical data, Max Wertheimer, during her rest, had the idea to conduct an experiment in order to understand why a person can see the movement of a certain object at a time when in reality it is absent. Having descended on the Frankfurt platform, Wertheimer acquired the most ordinary toy strobe with the aim of conducting an experiment right at the hotel. After some time, the scientist continued his observations in a more formal setting at Frankfurt University.
In general, these studies were aimed at studying the perception of the movement of objects, which does not actually occur. During the experiment, the scientist used the term "impression of movement." Using a device such as a tachistoscope, Max Wertheimer passed a ray of light through the small holes of the toy (one slot of the toy was located vertically, and the second had deviations from the first by twenty to thirty degrees).
During the study, a ray of light was passed through the first slot, and then through the second. When the light passed through the second slit, the time interval was increased to two hundred milliseconds. In this case, the participants in the experiment observed how the light appears first in the first, and subsequently in the second slit. However, if the time interval for lighting the second slot was shortened, it seemed that both slots were lit continuously. And when illuminating the second slot for 60 milliseconds, it seemed that the light constantly moves from one slot to the second, and then returns.
The scientist was convinced that this phenomenon is elementary in its own way, but at the same time it represents something different from one or even several simple sensations. Subsequently, Max Wertheimer gave this phenomenon the name "fi-phenomenon."
Many tried to refute the results of this experiment. In particular, Wundt’s theory confirmed that the perception of two light strips in the neighborhood should have been created, but nothing more. However, no matter how strictly introspection was carried out in the Wertheimer experiment, the strip continued to move, and it was not possible to explain this phenomenon using the available theoretical positions. In this experiment, the whole was the movement of the light line, and the sum of the constituent elements was two fixed lines of light.
Wertheimer's experience challenged the familiar atomistic associational psychology. The results of the experiment were published in 1912. This was the beginning of gestalt psychology.
Kurt Koffka
Another representative of Gestalt psychology is Kurt Koffka. He was a German-American psychologist who conducted his research activities with Wertheimer.
He devoted enough time to understanding how perception is structured and what it is made of. In the process of his scientific activity, he established that the child being born does not yet have gestalt formations. For example, a small child may not even recognize a loved one if he changes some details of his appearance. However, in the process of life, the formation of gestalt occurs in any person. Over time, the child already becomes able to recognize mom or grandmother, even if they change their hair color, haircut, or any other appearance that distinguishes them from other, foreign women.
Wolfgang Koehler (Keller)
Gestalt psychology as a scientific field owes much to this scientist, since he wrote many books that became the basis of the theory, and conducted several amazing experiments. Köhler was convinced that physics as a science should have a definite connection with psychology.
In 1913, Koehler went to the Canary Islands, where he studied the behavior of chimpanzees. In one experiment, a scientist placed a banana for animals outside the cage. The fruit was tied with a rope, and the chimpanzee easily solved this problem - the animal simply pulled the rope and brought the treats closer to itself. Koehler concluded that this is a simple task for an animal, and complicated it. The scientist handed a few ropes to a banana, and the chimpanzee did not know which one leads to a treat, so he was often mistaken. Koehler concluded that the decision of the animal in this situation is unconscious.
The course of another experiment was slightly different. The banana was still placed outside the cage, and a stick was placed between them (opposite the banana). In this case, the animal perceived all objects as elements of the same situation and easily moved a delicacy to itself. However, when the stick was at the other end of the cage, the chimpanzee did not perceive objects as elements of one situation.
The third experiment was carried out under similar conditions. Similarly, a banana was placed outside the cage at an inaccessible distance, and the monkey was given two sticks that were too short to reach the fruit. To solve the problem, the animal needed to insert one stick into another and get a treat.
The essence of all these experiments was reduced to one thing - to compare the results of the perception of objects in various situations. All these examples, just like Max Wertheimer's experiment with light, proved that perceptual experience has the quality of integrity (completeness), which its components do not have. In other words, perception is gestalt, and an attempt to decompose it into components ends in failure.
Research made it clear to Kähler that animals solved their tasks either through trial and error, or through sudden awareness. Thus, the conclusion was made - objects that lie in the field of one perception and are not connected with each other, when solving problems, are combined into a common structure, the awareness of which helps to solve the problem.
Kurt Levin
This scientist put forward a theory comparing the pressure of society, which determines the behavior of a person with various physical forces (internal - feelings, external - the perception of others' desires or expectations). This theory is called "field theory."
Levin argued that personality is a system in which there are subsystems that are in interaction. Carrying out his experiments, Levin noted that when a feature is active, the state of the subsystem is stressed, and when the activity is interrupted, it will still be in tension until it returns to the action. If there is no logical completion of the action, then the voltage is substituted or drained.
In simple words, Levin tried to prove the relationship of human behavior and the environment. This scientist has evaded the ideas of the influence of experience on the structure of personality. Field theory says that human behavior is completely independent of the future or the past, but it also depends on the present.
Gestalt psychology and gestalt therapy: definitions and differences
Recently, gestalt therapy has become a very popular area of psychotherapy. The methods of gestalt psychology and gestalt therapy are different, and the second is more often criticized by the adherents of the first.
According to some sources, Fritz Perls is a scientist who is considered the founder of gestalt therapy, not related to the scientific school of gestalt psychology. He synthesized psychoanalysis, the ideas of bioenergy and gestalt psychology. However, there is nothing in this area of therapy from the school that Max Wertheimer founded. Some sources claim that in fact, attachment to gestalt psychology was just an advertising move, to draw attention to the synthesized direction of psychotherapy.
However, other sources note that such therapy is still associated with the school of gestalt psychology. However, this connection is not direct, but it is still there.
Conclusion
Having examined in detail who the representatives of Gestalt psychology are and what constitutes this area of scientific activity, we can conclude that it is aimed at studying perception, which is a holistic structure.
Gestalt approaches over time have penetrated many scientific fields. For example, in pathopsychology or personality theory, and also such approaches are found in social psychology, the psychology of learning and perception. Today, it is difficult to imagine such scientific fields as neo-behaviourism or cognitive psychology without gestalt psychology.
As noted earlier, the main representatives of Gestalt psychology are Wertheimer, Koffka, Levin and Köhler. Having learned about the activities of these people, one can understand that this direction played a huge role in the development of world psychology.