Gestalt psychology

Abstract

This chapter highlights Gestalt psychology, which was created by M. Wertheimer around 1910–12. It discusses the history of the scientific community (Gestalt psychologists) and its production (Gestalt psychological production). Elements are sense impressions. However, they also constitute a “whole” and thus possess a quality of wholeness, a “Gestalt quality.” It is this Gestalt quality which is recognized, when a melody is transposed into a different key, whereby all the elements, the notes, are changed, whereas the whole, or Gestalt quality, is retained. The Gestalt psychologists themselves helped to create antagonism by their strong criticism of American psychology. After the Second World War, however, the general attitude toward Gestalt psychology became more positive. The fruitfulness of Gestalt theory as applied to cognitive psychology (sensation, perception, and thinking) became recognized. Moreover, with the formation and development of the Gestalt psychological school, there were other psychologists who developed similar theories. Gestalt psychological meta-theses incorporate a biological view of man, a parallelistic, neutralmonistic or possibly pluralist psycho–physical theory, a determinist meta-model, an empirico–rationalist and critic–realist epistemology, a nomothetic ideal of science, and a holistic–descriptive experimental method. © 1988, Elsevier Science & Technology. All rights reserved.