Gestalt school of psychology first saw light in the late 1800′ s in Germany and Austria, and this school of psychology was founded by Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka, and the pioneer Kurt Lewin improved its principles in the twentieth century (Gestalt, 2008). The word ‘Gestalt’ means originally “a structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts” (gestalt, 2008).
But in psychology Gestalt is defined as “the study of perception and behavior from the standpoint of an individual’s response to configurational wholes with stress on the uniformity of psychological and physiological events and rejection of analysis into discrete events of stimulus, percept, and response” (Gestalt psychology, 2008). The Gestalt psychology focuses on understanding the whole image, and that means when studying a psychological phenomenon, Gestalt focuses on the complete human as a complete unit and not taking a particular part as a subject of studying (Gestalt, 2008).
What is the right description for ‘Gestalt revolt’? The Gestalt psychology was against atomism of Wundtain psychology, and atomism can be defined as “analysis of mental life into simple components” (Gestalt psychology, n. d. ). Despite all the huge differences between Gestalt in Germany in one hand and the Functionalism and Behaviorism in the United States in the other hand, the two sides were agreed about rejecting atomism in Wundtain psychology (Gestalt psychology, n. d. ). What are the principles of Gestalt psychology?
Gestalt psychology has many principles which are called “gestalt laws”, and these laws indicate that people naturally have the instinct to “to experience things in as good a gestalt as possible” (Gestalt, 2000). The principles of Gestalt psychology are: 1. “The law of closure”: This law indicates that if a picture has a missing part, people are driven to suppose what that picture expresses and complete the missing part (Gestalt, 2000). For example, if we have a square with a gap in one of its corners, people are driven to guess that this is a square and the corner should be added (Gestalt, 2000).
2. “The law of similarity”: This law indicates that people are naturally driven to combine the things that have something in common “to see them as forming a gestalt” (Gestalt, 2000). It is a part of people’s instinct to see that the O’ s should form a line in this next example (Gestalt, 2000): 3. “The law of proximity”: This law indicates that if things are lying near each other are assumed to have a common relationship. In this next example we are naturally more driven to say that the X’s form horizontal groups more than saying that they form vertical groups (Gestalt, 2000):
4. “The law of symmetry”: In the next example, those are supposed to be pairs of brackets which are closed to each other, and those pairs of brackets are next to each other but due to the fact that those brackets are very close to each other, this will drive us to assume that they are “pairs of symmetrical brackets” (Gestalt, 2000): [ ][ ][ ] 5. “The law of continuity”: This law can be explained with an example of two crossing lines, if people have an image of two crossing lines without any gaps they will consider that it a meeting of two lines rather than considering it a meeting of two angles (Gestalt, 2000).
6. “Figure-ground”: The next example explains the principle, this next figure will be explained be people naturally as it is a picture of an object standing on the ground, but by looking at this picture in another way they will find that this is a picture of two faces with a black background, and nobody can see both pictures at one (Gestalt, 2000). What are challenges that Gestalt made to behaviorism? Gestalt and Behaviorism are different from each other, and some of the conflicting sides between them are (Gestalt psychology, n.
d. ): 1. Behaviorism “rooted in the atomistic tradition of English Associationism”, but Gestalt rejected atomism totally and its different German psychological tradition didn’t contain any kind of atomism (Gestalt psychology, n. d. ). 2. Behaviorism rejects the idea of studying consciousness due to the fact that Behaviorism is strongly connected to positivism, but Gestalt accepts the idea of studying consciousness (Gestalt psychology, n. d. ). What challenges did Gestalt make to contemporary psychology?
There are many challenges that Gestalt made to contemporary psychology, and they are: 1. Gestalt used to define and detect the problems “by changing them into postulates” (Gestalt psychology, n. d. ). 2. Gestalt used to define the terms in a more complicated method, while terms are usually defined in a simple way (Gestalt psychology, n. d. ). 3. Gestalt doesn’t use numbers or measures when addressing the problem, but it depends “more on demonstration than investigation” (Gestalt psychology, n. d. ). Conclusion
Gestalt psychology has been in evolution, starting with Christian von Ehrenfels the father of Gestalt to Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka the founders of Gestalt in the ninetieth century, to the contributions of Kurt Lewin and Kurt Goldstein in the twentieth century (Gestalt, 2000). And finally the Gestalt therapy by Fritz (Gestalt, 2008).
References
Answers Corporation. (2008). Gestalt psychology. Retrieved July 16, 2008, from http://www. answers. com/topic/gestalt-psychology? cat=health Boeree, C. G. (2000).
Gestalt Psychology. Retrieved July 14, 2008, from http://webspace. ship. edu/cgboer/gestalt. html gestalt. (2008). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved July 16, 2008, from http://www. merriam-webster. com/dictionary/gestalt Gestalt psychology. (2008). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved July 16, 2008, from http://www. merriam-webster. com/dictionary/Gestalt psychology Gestalt Psychology. (n. d. ). Retrieved July 14, 2008, from http://faculty. plattsburgh. edu/alan. marks/Hist%20409/Gestalt%20Psychology. htm