Gestalt Psychology
The word “gestalt”, for which there is no exact English equivalent, most closely translates to mean united or meaningful whole. Humans rely on perception of their environment coupled with preconceived knowledge in order to make sense of things. Gestalt psychology was created as a reaction to the behaviorism of Watson and the introspection of Titchner and was founded by Max Wertheimer. Other important figures in Gestalt psychology include Kurt Koffa, Wolfgang Kolher, Kurt Lewin, Kurt Goldstein and Mary Henle.
An early influence on Gestalt psychology was the philosopher Immanuel Kant. He argued that we do not perceive the world as it is; we impose cause and effect relationships on it and therefore our perceptions are influenced by our experience. The original observation forming Gestalt Theory was made by Max Wertheimer. Gestalt psychology is based on the observation that we often experience things that are not a part of our simple sensations. We have the tendency to experience a structured whole as well as the individual sensations. We are able to read and understand a word that is missing letters because our mind sees the whole even when it is not there.
This is called the law of closure. The law of similarity states that we group similar items together. The law of proximity shows that we will see things close together as belonging together. However, the law of symmetry can at times override the law of proximity as we are overwhelmed by a need for equilibrium. With the law of continuity, there is a perceptual tendency to follow elements that appear to be proceeding in the same direction, to “continue” in the direction that they appear to be heading. The figure-ground theory states that we have a tendency to see a figure in two parts-the forefront, or figure and the background, or ground.
The founder of Gestalt Psychology is considered to be Max Wertheimer. Wertheimer was born in Prague in 1880 and studied law for two years before deciding that he more enjoyed philosophy. In 1910 he went to the University of Frankfurt’s Psychological Institute. It was that same year that he purchased a stroboscope after his interest was peaked by the perceptions of motion he experienced on a train ride. It was also during his time at the Psychological Institute that he became aware of the Phi Phenomenon, or apparent motion. Wertheimer used apparent motion to demonstrate that perceptions were not reducible to sensory stimulation alone and had rendered Wundt’s eye-movement explanation flawed. Thus, the apparent movement confirmed Wertheimer’s more general suspicion: we cannot assume that the perceptual scene is an aggregate of unrelated elements because underlying processes are already functionally interrelated when that scene emerges, and now exhibits corresponding effects.
Kurt Koffa was born in Berlin and worked under Wertheimer. During his time at the University of Edinburgh, he became fluent in English. It was this language proficiency that enabled him to spread the Gestalt message to American, which he did in his 1922, Psychological Bulletin article, “Perception: An Introduction to Gestalt-Theorie.” American psychologists assumed from his article that Gestalt psychologists were only interested in perceptual phenomena. This focus on perception in the early days of Gestalt psychology was mostly due to a rebelling against the ideas of Wundt whose work had been in sensation and perception. Because Koffa was the best writer of the early Gestalt psychologists, he was the school’s spokesperson. He wrote books on subjects from child psychology to books about the theories and principles of Gestalt psychology.
Another important figure in early Gestalt psychology was Wolfgang Kohler. He was born in Estonia in 1887 and grew up in Germany. He attended the University of Berlin and considered himself to be a physicist in his way of thinking. In 1913 he was sent to study a colony of apes in the Canary Islands. His work with the apes was written about in his book Intelligence Tests with Anthropoid Apes. Kohler concluded from his work with the apes that insight learning had several important characteristics differentiating from Thorndike’s trial and error learning. He determined that insight learning was often occurs suddenly and completely, and does not depend on reinforcement.
Kurt Lewin was born in 1890 in Prussia and began formal training in psychology at the University of Berlin in 1910. His work in Gestalt psychology focused on the more social elements of cognition and perception and children. Lewin developed field theory in which a person is considered to be interacting continually within a field of psychological forces. He felt that the behavior of a person was a function of that person’s interaction with his or her psychobiological environment. Lewin invented hodology, which he used to show paths of energy within a person’s life space (the influences on a person at a given time). Using elliptical shapes to enclose a person’s life space, he showed that psychological facts are contained within the curve and events or objects that are not part of the person’s life space are outside of the curve. Life space becomes larger with age. Lewin found that going backward developmentally should cause dedifferentiation.
He illustrated this in his work with children by allowing them to play with ordinary toys, then giving them better toys and finally putting them back with the lesser toys while keeping the more interesting toys in sight. He found that their level of apparent development receded and the children’s quality of play was lessened. Lewin was also responsible for identifying and defining conflict. The approach-approach conflict occurs when one must make a decision between two goals each having a positive outcome. The approach-avoidance conflict happens when a goal simultaneously has both positive and negative outcomes. The avoidance-avoidance conflict transpires when a person must choose between to goal, each having a negative outcome.
Kurt Goldstein was born in 1878 and was a pioneer in clinical neuroscience. According to Dr. C. George Boeree:
“Goldstein developed a holistic view of brain function, based on research that showed that people with brain damage learned to use other parts of their brains in compensation. He extended his holism to the entire organism, and postulated that there was only one drive in human functioning, and coined the term self-actualization. Self-preservation, the usual postulated central motive, he said, is actually pathological!”
Goldstein was a student of Karl Wernicke and studied language deficits with him. He also worked with World War I soldiers who had become brain damaged and this work helped him to make strides in understanding the relationship between neurology and behavior within the Gestalt framework.
A remarkable contributor to modern-day Gestalt psychology is Mary Henle. She was born in Ohio in 1913. She attended Smiths College and studied under Kurt Koffa. She wrote many essays on Gestalt psychology. She taught under great scrutiny at Smiths, but eventually left to teach elsewhere. She faced much discrimination due to her being female and Jewish. However, with her writings, she contributed greatly to Gestalt psychology and Social Psychology. According to her biography on the Sarah Lawrence College website:
“In 1944 World War II was still being waged, so for her advanced Social Psychology class she used the psychology of the on going war as a large part of her basic syllabus. The students learned about how Democratic leaders, or leaders in general, were trained, and if, in fact they could be trained. They also studied propaganda and its effect on people; whether or not it could be used to change people’s minds. Most of the work in this class covered the big social issues of the times. Other areas covered in class include the psychology of the fighting man and attitudes.”
As others have mentioned about the relationship between Gestalt Theory and Gestalt Psychology Mary Henle commented, “The difference is so crucial that I could conclude at this point that there is no substantive relation between Gestalt psychology and gestalt theory.”
After researching and reading more about Gestalt theory, I had to wonder how exactly Gestalt theories can be used in therapy situations. It seems that Fritz Perls can be credited with ideas about Gestalt psychotherapy. According to Gary Yontef, PhD
“Gestalt therapy is a phenomenological-existential therapy founded by Frederick (Fritz) and Laura Perls in the 1940s. It teaches therapists and patients the phenomenological method of awareness, in which perceiving, feeling, and acting are distinguished from interpreting and reshuffling preexisting attitudes. Explanations and interpretations are considered less reliable than what is directly perceived and felt”.
Perls had been Goldstein’s assistant in 1926 at a neurological institute, and credited Goldstein with his first exposure to Gestalt principles as applied to organismic functioning. Perls wrote Ego, Hunger, and Aggression. His former mentor, Goldstein did not seem to appreciate Perls’ views that Gestalt psychotherapy was founded in Gestalt theory. As stated by Mary Henle: “Fritz Perls has done – `his thing’; whatever it is, it is not Gestalt psychology”. Her contemporary Rudolph Arnheim also says, “I can see Max Wertheimer fly into one of his magnificent rages, had he lived to see Perls’ Ego, Hunger, and Aggression (1947) dedicated to him as though he were the father of it all”.
Finding several references such as Mary Henle’s above, I began to see that many do not feel that Gestalt Therapy and Gestalt Theory can be related. I feel that Robert E. Sherrill explained it best:
“Gestalt therapists see close kinship between the two Gestalt systems; Gestalt psychologists deny any meaningful similarity. How has this disjunction of perception occurred? I believe it is due in part to Gestalt psychologists having recognized that Perls made frequent errors in describing Gestalt psychology. Another part has been Perls, et al.’s confusion between Gestalt psychology and the systems of Lewin and Goldstein. Finally, there is an important theoretical difference between Gestalt therapy and Gestalt psychology, that of the degree to which organismic variables influence perception.”
A problem faced by the Gestalt movement was the scattering of its proponents about the world during the time of World War II in order to get away from the Nazis. Gestalt psychology could have had a greater following or a stronger appeal had its key early figures not been disrupted by the problems of their time. Behaviorism was very strong in the United States at the time that Gestalt psychology was getting started and overcoming the popularity of Behaviorism was difficult. There were not many scholars of the next generation to carry on this school of psychology. With the introduction of Gestalt psychotherapy and its having little in common with true Gestalt theory probably created a false sense of what Gestalt actually was about in its infancy. Even though there was not nearly as much information available about this school of psychology as there was about Behaviorism and Psychoanalysis, I am glad that I took this opportunity to research Gestalt psychology and find out why it’s been forgotten over time or falsely represented in the birth of Gestalt psychotherapy.
