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Gestalt psychology Founder: Max Wertheimer Co-founder: Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Kofka It surfaced in Germany and the initial revolt was against the elementary dimensions of Wundtian Psychology but later revolt was directed mainly at Behaviorism. Gestalt is a German word that roughly means configuration, form, holistic, structure and patterns. It was a revolt against the idea that few bits and pieces of experience glued together to form the whole- it can’t be a complete experience. Any attempt to explain the figure by analyzing its parts results in the loss of figure’s Gestalt (Don’t analyze others by preconceived notions. It would be misleading to say that Gestalt psychology is a holistic psychology. Gestalt expresses the fundamental premise of a system of Psychology that conceptualizes psychological events as organized, unified and coherent phenomena. It was an anti-reductionistic system (reducing the psychological event to physiological mechanisms result in loss of a psychological event). Thus, Gestalt psychology is sensitive to frame of reference- importance is given to the context. Gestalt psychologists emphasized the study of consciousness, like structuralist psychologists who used controlled introspection in sensory experiments. However, they emphasized that both perceived forms (Gestalten) and the experienced world are already structured wholes. They rejected the view of Structuralists and Associationists that consciousness consists of associated elements. Later Gestaltists accepted behavioral wholes, such as the demonstration of an ape that uses insight to put together two bamboo sticks to reach a banana, instead of learning gradually through trial and error. Though they emphasized consciousness, they linked it with the brain by assuming isomorphism (iso- similar; morphic- shape; having similar shape)- it is the structural correspondence between experiences (not physical events and underlying brain processes). The perceptual experience and the brain experience do not correspond on a one-to-one basis, but rather correspond in terms of relations. Owing to their penchant for physiological explanation, the Gestaltists denied independent causal power to consciousness or experience. They limited the role of conscious experience in psychology to the status of given fact and object of explanation. In their estimation, aspects of consciousness experience could be explained by appeal to physiology; but a conscious state could not itself explain anything, even another conscious state (Koffka, 1935, p. 65; Kohler, 1938, p. 362). Explanation always flowed from brain processes to experience. The latter could serve as evidence for the character of brain processes, and nothing more. This evidential role must not be underestimated, however. The Gestaltists adduced their speculative physiological explanations from their descriptions of phenomenal facts together with their beliefs about the general characteristics of brain physiology (beliefs based in Gestalt physics, Kohler, 1920). Given the ineliminability of the phenomenal and the primacy of physiological explanation, it is natural to ask whether physiology actually can explain consciousness. The Gestaltists contended that physiology as traditionally conceived could not do the job; they rejected traditional forms of naturalistic or physiological reduction. Some of the most important gestalt principles are:

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Figure-ground Similarity: similar things tend to be grouped together Proximity: close temporal or spatial conjunction leads to a perception of togetherness Closure: we tend to psychologically complete that is incomplete Good continuation: we tend to see a good continuation of wavy lines and good continuation of angular lines even if they are clubbed together Relative salience of context Law of pragnanz: perceptual organization is orderly coherent and economical under prevailing conditons

Method used: Classical Gestalt depended heavily upon the single demonstration or experimentum crucis, however by mid-20th century, Gestalt social psychology bridged experiment and social action. Philosophers of science debated the significance of the so-called Gestalt switch in terms of realism versus relativism. In the early twentieth century, Gestalt psychologists experimented with tone color, figural aftereffects, illusions, and perceptual constancies. Brain scientists explored equipotentiality and mass action, behavioral neurology, and self actualization. Social psychologists extended the Gestalt to social fields of force in a life world and to humanizing the workplace. Gestalt therapists encouraged healthy contacts with the world through reorganization of self in a social field. Gestalt psychology is based upon a wide range of perceptual, learning, and cognitive experiments. Wertheimer’s classic phi phenomenon experiment used slits of light in a revolving tachistoscope wheel to produce a perception of apparent motion. Exposure intervals, as well as the color, arrangement, and size of the stimuli, could be varied. Kurt Koffka introduced the “white tablecloth experiments,” where a subject encounters a white and a black tablecloth, but the black one has greater illumination. Subjects have no difficulty identifying that the white is white, even though the “proximal stimuli” of the black one are brighter. The subject utilizes a “color gradient” to make a Gestalt perceptual judgment. This involved a new understanding of stimulus. A hungry fish bites the worm but the satiated one does not; the same stimulus object may elicit a different pattern of response as a “direct experience correlate of the stimuli.” No hypothetical psychological processes are involved. Lewin introduced concepts of psychological “life space” and “social fields of force” which was widely used in clinical and counseling situations. . The work of many Lewin’s students also contributed to social action research in the United States in the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. Lewin also focused on how the situation appears to the actor, and he diagrammed the needs of the person in different layers. He included motivation forces, as well as self and field, but opposed historical explanation by childhood experiences (psychoanalysis) or past learning (behaviorism). Physics provided the concepts of field of force, vectors, and ahistorical laws by which social Gestaltists described personality and social fields. The experimenter first became a subject of psychological attention in Lewin’s research. By contrast, contemporary research about character types and mental traits is abstracted from groups of persons and the experimenter is invisible

Kohler accused the established psychologies (behaviorism and structuralism) of attempting to emulate psychical sciences as it resulted in overemphasis of quantitative methods over qualitative considerations that should precede quantification. It may cause us to overlook the important processes and phenomena. Kohler believed that methodology should be adapted to the subject matter of a discipline rather than the other way round. Thus, they were also the pioneers in the use of phenomenological method. Their methodological concerns should not be interpreted as having anything to do with split between mission-oriented (applied) research and basic research. The dichotomy would be deemphasized with an informed philosophy of science as envisioned by Gestalt school. Gestalt therapists use ready- made techniques such as enactment of fantasies, role playing and psychodrama. They also use experiments and dream work to help the clients. Unlike psychoanalysis, they do not interpret dreams. Rather, clients present dreams and are then directed to experience what is like to be each part of the dream- a type of dramatized free association....