You ever wondered why when you’re in a museum and see something hanging on the wall, you know that the frame, glass, diagrams make up a picture? As humans, our brains will automatically organise what we see around us. This is, at a very rudimentary level, the basis of Gestalt psychology.
According to Benjamin (2024), “Gestalt psychology is best known for the phrase, the whole is different from the sum of the parts.” In other words, we instinctively group and interpret information to help us experience the whole, rather than just focus on the details.
The Rise of Gestalt Psychology.
A group of German psychologists are attributed with its development (Benjamin, 2024). Its founding is attributed to Max Wertheimer in the 1910’s. He was later joined by Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler (Rock & Palmer, 1990). It is suggested that Gestalt psychology was part of a resistance movement within German society to the alternative psychological theories of the time particularly Structuralism (Pickren & Rutherford, 2010). Whether it’s appropriate to class it as a resistance movement, the schools of thought have distinct views of how best to analyse and interpret human behaviours. Alternatives advocate that human beings are a sum of their parts, these parts can be identified and the causes of behaviour related to individual external stimuli. They aim to break down consciousness into its basic components such as sensations, images and feelings and study these (Burnes & Cooke, 2013).
Gestalt psychologists advocated that the human mind does not see things in different bits but rather perceives wholes. By looking at individual elements separately from each other and not including the person’s perception of their environment, they concluded that this would give you a misleading view of the causes of human behaviour. (Burnes & Cooke, 2013).
Interesting principles were developed that are still used today, including:
Proximity – even if objects don’t look the same, if they’re close together we tend to group them.
Similarity – we naturally group objects together that look alike.
Continuity – we tend to prefer continuous smooth patterns.
Closure – if something isn’t whole, our brains fill the gaps.
Why did it decline?
Gestalt had become a leading school of thought in Germany in the 20’s and 30’s. When the Nazis came to power, their ability to carry out their work freely was inhibited. By the mid 1930’s, the Nazi’s tyranny forced each of the leading gestalt psychologists to escape to America. It was not easy to start again in a different country, and their influence was lessened (Benjamin, 2024).
Many psychologists were not convinced and remained committed to other schools of thought. Gestalt theory was felt to be poorly articulated and the research techniques were perceived to have minimal empirical validation (Wagner-Moore, 2004).
Coupled with this, three of the leading gestalt psychologists had died by 1947. This limited the time they had to develop their theories further and influence others (Benjamin, 2024).
Enduring Influence
Despite its decline as a school of thought, many of the gestalt principles have been incorporated into other areas of psychology such as counselling with a focus on the here and now. Its influence can still be seen today outside of psychology in many diverse areas such as design and technology (Rock & Palmer, 1990).
Given the relevance of many of their principles, it’s good to see that their influence is still around today.
References
Benjamin Jr., L.T. (2024). A Brief History of Modern Psychology. (4th ed.). Wiley.
Burnes, B. & Cooke, B. (2013). Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory: A Review and Re-evaluation. International Journal of Management Reviews, 15, pp 408 – 425. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2370.2012.00348.x
Pickren, W.E. & Rutherford, A. (2010). A History of Modern Psychology. Wiley.
Rock, I. & Palmer, S., (1990). The Legacy of Gestalt Psychology. Scientific American, 263 (6), pp 84-91. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/24997014
Wagner-Moore, L.E. (2004). Gestalt Therapy: Past, Present, Theory and Research. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 41(2), pp 180 – 189. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-3204.41.2.180
Allison Beattie – Masters student at Robert Gordon University.
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