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Gestalt Psychology Reflection

Sara M. Covey
PSY 310
May 4, 2015
Melody Thompson

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Gestalt Psychology Reflection

Through the times of history, psychology as we know it has taken many twists and turns
from the theories of Skinner and Thorndike, to the experiments of Watson and Pavlov. Through
it all we have learned a great deal. However, according to Schultz & Schultz (2012) at
approximately the same time the behaviorist revolution was gathering strength in the United
States, the Gestalt revolution was taking hold of German psychology. (Schultz & Schultz, 2012,
pg. 262).
When it came to Gestalt psychology, you could say that this field had many influences
from many different founders with many different views and theories. Man Wertheimer,
Wolfgang Kohler, Ernst Mach, and Kurt Koffka, just to name a few, had a huge impact on the
development of Gestalt psychology. Gestalt psychology, as we are aware of, is the study of
perception and behavior from the standpoint of an individuals response to configurational
wholes with stress on the uniformity of psychological and physiological events and rejection of
analysis into discrete events of stimulus, perception, and response. (Merriam-Webster
Dictionary, 2014)
Max Wertheimer was a young scholar who was attending school to study law. However,
during his time at the University of Prague he decided to change his major to a field of study that
he found rather interesting, and that field was philosophy and psychology. According to different
students who had sat in on his lectures or had been to his office said that the way he saw and
perceived things was very stimulating, enlightening, and interesting. As an example, his office
walls were painted red because Wertheimer loved bright colors and felt that if the walls were not
a bright color such as red then you were not able to work as well. Max Wertheimer along with

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other founders had a hand in beginning the Journal of Psychological Research, which became
the official publication of the Gestalt Psychology School of Thought. (Schultz & Schultz, 2012,
p. 267).
Wolfgang Kohler, another scholar and founder of Gestalt psychology, had a passion for
the study of chimpanzees. However, after many years of research on animals, he seemed to lose
interest in the research of animals. He then turned to writing and authored Mentality of Apes
which became a renowned book. Then in 1920, Kohler published a book titled Static and
Stationary Physical Gestalts (1920), a book that won considerable praise for its high level of
scholarship. Kohler suggested that Gestalt theory was a general law of nature that should be
extended to all of the sciences. (Schultz & Schultz, 2012, p. 267)
Ernst Mach exerted a more direct influence of Gestalt thinking with The Analysis of
Sensations when it came to melodies and forms. (Schultz & Schultz, 2012, p. 268) His theory
was that when it came to our perception of things they really do not change in the way we see
them.
Kurt Koffka, another founder and perhaps the most ingenious when it came to Gestalt
psychology, became a writer and wrote a book about the development of children in psychology.
This book became successful in Germany and here in the United States. The book is titled The
Growth of the Mind.
According to Schultz & Schultz (2012), the Gestalt principles of perceptual organizations
are Continuity, Closure, Proximity, Similarity, Figure/Ground, and Simplicity. (Schultz &
Schultz, 2012, p. 272-273).

Examples of these are as follows: Similarity is

, Figure/Ground is

and Simplicity is

, Closure is

, Proximity is

, (The Gestalt Principles, n.d.). Continuity is

. (Saw, 2006)

Overall, the Gestalt principles of perceptual organization are all things we as humans
interact within our daily lives whether we realize it or not.

References

Graphic Designs Spokanefalls. (n.d.). The Gestalt Principles. Retrieved from

http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/gestaltprinciples/gestaltprinc.ht
Merriam-Webster Dictionary. (2014). Gestalt psychology definition. Retrieved from
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gestalt%20psychology
Saw, J. (2006). 2 D Design Notes. Retrieved from http://jimsaw.com/design/gestalt.html
Schultz, D., & Schultz, S. (2012). A History of Modern Psychology (10th ed.). Belmont, CA:
Cengage.