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Gestalt Psychology Reflection

Matthew Weitz
PSY 310
October 25, 2015
Shannon Kelly

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Gestalt Psychology Reflection

Gestalt psychology was primarily founded by three people. The original founders include
Wolfgang Khler, Max Wertheimer, and Kurt Koffka. Gestalt psychology foundations are
memory, learning and perception. The principles are isomorphism, reproductive thinking and
isomorphism. Gestalt meaning is a psychology term meaning unified whole and it is reference
to theories of visual perception. Gestalt is used in modern German to mean the way a thing has
been gestellt or put together. ("Kurt Koffka", 2014).
While Max Wertheimer was in law school at the University of Prague he found that he
was more interested in the field of Philosophy and Psychology so he changed his major. Along
with other founders he 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). In 1910 while riding a train the idea of apparent movement came to him.
He noticed the poles and far away houses seemed to be moving with the train. Apparent
movement explains how you see movement when there is no movement taking place. His
research was done after he left the train and went and purchased a toy stroboscope.
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)

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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. Together with Wolfgang Kohler and Max Wertheimer, Koffka set the
foundation for Gestalt psychology. They used the German word gestalt to describe their holistic
approach to human experience. ("Kurt Koffka", 2014).
The Principles of Perceptual Organization is how we perceive wholes and not clusters of
sensations, the elements interact to create a new whole which is the whole is different from the
sum of its parts. "There are wholes the behavior of which is not determined by that of their
individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic
nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes",
("What Is Gestalt Psychology?", 2015)
Gestalt principles of Perceptual Organization are Proximity, Continuity, Similarity,
Closure, Figure/ground and Simplicity. An example of Proximity would be watching a movie or
motions and the movie is a rapid succession of just still images which is a seamless visual
experience. An example of Continuity would be me watching my nephew growing up and how
his behavior seems to change gradually that sometimes I hardly even notice. An example of
Similarity is when I hear different music from the cars that are waiting beside me, and I can pick
out a certain artist of that song. An example of Closure is a sign that half is broken on the right
side, and see it as a whole circle or stop sign. An example of Figure-Ground is me walking on
my leaves in my yard and thinking that there is a snake under those leaves, since my neighbor
and seen one under hers. Since I love music a example of Simplicity would be a Ballad or even
poetry, either of the two represents simplicity.

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The contributions of Gestalt Psychology would be that it has had a permanent impact on
psychology, with the influenced of perception, thinking, learning, personality, motivation and
social psychology. It also was ground breaking for the field of cognitive movement, and also
fostered the interest in consciousness as the legitimate problem for psychology.

References

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Schultz, D., & Schultz, S. (2012). A History of Modern Psychology (10th ed.). Belmont, CA:
Cengage.
Kurt Koffka. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Kurt_Koffka
What is Gestalt Psychology?. (2015.). Retrieved from
http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesmz/p/max-wertheimer.htm