Gestalt psychology

1
Gestalt psychology

• Characterising Gestalt psychology
• Rise in Germany
• Moving to the USA
• Demise and legacies
• The point Is the success of a school largely a
  function of the quality of its ideas?

2
Characterising Gestalt psychology

• Period 1890-1967
• but main period 1911-mid 1930s.
• Gestalt the idea of unified form
• Aimed to understand what it is that people
  perceive and what the experiences of perception
  and learning are
• Key practitioners Kohler, Koffka, Wertheimer ..
  But also Lewin and others

3
Characterising Gestalt

• The idea of form (Mach)
• A table has a form quality (Gestaltqualitäten)
  that persists when sensations change - e.g
  different lighting.
• Titchener introspection analyse elements I
  see three lines
• whereas Gestalt I see a triangle
• Note phenomenological aspect

4
Examples of approach findings

• Phi phenomenon (Wertheimer in 1912).
• an experience that is not sensibly reduced to
  its elements
• Problem solving and insight
• Kohler (1925) apes in Tenerife
• Organization of visual array (Wertheimer, 1923)
• e.g. proximity, similarity, good continuation,
  law of Prägnanz

5

• Social psychology
• Lewin (1936) Individuals as complex energy
  fields with needs and tensions that direct
  perceptions and actions.
• life space
• and much, much more

6
Characterising Gestalt

• Recurring theme whole is different note not
  greater from the sum of parts
• There are wholes, the behaviour 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
  (Wertheimer, 1922).
• Field theory and physics
• Complex electrical fields ... isomorphism
• Laws e.g. of perception

7
Rise in Germany

• Carl Stumpf (1848-1936)
• philosopher to psychologist?
• dispute with Wundt
• lifelong friend of William James familiar with
  functionalism
• Phenomenological emphasis two forms of reality
• Links to Koffka, Kohler, Wertheimer, Lewin

8

• A few biographical details of some key figures
• Koffka (1886-1941)
• Student _at_ Berlin with Stumpf
• Universities of Frankfurt, Giessen
• 1926 USA and eventually Smith College
• Kohler (1887-1967)
• Student _at_ Berlin Stumpf Max Planck
• 1913-1919 Tenerife
• 1920 return to Berlin
• 1935 USA, Swarthmore Dartmouth colleges
• Wertheimer (1880-1943)
• Universities of Prague, Berlin Wurzberg
• 1933 USA, New York

9
A word on cultural conditions

• the most significant concerns and catchwords of
  German psychologists in the 1920s - holism and
  meaning, biology and development, language and
  culture, personality and character. These were
  also constituting terms of educated middle-class
  ideology and self-concept in the Weimar period.
  (Ash)
• the Gestalt theorists were indeed in tune with
  the times as became clear when others laid
  claim to the Gestalt concept. (Ash, 1995, p.
  307)

10

• In Germany pre-1914 themes made sharper by WWI
• mechanistic science ... What place for human
  values?
• Doubts over human rationality death on a huge
  scale
• rapid industrialisation and rise of
  technologies more efficient killing?
• superficiality of modernity
• devaluing of academic life threats to elite
  culture
• Gestalt psychology appeared to be. a constructive
  response to many of these fears
• consistent with wider philosophy of holism and
  the room it allowed for both science/facts and
  values (Harrington, 1996)

11

• In addition,
• Factors such as
• familiarity with the new physics
• Wertheimer Einstein lifelong friends
• Kohler engagement with ideas of Planck
  Boltzmann
• competent in areas outside psychology e.g.
  philosophy, maths
• comfortable as scientists

12

• Gestalt psychology
• resisted mechanistic science in its emphasis on
  holism
• resisted mechanics in adopting the new physics
• explicitly placed values at centre of study
• knowledge was not given over entirely to the
  physical sciences
• But also attacks for not going far enough
• e.g. Kreuger on emotion, Jaensch on
  will, purpose.

13
A verdict

• Gestalt psychology richly embedded in and
  resonant with German culture of early C20
• Also Gestalt psychology ... did have an unusual
  degree of institutional and intellectual
  coherence. It was a full-bloodied attempt to
  establish psychology as a science by a
  re-examination of philosophy and hence of the
  foundations of the sciences in general, and it
  was not just an attempt to impose the
  methodological prescriptions supposedly
  characteristic of the physical sciences.
• Smith, 1997, p681

14
Gestalt psychology in the USA

• USA as key in early C20 psychology, (ODonnell,
  1985)
• Movement of major theorists

15

• Koffka 1920s Smith College, New England
• 1933 Nazi Law on retirement of non-Aryan and
  politically suspect state officials
• 15 psychology profs, 6 lost jobs
• Wertheimer, New York, 1933
• Kohler, Swarthmore, 1935
• Lewin, Cornell, 1933
• yet comparatively less successful in USA
  (Henle, 1977, Ash 1995 but see Sokal, 1984)

16
Challenges in the USA

• Classical and Neo-Behaviorism
• place of phenomenology
• science prediction control
• Application of knowledge
• Individual lives of major figures
• Koffka, Wertheimer, Lewin all dead by 1947
• few if excellent students lack of manpower
  (Ash, 1995)

17
Legacies?

• Ideas, topics findings
• well-formedness in perception
• problem-solving insight (e.g. Duncker, 1945)
• purpose in behaviour (e.g. Tolman)
• life space/social field
• The Place of Value in a World of Fact
  (Kohler, 1938)

18
What might reflection on all this tell us?

• What enduring psychological issues are apparent
  when considering Gestalt ideas
• Is the rise demise of scientific schools of
  thought or research largely attributable to the
  quality of the ideas making up that approach?
• What ideas in Gestalt psychology challenge or are
  inconsistent with much of todays
  cognitive/social/neuro psychology?
• Is science only about theories facts? Should
  science only be about facts? Can science only be
  about producing facts? Etc.!