The Expressive Self: Gestalt Psychology, Art and Personality

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The Expressive Self Gestalt Psychology, Art and
Personality
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Aesthetics in the 18th century

• Aesthetics study of perception, sensory
  experience as opposed to conceptual thought.
• About human perception of artistic formEdmund
  Burke, Baumgarten, Kant, Shaftesbury
• Eventually also came to encompass notion of the
  beautiful

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Gustav Fechner (1801-1887)
1860 Elements of Psychophysics 1876 Vorschule
der Aesthetik Weber/Fechners Law intensity
of a sensation increases as the log of the
stimulus (S k log R) Conducted Studies on the
Golden Ratio/Golden Section Ratio of AC to CB
is the same as AC to AB (1 1.618)
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Golden Rectangle AGFD The ratio of the length
to the width should be close to the Golden Ratio
(approximately 1.618). Ratio of AG/AD DC/CF
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Within this one large Golden Rectangle there are
six other Golden Rectangles
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History of Empathy as Einfühlung German
Psychological Aesthetics

• Robert Vischer (1873)
• Über das optische Formgefühl
• (On the Optical Sense of Form)
• Einfühlung (feeling into) became
• popular in German psychological aesthetics
  beginning in the 1870s

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From Dekorative Kunst Illustrierte Zeitschrift
fuer Angewandte Kunst, Band 1, (Munich
H.Bruckman Paris, J. Meier-Graefe, 1898) p. 76
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Einfühlung as empathy Not only do I see
gravity and modesty and pride and courtesy and
stateliness, but I feel or act them in the minds
muscles. This is, I suppose, a simple case of
empathy, if we may coin that term as a rendering
of Einfühlung (1909 21).
Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927)
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James Ward (1843-1925) Philosopher and
Psychologist, Professor of Philosophy and
Logic University of Cambridge
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• With an image of a bunch of grapes the
  observer spoke of a cool, juicy feeling all
  over with a parrot, of a feeling of smoothness
  and softness all over me not tactual i.e. not
  cutaneous with a fish, of cool, pleasant
  sensations all up my arms slippery feeling in my
  throat coolness in my eyes. The object spreads
  all over me and I over it it is not referred to
  me but I belong to it.
• From Titcheners Laboratory, Cornell
  UniversityCheves Perky An Experimental Study of
  Imagination American Journal of Psychology, Vol.
  21, No. 3 (Jul. 1910), 448

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June Etta Downey (1875-1932) Studied at
University Chicago Professor of Philosophy Head
of Philosophy/Psych. Dept At University of
Wyoming Wrote Creative Imagination (1929)
Herbert Sydney Langfeld (1879-1959) Studied with
Stumpf, University of Berlin Professor, Harvard
1910 -1924 Head of Psychology Laboratory,
Princeton The Aesthetic Attitude (1920)
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From Keats Hyperion Upon the sodden
ground His old right hand lay nerveless,
listless, dead, Unsceptred and his realmless
eyes were closed While his bowed head seemd
listning to the Earth, His ancient mother, for
some comfort yet.
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Subject D Perfectly clear-cut visual image of
the old man in the posture described. Tactual
and kinaesthetic feeling of the sodden ground.
Feeling of weight and relaxation in right hand.
Kinaesthetic feeling of bowed head and of closed
yes. Auditory attention, with strain in ear
Subject 2 Put self into the old man and
slight tendency to get outside and see old man.
(CI, 188). Subject 3 As Observer I am
north-east of visualized self and of old man.
Visual self about one hundred feet off, looking
at old man who is twenty feet farther off. No
imitation of old mans posture.
Downey, 1912, p. 308
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Wheeled clouds, which as they roll Over the
grass, and flowers, and waves, wake sounds, Sweet
as a singing rain of silver dew. Percy Bysshe
Shelley, poet Subject M Movement in chest
spreading forward of hands in space. Feet not on
ground. Become the cloud feel of the cloud. The
cloud, if conscious, would feel thus. (Downey,
CI, 189)
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• There are hours when I go out from myself and
  live in a plant, when I feel myself as the grass,
  as bird, as tree-top, cloudshours when I run,
  fly, swim, when I unfold myself in the sun, when
  I sleep under leaves, when I float with the larks
  or creep with the lizards, when I shine in the
  stars and fire-flies, when, in short, I live in
  every object which affords an extension of my
  existence.
• George Sand, as quoted in Downey, Creative
  Imagination, 1929

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Pietà , Perugino (Academy, Florence)
Entombment, by Raphael (Villa Borghese, Rome)
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The Dream of St. Ursula, Vittorio Carpaccio,
1495 Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
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Botticelli, Portrait of a Young Woman (Berlin)
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Kurt Koffka
GESTALT PSYCHOLOGISTS
Max Wertheimer
Wolfgang Köhler
Kurt Lewin
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Examples of the Phi PhenomenonMax Wertheimer,
1912
Gestalt Form, Configuration
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Figure-Ground Gestalt Images
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Study of the Regular Division of the Plane with
Horsemen , By Dutch artist M.C. Escher
(1898-1972)
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Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007) Gestalt Psychologist
of ArtSarah Lawrence 1943-1968Harvard Dept. of
Visual and Environ. Studies 1968-1974

• Art and Visual Perception (1954)
• Towards a Psychology of Art (1966)
• Visual Thinking (1969)

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• But if I sit in front of a fireplace and watch
  the flames, I do not normally register certain
  shades of red, various degrees of brightness,
  geometrically defined shapes moving at such and
  such a speed. I see the graceful play of
  aggressive tongues, flexible striving, lively
  color. The face of a person is more readily
  perceived and remembered as being alert, tense,
  concentrated rather than being triangularly
  shaped, having slanted eyebrows, straight lips,
  and so on.
• (Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, 1954, 430)

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Herman Rorschach 1884-1922
Determinants Experiencing Types
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Common response bat, butterfly or moth
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Common responsetwo humans
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Common Response.pink animal
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Common responseblue crab, lobster, spider
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Rorschach Testing, c.1930
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The Psychological Corporation 1921

• J. McKeen Cattell, President
• Approximately 20 psychologists as directors.
• Guaranteed training and standards of its members
  (compiled a black list of charlatans and
  ignoramuses to be avoided).
• Aims construct standardized tests vocational
  guidance people-sorting tests job analysis
  efficiency engineering research for business
  concerns research on conduct and control.
• Source J. McKeen Cattell, The Psychological
  Corporation Annals of the American Academy of
  Political and Social Science (Vol.110),
  Psychology in Business (Nov. 1923) 165-171

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Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

• Henry Murray and Christina Morgan devised it in
  1935.
• Evoke unconscious fantasies
• Freudian bent to the interpretation
• Subjects offered their own interpretations of
  ambiguous social situations
• Subjects would project their own complexes onto
  images

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From TAT
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From TAT
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Myers-Briggs Personality Testderived from Carl
Jungs 1921 Pychological Types
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Check out the website humanmetrics.com This
test ends up 16 different types