Gestalt psychology, which emerged from the work of Max Wertheimer, was partly a reaction to Wilhelm Wundt’s structuralism. This school of psychology has played an important role in the development of modern psychology, especially in the psychology of mind and behavior. While Wundt was interested in breaking down psychological matter into its smallest possible parts, the figures of psychologists are interested in looking at the totality of the behavior of the mind. The guiding principle of the Gestalt-movement is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Max Wertheimer explained this when he presented his study of perception and movement: “We see that a sum or part does not contain the effect of an entire event.”
Gestalt psychology is a school of thought that considers the human mind and behavior as a whole. Trying to make sense of the world suggests that we are not simply focusing on the smallest components. Gestalt psychology is the theory of visual perception developed by German psychologists in the early 1920s who tried to explain the way the mind moves in a chaotic world without drawing any meaningful conclusions.
The word shape means to unite a whole, a sentence that perfectly captures how we perceive fragmented parts. The essence here implies that we can independently create a perception of the whole from its parts; in other words, putting something together into a “whole” can help us put it all together. This is a result that adds nourishment to the idea that the human mind has its own way of organizing, and is based on perceiving things as a whole, not as individual parts.
Gestalt psychology is a school of thought that considers the human mind and behavior as a whole. After the foundation of Gestalt Psychology, co-founder Kurt Koffka published “The Principles of Gestalt Psychology,” in which he introduced Gestalt Theory and its principles. The following principles in psychology of attitude describe how we give meaning to things and events. When trying to make sense of the world, Gestalt Psychology recommends not just focusing on small components. Instead, the mind tends to perceive objects as a whole, not as individual parts of a larger, more complex world. The idea is that we can only perceive our world sensually if we see the whole world, instead of just a single part of it.
The basis of this idea is the book Gestalt Psychology, written in 1890 by the philosopher and psychologist William James and his wife Mary Jane. Gestalt psychology emerged from the work of Max Wertheimer, which was an extension of the structuralist approach advocated by Wilhelm Wundt. When Wolfgang Kohler took over the leadership in 1922, the School of Gestalt Psychology became the most important school of psychology in Germany and the USA. The Berlin Laboratory for Experimental Psychology defines what we know as Gestalt Psychology. PhI Phenomenkonzept, which deals with the illusion of movement created by the perception of stills in rapid succession, is one of the most important aspects of Gestalt psychology and a key component of its theory. Wolfgang Kohler, founding member of this school of thought, has researched various topics in the field of psychology. He is the author of a number of books on psychology and a number of articles on the history of his school’s thinking.
The design principles of the grouping are a small part of the larger Gestalt psychology, but were first proposed by Wolfgang Kohler, Kurt Schiller and Friedrich Nietzsche. It was the crucial founding member of this Gestalt theory and one of its most important contributions to the development of psychology that “Gestalt theory” could be explained by describing a whole that is different from the sum of its parts. Although Kohler is considered the father of Gestalt psychology, many have contributed to its development, including many others, including psychologists such as Wolfgang Kohlers and Fritz Perls. Gestalt is not the name for all psychologists who contribute to this work, but for their contributions to the development of theory.
Indeed, many representatives of Gestalt psychology were founded in accordance with this vision. Eventually, some of Gestalt Psychology’s founders became co-founders and directors of the Gestalt Institute in Cleveland, where they researched and implemented many of their ideas. With the establishment of the Institute, he opened the door to a completely new way of thinking, not only in psychology itself, but also in psychology in general. Gestalt psychology, founded by Max Wertheimer, was, like so many other times, a rebellion against the molecularism of the Wound Program of psychology, including William James. In fact, the word shape means a unified, meaningful whole, which should instead be the focus of psychological investigation.