What is Gestalt psychology?

Gestalt psychology is one of the major schools of modern Western psychology, also known as Completion Psychology according to its original meaning.It was born in Germany in 1912, and later further developed in the United States, in opposition to Atomic Psychology.

Gestalt psychology adopted Husserl's phenomenological viewpoint, which advocates that psychology study the experience of phenomena, that is, the neutral experience of non-mind and non-object. In observing the experience of phenomena to maintain the original nature of the phenomenon, can not be analyzed as sensory elements, and that the experience of phenomena is holistic or complete (Gestalt), so called Gestalt psychology. Since the main research in the early years of this system was done in the laboratories of the University of Berlin, it is sometimes called the Berlin School. The main leaders were Wertheimer, Koehler, and Koffka.

The Gestalt school started with experiments on the phenomenon of seeming motion. The experiment was conducted by Wertheimer, and the observers were K?hler and Koffka. The experiment was conducted with the aid of a tachistoscope, in which two glowing straight lines, a and b, were projected successively on a black background. If the time between the projection of the two lines is too long, for example, 2000 or 200 milliseconds, the observer can see line a first, then line b, no movement; if the time between the shortening of the time, for example, 30 milliseconds, you can see the two lines at the same time, but also did not see the movement; if the time between the two, for example, 60 milliseconds, you can see line a to line b move, or see only the movement, did not see the line, which is called the phenomenon of likelihood of movement. This is called the phenomenon of seeming motion. This is the same as what you see when you watch a movie, where the picture is still, but the audience sees the characters moving during the screening.

This phenomenon has been recognized for a long time, but Wertheimer's explanation of it is new. Previous psychologists in the interpretation of motion perception, or to take eye movement, or to take after the image of mixing, or to take the association that there are certain sensory elements, and then these elements are synthesized, constituting the perception of motion. But Wertheimer ruled out each of these explanations.

The experiment proved that the eye movement needs at least 130 milliseconds, 60 milliseconds time is impossible to produce eye movement; Secondly, after the image mixing theory is difficult to establish, because in the production of the phenomenon of seemingly moving, the eye did not move, how can there be after the image of the mixing it? In addition, the association theory is not supported because observers of motion phenomena report that they see a line moving, or they see movement but not a line. Thus, motion perception is a gestalt and cannot be interpreted as an association of sensory elements.

There were also a few in pre-Wertheimer psychology who believed that a whole was not equal to the sum of its parts. Mach believed that the color and size of a circumference could be changed, but its circularity did not change because of it; the successive notes of a tune could be changed, but it still sounded the same. Mach called the circumference the sense of spatial form and the tune the sense of temporal form.

Ehrenfeld called these spatial and temporal forms "formations" and introduced the concept of formations in a paper in 1890. He asked whether the forms of space and time are a new element or a collection of old elements. He concluded that it was a new element. He argued that a square is made up of four straight lines, but a "square" is not a collection of four lines, it is a new form, property or element. So the work of Mach and Ehrenfels was only to add a new element to the old one, and not to reject elementalism at all.

Gestalt psychology, on the other hand, holds that the experience of phenomena is holistic or Gestalt, and that the so-called sensory elements are the product of an unnatural analysis. The experience of reality only proves "perceptual organization".

K?hler said, "When I look at the desk in front of me, I see a number of well-defined wholes separated from the field of vision, a piece of paper, a pencil, an eraser, a cigarette, and so on." In order to prove the reality of these separated wholes, he thought it would be well to try to make some other wholes by combining parts of these objects with parts of the background, with the result that one could sometimes fail and sometimes have a better success, but the new wholes created would be not less strange and bizarre in comparison with natural wholes, and the reader might think that this was due to the fact that people had applied them daily and were accustomed to look at them as separated wholes.

K?hler says: "Who can deny that a piece of paper or a pen is a familiar object? I know by past experience what it is used for and what it is called, and therefore, without hesitation, should recognize that they have a sufficient 'meaning.' But in the light of these facts it may not be immediately asserted that without knowledge of their actual utility a piece of paper or a pen would fail to be a detached whole within our vision. It may be that until we have that knowledge, this same physical objects, though we do not recognize them and cannot name them, still appear as individual units, separated wholes, within the field of vision." K?hler cites many other examples as evidence. In short, in K?hler's view, phenomenal experiences are wholes, units, not sense elements.

Wertheimer argues that for a long time European science has been characterized by the idea that the task of science consists in breaking complex things into elements. Now, "if science is consulted about living experiences and asked what it can say about them, it gives you a list of elements such as sensations, images, feelings, wills, actions, and laws relating to these elements. It says to you, please! Just use them to recompose your experience. This puts us in a difficult position in terms of concrete research and raises problems that traditional analysis cannot solve." It is clear that this criticism is aimed not only at sensationism but also at associationism.

Wertheimer ridiculed these doctrines, as mosaicism or bandaging. Vonte believed that the mind has the unity of consciousness that actively synthesizes the elements into a whole, but in Wertheimer's view, this unity of consciousness doctrine still allows the sensory elements to occupy an important place.

Gestalt, on the other hand, "is not the sum of the contents of pre-existing fragments combined by subjective means, or a subjectively arbitrary structure. They are not simply the blind addition of essentially disorganized and intractable elemental 'shapes', nor are they merely forms attached to already existing material. On the contrary, it is the whole that is to be studied here, the complete course with its special inner laws, and it is the structure with its specific holistic principles that is under consideration." This is considered to be the central claim of Gestalt psychology.

One basic principle of Gestalt psychology is organization, and the organizing principles begin with graphics and context. Within a field of view, some images are more prominent and distinctive, constituting the graphic; some images play a role in supporting the graphic, constituting the background, such as the clouds and the moon, or a little bit of red among the green bushes.

In a perceptual field or perceptual field, neighboring units are grouped together with units of similar size, shape, or color. On the contrary, the distance is large or the size, shape and color of the units are different, they are separated, if the subjective if hard to pull them together, it is difficult to create a stable combination. The same phenomenon is experienced in the sense of hearing. The sound of the clock "the ta" composed of natural rhythms, changed to "ta's" although temporarily possible, but soon reverted to "the ta".

In order to explain the phenomenon of seeming motion, Wertheimer has proposed the field theory of the interaction of brain processes, that there is a center in the brain stimulated, there will be a certain size of the neural wave propagation out of the water like throwing a stone in the water when the ripples caused by the same. If point a and a neighboring point b are stimulated one after another, a short circuit between a and b is created. If the ripple from point a reaches its peak and a similar circle of excitation arrives from point b, the direction of the neural course is determined by the fact that a arrives first. the closer the points a and b are, the more favorable the conditions are for the production of a seemingly dynamic course, which is a vast and special whole.

Gestalt psychology uses this field theory to explain the combination of perceptual units. Poling says, "We have seen that Gestalt psychology's emphasis on the whole led its disciples to apply field theory. If the material within the field takes shape due to the field forces acting on each other or due to its action being analogous to that of a magnetic or electric field, then the empirical items constituting the figure of the combination can sometimes be understood."

Gestalt psychology also used this field theory to study learning. K?hler worked on experiments on chimpanzee learning when he was forced to be stranded on the island of Tenerife during the First World War. He gave chimpanzees a variety of different learning situations and observed how they solved problems to obtain a target object, a banana. The stress of such situations is obvious. The animal has to walk towards the object, and a barrier is placed between the animal and the object by the experimenter. The animal must observe the entire situation, comprehend the relationship between the object and the obstacle, and then overcome the obstacle, solve the problem, and obtain the food.

This kind of learning is called epiphanic learning and is different from Thorndike's trial-and-error learning. Trial and error learning obstacles can not be observed by animals, so they have to blindly try, try and error, error and try again, and finally get lucky to succeed. Epiphanic learning, on the other hand, is when an animal comprehends the relationship of a situation, or uses a cane to pull a banana into its hand, or overlaps a box and leaps onto it to obtain a banana hanging high under the roof, or pushes the object of its purpose in the opposite direction to achieve its purpose in a roundabout way.

In short, animals in epiphanic learning situations are able to reorganize the entire learning field perceptually with their own intelligence. What was once a chimpanzee's walking stick as a toy can now become a tool for pulling an object (a banana).

"This new chapter in psychology describes the organization of experiences as perceptible objects, and the structure of these objects as larger systems, without any relation to 'sensations' or their 'properties'", says Pauling. occurring in any way." This summary of Gestalt psychology by Pollin should be considered quite accurate.

Other Subdisciplines of Psychology

Overview of Psychology, Comparative Psychology, Curative Psychology, Dynamical Psychology, Constructive Psychology, Functional Psychology, Theoretical Psychology, General Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Behaviorist Psychology, Intentional Psychology, Psychostatistics, Developmental Psychology, Psychology of Lifelong Development, Psychology of the Child, Psychology of Youth, Psychology of Adults, Psychology of Aging, Gestalt Psychology (Completion Psychology), Industrial Psychology, Managerial Psychology, Labor Psychology, Engineering Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Consumer Psychology, Medical Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Neuropsychology, Physiological Psychology, Counseling Psychology, Health Psychology, Physiological Psychology and Medicine, Educational Psychology, Social Psychology, Applied Social Psychology, Mathematical Psychology, Topological Psychology Sports Psychology, Music Psychology, Psycholinguistics, Psychology of Religion, Legal Psychology, Environmental Psychology, Ethnopsychology, Group Psychology, Aesthetic Psychology, Literary Psychology, Experimental Psychology, Mindfulness