Gestalt Psychology Reflection

April Cage
Professor Katrina Ramos
3/16/15

INTRODUCTION

Gestalt psychology means unified whole. The three main founders who established the school of gestalt psychology were Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka as well as Wolfgang Kohler. The foundations of the Gestalt psychology are perception, memory and learning. Some of the principles of Gestalt psychology are isomorphism, productive thinking as well as reproductive thinking. It refers to theories of visual perception developed by German psychologists in the
1920s. Instead of approaching psychology as atoms or elements according to Wundt’s theory,
Gestalt psychology on the other hand, focuses on human experiencing psychological events as a whole. Reflection

Max Wertheimer used to study law but his interest soon shifted to philosophy and psychology.
He developed a keen interest on perception after observing how the flashing of lights at train station created an illusion of movement. He was at the University of Frankfurt where he worked with Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler and the three of them established a school of thought known as Gestalt Psychology. He pursued perceptual ideas through his studies with chimpanzees as director of the Canary Island Anthropoid Station in 1913. He became an American citizen and finally became the president of the American Psychological Association in 1959. Kohler contributed substantial literature work to the field of psychology. He wrote and lectured extensively on his animal research and on the understanding of human perception. Isomorphism means similar shapes. Isomorphism suggests that there is a clear pattern in the gestalt patterning of stimuli and of the activity in the brain while a person actually perceives the stimuli. The isomorphism discussed in gestalt theory is mainly functional isomorphism.
Behavior of a system as if it was physically similar in shape. It can only be assumed as the exact geometrical configuration of the brain but cannot be observed phenomenologicaly. (Lehar,
2003)
Productive thinking will lead to an understanding of the relationships between the objects in a problem which will in turn lead to an abstract thought process which can be applied to future problems. Productive thinking is used when there is no obvious answer to the problem. It basically requires the individual to think out of the box to get to the answer. Gestalt theory also distinguishes between productive and reproductive thinking in problem solving. Productive thinking involves producing a new orgainziation of a problem's elements, as in the insight solutions of Koehler's chimpanzees. Reproductive thinking applies past solutions to new problems. For example, having once learned to "assemble" sticks to form a rake, a caged chimpanzee might next reproduce this strategy by stacking boxes in a cage to reach a goal, when each box by itself is too short to do the job.

Conclusion

One of the contributions of Gestalt psychology is Gestalt therapy. Gestalt therapy focuses raising an individual’s needs, senses, feelings as well as boundaries. It contributes to the individual well-being and self-respect. It emphasizes strongly on contact, connection and respectful meetings. According to Lewin’s theory, an individual is actually a part of society and there cannot be an isolation of an individual as Gestalt has always been focusing on the whole rather than individuals. However, in the context of human beings, every one of us are formed by atoms with specific individual characteristic but when put in a larger structure, humans are dependant of each another. This is called, paradigm of individualism.

Gestalt psychology has impacted the field of psychology to a huge extent mainly in terms of

perception, memory and learning. Principles of Gestalt psychology like isomorphism, productive

thinking and re productive thinking had proven to be the few best psychological theories that

have been implemented to date. Since gestalt have progressed so much till date, gestalt therapy

have been established and it aimed in helping individual understand their internal self in order

for them to understand their actions, reactions as well as behaviors.

REFERENCES

Lehar S. (2003) The World In Your Head: A Gestalt View of the Mechanism of Conscious Experience. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc.

A History of Modern Psychology, Tenth Edition, Schultz/Schultz