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"The basic thesis
of gestalt theory might be formulated thus:
there are contexts in which what is happening in the whole cannot
be deduced from the characteristics of the separate pieces, but
conversely; what happens to a part of the whole is, in clearcut
cases, determined by the laws of the inner structure of its whole."
Max Wertheimer, Gestalt
theory.
Social Research, 11
(translation of lecture at the Kant Society, Berlin, 1924).
For full text click here.
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"General validity
of the law and concreteness of the individual case are not antitheses
... reference to the totality of the concrete whole situation
must take the place of reference to the largest possible historical
collection of frequent repetitions.
This means
methodologically that the importance of a case, and its validity
as proof, cannot be evaluated by the frequency of its occurence.
Finally, it means for psychology, as it did for physics, a transition
from an abstract classificatory procedure to an essentially concrete
constructive method."
Kurt Lewin, The Conflict
between Aristotelian and Galileian Modes of Thought in Contemporary
Psychology.
Jour. Gen. Psychol., 1931, 5.
Cited from: K. LEWIN, A Dynamic Theory of Personality, McGraw-Hill,
New York and London 1935, p. 42
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"Science is
rooted in the will to truth. With the will to truth it stands
or falls. Lower the standard even slightly and science becomes
diseased at the core. Not only science, but man.
The will to truth, pure and unadulterated, is among the essential
conditions of his existence; if the standard is compromised he
easily becomes a kind of tragic caricature of himself."
Max Wertheimer, On Truth.
Social Research, Vol. 1, No
2, May, 1934.
Cited from: M. HENLE (ed.), Documents of Gestalt Psychology, Univ.
of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1961, p. 19
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"In
talking to younger psychologists, one finds that many of them
seem to believe that perception is something at the surface of
the mind, a kind of borderline problem, and that preoccupation
with it is obsolete. They look with disdain at every psychological
problem that does not at least deal with personality, motivation,
or social intercourse. But when discussing problems in which simple
facts of stimulus and reaction play a role, as for example in
behavior therapy, they prove that they would have done well to
occupy themselves a little more with the fundamentals of perception.
...
Psychologists of the younger generation tend to forget that, taken
strictly, all social interaction is primarily interaction between
percepts, interaction which only by cybernetic mechanisms is transferred
to the participating organisms and copied by them, so that the
interaction of the organisms is but a mediating correlate of what
happens in the phenomenal worlds of the interacting subjects.
And if this is the case, the theory of perception plays a fundamental
role for every other field of psychology."
Wolfgang Metzger: Can
the Subject Create his World? Hyroshima Forum for Psychology
1, 1974, 3-14
included in: R.B. MacLeod & H.L. Pick, eds., Perception. Essays
in Honor of James J. Gibson.
Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1974, 57-71
For a full text version of this
article click here.
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"In
fact, the concept 'Gestalt' may be applied far beyond the limits
of sensory experience. According to the most general functional
definition of the term, the processes of learning, of recall,
of striving, of emotional attitude, of thinking, acting, and so
forth, may have to be included. This makes it still clearer that
'Gestalt' in the meaning of shape is no longer the center of the
Gestalt Psychologist's attention. For, to some of the facts in
which he is interested the term 'Gestalt' in the meaning of shape
does not apply at all."
Wolfgang Köhler: Gestalt
Psychology. An Introduction to New Concepts in Modern Psychology.
New York: Liveright, 1947; pp. 178f.
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"The
nature of mental development ... is not the bringing together
of separate elements, but the arousal and perfection of
more and more complicated configurations in which both the
phenomena of consciousness and the functions of the organism
go hand in hand."
Kurt Koffka: Growth
of the Mind. An Introduction to Child Psychology.
New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1924. New edition: New Brunswick
and London: Transaction Books, 1980; pp. 356.
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"...
the tendency toward the good Gestalt finds its explanation
as an organismic phenomenon. The explanation lies in the
tendency toward preferred behavior, which is the essential
prerequisite for the existence of a definite organism. It
is a special expression of the general tendency to realize
optimal performances with a minimum expenditure of energy
as measured in terms of the whole. The operation of this
tendency includes the so-called 'prägnanz', the closure
phenomenon, and many other characteristics of Gestalt. In
fact, they are only intelligible from this tendency."
Kurt Goldstein: The
Organism. A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological
Data in Man.
New edition with a forword by Oliver Sacks: New York:
Zone Books, 1995; pp. 292.
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"...
for Gestalt psychologists, ..., there is an original sensory
organization on which are based all developments of secondary
organization produced by learning or by practical intelligence.
Because of this conception of an original organization,
we have often been accused of a Kantian apriorism. Words
are truly the most dangerous things in the world. 'Original
organization!" Does this mean preestablished units
or organizations in man's nature, for example in his brain?
Not at all!"
Wolfgang Köhler:
Human Perception. (La perception humaine, 1930). In:
The Selected Papers of Wolfgang Köhler.
Edited by Mara Henle. New York: Liveright, 1971; p.
160.
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"Intentional
action is not the prototype of will-action. It occurs in
all forms of transition, from controlled action to uncontrolled,
drive-like, field-action. ... Accordingly, the majority
of controlled (will) actions are not preceded by an act
of intending. Intentional actions are relatively rare. They
are prepared actions, where the act of intending, which
is as a rule controlled, prepares an uncontrolled field-action."
Kurt Lewin: Intention,
Will, and Need .
German original published in Psychologische Forschung,
1926, 7, 330-385. Here cited from the English translation
(by D. Rapaport) in M. Gold (ed.), The Complete Social
Scientist. A Kurt Lewin Reader, p. 113.
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"Gestalt
psychologists hold that expressive behavior reveals its
meaning directly in perception. The approach is based on
the principle of isomorphism, according to which processes
which take place in different media may be nevertheless
similar in their structural organization. Applied to body
and mind, this means that if the forces which determine
bodily behavior are structurally similar to those which
characterize the corresponding mental states, it may become
understandable why psychical meaning can be read off directly
from a person's appearance and conduct."
Rudolf Arnheim: The Gestalt
Theory of Expression. Psychological Review, 56,
No 3, May 1949. Here cited from the reprint in: Mary Henle
(ed.), Documents of Gestalt Psychology, Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1961, p. 308.
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"What exactly
happens in the brain when certain psychological events take
place? Even if we knew in detail what areas of the tissue
are involved in particular achievements, we would still
not be able to answer that question. ...
I do not believe that this part of our task can be entirely
left to the neurophysiologists. For, much as I admire their
actual achivements, we disagree on one major issue. At the
present time, no evidence as to the nature of brain function
can compare with our own, that is, the psychologists' evidence,
and most of the physiologists quitely ignore. They obviously
do so in the conviction that the main principles of peripheral
nervous function are also those of central function. Hence,
since they know the former processes extremely well, they
do not seem to expect that, when studying the brain, they
might sooner or later need our help.
But the most important process of the peripheral nervous
system is the nerve impulse. If brain function, too, consisted
mainly of such impulses, then hosts of psychological facts
could never be understood in physiological terms."
Wolfgang Köhler:
The Present Situation in Brain Physiology. American
Psychologist, 13, No 4, April 1958. Here cited from
the reprint in: Mary Henle (ed.), Documents of Gestalt Psychology,
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1961, p. 98.
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"Modern
psychology has often drawn, I suspect, a caricature rather
than a portrait of man. As a result it has introduced a
grave gap between itself and the knowledge of men that observation
gives us and from which investigation must start. Those
who are not psychologists ... speak of such strange things
as fair play, justice and unjustice, even of dignity and
the need for freedom. ... Yet not only are these ideas excluded
from scientific discussion; the conceptual schemes with
which psychology works today hardly leave room for them.
"
Solomon E. Asch: Social
Psychology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1952,
p. 24.
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"Every
determinate body has some kind of Gestalt. He who compares
the Gestalt of a clod of earth or of a heap of stones with
the Gestalten of say a swallow will however at once have
to admit that the tulip, or the swallow, has realized the
particular genus Gestalt to a
greater degree than have the clod or the heap.
... being of higher as opposed to lower Gestalt ... can
be determined very well by distinguishing marks. Higher
Gestalten are those in which the product of the unity of
the whole and the multiciplity of the parts is greater."
Christian von Ehrenfels:
On Gestalt Qualities (1932). In: Barry Smith
(ed.), Foundations of Gestalt Theory. Philosophia Verlag
München Wien, 1988, p.123.
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" 'Pieces'
almost always appear 'as parts' in whole processes. ...
To sever a 'part' from the organized whole in which it occurs
- whether it itself be a subsidiary whole or an 'element'
- is a very real process usually involving alterations in
that 'part'. Modifications of a part frequently involve
changes elsewhere in the whole itself. Nor is the nature
of these alterations arbitrary, for they too are determinded
by whole-conditions."
Max Wertheimer: The
general theoretical situation (1922). In: W. D.
Ellis (ed.), A source book of Gestalt psychology. New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1938, p.14.
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"Fortunately
I experienced Max Wertheimer's teaching in Berlin and collaborated
for over a decade with Wolfgang Köhler. I need not
emphasize my debts to these outstanding personalities. The
fundamental ideas of Gestalt theory are the foundation of
all our investigations in the field of the will, of affection,
and of the personality."
Kurt Lewin: A dynamic
theory of personality. Selected papers (1935).
New York & London: McGraw-Hill, p.240.
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"In psychology
... we have wholes which, instead of being the sum of parts
existing independently, give their parts specific functions
or properties that can only be defined in relation to the
whole in question."
Wolfgang Köhler:
Human Perception. (La perception humaine, 1930). In:
The Selected Papers of Wolfgang Köhler.
Edited by Mara Henle. New York: Liveright, 1971; p.
145.
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"Relatively
segregated units which stand apart in the visual field have
been called Gestalten. The characters of local events depend
upon their place in the Gestalt in which they occur, but
this is also true of the segregation of Gestalten themselves
as regards the entire visual field."
Wolfgang Köhler:
Some Gestalt Problems.
In: W. D. Ellis (ed.), A source book of Gestalt psychology.
New York: Harcourt Brace, 1938, p.59.
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"A man
is not only a part of his field, he is also one among other
men. When a group of people work together it rarely occurs,
and then only under very special conditions, that they constitute
a mere sum of independent Egos. Instead the common enterprise
often becomes their mutual concern and each works as a meaningfully
functioning part of the whole."
Max Wertheimer, Gestalt
theory.
Social Research, 11
(translation of lecture at the Kant Society, Berlin, 1924).
For full text click here.
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"If the
individual were intrinsically incapable of such attitudes
as fear, respect, aversion, love, an joy, of such functions
as perception, learning, and memory, no influences of the
group, however strong, could ever produce in him these mental
events."
Wolfgang Köhler,
Psychological Remarks on Some Questions of Anthropology.
American Journal of Psychology,
50 (Golden Jubilee Volume), 1937. Here cited from: Mary
Henle (ed.), Documents of Gestalt Psychology, Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961, p.
221.
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"Thinking
consists in envisaging, realizing structural features and
structural requirements; proceeding in accordance with,
and determined by, these requirements; thereby changing
the situation in the direction of structural improvements,
which involves..."
Max Wertheimer, Productive
Thinking.
Here cited from: Enlarged
Edition, edited by Michael Wertheimer, The University of
Chicago Press, 1989, p. 235.
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"In the
organism (and in the nervous system) there are obviously
many constraints; but within the limits set by these constraints,
invariant physical processes produce order without help
of mechanical arrangements or of a creative Mind. We accept
such dynamic equilibria in physics, why not also in the
nervous system, which is itself a physical system?"
Mary Henle, Letter
to B. F. Skinner, September 7, 1975.
1879 and All That. Essays
in the Theory and History of Psychology,
Columbia University Press, New York 1986, p. 170.
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"Given
a situation,
a system with a Leerstelle [a gap], whether a given completion
(Lueckenfuellung) does justice to the structure, is the
'right' one, is often determined by the structure of the
system, the situation. There are requirements, structurally
determined; there are possible in pure cases unambiguous
decisions as to which completion does justice to the situation,
which does not, which violates the requirements and the
situation."
Max Wertheimer, Some
Problems in the Theory of Ethics.
In: Mary Henle (ed.), Documents
of Gestalt Psychology, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 1961, p. 36.
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"Truth
and falsity, indeed understanding, is not necessarily something
purely intellectual,
remote from feelings and attitudes. ... It is in the total
conduct of men rather than in their statements that truth
or falsehood lives, more in what a man does, in his real
reaction to other men and to things, in his will to do them
justice, to live at one with them. Here lies the inner connection
between truth and justice. In the realm of behavior and
action, the problem recurs as to the difference between
piece and part."
Max Wertheimer, On
Truth.
In: Mary Henle (ed.), Documents
of Gestalt Psychology, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 1961, p. 28.
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"Only a
few psychologists are still convinced that the main subject
matter of psychology is our direct experience. ... Most
of us realize that, regarded as events, the facts and sequences
of our direct experience do not, taken by themselves, represent
complete wholes; they are, on the contrary, merely parts
of larger functional contexts. ... I regard it as a necessity
of psychological method that we make the attempt to develop
a theory of 'the larger physiological context,' upon which
all our experiences depend, on the basis of the fundamental
principles of physics."
Wolfgang Köhler,
The New Psychology and Physics.
In: Mary Henle (ed.), The Selected
Papers of Wolfgang Köhler, New York: Liveright,
1971, p. 237 and 239.
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"Whereas
the machine theory of the working of the nervous system
makes local processes in it indifferent to each other, from
the dynamic point of view, with its admission of, and emphasis
on, interaction, the outcome of a self-distribution will
depend upon the actual properties of local events in the
working of the nervous system. This is the case in all examples
of physical self-distribution; the ways of interaction are
always determined by the properties of interacting substances
or processes in their relation to each other."
Wolfgang Köhler,
The New Psychology and Physics.
In: Mary Henle (ed.), The
Selected Papers of Wolfgang Köhler, New York: Liveright,
1971, p. 243.
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"The invitations
inherent in a situation are rarely strict comands impelling
the perceiver to obey. Lewin points to the varying degrees
of freedom determined by the conditions of a situation.
The freedom of choice depends in part on the strength of
the local conditions but also on the range of a person's
knowledge of what has happened before and what might follow.
Interaction with the presently given takes place in the
context of what we know about the past and the future."
Rudolf Arnheim, Learning
by What is Around.
In: Rudolf Arnheim, The
Split and the Structure, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London,
1996, p. 16.
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"... events
in organisms cannot be properly understood unless we realize
that organisms are open systems, that is, systems
which absorb energy from the outside. Under these conditions,
the direction of events in living systems need not be the
same as it is in closed systems."
Wolfgang Köhler,
The New Psychology and Physics.
In: Mary Henle (ed.), The
Selected Papers of Wolfgang Köhler, New York: Liveright,
1971, p. 243.
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"The
principle [of contemporaneity] has been stressed by the
field theorists from the beginning. It has been frequently
misunderstood and interpreted to mean that field theorists
are not interested in historical problems or in the effect
of previous experience. Nothing can be more mistaken. In
fact, field theorists are most interested in development
and historical problems and have certainly done their share
to enlarge the temporal scope of the psychological experiment
from that of the classic reaction time experiment, which
last only a few seconds, to experimental situations, which
contain a systematically created history throughout hours
or weeks."
Kurt Lewin, Field Theory
in Social Science. Selected Theoretical Papers. D. Cartwright
(ed.), New York: Harper, 1951, pp. 45-46.
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"Mozart's
music may appear serene and cheerful to a modern listener,
who perceives it in the temporal context of twentieth-century
music, whereas it conveyed the expression of violent passion
and desperate suffering to his contemporaries against the
background of the music they knew. Such examples do not
demonstrate that there is no intrinsic connection between
perceptual patterns and the expression they convey but simply
that experiences must not be evaluated in isolation from
their spatial and temporal whole-context."
Rudolf Arnheim, The
Gestalt Theory of Expression.
First published in Psychological
Review, 56, No 3 (1949). Reprinted in: Mary Henle (ed.,
1961): Documents of Gestalt Psychology. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 301-323.
Citation from page 316f.
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"The
self is more than one other object in the psychological
field. It has the unique property of being both the subject
and object of experience; it is for us both the source and
end of experience."
Solomon E. Asch: Social
Psychology (from chapter 10: The Ego).
Solomon E. Asch (1952): Social
Psychology. Eaglewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
Citation from page 287.
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"Insight
into the lawfulness of affect can only be gained by giving
up the attempt to use Aristotelian concepts to discover
statistical regularities within the course of events itself.
Rather, the progress of events depends on the changes in
the total situation created by each successive event, and
on the consequences of such changes. Events can be understood
and conceptually deduced only by means of the dynamic properties
of the inner situation of a person, on the one hand, and
of the forces of the environment surrounding the events
on the other."
Tamara Dembo, The
Dynamics of Anger.
Original article "Der
Ärger als dynamisches Problem" was published in
Psychologische Forschung 15 (1931), 1-144. Here cited
from the translation (by Dr. Hedda Korsch) in: Joseph de
Rivera (ed., 1976), Field Theory as Human Science - Contributions
of Lewin's Berlin Group, New York: Gardner Press, pp.
324-422. Citation from page 334.
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"The heliotropism
of sunflowers should make psychologists see what Wolfgang
Köhler meant when he refused to let behavior be parceled
out between inherited and acquired components. No inherited
mechanism, transmitted by the genes, makes the flower turn
to the sun, nor has anybody taught it to do so. Rather,
an inherent tendency toward a balanced distribution of energy
moves the flower's head into the one position that guarantees
the symmetry of solar justice to all its parts."
Rudolf Arnheim, Parables
of Sunlight.
Berkeley, Los Angeles, London:
University of California Press, 1989. Citation from page
25.
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"By a Gestalt
quality we understand a positive content of presentation
bound up in consciousness with the presence of complexes
of mutually separable (i.e. independently presentable) elements.
That complex of presentations which is necessary for the
existence of a given Gestalt quality we call the foundation
of that quality."
Christian von Ehrenfels,
On 'Gestalt Qualities' (1890).
Cited from the English translation
(by Barry Smith) of the German Original "Über
'Gestaltqualitäten'", Vierteljahresschrift
für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 14, 1890, 249-492.
This English version ("On 'Gestalt Qualities'")
is published in Barry Smith (Ed., 1988), Foundations
of Gestalt Theory, München-Wien: Philosophia, pp.
82-117. Citation from page 93 of this publication.
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"Normal
and abnormal behaviour follow the same laws, both are reactions
of physical systems to sets of conditions that upset their
existing states; different systems will react differently,
and that not because a locus, responsible for certain part-functions,
has been destroyed, but because, through destruction of
tissue in one place the systematic characteristics of the
whole system have been altered."
Kurt Koffka, Psychology
for Neurologists.
Cited from Molly Harrower:
Kurt Koffka - an unwitting self-protrait, Gainesville:
University of Florida Books, p. 202.
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"A theory
of perception must be a field theory. By this we
mean that the neural functions and processes with which
the perceptual facts are associated in each case are located
in a continuous medium; and that the events in one part
of this medium influence the events in other regions in
a way that depends directly on the properties of both in
their relation to each other."
Wolfgang Köhler,
Dynamics in Psychology.
New York: Liveright (1940), p. 55.
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"... group
action is real, having laws that are often not reducible
to those of its components taken singly. There are groups
that are more than aggregations or collections of independent
events. The particular events we call things or bodies are
the product of internal group relations. In the course of
interaction new relations and properties arise, which are
not identical with the properties of their constituents."
Solomon E. Asch: Social
Psychology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1952,
p. 263.
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"... there
are situations in which, even for an adult, the ego may
serve as the center of the perceptual coordinate system
and others in which perception tends to be determined more
by external forces than by the ego. Perhaps the issue whether
or not the child is more egocentric than the adult, whether
or not the extent of egocentrism is a function of development,
ought to be replaced by the problem of determining the conditions
under which a given organism behaves as if the ego is at
the center of his coordinate system and the conditions under
which this is not the case"
Abraham S. Luchins &
Edith H. Luchins: Rigidity of Behavior. A Variational
Approach to the Effect of Einstellung. Eugene, Oregon:
University of Oregon Books, 1959, p. 42.
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"There
are still psychologists who, in a basic misunderstanding,
think that gestalt theory tends to underestimate the role
of past experience. Gestalt theory tries to differentiate
between and-summative aggregates, on the one hand, and gestalten,
structures, on the other, both in sub-wholes and in the
total field, and to develop appropriate scientific tools
for investigating the latter. It opposes the dogmatic application
to all cases of what is adequate only for piecemeal aggregates.
The question is whether an approach in piecemeal terms,
through blind connections, is or is not adequate to interpret
actual thought processes and the role of the past experience
as well. Past experience has to be considered thoroughly,
but it is ambiguous in itself; so long as it is taken in
piecemeal, blind terms it is not the magic key to solve
all problems."
Max Wertheimer: Productive
Thinking. Enlarged Edition 1959, New York: Harper,
p. 65.
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"... we
have to remember that sometimes percepts tell us more about
facts than do the events which mediate between these facts
and the percepts. Similarily, perceived behavior may tell
us more about the mental processes of others than could
be gathered from a study of their physical behavior."
Wolfgang Köhler:
Gestalt Psychology. An Introduction to New Concepts in
Modern Psychology.
New York (1947): Liveright, p. 222. (page number given from
1992 edition)
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The word
"Gestalt" carries...
"... in
its connotation the chaos-kosmos alternative; to say that
a process, or the product of a process is a Gestalt means
that it cannot be explained by mere chaos, the mere combination
of essentially unconnected causes."
Kurt Koffka: Principles
of Gestalt Psychology. New York: Harcourt Brace
1935, p. 683.
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"... it
seems to be the natural fate of Gestalt Psychology to become
Gestalt Biology."
Wolfgang Köhler:
Gestalt Psychology. An Introduction to New Concepts in
Modern Psychology.
New York (1947): Liveright, p. 359. (page number given from
1992 edition)
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"We may
seek the outer friend - or many outer friends - in place
of the inner friend who is not sufficiently developed. Of
course outer friends are essential, but they cannot replace
the inner friend. In fact, without some development of the
inner friend, it seems that we cannot relate to the outer
one. If we do not like ourselves enough, we will not believe
that the other likes us; if we do not accept ourselves enough,
we will not let the other accept us."
Mary Henle: Some
Aspects of the Phenomenology of the Personality.
Psychologische Beiträge, VI (3-4), 1962, 395-404
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English
