![]() ![]() In comparison to von Ehrenfels and others who had used the term "gestalt" earlier in various ways, Wertheimer's unique contribution was to insist that the "gestalt" is perceptually primary. Wertheimer's publication of these results in 1912 marks the beginning of Gestalt psychology. He noted that this was a perception of motion absent any moving object. Through a series of experiments, Wertheimer discovered that a person observing a pair of alternating bars of light can, under the right conditions, experience the illusion of movement between one location and the other. She was a student at Frankfurt Academy for Social Sciences, who interacted deeply with Wertheimer and Köhler. īy 1914, the first published references to Gestalt theory could be found in a footnote of Gabriele von Wartensleben's application of Gestalt theory to personality. Both von Ehrenfels and Edmund Husserl seem to have been inspired by Mach's work Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen (Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations, 1886), in formulating their very similar concepts of gestalt and figural moment, respectively. The idea of a Gestalt-qualität has roots in theories by David Hume, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Immanuel Kant, David Hartley, and Ernst Mach. He called it Gestalt-qualität or "form-quality." It is this Gestalt-qualität that, according to von Ehrenfels, allows a tune to be transposed to a new key, using completely different notes, while still retaining its identity. He claimed that, in addition to the sensory elements of the perception, there is something additional that is an element in its own right, despite in some sense being derived from the organization of the component sensory elements. Von Ehrenfels observed that a perceptual experience, such as perceiving a melody or a shape, is more than the sum of its sensory components. Von Ehrenfels introduced the concept of Gestalt to philosophy and psychology in 1890, before the advent of Gestalt psychology as such. Wertheimer had been a student of Austrian philosopher, Christian von Ehrenfels, a member of the School of Brentano. Gestalt theories of perception are based on human nature being inclined to understand objects as an entire structure rather than the sum of its parts. ![]() : 13 They argued that the psychological "whole" has priority and that the "parts" are defined by the structure of the whole, rather than the other way round. ![]() : 13 Instead, they viewed psychological phenomena as organized, structured wholes. In contrast, the Gestalt psychologists believed that breaking psychological phenomena down into smaller parts would not lead to understanding psychology. The Gestaltists took issue with the widespread atomistic view that the aim of psychology should be to break consciousness down into putative basic elements. Together, these three theories give rise to the view that the mind constructs all perceptions and abstract thoughts strictly from lower-level sensations, which are related solely by being associated closely in space and time.
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