Watson, Sr., R.I. (1978). The great psychologists. (4th
edition). New York: J.B. Lippincott Co.
CHAPTER 19
WERTHEIMER
GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY
In 1910 a psychologist, Max Wertheimer by name, was traveling
by train from Vienna to the Rhineland on his vacation.' During
this journey an idea came to him for a research study which was
to found Gestalt psychology. Gone were his plans for a vacation.
At Frankfurt, the next major stop, he left the train, bought a
toy stroboscope, and took it to his hotel room to verify, in a
preliminary way, the "insight" that had just come to
him. The stroboscope, it should be explained, is a device allowing
successive still pictures to be exposed at a constant rate of
speed so that movement is perceived. Before the advent of motion
pictures, which itself is a later development of the same principle,
stroboscopes were relatively common as children's toys. However,
Wertheimer did not have to use the stroboscope in his formal experiment;
the University of Frankfurt placed at his disposal a tachistoscope.
This is a device for regulating the length of time a visual stimulus,
such as a nonsense syllable, or figure drawing, is exposed. It
may also be used to present successive stimuli, separated by short,
precisely regulated intervals of time.
What was this epoch making experiment? It was a problem in the
perception of apparent motion, that is, the perception of movement
when actually no movement had taken place .2 Two lines were exposed
in two different places on the face of the tachistoscope. Each
exposure lasted a very short time and was separated from the next
exposure by varying lengths of time. If there was too long a time
between the exposures, the subject would see the lines successively.
If the time was too short, he would see the lines simultaneously.
However, if the time interval between the exposures was at an
optimal length, the subject saw, not two lines successively or
simultaneously, but one line move from one place to another. The
experience is that of a single line which visibly moved, despite
the fact that actually there are two successively exposed stationary
lines separated by an interval of time. Variations, such as exposing
a vertical line followed by a horizontal line, for which the observer
saw a line swinging around through ninety degrees, gave the same
result-an impression of motion of lines. This apparent movement
Wertheimer called phi phenomenon. Sometimes an observer reported
movement alone, with no line being seen to move. Movement without
the lines being experienced at all, he called "pure phi."
Although the name was new, the phenomenon itself had been known
for many years. This seemingly trivial verification of what was
known was to launch another new movement in psychology. It is
the interpretation extending far beyond its ostensible subject,
not the results, as such, that is important.
Wundt's view of psychology will serve as an illustration of what
Wertheimer and others were attempting to combat through this and
similar studies. To Wundt, there were various dimension available
for compounding-quality, intensity, pleasantness-unpleasantness,
tension-relaxation, and excitementdepression. When these are compounded
by association, ideas and perceptions are formed. That these compounds
had characteristics as a whole, not readily explained by the parts,
Wundt had been aware. Somewhat lamely, Wundt's solution depended
upon creative synthesis in the spirit of John Stuart Mill's mental
chemistry. Wertheimer's study arose from dissatisfaction with
this elementaristic, associationistic position of Wundt and others,
which had left many characteristics of percepts unexplained by
their supposedly ultimate components.
ANTECEDENTS OF GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY
Some of the perplexities of configuration had already been elucidated
and explanations had been attempted before Wertheimer appeared
in Frankfurt. Ernst Mach in his book, The Analysis of Sensations,3
originally published in 1886, showed that changes in spatial orientation,
such as first viewing a square from one of its sides and then
shifting to a corner or first learning a series of sounds at one
tempo and then hearing them at a faster or slower tempo did not
bring about in either instance a radical change in the experience
of the over-all configuration. Despite wide variation in viewing
conditions, a table remains a table, no matter how viewed. Look
at a table from one corner with the edge of the table at eye level.
Although the retinal image is a complex quadrilateral, you see
a rectangle oriented obliquely in space. Mach went on to speak
of sensations of space-form and sensations of time-form, meaning
that these two forms were kinds of experience in themselves. The
circle may change size or color without changing its space-form
of circularity.
In Austria, Christian von Ehrenfels,4 about twenty years before
Wertheimer's study, had dealt with what he called Gestaltqualitdt
or form quality. He noted that in the visual field certain visual
character istics, such as roundness, angularity, and slenderness
are omitted when we deal with sensations. Their occurrence seems
to be due to something beyond single sensations. If individual
stimuli are changed in the same proportion, these particular characteristics
of slenderness, angularity, and roundness are still present as
before. Among other phenomena which he also considered was the
effect of transposing a melody. A melody made up of one series
of notes is still heard as the same melody when heard in a different
set of notes. A melody played in different keys is still recognizable
as the same. That aspect of perception given by the transposition
of melodies and proportionate changes in roundness, angularity,
and slenderness, von Ehrenfels called Gestaltqualitat or form
quality. These perceptions were based on something more than the
sum of the individual lines, something over and above the tones.
The form quality, however, was treated by von Ehrenfels as still
another element (although not a sensation) in a summative fashion,
so that, if there were nine notes and a Gestaltqualitat, there
were ten elements -nine sensory and one non-sensor y.5 A variant
explanatory principle that was also offered, spoke of "relations
between elements" as accounting for the phenomenon. Ehrenfels
and the Austrian School of Gestalt quality which developed at
Graz held that form qualities were constructed out of the sensory
data and, since the elements were the ultimate facts of consciousness,
continued an old tradtion, rather than began a new one.
Other relevant work by individuals outside the Gestalt tradition
was going on more or less simultaneously with that of Wertheimer.
Friedrich Schumann, met before as G. E. Muller's assistant and
collaborator in the invention of the memory drum, and who was
Wertheimer's host in Frankfurt, had already found in studies of
visual shape and size perception that analysis into sensory elements
was of no help in explaining the results.6 Edgar Rubin, a Danish
phenomenologist, had arrived at a distinction between the figure,
the substantial appearance of objects, and the ground, the general
homogeneous environment in which the object was placed. Perception,
he argued, is selective. Not all stimuli are perceived with the
same clarity and distinctness. Those perceived with greater clarity
form the figure, while the remainder give the ground. The house
against the sky, the word or picture on the white page, the recognized
face against the rest of the faces in the photograph, have this
relation of figure and ground. Nevertheless, these and other workers
were functioning within the confines of the usual psychology.
We are also prepared for the revolt against elementarism by our
knowledge of James. Independently, Wertheimer thought the view
of man, against which James also argued, was repellent and untrue.
James had held that elementarism fails to account for the simplest
facts of experience. For example, our field of vision is ordered
and extended. We see unitary objects of definite extension, form,
and size, not a bundle of sensations. But Wertheimer went beyond
James and the others in that he submitted these convictions to
experimental study of a crucial kind. From these experiments Wertheimer
was to see a new way of understanding these perplexing phenomena
and to integrate the results with a new way of looking at psychological
phenomena.
Gestalt psychology was influenced by the continuing phenomenological
trend .7 From the days of Goethe and Purkinje and their observations
of color in the early nineteenth century, a phenomenological strand
of development had continued to hover close to the main stream
of psychology, although not accepted by the dominant tradition.
Since phenomenology involved the study of immediate experience,
its conclusions were seen as following directly from the experience.
For example, in Hering's studies of color what he did essentially
was to demonstrate the presence of some color phenomena without
feeling the need, from his point of view, to go beyond this demonstration.
Many of the illustrations of Gestalt psychology will be found
to take this phenomenological form. However, the Gestalt psychologists
were sufficiently imbued with other trends to proceed to experiment
and measurement.
EARLY YEARS of MAX WERTHEIMER'
Max Wertheimer had been born in Prague in 1880 where his father
directed and taught in a commercial school. After attending a
local gymnasium, he studied law at the University for two and
a half years but then shifted to the study of philosophy while
still at Prague. Among others, he attended the lectures of von
Ehrenfels whose work had led to the theory of Gestaltqualitat.
He continued work at Berlin in philosophy and psychology, where
he studied under Schumann, mentioned earlier, and Carl Stumpf,
the friend of William James and a specialist in the psychology
of music. He then went on to Wurzburg where he received his degree
in 1904 summa cum laude under Kulpe, during the period the Wurzburg
School was carrying on the revolt, not against elementarism as
such but against the constraints Wundt would put upon the elements
with which psychology was concerned.
An early research interest, in keeping with Wertheimer's interest
in the law, had been in the association experiment as used for
the detection of guilty knowledge on which he had published in
19059 and in later years. The years 1904 to 1910, before his arrival
in Frankfurt, are not well documented, although some of his activities
in Prague, Vienna, and Berlin concerned psychological matters.
FRANKFURT, PHI PHENOMENON, KOHLER, AND KOFFKA
On arrival in Frankfurt in 1910, after trying out his hypothesis
with the toy stroboscope, Wertheimer sought out his old teacher
Schumann, who had just arrived at the University of Frankfurt.10
It was he who placed a tachistoscope at his disposal. His first
subject was Wolfgang Kohler (1887- ) and his second, Kurt Koffka
(1886-1941) . These two men were destined to be second only to
Wertheimer in their contributions to Gestalt psychology in the
years to come. Koffka and Kohler had taken their degrees at Berlin
in 1908 and 1909 respectively and were the new assistants in the
Psychological Institute at Frankfurt." They had also already
done some research in psychology, Kohler on hearing and Koffka
on imagery and thought. What first united these three was their
discontent with Wundtian elementarism. As good subjects should
be, Kohler and Koffka had been kept ignorant of the purpose of
the experiment until after its completion. Sometime in 1911 Wertheimer
called them in to explain the experiment.12 From then on their
lives and work are intricately interwoven.
Wertheimer's paper on the "Experimental Studies of the Perception
of Movement"13 appeared in 1912. This single study stimulated
over a hundred papers on apparent movement in the next thirty
years.14 By and large, Wertheimer's findings were substantiated.
Reverberations from his study were to extend into other psychological
fields, particulary memory, thinking, and action.
Several explanations of apparent movement were already current.15
The traditional view of discrete elements would have it that each
stimulus gives rise to its own sensation and, on the basis of
past experience, our perceptions of them are integrated. To be
more specific, Wundt attributed apparent movement to the kinesthetic
sensations produced by the movement of the eyes.16 Wundt's explanation
was neatly ruled out by Wertheimer's arranging the experimental
setting with suitable pairs of lines as to require two simultaneous
movements in opposite directions. Phi phenomenon still occurred.
Since the eyes could hardly move out in both directions at the
same time, Wundt's explanation fell to the ground.
THE NATURE OF PHI PHENOMENON AND GESTALT
Wertheimer argued that the apparent movement generated in his
experiment had no counterpart in the sensory elements. Local sensory
stimulation cannot be responsible for the actually perceived phenomenon.
It is this fact which he could not fit into existing theories
of perception. Hence a general reevaluation of the basic nature
of perception seemed necessary to him.
Whatever it was that Wertheimer explained to Kohler and Koffka
in 1911 about his experiment on phi phenomenon, it was not the
full blown Gestalt theory.17 That what was said seemed to them
to be a challenge to the established order, there is no doubt.
Wertheimer did know by then that the Gestaltqualitdt interpretation
was not sufficient, and said so in the paper, but a more complete
statement had to await later work. To explain Gestalt theory in
a preliminary way, there are two papers devoted to theoretical
statements which were published by Wertheimer in 1922 and 1925.18.
is
In the phi phenomenon, Wertheimer wrote, the subjects were perceiving
a whole, or Gestalt, not the isolated elements. Von Ehrenfels
and the members of the Graz School had been on the right track,
Wertheimer said, in raising an important problem; but, by depending
upon a summation principle, they had been wrong.20 What takes
place in each part depends upon the whole. This is true of all
perceptual experience. In our perception of objects there are
characteristics that cannot be attributed to a single sensation.
This Gestalt or whole is a "given" of perception, not
something unstructured. The Gestalt is, in itself, primary and
inherent in the process of sensory reception. With James Wertheimer
agreed that what the elementarists had found were the secondary
products of analysis. What was important was not the mosaic but
a dynamic field in which the parts are interacting through the
receptive process. Perception shows a totality, a whole, a configuration,
an articulated structure; and it is the task of psychology to
account for it, not by explaining it away but by exploring its
characteristics as a structure itself. Gestalt psychology restored
the "thing-language," as Brunswik21 phrased it many
years later, to its place in the psychology of immediate experience.
For psychology to advance, requires "a procedure `from above,'
not `from below upward"'22; understanding of whole properties
must precede consideration of the significance of the "parts:"
A Gestalt is primary to the parts, not merely its sum. It now
becomes relevant to quote Wertheimer's formal definition of Gestalt:
"There are wholes, the behavior of which is not determined
by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes
are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole."a3
Sometimes the wards "configuration," "structure,"
and "whole" are used as English translations for Gestalt,
but the untranslated term is preferable, since none of these words
capture its complete meaning. Two meanings of Gestalt in German
must be specified. On one hand, there is Gestalt as abject. A
Gestalt is an object which has shape, an entity in itself which
has form, as a chair or table. On the other hand, Gestalt is the
property of things as in squareness or triangularity. Gestalt,
then, is both the object and the form characteristics of that
object.
The emphasis upon wholes has sometimes led to a misunderstanding
about the Gestalt theorists' precise attitude toward parts in
the psychological field and toward the process of analysis. The
Gestalt position does not demand, for example, that the entire
visual field be organized into a single pattern. One has to do
no more than use his eyes to see it is not. There are aggregates
within this field that are Gestalten. The Gestalt psychologists
do use analysis; they object to analysis into sensational elements
which have no existence as bits of experience, but not to analysis
as such. If there is analysis into genuine parts, then this is
more than permissible; it is demanded.
Analysis is exemplified in the various laws of Gestalten. Each
law, in one sense, is a statement of analysis, as for example,
the distinction made between figure and ground. The parts, however,
are derived from their meaningfulness in the total context, not
from sensory elements. Attitudinal analysis is also possible.
An observer may, by adopting a particular attitude, select some
part of the Gestalt and suppress others. This happens in reversible
perspective, as when one sees a line drawing of an illusion capable
of being seen two ways, permitting one to switch from one view
to the other. This is a kind of analysis in which there is a change
in the organization of the field, so that the impression one receives
is different in one way of perceiving it from another.
GESTALT AS A PSYCHOLOGY OF PROTEST
There was to develop not only a Gestalt theory, but also a Gestalt
movement with these three men zealously propagandizing for the
Gestalt point of view, a task to which they dedicated much of
their efforts in the years to come. In furthering this aim, however,
Kohler and Koffka were much more ready than Wertheimer to systematize
their thinking and put it into print.
Coming into being in Germany at the same time as Behaviorism
was making its appearance in the United States, Gestalt psychology
was likewise a psychology of protest. Unlike the Behaviorists,
Gestalt psychologists did not question the existentiality of consciousness,
but rather they doubted the reality of the elements of which other
psychologists said consciousness was constituted. Wertheimer summarized
these mistaken beliefs in terms of the "bundle hypothesis"
and the "association hypothesis."24 Sensory elements
do not form a bundle and association does not serve as a means
of binding together, because there is not a summative relationship
as the psychologists whom they were attacking claimed. Gestalt
psychology was very much a revolution against the established
order in psychology. In its early years the exposing of the inadequacies
of the entrenched position in psychology was almost as important
to them as their positive contributions. They aspired to nothing
less than a complete revision of psychology, but from the figure
down, rather than from the ground up.
WERTHEIMER AND THE PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION
Wertheimer lectured at Frankfurt from 1912 on, where he was Dozent,
as he did later at Berlin, where he went in 1916.2 He became an
"Assistant Professor" in Berlin in 1922, and Professor
at Frankfurt in 1929 where he returned to take Schumann's old
chair. Relevant publications from Wertheimer were slow in coming.
During the war years Wertheimer collaborated on research in the
development of binaural listening devices for use in submarines
and harbor defense installations which were not particularly relevant
to Gestalt psychology.
The influence of Wertheimer on the thinking of other psychologists
was considerable although, as Newman 26 remarks, hard to evaluate.
It was primarily from his lectures and his inimitable conversations
that his students, including Kurt Lewin, learned about Gestalt
psychology. At Berlin and Frankfurt colleagues and students carried
on research theses on a variety of studies.
Much of what was contained in Wertheimer's lectures during these
years did not see print until after the war. This was the case
with a paper on creative thinking which appeared in 1920?' It
anticipated in same respects ( as did a paper on thinking appearing
as early as 1912 ) his major work in this field, which was not
to appear for more than twenty years.
In 1923, an important paper on perceptual grouping appeared,
and it requires detailed consideration.28 In this paper Wertheimer
attempted to show that a person perceives objects just as directly
as he saw motion in the study of the phi phenomenon, not as clusters
of sensations but as unified wholes.
The principles of organization of Gestalten that Wertheimer formulated
had specific reference to perception, i.e., having to do with
how Gestalten were organized. He preferred to use simple visual
phenomena, such as dots, lines, or figures made of a few lines
or simple auditory stimuli, individual musical notes, for example,
so as not to be charged with confusing the issue by inclusion
of common objects whose sheer meaningfulness would suggest organization.
He presented various principles, some of which follow. There is
the principle of proximity-parts close together are perceived
together, as in tap-tap, pause, tap-tap, pause, tap-tap. The two
taps together will be heard as belonging together rather than
the last tap before the pause being perceived as related to the
first tap after it. Things close together in time tend to be grouped
together. To use another and spatial illustration, dots relatively
close together are readily seen as a group. Second, there is a
principle of similarity. Imagine a soft tone represented thus
. while ! represents a loud tone. Then in . . . ! ! . . . ! !
. . . the three soft tones are heard together, as are the two
loud tones, and so on. With effort we can hear some other arrangement
as . ._. ! ! . . _. ! !. . . , but this cannot be long maintained.
It should be noted that this visual representation of auditory
stimuli functions in much the same fashion as the auditory stimulus
it is designed to symbolize. To use another visual illustration,
dots of the same shape or color are readily seen as a group, as
distinguished from those of another shape or color which will
form still another group.
Wertheimer was demonstrating that we respond not to isolated
stimuli, but to the nature of the setting in which they were found.
A considerable amount of work by others developing these and other
laws of form followed. By 1933 Helson29 was able to isolate 114
separate laws of Gestalten.
Certain illustrations in this later work will make more meaningful
this problem of the laws of organization of Gestalten. A principle
was borrowed from the research of Rubin, whose investigations
of figure and ground have already been cited. In the present context,
the differentiation into figure and ground became a law of Gestalt
organization.
Still another principle of organization is that of closure. Closure
is the tendency to complete a figure, no matter what the sensory
modality. Visual forms are, of course, included. For example,
if a figure is drawn with incomplete lines or small gaps (as are
many cartoons and sketches) the perceiver completes it, typically
disregarding, or not "seeing" its incompleteness. A
children's puzzle picture in which the task is to find hidden
faces, also illustrates closure. The obvious figures that the
artist has drawn completes some pattern, say a country scene with
trees and a brook, which we accept. The figure for which one is
to search is hidden, say a face, because lines making up the face
are incorporated into the country scene which is composed of figures
for which closure is easier to make. The same illustration supplies
another instance of closure. As one searches, there is tension,
a sense of incompleteness; when the face leaps into view, closure
has taken place. In the same vein a favorite conversational illustration
of Wertheimer, which he would demonstrate in a restaurant, involved
the waiter and the bill. Before being paid, when asked the amount
of the bill, the waiter would be able to state it promptly, since
the transaction had not been completed. Called over again a minute
after it was paid, he would not be able to remember the amount.
Before payment there was tension; payment made for closure. This
is the completion principle of closure .3° But there is another
aspect of closure that must be distinguished. This is the perceptual
principle of closure. Many superficial accounts of closure use
a circle made from short, dashed lines as the example, par excellence,
of completion closure. It is nothing of the kind; it is not seen
as an unbroken circle which completion closure calls for. It is
seen as a circle made of broken lines-a broken whole rather than
a series of unrelated stimulus points. It illustrates what is
called perceptual closure. Despite being broken, it still has
perceptually the appearance of a circle. Closure is essentially
a special instance of the most general of configurational laws,
that of Prdgnanz, the principle that all experienced fields tend
to become as articulated as possible. Besides closure, other factors
of proximity, similarity as well as symmetry and regularity are
embraced in this Law of Pragnanz.31
KOHLER AND THE MENTALITY of APES
Kohler remained at Frankfurt until 1913 when an opportunity arose
to go to the Anthropoid Station on Tenerife in the Canary Islands,
where he worked with apes and chickens.32 Because of the war he
remained there longer than he had intended.
An experiment of Kohler's33 with chicks, performed during these
years, simple in nature though it is, brings out clearly what
the Gestalt psychologists were trying to demonstrate. Two shades
of gray paper on which grain was scattered were exposed. Hens
were trained to take grains from one of these papers, a darker
shade of gray than that of the other paper. If they pecked at
a grain on the darker paper, they were permitted to swallow it;
if they pecked at a grain on the lighter paper, they were driven
away. After hundreds of trials, they learned eventually to peck
only at grain on the darker paper. So far this is only preliminary
to the experiment itself. The crucial series of trials was now
inserted. The darker gray paper of the learning trials was used
again, but now it was accompanied by a sheet of a still darker
gray, instead of the original lighter sheet. If the hens pecked
on the original gray they were responding to specific brightness,
as such; if they pecked at what now was the darker paper, they
would be reacting to a total situation or Gestalt, that is, to
a relation of lighter-darker. As a rule, the hens pecked at the
darker gray, not the particular one on which they had learned
to peck. This was a relative response in which "darker of
two" was the clue, not the specific gray. The hens reacted,
not to a specific element in the learning situation, but to the
pattern or Gestalt.
Kohler's work on chimpanzees while at Tenerife appeared as the
Mentality o f Apes, first published in 1917 and later translated
into English34 along with an important paper in 1927.35 His problem
was the investigation of the intelligence of chimpanzees as shown
in the solving of problems. The studies of chimpanzees took place
in and around their cages and involved such simple props as the
bars of the cages serving as a means of blocking direct access,
bananas for them to secure, sticks to be used to draw in the bananas
from outside of the cage, and boxes on which to climb.
One study involved a stick hidden by Kohler in the framework
of the roof of the cage with the chimpanzees watching. The animals
were then taken to their living dormitory for the night. The next
morning one of the apes, brought back to the cage, found that
outside the cage there was a bunch of bananas. He was already
familiar with using a stick to draw them in. He looked around,
as Kohler put it, as a man would in seeking a tool, but did not
find one. After some seconds his eyes went to the place where
the stick had been hidden the night before. Although the stick
was not in sight, he immediately climbed up to where it was hidden,
brought it down, and used it to draw in the bananas.
Another study involved a banana placed at ceiling level of the
cage as well as a box, which if maneuvered properly so it was
under the banana, would permit the chimpanzee to jump up from
its top to secure the banana. Almost all the chimps solved the
problem of moving the box to the correct spot under the banana,
climbing up on the box, and jumping to get the banana.
Contrast their behavior with that of a relatively stupid chimpanzee.
He had been present many times when the others had learned to
use the box as a tool to reach the banana. These other chimpanzees
even tried to show him how to use it, but his behavior imitated
only parts of their behavior. He would move the box, but, as often
as not, away from the food. He would then climb on the box and
jump, but not under the banana and, after climbing off the box,
would then jump up under the banana. He never formed the Gestalt;
for him there were two separate groups, climbbox-jump and jump-under-fruit.
He did not relate the parts of the activity to the essential structure
of the total situation.
These and similar results were interpreted by Kohler as evidence
of insight-the seeing of relations. These Gestalten occur in the
process of solving problems. There is an activity on their part
which is a continuous whole in which everything falls into place.
There is continuity, a direction toward a goal, and closure. The
insightful solutions they displayed are interpreted as making
for closure of the gap in the animal's psychological field. Capacity
for perception of relations varied in different animals and thus
became an indication of intelligence.
KOHLER AND PHYSICAL GESTALTEN
In 1920 Kohler left Tenerife for a Germany then in the throes
of economic and social reconstruction. He managed to secure only
temporary academic appointments for a year or so. Formal recognition
of Gestalt psychology by the academic world, however, came in
1922 when Kohler was appointed to a chair and the directorship
of the laboratory at the University of Berlin. This was a post
he occupied until 1935. Presumably in part responsible for this
major appointment was the publication of a book the year before,
whose translated title is the formidable, Static and Stationary
Physical Gestalts."
To evaluate its significance, it is necessary to return to Wertheimer's
original experiment.37 Wertheimer postulated brain action as a
configural total process to account for phi. These processes must
be essentially similar for apparent and for true motion, since
they are experienced as identical. If one assumes that wherever
there are two identical phenomena, one may also assume that there
are corresponding brain processes. If the nervous system was so
organized that it consisted of interlocking elements, it simply
could not account for phi. There must be some correspondence between
the patterning of the psychological experience and the underlying
brain process. The nervous system has unitary properties with
its parts being included in the larger units or Gestalten. Wertheimer
suggested that, physiologically speaking, the seen movement was
a consequence of a physiological short cut. With precisely the
right temporal interval, "physiological cross processes"
took place. These were modes of functional interconnection in
larger patterns rather than points on the cortex. The physiological
processes had whale properties themselves, and they were essentially
the same in phi as they were in real motion.
This point of view was generalized by Kohler in his book of 1920.38
A theory that physical systems possess Gestalt properties was
the consequence, and this theory made it possible for Kohler to
offer a transition from psychological to physical systems. Both
the brain process and the perceived object correspond in that
they are Gestalten. In relating the mental and physical, Kohler
advanced the thesis that the form of the mental event is the same
as the form of the physical. This is the principle of isomorphism;
there is a formal correspondence between the brain processes and
the experienced consciousness. This correspondence is not the
relation of object to its mirror image; rather it is topological.
These two, the physical process and experience, are different
spatially. There is a formal correspondence but not a literal
copy between the experience and the brain pattern. This statement
of isomorphism was Kohler's solution to the age-old mind-body
problem. Isomorphism was his way of integrating the mind with
the rest of the world.
Isomorphism, however, was but a phase of a much more ambitious
undertaking on the part of Kohler.39 He was intent on nothing
short of demonstrating that biology, chemistry, physics, and even
astronomy, were also sciences involving Gestalten. It should be
mentioned that Kohler had studied physics under Max Planck, whose
work in the quantum theory influenced him considerably. Kohler's
attempt at model building was a heroic effort whose effect is
hard to assess. Certainly it was meant to be more than an analogy,
and in the contemporary period of psychology Kohler has bad success
in utilizing it to further psychological investigation.
KOFFKA AND THE GROWTH OF THE MIND
Koffka had left Frankfurt in 1911 for a long period of service
at the University of Giessen (1911-1927 ), which was interrupted
by visits to universities in the United States.40
During these years Koffka wrote the Growth o f the Mind,41 which
was published in English in 1924 and which is based upon a work
in German which had appeared three years before. It bore the subtitle,
an introduction to child psychology. Koffka made use of a developmental
concept in his account, stressing what he called the convergence
theory.
To place convergence theory in its proper setting, it is necessary
to say something more about the phenomenological strain in Gestalt
psychology. Phenomenology tended to go hand in glove with more
sympathetic acceptance of nativism, as distinguished from empiricism.
It has been established that, according to Gestalt theory, one
does not need to learn to see structures in the sense that the
properties of the psychological field are used to explain the
events taking place within that field 42 Therefore, if the controversy
over the influence of hereditary versus environmental influences
be conceived relativistically, Gestalt psychology is somewhat
more nativistic. And yet, there is also acceptance of the importance
of learning in development. A compromise was expressed by Koffka's
acceptance of a convergence theory, originally proposed by William
Stern, in which every capacity is the result of a collaboration
of inner and outer conditions of development. There is a convergence
of these inner capacities and outer conditions so that both share
in any psychological process.
Koffka submitted the concepts of reflex and of instinct to Gestalt
analysis. Consistent with the Gestalt principle of the priority
of the whole over the part, he saw reflexes as derived from instincts,
rather than the reverse. To illustrate his handling of instinct,
Koffka43 held that one of its most conspicuous characteristics
was the tendency of an instinct to require the individual to work
toward the attainment of some goal. This working toward a goal,
in turn, is directly interpretable as being an instance of bringing
about closure in a temporal Gestalt.
Although there had been earlier work by Wertheimer in learning,
Kofka's book served to emphasize in a detailed fashion that the
learning process is clearly within the sphere of Gestalt psychology.
The laws of organization in perception are seen as applicable
to learning problems. Kohler's work on chimpanzees illuminates
the point. His results were used by Koffka to challenge in a detailed
fashion the theory of trial and error learning to the point that
insight was offered as a replacement for it as a means of accounting
for the learning process. The trial and error hypothesis assumes
that in learning a large number of random movements are made,
that the correct responses are gradually learned, and that the
incorrect ones are eliminated. A variety of explanations are offered
as to why this takes place. During the years in question the differentiation
between those responses stamped in and those stamped out was attributed
to the respective pleasure and pain that accompanied them.
To Koffka, learning is not a gradual mechanical process, but
involves the same principles as perceptual Gestalten. Koffka rejected
trial and error as an explanatory principle for learning and pointed
out that the customary puzzle boxes and mazes were apparatuses
that forced the animals to learn by trial and error because no
other approach was possible under these circumstances. The results
of such studies, just as those in sensation, were seen as an artifact
of the laboratory procedure. To be sure, an obstacle between the
animal and the goal must be provided, but it should be of such
a nature as to permit intelligent, insightful behavior, if the
animal is capable of it. This was the case with Kohler's procedures.
The causative relations were open to the animals' observation,
and insight resulted. Insight takes the place of practice or repetition
as the crux of learning in the Gestalt description of learning.
Practice does have some effect-after the Gestalt has been assimilated,
practice makes its execution easier, as is the case when a musician
grasps the Gestalt of a composition and with the aid of practice
proceeds to play it better.
GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY COMES TO THE UNITED STATES
With the rise of Hitler in the early thirties, Gestalt psychology
experienced an almost complete transplantation of its leaders
to the United States. Gestalt psychology, however, did not entirely
disappear from Germany. Its principles were applied in other areas,
as in personality theory. It was diluted to some extent by eclecticism;
and some of its adherents splintered into smaller groups, each
separated from the others by some theoretical difference. Under
Hitler, psychology as a whole became a minor subject in the German
academic hierarchy.
Before the migration, psychologists in the United States were
not unfamiliar with the Gestalt psychologists' work. They had
read their publications, and several visits by leading Gestalt
psychologists had been made. In 1922 Koffka in the Psychological
Bulletin wrote for American psychologists the introductory statement
of the Gestalt position .44 He used as the medium for his presentation
the study of perception, a field in which he was by now specializing.
Although admirable in many respects, his article had the unfortunate
effect of creating the misapprehension among psychologists that
Gestalt psychology was little more than a theory of perception-a
view not entirely dissipated to this very day. Koffka and Kohler
made several visits during the twenties and early thirties. Koffka
was the first to settle in the United States, in 1927 becoming
a professor at Smith College and remained on its faculty until
his death in 1941. He worked principally on color vision in relation
to perceptual organization. Kohler's book, Gestalt Psychology,45
appeared in 1929. In 1934 he lectured at Harvard, returned to
Germany, and in 1935, in view of his open conflict with the Nazi
regime, he decided to migrate permanently. He became Professor
of Psychology at Swarthmore College, where he remained until his
retirement. Kohler and Koffka between them carried on more of
the polemics for Gestalt psychology in the United States than
did Wertheimer.
Wertheimer and his family left Germany in 1933 and came to the
United States. In 1934 he became a part of the "University
in Exile" of the Graduate School of the New School of Social
Research in New York City. This was an affiliation which was to
continue until his death in 1943.
Other psychologists more peripherally related to Gestalt psychology
also came to the United States. There was Kurt Lewin, who had
taken his degree at the University of Berlin after World War I.
He arrived in 1933 and went on to do important work related to
Gestalt psychology beyond our scope in the contemporary period.
There was also Kurt Goldstein, the neurologist, who was affiliated
with Gestalt psychology in Germany. When he came to the United
States in 1935, Goldstein continued to make use of Gestalt concepts
in his clinical work.
The reception of Gestalt psychology in the United States was
a mixed one, and it made relatively slow progress. Behaviorism
was riding the crest of a wave. The language barrier stood in
the way. A philosophical substratum was seen as lurking in the
background of Gestalt thinking. The Gestalt critique of introspective
elementarism left many American psychologists somewhat baffled.
Titchenerian structuralism had passed its peak some years before,
and functionalism was asking and answering questions which, in
part at least, made them think that the Gestalters were insisting
on fighting about a dead issue. Instead of arguing that they were
wrong, some American psychologists said that they were right,
but left it at that or added that they were unoriginal.
A new opponent for the Gestalt movement to attack was readily
apparent. Behaviorism with its reductionist tendencies became
the new target. Gestalt psychology accepted the study of behavior
as legitimate, but insisted that the approach to it should be
molar, not molecular. Moreover, their isomorphic view was opposed
to the point-by-point correspondence of the S-R formula. This
controversy was accentuated by the disagreement over the validity
of introspection, even though this was not the same sort of introspection
as that of Wundt or Titchener. Behavior as composed of reflexes
and conditioned responses was considered to be open to the same
criticisms that had been made of the brick and mortar psychology
of Wundt and Titchener.
American psychologists who were sympathetic to Gestalt theory
seldom went so far as to become complete adherents. Rather, seeing
it as valuable, they assimilated it more generally into a eclectic
pattern where it served as a needed corrective to a more atomistic
approach.
Criticism, as a matter of fact, had been published before the
arrival of Gestaltists in the U.S. Helson,46 a sympathetic critic,
had pin-pointed what was to be a major criticism, then and later.
He argued that they had followed the advice of Goethe to a friend
on how to solve problems; they had changed the problem into a
postulate. The issue of organization in mental life was treated,
he said, by Gestalt psychologists, not as a question to be wrestled
with, but instead treated as a "given" of nature. This
is, of course, close to solving a problem by denying its existence.
The ten years between 1933 and 1943 in the United States were
busy ones for Wertheimer, but not as productive in a quantitative
way as one might have wished. Burdened as he was with adapting
to a new environment and a struggle with a foreign language, Wertheimer
suffered increasing exhaustion 4' He continued trying little experiments
in an informal fashion, communicating them to his friends, and
at meetings of psychologists, but without recording them in published
form.
Wertheimer did not live by psychology alone. He was a man of
broad interests in social issues, in logic, and in ethics, areas
to which he devoted time and energy. At the New School of Social
Research he was a member of a heterogeneous group of social scientists,
which facilitated the spread of his interests beyond psychology.
He saw the Gestalt point of view as extending into these areas
in order to help us understand the complex problems these fields
represented. Wertheimer felt deeply the social issues of his time
and wrote eloquently and incisively on matters such as the meaning
of freedom.48
One characteristic of the then current work in anthropology caused
him considerable distress. This was the doctrine of cultural relativism.
He combatted this vigorously. He discussed ethics in a setting
of this principle of relativity and pleaded that studies of ethnology,
sociology, and cultural history are not enough 4s The conditions
of evaluation themselves need study. This would lead to psychological
studies some of which would use Gestalt concepts. Another paper
concerned the question of truth.50 Science and logic have applied
the proposition that truth is correspondence to the object, but
a difficulty has tended to arise because it is possible to define
an object by a part, making this part statement true, but false
to the whole. For example, a man who hires another to steal something
for him, when asked if he stole, replies, "No,"-he is
telling the truth to the question (which is only a part), but
he is lying so far as the whole situation is concerned. This error
is an instance of a piecemeal view of reality. From this point
of departure Wertheimer goes on into logistics, the study of relational
networks, in which the Gestalt part-whole problem is considered.
This paper serves to lead directly to his remaining major contribution
to Gestalt psychology, a posthumously published book on thinking.
PRODUCTIVE THINKING
This investigation of thinking has been a guiding implicit and
explicit interest for many years. In fact, Wertheimer's interest
in the problem of thinking goes back to at least 1912, for it
was in that same year as his historic paper on perception he first
published on this topic. Since Gestalt psychology is sometimes
described as if it contributed only to perceptual problems, it
is fitting to emphasize that Wertheimer's interest in thinking
was contemporaneous with that in perception. His study of thinking
culminated in the book, Productive Thinking.51 As Wertheimer interpreted
it, the main factor in productive or creative thinking is to grasp
the structure of the situation, or the Gestalt. Productive thinking
serves as a means to relate the problem at hand, whatever it may
be, to the tasks and goals and to the total situation. Analysis
goes on, not of parts, but of part-whole relationships.
It would be impossible to capture the full characteristic flavor
of Wertheimer's presentation without direct lengthy quotations
quite beyond present scope. A summary, no matter how plausible
on the surface, is to some extent false to the original. It was
characteristic that he gave not a polished presentation leading
remorselessly step by step to the solution, but the raw protocol
of both productive and unproductive thinking using a great variety
of sources of material-geometrical figures, numerical manipulations,
physical principles, and social situations. Productive thinking
would have its fumbling and false starts, just as would unproductive
thinking; but unlike it, there would be a return to the theme
without undue delay, showing a sense of direction and an ability
to isolate the essential features. In productive thinking the
material given is seen in a new light, and that which was obscure
before becomes obvious. Consider Wertheimer's example of the task
of computing the sum of the numbers in an arithmetical series
presented with numbers in an ascending direction, i.e., 1 + 2
+ 3 + 4 -f- 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10. If, instead of laboriously
adding, as the structure of the problem presented seems to call
for, the individual saw that, from the two ends of the series
toward the middle, the terms increase and decrease at the same
rate, a new approach would suggest itself. It will be noted that
the middle pair are 5 and 6, on one side of which the numbers
increase and on the other side decrease by one, giving pairs 4
+ 7, 3 + 8, 2 + 9, and 1 + 10. Each pair equals 11. There are
five pairs of 11 each; therefore, the answer is 55. There is a
recentering; a regrouping has taken place so that a new figure-group
organization emerges. Instead of perceiving it as a single progressive
series - it is seen as two series meeting in the center –
There had been a reorganization of the field. Once the principle
of reorganization has been grasped, the recognition of the particular
steps necessary for the solution to the problem can then be found.
In productive thinking, habitual methods of using familiar concepts
often have to be overcome in order to solve problems in a novel
fashion. Especially fascinating in this regard is Wertheimer's
account of Einstein's thinking that culminated in the theory of
relativity. His account was derived from the many hours that the
two spent together in reviewing, decisive step by decisive step,
the thinking which Einstein had done in formulating his theory.
In this recounting, each step seemed to emerge because it was
the one required for the solution. This production had the difficulty
of moving against the strong Gestalt which was the traditional
Newtonian system of physics. Einstein's general transformation
formula was a transformation in another sense; he had to transform
at any given stage his thinking against the weight of this well-articulated
structure.
The relevance of Gestalt principles to teaching was also shown
by Wertheimer; it became the basis for criticism of the emphasis
on repetition and routine practice, which had derived its rationale
from the associationistic theory of learning. Inculcation of rules
and principles by rote memory is rarely productive, Wertheimer
held, in that, more often than not, the student's response is
a blind repetition of arbitrarily learned materials. This lack
of productivity is demonstrated, Wertheimer believed, by the student's
inability to solve a variation of the original problem when it
is presented to him. When teachers arrange their problems so that
the whole is available to the student, insight is more likely
to occur.
OVERVIEW
Max Wertheimer saw an old problem in a new way and thereby founded
a new approach to psychology. He was joined in this enterprise
by two other psychologists, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Kaffka, but
it was he who first saw the problem and was the one to grasp the
significance of spontaneous groupings in sensory fields, as Kohler52
said, and it was he who was the "first founder" as Koffka53
called him.
Wertheimer never wrote a systematic, complete statement of Gestalt
psychology. It is probable that he had no desire to do so, any
more than he wished to engage in the endless polemics concerning
the value of Gestalt psychology. It was not that he did not care;
he did care, but these were tasks for someone of a different temperament.
He had a restless, inquiring approach to many aspects of life
and psychology, and he was prodigal with his carelessly tossed-off
insights. His spontaneity and brilliance made for his productive
contribution to psychology. Paradoxically, he was compulsively
careful about gathering and analysing data. Only if the data were
crystal clear and the experiment unequivocal would he publish
his results. This prodigality and brilliance helped his students
to learn more from him than did students who had to depend upon
the written word for their knowledge of his work.
