What is Gestalt Theory?


Primary Factors
Gestalt is a German word roughly meaning "whole, configuration, or constellation". The word first became popular in turn of the century Europe during a time when scientists and scholars of an amazing variety began to explore alternatives to the then predominate "reductionist paradigm" of nature. Out of the exploration for an alternative paradigm came a number of different attempts to establish a science of holism, gestalt psychology and general systems theory are the two most influential attempts still surviving today.

Today the word Gestalt is most often associated with psychology, psychotherapy, organizational development, computer programming, a sudden understanding, or a life orientation.

Gestalt psychology was founded in 1910 by German psychologists, Max Wertheimer, and developed more by Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler. Gestalt theory emphasized higher order cognitive processes in the midst of behaviorism. It was the outcome of concrete investigations in psychology, logic, and epistemology. Gestalt theory is a broadly interdisciplinary general theory, which provides a framework for a wide variety of psychological phenomena, processes, and applications. Human beings are viewed as open systems in active interaction with their environment.

The focus of Gestalt theory was the idea of “grouping”, i.e. characteristics of stimuli cause us to structure or interpret a visual field or problem in a certain way.

The primary factors that determine grouping are:

  1. proximity – elements tend to be grouped together according to their nearness
  2. similarity – items similar in some respect tend to be grouped together
  3. closure – items are grouped together if they tend to complete some entity
  4. simplicity – items will be organised into simple figures according to symmetry, regularity, and smoothness.

These factors are called the laws of organisation and are explained in the context of perception and problem solving.

Home page

PreviousNext