Gestalt psychology, school of psychology founded in the 20th century that provided the foundation for the modern study of perception. Gestalt theory emphasizes that the whole of anything is greater than its parts. That is, the attributes of the whole are not deducible from analysis of the parts in isolation.
Gestalt psychology is a school of thought that seeks to understand how the human brain perceives experiences. It suggests that structures, perceived as a whole, have specific properties that are different from the sum of their individual parts.
For instance, when reading a text, a person perceives each word and sentence as a whole with meaning, rather than seeing individual letters; and while each letterform is an independent individual unit, the greater meaning of the text depends on the arrangement of the letters into a specific configuration.
Gestalt grew from the field of psychology in the beginning of the 19th Century. Austrian and German psychologists started researching the human mind’s tendency to try to make sense of the world around us through automatic grouping and association.
The Gestalt Principles, or Laws of Perception, explain how this behavior of “pattern seeking” operates. They offer a powerful framework to understand human perception, and yet are simple to assimilate and implement.
For that reason, the Gestalt Laws are appealing not only to psychologists but also to visual artists, educators and communicators.
In a loose translation, the German word ‘Gestalt’ (pronounced “ge-shtalt”) means ‘configuration’, or ‘structure’. It makes a reference to the way individual components are structured by our perception as a psychical whole (Wulf, 1996). That structure provides a scientific explanation for why changes in spacing, organization and timing can radically transform how information is received and assimilated.
Two of the main philosophical influences of Gestalt are Kantian epistemology and Husserl’s phenomenological method. Both Kant and Husserls sought to understand human consciousness and perceptions of the world, arguing that those mental processes are not entirely mediated by rational thought (Jorge, 2010). Similarly, the Gestalt researchers Wertheimer, Koffka and Kohler observed that the human brain tends to automatically organize and interpret visual data through grouping. They theorized that, because of those “mental shortcuts”, the perception of the whole is different from the sum of individual elements. This idea that the whole is different from the sum of its parts – the central tenet of Gestalt psychology – challenged the then-prevailing theory of Structuralism.
The inaugural article of Gestalt Psychology was Max Wertheimer’s Experimental Studies of the Perception of Movement, published in 1912. Wertheimer, then at the Institute of Psychology in Frankfurt am Main, described a visual illusion called apparent motion in this article. Apparent motion is the perception of movement that results from viewing a rapid sequence of static images, as happens in the movies or in flip books. Wertheimer realized that the perception of the whole (the group of figures in a sequence) was radically different from the perception of its components (each static image).
Gestalt’s principles, or Laws of Perception, were formalized by Wertheimer in a treaty published in 1923, and further elaborated by Köhler, Koffka, and Metzger.
The principles are grounded on the human natural tendency of finding order in disorder – a process that happens in the brain, not in the sensory organs such as the eye. According to Wertheimer, the mind “makes sense” of stimulus captured by the eyes following a predictable set of principles. The brain applies these principles to enable individuals to perceive uniform forms rather than simply collections of unconnected images. Although these principles operate in a predictable way, they are actually mental shortcuts to interpreting information. As shortcuts, they sometimes make mistakes – and that is why they can lead to incorrect perceptions.
The law of Prägnanz is also called “law of simplicity” or “law of good figure”. It states that when faced with a set of ambiguous or complex objects, the human brain seeks to make them as simple as possible. The “good figure” is an object or image that can easily be perceived as a whole. A good example of this process is our perception of the Olympic logo. We tend to see overlapping circles (the simpler version) rather than a series of curved, connected lines (Dresp-Langley, 2015). This law suggests that we tend to group shapes, objects or design elements that share some similarity in terms of color, shape, orientation, texture or size.
The law of proximity states that shapes, objects or design elements located near each other tend to be perceived as a group. Conversely, randomly located items tend to be perceived as isolated. This principle can be applied to direct attention to key elements within a design: the closer visual elements are to each other, the more likely they will be perceived as related to each other, and too much negative space between elements serve to isolate them from one another.
Common Region – This law proposes that elements that are located within the same closed region – such as inside a circle or a shape – tend to be perceived as belonging to the same group. Those clearly defined boundaries between the inside and the outside of a shape create a stronger connection between elements, and can even overpower the law of Proximity or of Similarity.
Continuity – This law argues that shapes, objects or design elements that are positioned in a way that suggests lines, curves or planes will be perceived as such, and not as individual elements. We perceptually group the elements together to form a continuous image.
Closure – This law suggests that the human brain has a natural tendency to visually close gaps in forms, particularly when identifying familiar images. When information is missing, our focus goes to what is present and automatically “fills” the missing parts with familiar lines, colors or patterns. Once a form has been identified, even if additional gaps are introduced, we still tend to visually complete the form, in order to make them stable. IBM’s iconic logo is one example of applied closure – blue horizontal lines are arranged in three stacks that we “close” to form the letterforms (Graham 2008).
The classic gestalt principles have been extended in various directions. The ones above are some of the most commonly cited, but there are others, such as the symmetry principle (symmetrical components will tend to be grouped together) and the common faith principle (elements tend to be perceived as grouped together if they move together).
Gestalt therapy was founded by Frederick (Fritz) and Laura Perls in the 1940s. It focuses on the phenomenological method of awareness that distinguishes perceptions, feelings and actions from their interpretations. It believes that explanations and interpretations are less reliable than the concrete – what is directly perceived and felt. It is a therapy rooted in dialogue, in which patients and therapists discuss differences in perspectives (Yontef, G, 1993).
In Education, Gestalt Theory was applied as a reaction to behaviorism, which reduced experiences to simple stimulus-response reflections. Gestalt suggested that students should perceive the whole of the learning goal, and then discover the relations between parts and the whole. That meant that teachers should provide the basic framework of the lesson as an organized and meaningful structure, and then go into details. That would help students to understand the relation between contents and the overall goal of the lesson. Problem-based learning methodologies also arose based on Gestalt principles. When students are exposed to the whole of a problem, they can “make sense” of it before engaging in introspective thinking to analyze the connection between elements and craft independent solutions (Çeliköz et al. 2019).
By Nathalia Bustamante, Updated on September 7, 2023
Nathalia Bustamante is a Brazilian journalist at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.
Reviewed by Saul McLeod, PhD & Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc
Gestalt therapy is based on the idea that overall perception depends on the interaction between many factors. Among these factors are our past experiences, current environment, thoughts, feelings, and needs. Gestalt therapy involves key concepts such as awareness, unfinished business, and personal responsibility.
The main goal of Gestalt therapy is to help us focus on the present. While past context is important for viewing yourself as a whole, a Gestalt therapist will encourage you to keep your focus on your present experience.