The Main Influences On Gestalt Psychology - 757 Words

d reflection on the main influences on Gestalt psychology and how they contributed to its development. Since being discovered, gestalt psychology created vital contributions to the psychology of thinking and problem solving influenced by thinkers, including, Immanuel Kant, Ernst Mach and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. This paper will reflect on the main influences on Gestalt psychology, their contributions, and the principles of perceptual organization. According to the Merriam-Webster, the definition of gestalt psychology is: the study of perception and behavior from the standpoint of an individual s response to configurational wholes with stress on the uniformity of psychological and physiological events and rejection of analysis into discrete events of stimulus, percept, and response One of the main influences on Gestalt psychology , and their ideas influenced the later development of cognitive psychology. The gestaltists argued that understanding mind and behavior could not be achieved by trying to dissect conscious experience into its sensory elements, or by reducing complex behavior to elementary stimulus-response units. Rather, their emphasis was on phenomenologically whole experiences, and before long their movement came to be identified with this catch phrase: The whole of an experience is greater than the sum of its individual parts. Three german gestalt pioneers emigrated from Europe to the US, Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Hohler.Show MoreRelatedThe Theories Of Gestalt Psychology1503 Words   |  7 PagesDevelopment of Gestalt Psychology Phrases such as â€Å"seeing the forest from the trees† and â€Å"the whole is greater than the sum of the parts† have roots grounded in the same ideals of Gestalt psychology. These phrases best describe the purpose of Gestalt psychology in how they emphasize focusing on the big picture and not just the colors. 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