Historical Context for Schools of Thought
Historical Context of School of Thought: Gestalt Psychology
Instructions:
Historical Context for Schools of Thought
Choose one school of thought from the chapters you reviewed for this unit on physiology, experimental psychology, voluntarism, structuralism, functionalism, and Gestalt psychology (not Gestalt therapy).
What was happening in the world at that time that contributed to the rise of the school of thought or aligned with its principles and values? How did the emerging school of thought fit with people’s way of viewing the world, and their culture, at that time in history? Did the new school of thought modify society in any way? Explain your ideas clearly, and use examples or illustrations to make your points. Include at least two relevant peer-reviewed articles that support your thoughts in your post.
Solution
Historical Context of School of Thought: Gestalt Psychology
The foundations of Gestalt psychology are based on the idea that individuals experience “things” as integrated wholes. Gestalt psychology, as a school of thought, started in Berlin School of Experimental Psychology. During this time, most of the behavioral psychologists rebelled against functionalism and structuralism in the US, as a group of German philosophers and psychologists focussed on assaulting Wundt’s theory of elements (Hergenhahn & Henley, 2014, p.438). As such, the theory was built upon Würzburg school and Brentano’s act psychology which stipulated that consciousness cannot be abridged without a distortion of the underlying meaning of experience -phi phenomenon, which was documented in 1912 by Wertheimer. Historically, the conceptual frameworks of Gestalt psychology were introduced to psychology and philosophy in 1980 by Christian von Ehren, an Austrian philosopher, who was a member of the School of Brentano. Gestalt psychology has several antecedents who contributed to Gestalt School of Thought existence. These include the likes of Wolfgang Kohler- a phenomenologist, Max Wertheimer- an experimenter with the phi phenomenon, and Kurt Koffka – focused on perception interpretational learning, and hearing impairments (Yasnitsky, 2012).
Before World War II, Gestalt
psychologists had taken over the most
position in German universities and as after some time they scattered as a
result of World War to America where they worked with the “like-minded”
scholars to foster the theoretical framework of Gestalt psychology (Hergenhahn & Henley, 2014, p.460). Gestalt psychology has influenced social psychology with its
concepts of perception such as the Festinger’s theory of cognitive resonance stipulated
by Kurt Lewin (Hergenhahn & Henley, 2014, p.
457).
Gestalt psychology has influenced the way we view things as well as the way we
make our decisions. For instance, the concepts of figure-ground relationships
of proximity, similarity, closure, and inclusiveness, can enable individuals to
have different perceptions of an object. Also, regarding
learning, Gestalt psychology has
influenced how individuals solve problems
through insightful thinking and transposition (Hergenhahn & Henley, 2014, p.456). Last, in modern day gestalt psychology, Kurt Lewin suggests that
the concepts of Gestalt psychology have
influenced conflict resolution and motivation within life space(Wheeler, 2008).
References
Hergenhahn, B. R., & Henley, T. B. (2014). Gestalt Psychology. In An Introduction to the History of Psychology (7th ed., pp. 437–462). Belmont: Wadsworth: Cengage Learning.
Wheeler, L. (2008). Kurt Lewin. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 1638–1650. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00131.x
Yasnitsky, A. (2012). A history of cultural-historical Gestalt psychology: Vygotsky, Luria, Koffka, Lewin, and others. Dubna Psychological Journal, 1, 98–101.
