The term “Gestalt” is a German word. The word by itself means “form” or “sharp.” In English, it refers to the aspect of holism, which is defined as “all, whole, entire and total.” The origin of Gestalt psychology started during 1920’s and 1930’s, the psychologists were dominated by the study of visual perception. According to Gestalt Principles, it states that “Gestalt is also known as the "Law of Simplicity" or the "Law of Pragnanz" (the entire figure or configuration), which states that every stimulus is perceived in its most simple form.” Pragnanz is a German term means pregnant; Dr. C. George Boeree states that it is in sense of pregnant with meaning, rather than pregnant with child. Gestalt psychologists believed the basic principle that the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. In other words, the whole was perceived differently and had greater meaning than its individual components.
The three founders of Gestalt theory are Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka. According to Dr. C. George Boeree, “Gestalt psychology is based on the observation that we often experience things that are not a part of our simple sensations. The original observation was Wertheimer’s, when he noted that we perceive motion where there is nothing more than a rapid sequence of individual sensory events.” In perception, there are many principles explain how people visualize parts and comprehend the parts into a whole. There principles are called Gestalt Laws. The most general principle is the Law of Pragnanz as mentioned above. This law says that “we are innately driven to experience things in as good a gestalt as possible” (Gestalt Psychology). In the quote, the “Good” has a broad meaning, such as regular, orderly, simplici...
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Merleau-Ponty distinguishes three aspects of the psychological process; basic sensations, perception, and the associations of memory (Merleau-Ponty, 1994). Basic sensations receive raw information from the world and transduce them for our perceptual processes. Perception unifies the infinite amount of information about our environment, from our environment, into a meaningful structure. Perception is interpretive, but its presentation of the world is as distal and objective. There are three central features of perception for Merleau-Ponty. First, perception is synthesized independently by the body and not by the mind (consciousness).
ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper is to defend a broad concept of visual perception, according to which it is a sufficient condition for visual perception that subjects receive visual information in a way which enables them to give reliably correct answers about the objects presented to them. According to this view, blindsight, non-epistemic seeing, and conscious visual experience count as proper types of visual perception. This leads to two consequences concerning the role of the phenomenal qualities of visual experiences. First, phenomenal qualities are not necessary in order to see something, because in the case of blindsight, subjects can see objects without experiences phenomenal qualities. Second, they cannot be intentional properties, since they are not essential properties of visual experiences, and because the content of visual experiences cannot be constituted by contingent properties.
...visual information is processed to extract identity, location, and ways that we might interact with objects. A prominent anatomical distinction is drawn between the "what" and "where" pathways in visual processing. However, the commonly labeled "where" pathways is also the "how" pathway, at least partially dedicated to action.
Sajda P. & Finkle, L.H. (1995) Intermediate Visual Representations and the Construction of Surface Perception. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 7, 267-291.
In “The Anatomy of Judgmen”t, M. L. J. Abercrombie discusses how information is gained through our perception. Abercrombie claims that interpretation is a very complicated task that people have been learning to exercise since birth. Each person has a different way of interpreting the objects or situations they see, because people often relate their own past experiences. She also explains two important concepts: schemata and context. She defines schemata as a way our mind functions by understanding new things perceived through sight, by relating it to an individual’s past experiences. Past experiences help interpret what is seen further, if the object fits one’s expectation or their schemata, and not something different from their past experiences. Her fundamental insight is that seeing is more complex than just passively registering what is seen, and consists of a form judgment for...
The psychodynamic approach lends itself to being a controversial yet highly influential theory in the history of psychology. The theory has become one of the most significant psychological approaches and its originator, Sigmund Freud, has become a major influence in modern psychology. The psychodynamic approach largely focuses on motivation and past experiences which develop and individual’s personality. Freud used the iceberg metaphor to outline the three states of consciousness and argued that only twenty percent of the mind represents the conscious. In addition he theorised that there was a pre-conscious mind which represents general memory. Finally, the unconscious mind which is essentially the reservoir of repressed or hidden experiences and desire.
Sigmund Freud’s theories on the construction of the mind are simple, but fundamentally changed the field of psychology. He proposed, among other things, that the human mind is composed of three parts: the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. The preconscious consists of information, such as a telephone number, that is “accessible to consciousness without emotional resistance” (Schellenberg 21). In Freud’s estimation, the unconscious is the most important area of the mind. The information stored within it has “very strong resistances” to becoming conscious (Freud 32). Residing in the unconscious is the id, which “contains everything…that is present at birth… – above all, therefore, the instincts which originate from somatic organization” (14). From birth, all action is instinctual, from the id. The id recognizes and entertains no desires but its own and is impatient to have its needs met. This phase lasts until a part of the id changes “under the influence of the real external world” (14). This changed portion b...
(2012). Perception, conscious and unconscious processes. In F. G. Barth, P. Giampieri-Deutsch & H. Klein (Eds.), Sensory perception: Mind and matter; sensory perception: Mind and matter (pp. 245-264, Chapter xi, 404 Pages) Springer Science + Business Media/SpringerWienNewYork, Vienna. Retrieved from http://vortex3.uco.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.vortex3.uco.edu/docview/1037892527?accountid=14516
Gestalt therapy is existential, phenomenological, and process-based approach created on the premise that individuals must be understood in the context of their ongoing relationship with the environment. Awareness, choice and responsibility are the cornerstone of practice (Corey, 2013).
Gestalt psychology was founded by German thinkers Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka. They mainly focused on how people interpret the world around them. The Gestalt perspective formed partially as a response to the structuralism of Wilhelm Wundt, who focused on breaking down mental events and experiences to the smallest elements. Structuralists had failed in explaining the concept of ‘apparent motion’ and ‘illusory contours’.
The first theory Psychodynamic theory presented by Sigmund Freud, is based on how a person’s self-awareness and understanding of the past on present behavior. Psychody...
There are many different Visual Perception principles in perception. The main principles are Gestalt. Gestalt is a German word meaning 'form' or 'shape'. Gestalt psychologists formulated a series of principles that describe how t...
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