Gestalt theory, or Gestalt psychology, is a school of psychology that emphasizes perceiving and understanding information as whole patterns or configurations rather than as separate, individual parts. It originated in the early 20th century in Austria and Germany, founded by psychologists such as Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Köhler as a reaction against the structuralist approach that broke experience into basic elements. Gestalt psychology is famously summarized by the phrase "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts," meaning that the overall perception cannot be understood merely by analyzing its components independently
. Key aspects of Gestalt theory include:
- Holism: The mind perceives objects and experiences as unified wholes rather than disconnected fragments
- Perceptual Principles: These include laws such as proximity, similarity, closure, continuity, and Prägnanz, which explain how humans naturally organize visual elements into groups or unified forms
- Phenomena like the Phi Phenomenon: Discovered by Wertheimer, this is the illusion of movement created by alternating stationary lights, illustrating that perception involves more than just sensory input but also how the brain organizes it into meaningful wholes
- Properties of Gestalt perception: Emergence (whole patterns emerge from parts), reification (perceived objects contain more spatial information than sensory input), multistability (ambiguous images can switch between interpretations), and invariance (recognition of objects despite changes in orientation or scale)
In summary, Gestalt theory focuses on how humans naturally organize sensory information into meaningful wholes, influencing fields such as perception, cognition, and design. It views perception as an active, constructive process rather than a passive summation of sensory data
