Gestalt Psychology



Gestalt Psychology became increasingly important and influential during the first half of the twentieth century. It was a reaction to associationist or atomistic psychology, in which the real data of psychology are thought to be simply individual items like sensations: the task then is to discover by what laws or principles they are associated to form more complex psychological states or episodes. In Gestalt psychology, by contrast, the data are thought to include features of form and organization. Thus, the perceptual field, in vision, for instance, consists of entities or forms seen to stand out against a (back)ground.



GO BACK