Gestalt+Theory

= "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" =

[[image:http://homepages.ius.edu/rallman/wholesum.gif width="400" height="84"]]
= SOURCES = Gazzaniga, Michael S., and Todd F. Heatherton. “Sensation, Perception, and Attention.” Psychological Science Mind, Brain, and Behavior. New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003. 152-155. Print. Wade, Carole, and Carol Tavris. “Sensation and Perception.” Invitation to Psychology. 4th ed. 2002. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008. 197-201. Print. [|http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~kbroom/Lectures/gestalt.htm] http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/gestaltprinciples/gestaltprinc.htm http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/skaalid/theory/gestalt/gestalt.html http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/gestalt.html ANGELA THIS HAS A LOT OF VOCAB <3 ILY here ya go andreeee :) <3 angg http://www.minddisorders.com/Flu-Inv/Gestalt-therapy.html [] []

INTRODUCTION: **  -Gestalt Therapy was founded by Dr. Frederick Perls
 * WHO ** : Gestalt Psychology was founded by Max Wertheimer. was born in 1880.

-Gestalt therapy is very complex. It is a psychological system which deals with the development of self-awareness and personal responsibility. The whole purpose of Gestalt therapy is to make the clients aware about how they act and deal with their environment. Like how they function at school or work and with friends and family. The therapy is more focused on what is happening rather than the topic being discussed. Perls thought that a lot of peoples personalities were lacking wholeness. He said that people were more often than not only aware of some parts of themselves as to their whole self. The goal of Gestalt therapy is to help someone become whole, to help them realize the other parts.
 * WHAT **: Gestalt Psychology is based on the fact that people see things that are not part of our normal sensations. Gestalt therapy helps patients with the method of awareness. The theory refers to the forming ability of our senses, especially along with our visual interpretation of figures and whole illusions besides a simple abundance of curves and lines.

**WHERE** : Max Wertheimer went to the University of Frankfurt's Psychological Institute in 1910. That same year he went on vacation, and started to become interested in the perceptions that he experienced on a train. Wertheimer bought a toy stroboscope while he was stopped at the station. This is a spinning drum with slots in it to see the pictures on the inside, kind of like a sophisticated flip book. When he went back to the Institute his teacher had him study the effect by giving him a tachistoscope. He then met two people who would become his lifelong partners, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka.  -Fritz Perls, Laura Perls and Paul Goodman co-founded Gestalt therapy in the 1940s - 1950s. Gestalt therapy rose around the  middle
 * WHEN **: Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Kohler are theorists who studied Gestalt Psychology in the early 20th centuries.

of the 20th century. It was pretty popular during the 1960s and early 1970s. Gestalt therapy training centers were starting to be spread globally during the 70s and 80s.

 ** WHY **: People use Gestalt Therapy for several different reasons. The client will become aware of what they are doing and how they are doing it. They will also learn how they changed themselves and learn to accept and value themselves. Gestalt therapy is known to be "unpredictable" because the therapist and client use a moment to moment experience and neither know where exactly it will take them.


 * CURRENT EVENTS **: [|Do you see what i don't see] [|traces of self]

BRIEF HISTORY
Gestalt psychology first started in the early 20th century, approximately 1910. The idea was founded by a Czech man in Germany named Max Wertheimer. He was taken away with an idea when he saw lights flashing at a railroad crossing. He went on to buy a toy by the name of zoetrope, or as Andrea previously stated, a stroboscope. In his hotel room he made his very own toy like this consisting not of ordinary objects but rather abstract lines. From this he studied different conditions that play a factor in the illusion of motion pictures. A few years prior to this incident Wertheimer had studied Gestalt theories with an Austrian philosopher, Ehrenfels. Ehrenfels has studied melodies and stated that a melody is still identifiable when played in varying keys. He concluded that “if a melody and the notes that comprise it are so independent, then a whole is not simply the sum of its parts, but a synergistic ‘whole effect,’ or gestalt.” Along the same idea, Wertheimer concluded that movement is effected by the vibrant interrelation of elements rather than the individual elements. After studying further into Gestalt theories, Wertheimer took on two colleagues, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler. He gathered information and performed tremendous experiments. After a year he shared the information with the two other men and then published all of his results in 1912. The paper was called, “Experimental Studies of the Perception of Movement” and this paper was the first important landmark in Gestalt psychology. From here the three were eventually separated but reunited shortly after. They continued their research and conducted experiments. Wertheimer and Kohler worked in the Psychological Institute at the University of Berlin and began a research journal on their investigations. They even used their students as subjects and that is how many of them learned. The journal became a huge success along with their psychological department. From here the Gestalt theories took on their own course and were studied by many. The Gestalt theories even adapted into a type of therapy started in the 1940’s by Fritz Perls and was cofounded with help from his wife, Laura. The therapy is used to help a client raise their awareness with their environment.

VOCABULARY
Gestalt- a unified whole Law of Closure- if pieces of a normally complete figure are missing, we tend to fill them in Law of Similarity- humans try to group similar items together within an object to form a gestalt overall Law of Proximity- things that are very close together are seen as belonging Law of Good Continuation- we tend to continue contours if elements imply a certain pattern of direction Law of Prägnanz- we organize objects into the simplest form possible (pragnanz is German for “good figure”) Law of Figure/Ground- we take one portion of an image and make it the fore-ground while the other is the back-ground (by intertwining the two we can see two images) Insight learning- organizing pieces in a gestalt manner to solve a problem Productive thinking- organizing something to form a more familiar object to work with Gestalt therapy- uses aspects of the gestalt theory to help a person increase their self awareness and personal responsibilities

The word Gestalt is a German word that means “shape” or “form.” This school of study is basically the study of perception and how we see things. This theory has different principles that our brains use so that it can organize sensory information.
 * THEORIES **:

It is broken down into principles such as: 1. Emergence: what we see with out an explanation. 2. Reification: pictures that are not there, but you can see that they are. 3. Multistable Perception: different interpretations of pictures 4. Proximity: Things that are stationed near each other are “grouped” together. 5. Closure: fill in gaps to finish pictures 6. Similarity: Things that are the same belong together. 7. Continuity: continuing lines that don’t end. Perceptual Constancy: “ability to perceive objects as stable or unchanging even though the sensory patterns they produce are constantly shifting.” 1. Shape Constancy 2. Location Constancy 3. Size Constancy 4. Brightness Constancy 5. Color Constancy

Perceptual Illusion: perceptual constancies allow us to make sense of the would, but we can be fooled and these errors help us understand the strategies of our minds.

The Muller-Lyer Illusion

Found that the brain misinterprets sensory information.