HISTORY OF GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY

JOHAN WAGEMANS

LABORATORY OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

UNIVERSITY OF LEUVEN, BELGIUM

INTRODUCTION

1.

Gestalt psychology

• present status of Gestalt psychology = ambiguous – on the one hand, Gestalt psychology = dead and

burried • the Gestalt school has died with its founding fathers in the

1940s • after some devastating empirical findings regarding electrical

field theory in the 1950s • a natural decline because of fundamental obstacles against

further progress and stronger theoretical and experimental frameworks arising and gaining dominance since the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., cognitive science, neuroscience)

– on the other hand, Gestalt psychology = alive and kicking

• almost all psychology textbooks still contain a Gestalt-like chapter on perceptual organization (although often quite detached from the other chapters)

• new empirical papers on Gestalt phenomena are published on a regular basis (perhaps even at an increasing rate)

Gestalt psychology

• main reasons

– limited knowledge of Gestalt psychology’s history

– limited knowledge of Gestalt psychology’s roots in phenomenology

• main aim of this lecture: to provide you with this background knowledge

History of Gestalt psychology: Why bother?

• to provide you with the proper perspective to be able to build on the foundations from the past, while simultaneously avoiding its mistakes

• to remove some of the misunderstandings

• to provide you with a broader framework to situate and evaluate present work

• to make room for a better, deeper understanding

PHENOMENOLOGY

2.

Epistemology

• branch of philosophy dedicated to the origins of knowledge

• until 19th century: mainly two opponent schools – empiricism: all knowledge founded on empirical

(sensory) experience, e.g. • John Locke (1632-1704): “Nihil est in intellectu quod

non fuit prius in sensu”

• George Berkeley (1685-1753): “Esse est percipi”

• David Hume (1711-1776)

– rationalism: all knowledge founded on ratio (reasoning, thought), e.g.

• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): fundamental concepts structure human experience

Phenomenology

• a kind of third way (middle ground)

– against both empirism and rationalism

– knowledge does not follow from experience nor reasoning

• 2 main proponents

– Franz Brentano (1838-1917)

• strong influence in psychology

• Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkte (1874)

– Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)

• strong influence in philosophy: Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty,

Sartre, Derrida, Levinas, Ricoeur, …

Key ideas

1. intentionality – crucial point of departure in phenomenology – intentionality

= directedness of subject on object = way to give meaning to objects

– defining characteristic of mental phenomena (in contrast to physical phenomena)

– each mental phenomenon has a content and is directed towards an object (Gegenstand)

2. presentations – presentations (Vorstellungen) as acts – conscious experience is always unitary, because

• presentations are directed towards objects (note: these can be internal, these do not have to be external)

• presentations result from single whole (unitary act) of actual presenting

Implications

• mental phenomena are not contents (↔ structuralism by Wundt and Titchener) but acts, activities, functions (cf. “Aktpsychologie” // functionalism)

• in this approach, the world is built from within, but not in a neurophysiological sense

• the world of experience is reducible neither to external nor to internal psychophysics

• the experience is primary, conscious, self-evident, immediately given, and endowed with qualities (such as colors, shapes, movements, etc.) and meaning, not a product of the computational elaboration of stimuli

• one perceives qualitative wholes, not physical entities • at issue is the coherence of the structure, not the so-called

veridicality of the percepts • “Wahrnehmung ist Falschnehmung”

– “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one” (Albert Einstein) – we can only be certain of our internal perceptions

PRECURSORS

3.

Transition figures

• From phenomenology to Gestalt psychology

– Ernst Mach (1838-1916)

– Alexius Meinong (1853-1920)

– Christian von Ehrenfels (1859-1932)

– Vittorio Benussi (1878-1927)

– Carl Stumpf (1848-1936)

– Friedrich Schumann (1863-1940)

Ernst Mach (1838-1916)

• Physicist, mathematician, and philosopher, working in Graz, Prague, and Vienna

• “Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen” (1886) – time and space are essential for

perception (cf. Kant)

– perception = epistemological basis of all science

– strong influence on later phenomenology and logical positivism

– nice example: drawing of visual field experienced through one eye

Visual field

Ernst Mach, 1886 “As Seen” (after Mach), iPad drawing, 2012 by Robert Pepperell

http://www.robertpepperell.com/

Alexius Meinong (1853-1920)

• studied history and philosophy in

Vienna (with Brentano)

• professor of philosophy in Graz, founder of Psychological Institute (1894)

• “Über Gegenstandstheorie” (1904) – real, existing objects (e.g., horse) – intentional existence (e.g., unicorn)

• “objects of thought” • “Meinong’s jungle”

• promotor of Christian von Ehrenfels

Christian von Ehrenfels (1859-1932)

• studied with Brentano in Vienna

and with Meinong in Graz

• introduced the term “Gestalt” in philosophy and psychology – Johann Wolfgang Goethe:

• self-organizing forms in nature

• coherent, structured wholes with symmetry and balance

• “Über Gestaltqualitäten” (1890) – melody = more than a collection of

notes

Vittorio Benussi (1878-1927)

• most important researcher of

Alexius Meinong’s Gegenstandstheorie

• introduced Gestalt psychology in Italy

– promotor of Cesare Musatti

– through him also influencing Fabio Metelli and Gaetano Kanizsa

• major conflict with Kurt Koffka (core of controversy between Graz vs. Berlin school)

• a rather tragic figure for several reasons

Carl Stumpf (1848-1936)

• studied with Brentano, who sent him to

Göttingen, where he received training in epistemology, physiology, and physics (from Hermann Lotze)

• 1873: first major book on the psychological origins of space

• 1879: first volume of his most important scientific work “Tonpsychologie”

• very influential figure – held chairs in Würzburg (1873), Prague (1879), Halle

(1884), Münich (1889), and Berlin (1893), where he was asked to build a psychological institute that could compete with Leipzig

– in Berlin he had many excellent coworkers (e.g., Wertheimer, Koffka, Köhler, Gelb, von Allesch, Lewin)

– all of these also studied at other universities but Stumpf was the master under whom the Gestalt theorists learned their trade as experimenters

Friedrich Schumann (1863-1940)

• student and assistant of Georg Elias Müller in Göttingen

• assistant of Carl Stumpf in Berlin from 1894 till 1905

• 1900a, 1900b, 1904: “Beiträge zur Analyse der Gesichtswahrnehmungen: Einige Beobachtungen über die Zusammenfassung von Gesichtseindrücken zu Einheiten”

– first examples of grouping by proximity and similarity

– first examples of subjective contours

• from 1910 director of Psychological Institute in Frankfurt, where Koffka and Köhler were assistants when Wertheimer arrived

EMERGENCE OF GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY (BERLIN SCHOOL)

4.

How Gestalt psychology started

Wertheimer, M. (1912). Experimentelle Studien über das Sehen von Bewegung. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 61, 161-265.

anecdote phi motion

Steinman, R. M., Pizlo, Z., & Pizlo, F. J. (2000). Phi is not beta, and why Wertheimer’s discovery launched the Gestalt revolution. Vision Research, 40, 2257-2264.

http://www1.psych.purdue.edu/Magniphi/MagniPhi.html

key role

phi as pure motion, not a displacement between two objects

phi as a process, “an across in itself”, that cannot be composed from the usual optical contents

A radical vision

emerging Gestalt theory

Gestalts emerging in the brain

not Gestalt qualities added to the primary sensations

not Gestalts as more than the sum of the parts

but Gestalts as different from the sum of the parts

often the whole is grasped even before the individual parts enter consciousness

a structured unit emerges as a whole

psychological facts and physiological hypotheses went hand-in-hand

continuous whole-processes rather than associated combinations of elementary excitations

specifically: some kind of physiological short circuit, and a flooding back of the current flow, creating a unitary continuous whole-process

Some early Gestalt history (1)

Koffka, K. (1915). Beitrage zur Psychologie der Gestalt. III. Zur Grundlegung der Wahrnehmungspsychologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit V. Benussi. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 73, 11-90. implications of this view primary relations

no longer stimulus ~ sensation but stimulus pattern ~ perceived whole

perceived wholes not constructed in the mind from elementary sensations but direct experience-correlates emerging in the brain

Kurt Koffka (1886-1941)

Some early Gestalt history (2)

Köhler, W. (1920). Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationären Zustand. Eine natur-philosophische Untersuchung. Braunschweig, Germany: Vieweg.

decisive step: real physical Gestalts in the brain

strong Gestalts the mutual dependence among the parts is so great that

no displacement or change of state is possible without influencing all the other parts of the system

in fact: there are no parts at all, only interacting moments of structure that carry one another

psychophysical isomorphism psychological facts and the brain events that underlie

them are similar in all of their structural characteristics specifically: visual Gestalts result from a single Gestalt

process in which the whole optic sector from the retina onwards is involved, including transverse functional connections

in fact: the brain described as a self-organizing physical system

Wolfgang Köhler

(1887-1967)

Some early Gestalt history (3a)

Wertheimer, M. (1922). Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt, I: Prinzipielle Bemerkungen. Psychologische Forschung, 1, 47-58.

- We need descriptions of conscious experience in terms of the

units people naturally perceive, rather than the artificial ones imposed by standard scientific methods.

- We should not constrain ourselves to a piecemeal inquiry into the contents of consciousness, building up higher entities from constituent elements, using associative connections (“Und-Summe”).

- Instead, what is given in experience “is itself in varying degrees ‘structured’ (‘gestaltet’), it consists of more or less definitely structured wholes and whole-processes with their whole-properties and laws, characteristic whole-tendencies and whole-determinations of parts” (p. 14).

- The perceptual field does not appear to us as a collection of disjointed sensations, but possesses a particular organization of spontaneously combined and segregated objects.

Max Wertheimer (1880-1943)

Some early Gestalt history (3b)

Wertheimer, M. (1923). Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt, II. Psychologische Forschung, 4, 301-350. = an attempt to elucidate the fundamental principles of that organization - the most general principle = the so-called law of

Prägnanz: the perceptual field and objects within it will take on the simplest and most encompassing (“ausgezeichnet”) structure permitted by the given conditions

• for Köhler this is just another example that phenomenal Gestalten are like physical Gestalten: all processes in physical systems, left to themselves, show a tendency to achieve the maximal level of stability (homogeneity, simplicity, symmetry) with the minimum expenditure of energy allowed by the prevailing conditions

- more specific principles: proximity, similarity, uniform density, common fate, direction, good continuation and “whole properties” (or “Ganzeigenschaften”) such as closure, equilibrium, and symmetry

Max Wertheimer (1880-1943)

ESSENCE OF BERLIN SCHOOL

5.

Against predecessors

Structuralism/empiricism

• sensations are the primary units of mental life

• introspection: perceptual experience must be analyzed as combinations of elementary sensations of physical stimuli

• percepts are associated combinations of elementary excitations

• perceptual organization is based on perceptual learning, past experience, intentions

• likelihood principle

Berlin school

• Gestalten are the primary units of mental life

• experimental phenomenology: perceptual experience must be described in terms of the units people naturally perceive

• percepts organize themselves by mutual interactions in the brain

• perceptual organization is based on innate, intrinsic, autonomous laws

• simplicity or minimum principle

Against other Gestalt schools

Graz school (Meinong, von Ehrenfels, Benussi)

• Gestalt qualities are more than the sum of the constituent sensations

• one-sided dependency between parts and wholes (the wholes depend on the parts, but the parts do not depend on the whole)

• perception is “produced” on the basis of sensations

Berlin school (Wertheimer, Köhler, Koffka)

• Gestalten (structured experiences) are different from the sum of the parts

• two-sided or reciprocal dependency between parts and wholes (the whole is grasped before the individual parts enter consciousness)

• perception “emerges” through self-organization (non-mechanistically and autonomously)

Against other Gestalt schools

Leipzig school (Krüger, Sander, Jaensch)

• stage theory: “Aktualgenese”, microgenesis

• mystic holism, segregated from natural science

Berlin school (Wertheimer, Köhler, Koffka)

• no analysis into stages, but functional relations in the emergence of Gestalts can be specified by Gestalt laws of perceptual organization

• holism integrated with natural science (physical Gestalten, isomorphism, minimum principle)

RISE AND FALL

6.

An open-ended research program

• Wertheimer (1922, 1923) basically outlined a whole research program. • Once Wertheimer, Koffka and Köhler had acquired professorships at

major universities in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, they started to work on this research program with their students.

• A flourishing period

• A few highlights: – Kurt Gottschaldt on embedded figures (1926) – Joseph Ternus on phenomenal identity (1926) – Karl Duncker on induced motion (1929) – Wolfgang Metzger on a homogeneous Ganzfeld (1930) and motion in depth

(1934)

• Expansion into other domains: – other sense modalities (e.g., binaural hearing by Erich von Hornbostel) – learning and memory (e.g., Otto von Lauenstein and Hedwig von Restorff) – thought (e.g., Karl Duncker) – action and emotion (by Kurt Lewin) – neuropathology and the organism as a whole (by Adhemar Gelb and Kurt

Goldstein) – film theory and aesthetics (by Rudolf Arnheim)

Second generation

Decline and fall

• the findings obtained did not always fit the original theories, which posed serious challenges to the Gestalt framework

• even more devastating: the emergence of the Nazi regime in Germany from 1933 to World War II – many of the psychology professors at German universities

lost their posts because of the discrimination and prosecution of Jews

– they emigrated to the U.S. to take on new positions there – most did not do any new empirical work there – most wrote books in which they outlined their views (e.g.,

Koffka, 1935; Köhler, 1940; Wertheimer, 1945) – major exception:

• Köhler & Wallach (1944) • Köhler & Held (1949)

From speculation to facts

Köhler, W., & Held, R. (1949). The cortical correlate of pattern vision. Science, 110, 414-419.

previously: indirect evidence from “figural aftereffects” (with Hans Wallach)

now: first recordings of visual currents, picked up by an electrode at the scalp of human observers

from “electromotive forces” to “electrical field theory”

flow of current is “relational” the field of distribution of current

flow is “molar” the characteristics of perceptual

organization correspond to the distribution of current

dense, continuous flow ~ figure interruption of flow or sharp

intensity gradient ~ contour

From speculation to facts

Lashley, K. S., Chow, K. L., & Semmes, J. (1951). An examination of the electrical field theory of cerebral integration. Psychological Review, 58, 123-136.

more direct test of electrical field theory

rationale: insulate part of a cortical field and test for consequent disturbances of function

metallic strips and pins inserted in macaque cortex

almost no effect on post-operative retention of object discrimination

End of electrical field theory

similar study with slightly different methods but same results: Sperry, R. W., Miner, N., & Myers, R. E. (1955). Visual pattern perception following subpial slicing

and tantalum wire implantations in the visual cortex. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 48, 50-58.

Köhler’s reactions to these studies (pointing out several methodological and conceptual shortcomings) were basically ignored

devastating blow to

electrical field theory

basic isomorphism postulate of Gestalt theory

Situation in Germany

Situation elsewhere in Europe

HISTORICAL EVALUATION

7.

Mixed evaluation

• On the one hand, signs of well-deserved respect

in the U.S. and in Germany – Köhler’s honorary degrees in 1967 and his APA

presidency in 1957 – Wertheimer’s posthumous Wilhelm Wundt Medal of the

German Society for Psychology in 1983

• On the other hand, the Gestalt theorists’ ideas

were ambivalently received – they raised central issues and provoked important

debates in psychology, theoretical biology, and other fields

– their mode of thinking and research style accommodated uncomfortably to the intellectual and social climate of the postwar world

Main reasons (Ash, 1995)

1. institutional, political, and biographical contingencies

– insufficient funding for Berlin school – severe personal blows with the early deaths of Wertheimer in

1943, Koffka in 1941, Gelb in 1935, and Lewin in 1947 – 3 of Köhler’s most outstanding students (Karl Duncker, Otto

Lauenstein, and Hedwig von Restorff) all died young – after they left Germany, the founders of Gestalt theory all

obtained positions where they could do excellent research but could not train PhDs

– the situation in Germany was different: Metzger, Gottschaldt and Rausch produced more students between them than Wertheimer, Koffka and Köhler did, but relatively few carried on in the Gestalt tradition

– they all broadened the scope of their research portfolio much beyond traditional Gestalt topics, in the direction of developmental psychology, educational psychology, sport psychology, personality, clinical psychology, psychotherapy, and so forth

Main reasons (Ash, 1995)

2. conceptual issues

– language • for rationalists: language constitutes meaning • for Gestaltists: language expresses meaning that is already there in the

appearance or in the world

– applying Gestalt thinking to personality and social psychology • based on analogy or metaphor • but the further the metaphors were stretched, the harder it became to

connect them with Köhler’s concept of brain action

– a meta-theoretical impasse between the theoretical and research styles of Gestalt theory and those of the rest of psychology

• Gestalt theory: non-mechanistic but scientific approach to holism – the external world, its phenomenal counterpart, and the brain events

mediating interactions between them, all have the same structure or function, according to the same dynamical principles

• the critics insisted on causal explanations: cognitive operations in the mind or neural mechanisms in the brain

My own evaluative review

“the good”

contributions standing the test of time “the bad”

ideas refuted by results, exaggerated claims “the ugly”

important insights that are still difficult to integrate in modern vision science

The good

• research on perceptual grouping and figure-ground organization has been able to build on the sophisticated research methods available in vision science in general

• demonstrations with either very simple or confounded stimuli were supplemented with real experiments, using carefully constructed, sometimes also richer stimuli

• 100 years of research on perceptual grouping and figure-ground organization has yielded a wealth of knowledge regarding principles of perceptual organization, their ecological foundations, computational mechanisms, and neural underpinnings

The good (ctd.)

• some progress has been made in linking these aspects of perceptual organization to other aspects of visual processing

• mid-level vision is now often conceived as a relay-station between low-level vision and high-level vision processes which interpret their meaning

The bad

• Gestalt theory was criticized for formulating new laws for every factor that influenced perceptual organization, and with little precision.

• To avoid a proliferation of “laws”, the law of Prägnanz was proposed as the fundamental law encompassing all the others but its formulation was left intentionally vague:

– “psychological organization will always be as ‘good’ as the prevailing conditions allow” (Koffka, 1935, p. 110)

– “one recognizes a resultant ‘good Gestalt’ simply by its own ‘inner necessity’ ” (Wertheimer, 1923/1938, p. 83).

The bad (ctd.)

• Köhler’s electrical field theory was proven wrong by Lashley’s and Sperry’s experiments and the underlying notion of psychophysical isomorphism turned out not to be productive.

• No alternatives were found to replace the physical but non-mechanistic foundations of Gestalt theory.

• With no testable quantitative models and no plausible neural underpinning, the Gestalt principles remained mere descriptions of interesting perceptual phenomena.

The bad (ctd.)

• Claims about Gestalt principles being

preattentive, innate, and independent of

experience appear exaggerated:

– principles of grouping seem to operate at multiple

levels and figure-ground segregation can also be

affected by attention

– infants are already capable of grouping according to at

least some grouping principles, but developmental

trends regarding other grouping principles indicate that

visual experience does play a role as well

– recent studies with adult observers showed that past

experience can exert an influence on several aspects of

figure-ground perception

The ugly

• Several Gestalt notions do not fit well with the rest of what we know about vision.

• Modern vision science appears to be incommensurate with “the fundamental ‘formula’ of Gestalt theory” (Wertheimer, 1924/1938, p. 2)

– “There are wholes, the behavior of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole.”

→ How can we understand the relationships between parts and wholes in light of the visual cortical hierarchy and dynamics?

The ugly (ctd.)

• The convergence between psychophysical results and natural image statistics seems to indicate that the visual system is tuned to the properties of its environment.

→How can internal laws based on a general minimum principle yield veridicality in the external world (or the behavioral suitability or survival value of vision as our user interface)?

• Establishing an integration of Gestalt theory within modern vision science provides serious challenges.

Conclusions

• Gestalt theory is still relevant to current psychology/vision science in several ways:

– proper emphasis on the emergence of structure in perceptual experience and the subjective nature of phenomenal awareness

– continuing challenge to some of the fundamental assumptions of mainstream vision science and cognitive neuroscience

– much progress has been made in the field of nonlinear dynamical systems, both theoretically and empirically

Conclusions (ctd.)

• rumors about the death of Gestalt psychology were greatly exaggerated

– the field of research on perceptual grouping and figure-ground organization is thriving

– progress has been tremendous compared to the situation of 100 years ago

• significant challenges remain

– building on a research tradition of more than a century, we can now reconsider some of the old puzzles at a much more advanced scientific level now

– an open-ended research program

– the most important challenge: to better integrate this research tradition with the rest of vision science

SOURCES

8.

A century of Gestalt psychology in visual perception

• 2 extensive reviews in 2012

– Wagemans, J., Elder, J. H., Kubovy, M., Palmer, S. E., Peterson, M. A., Singh, M., & von der Heydt, R. (2012). A century of Gestalt psychology in visual perception: I. Perceptual grouping and figure-ground organization. Psychological Bulletin, 138(6), 1172-1217. doi: 10.1037/a0029333

– Wagemans, J., Feldman, J., Gepshtein, S., Kimchi, R., Pomerantz, J. R., van der Helm, P., & van Leeuwen, C. (2012). A century of Gestalt psychology in visual perception: II. Conceptual and theoretical foundations.

Psychological Bulletin, 138(6), 1218-1252. doi: 10.1037/a0029334

Oxford Handbook of Perceptual Organization

SECTION 1. GENERAL BACKGROUND 1. Wagemans, J. ― Historical and

conceptual background: Gestalt theory.

2. Albertazzi, A. ― Philosophical background: Phenomenology.

3. Koenderink, J. J. ― Methodological background: Experimental phenomenology.

THANK YOU

JOHAN.WAGEMANS@PSY.KULEUVEN.BE

WWW.GESTALTREVISION.BE