Max Wertheimer: biography of the founder of Gestalt psychology

Max Wertheimer was the first to study perceptual organization. Wertheimer’s approach to the way we perceive the world was to look at things as a whole. Thus, he suggested that the whole was much more than its parts.

His work created an important foundation of psychological theory; and in addition to contributing to the creation of the Gestalt school, he contributed valuable knowledge to experimental psychology and the study of perception. He created the Phi phenomenon that forms the basis of Gestalt psychology.. His findings were compiled in his book Productive thinking.

Early life

Max Wertheimer was born on April 15, 1880 in Prague. His father was a teacher and principal of a local school. The interests of little Wertheimer They fluctuated, in principle, between music and philosophy.

Although he began studying Law at the university, he finally opted for Philosophy and Psychology, and would graduate addition cum laude with a doctorate from the University of Würzburg. During her doctoral research, Max Wertheimer investigated the evaluation of testimonies through lie detectors.

Max Wertheimer and his professional career

Wertheimer was a great observer, he noticed things that, for others, went unnoticed and that was one of his great talents. One day, observed that the flashing lights of a train station created an illusion of movement. This was the beginning of his interest in the study of human perception.

He called this type of perception the Phi phenomenon., the principle on which moving images are based. Thus, it formed the basis of Gestalt psychology, which revolutionized the world of psychology. But his interest in the study of perception did not stop at that time, but continued to increase over time.

He worked at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Frankfurt. It was there that he met two of his assistants: Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Kofka.. Their mutual interest in perception and their shared vision eventually made them lifelong research partners, together they formed the Gestalt school of thought.

Already married and with a family, after listening to Hitler’s fiery pre-election speeches and the mobilization of the Nazis, he decided to leave Germany. He returned with his family for a brief period to Czechoslovakia. Until, shortly after, In 1933, he emigrated to the United States.

His life away from Europe

He taught at New School for Social Research In New York. The courses Wertheimer taught included logic, social psychology, educational psychology, experimental psychology, and psychology of music; In the latter, he made great contributions. His classes were always characterized by being enormously interactive. He encouraged students to debate and gave numerous lectures at Princeton and Columbia Universities.

Max Wertheimer He did not always publish his theories or his experimentsbut many of them were the basis of the research of other prestigious psychologists such as Solomon Asch, George Katona or Abraham Maslow.

In 1937 he met Abraham Maslow, with whom he developed an important professional relationship. and personal. The ideas and figure of Max Wertheimer were a great inspiration for Maslow and his hierarchy of needs.

Thanks to the excellent work of Max Wertheimer in the New School for Social Research, Gestalt psychology became one of the first schools of psychology during the first half of the 20th century.

Finally, Wertheimer died in 1943 in New York, as a result of a coronary embolism. His funeral was attended by such influential figures from the academic world as Albert Einstein himself.

His contributions to psychology

Wertheimer’s works had an enormous influence on the development of psychology, Solomon Asch stated that:

His work was instrumental in the early development of psychology and influenced many other psychologists and other fields of research such as linguistics and education. That said, Wertheimer’s most significant contributions were:

The laws of perceptual organization

Wertheimer established a series of laws of perceptual organization of innate origin; which account for our natural tendency to perceive objects as a whole, or as organized wholes. Some of them are:

Figure-ground reciprocity: the figure is that element on which attention is focused, it stands out and is more relevant than the background. Sometimes an image and its subject in a given scene can be confusing and the perceiver organizes them, changing them or observing them from a completely different perspective.Law of proximity: tendency to associate objects in a space according to their proximity or closeness; The closer two pieces or objects are, the more likely they are to connect.Law of closure or conclusion: tendency to join together pieces that are separate in order to obtain a complete image. That is to say, if a line forms a closed or almost closed silhouette, it is common to observe a figure apparently enclosed by a path, instead of a simple line.Präganz’s law or principle of good form: tendency to perceive the simplest possible forms. As the psychologist Rudolph Arnheim well exemplifies: if a figure is simpler when interpreted in three dimensions than when interpreted in two, the individual will interpret it that way, leaving the plane.

Gestalt Psychology Foundation

Among the great contributions of Max Wertheimer highlights the founding of the Gestalt psychological school; whose current is based on the fact that perception is mediated by mechanisms that allow patterns in sets to be recognized from simple elements.

These patterns are usually based on the proximity, similarity or continuity that the elements have with each other.

Unlike structuralism, which focused on atomism and decomposed mental processes into their smallest possible parts, The interest of the Gestalt school was focused on the holistic approach.

Contributions to educational psychology

Applying his holistic ideas to the psychology of education, he maintained that it is It is essential to teach children, first of all, global concepts that will contribute to their general intellectrather than instilling the details in them.

Well, when they are taught the details first, students often get confused and fail to understand the meaning of what they learn.

Productive vs reproductive thinking

Max Wertheimer made a distinction between productive thinking and reproductive thinking. The first refers to the ability to generate new ideas.while the second is responsible for the repetition of data already existing in the mind.

Productive thinking takes place when the subject uses the knowledge that he already has stored and, based on it, carries out reasoning that generates new ideas that did not previously exist in his mind.

Likewise, he stated that, To enhance productive thinking, it is not advisable to obstinately follow closed rules to try to resolve a problem.. Well, sometimes, this method can be an impediment that helps one generate new mental content.

Finally, we emphasize the importance of Max Wertheimer’s work for the development of psychology. Without a doubt he was a character who left his mark on this discipline and whose contributions are still valid.

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