The Gestalt Psychology

Gestalt Psychology originated in Germany, between 1910 and 1912. The translation of the German word “Gestalt” is complex and the terms, in Portuguese, that are closest to its translation would be “form”, “configuration”. The three researchers who marked this theoretical current were Marx Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler. These researchers were based on psychophysical studies – which related form and its perception. His experiments began with the perception and sensation of movement. They aimed to understand the psychological processes involved in optical illusion, when the physical stimulus perceived by the subject has a different form than what corresponds to reality.

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The founder of Gestalt Psychology, Wertheimer, took as his object the analysis and understanding of apparent movement. He performed experiments with two points of light, turning both lights on and off in the dark, at different time intervals between turning on one lamp and turning off the other, and also at different speeds in that interval. The researcher came to the conclusion that the movement perceived in the lights took place in the subject’s mind, through optical illusion.

Kurt Koffka, a German psychologist, was responsible for spreading Gestalt Psychology in the United States through lectures he gave at Universities. At this time, American Psychology was centered on Positivism, and as such, Gestalt came under severe criticism. Köhler was also another Gestalt Psychology researcher and developed research with monkeys at the time of the First World War. This researcher aimed to know the mental capacity of monkeys. In 1935, he became the president of the APA (American Psychological Association).

The Gestalt theory has perception as its starting point and main object. According to the Gestaltists, the process of perception lies between the stimuli provided by the environment and the individual’s response. Thus, what is perceived by the individual and how it is perceived are important elements for understanding human behavior. As with Behaviorism, Gestalt understands Psychology as a science that studies behavior, however, with its theoretical differences – the behaviorists studied behavior through the stimulus-response relationship and disregarded the conscious contents due to the impossibility of controlling them in a way scientific. According to the Gestaltists, behavior should be observed in its most global aspects and there should be consideration of the conditions that alter the perception of the stimulus. As justification for this theory, they were based on the theory of isomorphism – this assumed an idea of ​​unity in the universe and assumed that the part was always related to the whole. When you see only part of a certain object, for example, there is a tendency to restore the balance of the form and this ensures that you understand the object you are perceiving. “This phenomenon of perception is guided by the search for closure, symmetry and regularity of the points that make up a figure (object)” (TEIXEIRA, 2007, p.60).

It is in the phenomena of perception that Gestalt discovers the conditions for understanding human behavior. The way in which the stimulus is perceived will provoke human behavior. It is worth explaining some fundamental principles and from which perception is configured: 1) “the whole is more than the sum of the parts”; 2) closure principle; 3) proximity principle; 4) similarity principle; 5) the relationship between figure and background. We will make some brief explanations about these principles respectively. Principle number 1 means that when observing an object, there is a tendency to perceive the totality of the object. Principle number 2 states that there is a tendency to seek in memory some element that is close to the object, in terms of content and form, to facilitate its understanding. Principle number 3 means that, when an object is perceived, there is a tendency for it to be grouped according to the close relationship it has with another object. Principle number 4 tells of man’s tendency to group elements according to their similarities. Finally, in the figure/background relationship, a part emerges from the whole and is distinguished from the rest of the engraving. The part that emerges is the figure and the other elements are the ground. Thus, the object that is immediately perceived is always the figure.

The concept of insight is of paramount importance to Gestalt. It is defined as a cognitive event in which the relationship and connection of psychological events give form to the figure and make the subject understand the formed figure.

As can be seen, Gestaltists were also supporters of the innatist conception of man and the Kantian apriorism. Nevertheless, man’s cognitive behavior would be the result of innate structures – which are inherent to the subject. According to this perspective, learning is determined by the subject’s ability to perceive and also by a mature nervous system. Learning occurs, therefore, from the inside out and is linked to the student’s readiness to learn. Readiness, in turn, depends on the student’s neurological maturation and it is this that determines the student’s motivation and interest during learning. The teacher’s job, within this theoretical perspective, would be to help the student, it would be to reorganize the student’s field of perception according to the content

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