Download Some Gestalt history

Some Gestalt history
Johan Wagemans
University of Leuven, Belgium
17/02/2011
(internal lab presentation)
precursors
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Ernst Mach (1838-1916)
– mathematics, physics, philosophy
– 1886: “Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen”
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Carl Stumpf (1848-1936)
– student of Franz Brentano and Hermann Lotze
– founded the LEP at Berlin (1893)
– his students in Berlin: Wertheimer, Koffka, Köhler, Lewin
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Christian von Ehrenfels (1859-1932)
– studied with Brentano in Vienna
– originator of the term Gestalt
– 1890: “Über Gestaltqualitäten”
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Friedrich Schumann (1863-1940)
– student of Georg Elias Müller at Göttingen
– assistant of Carl Stumpf in Berlin
– 1900a, 1900b, 1904: “Beiträge zur Analyse der Gesichtswahrnehmungen:
Einige Beobachtungen über die Zusammenfassung von Gesichtseindrücken zu
Einheiten”
Carl Stumpf (1848-1936)
• started university studies in Würzburg in 1865, where he became a
disciple of Franz Brentano (intentionality as immanent objectivity);
after a year Brentano sent Stumpf to Göttingen, where he received
training in epistemology, physiology, and physics
• 1873: first major book on the psychological origins of space
• 1879: first volume of his most important scientific work
“Tonpsychologie”
• 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 like Max Wertheimer, Kurt
Koffka, Wolfgang Köhler, Adhemar Gelb, Johannes von Allesch, and
Kurt Lewin (all but Wertheimer got their PhD with him)
• all of these scholars also studied at other universities but Stumpf was
the master under whom the Gestalt theorists learned their trade as
experimenters
Graz – Berlin schools
Graz school
Berlin school
Meinong, Ehrenfels, Benussi
Wertheimer, Köhler, Koffka
Gestalten as emergent qualities
Gestalt as a sui generis whole
dependent upon objects,
rise above them as a content
not founded on any more elementary
objects
the mind produces a percept
the percept organizes itself by mutual
interaction
constructivism
objectivism
Max Wertheimer
(1880-1943)
° April 15, 1880, Prague
† October 12, 1943, New Rochelle
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entered Prague’s Charles University in 1898 in the legal faculty but taking many
courses in philosophy, physiology, music, and art history; after 5 sem, switched to
philosophical faculty (many classes from Christian von Ehrenfels)
studied philosophy in Berlin from 1902 to 1904 (classes from Carl Stumpf, lab
exercises with Friedrich Schumann)
got his doctoral degree from Oswald Külpe (Würzburg, 1904)
became interested in motion perception after an experience on a train (1910)
at the Psychological Institute in Frankfurt he got a tachistoscope (from Schumann)
to study the phenomenon
his first subjects were two younger assistants there, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt
Koffka
Max Wertheimer (ctd.)
1912: seminal paper, lectureship in Frankfurt
1916: Berlin
1922: assistant professor Berlin
1925: professor in Frankfurt
1933: escape to U.S.
1934: position at New School for Social
Research (N.Y. City)
• 1945: “Productive Thinking”
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Kurt Koffka
(1886-1941)
° March 18, 1886, Berlin
† November 22, 1941, Northampton
• 1903: enrolled at the University of Berlin,
in philosophy (classes from Stumpf)
• 1909: PhD Berlin on rhythm
• assistant in Freiburg (von Kries), Würzburg (Külpe; working on
similarity and imagery), and Frankfurt (Schumann)
• 1911-1927: Giessen
• 1922: Psych Bulletin paper (Gestalt program introduced in the U.S.)
• 1927: emigrated to the U.S.
• teaching position at Smith College
• 1935: “Principles of Gestalt Psychology”
Wolfgang Köhler
(1887-1967)
° January 21, 1887, Reval (Estonia)
† June 11, 1967, New Hampshire
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background in natural science thanks to a remarkable
teacher (Geitel, in contact with Planck, Becquerel,
Rutherford)
studying philosophy, history, and physics in Tübingen, then experimental
psychology in Bonn, moving to Berlin to work with Stumpf
1908: PhD Berlin (on acoustics)
assistant in Frankfurt
1913-1920: Tenerife (“mentality of apes”)
1922: chair and director Berlin
1929: “Gestalt psychology”
1935: escape to U.S.
position at Swarthmore College
2nd generation
• Kurt Lewin (1890-1947)
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PhD Berlin (Stumpf)
worked with Wertheimer, Koffka, Köhler
went to U.S. (guest lecturer at Stanford and Cornell)
1935: took position at Iowa
1944: created Research Center for Group Dynamics at M.I.T.
influenced Solomon Asch, Leon Festinger
• Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965)
– 1903: MD at Breslau
– teaching position at the Neurological Institute at Frankfurt
where he met Wertheimer, Koffka, Köhler
– plasticity of brain functions (recovery after trauma)
– influenced Gordon Allport, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow
2nd generation (ctd.)
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Wolfgang Metzger (1899-1979)
– studied with Wertheimer, Koffka, Köhler in Berlin
– became assistant and successor of Wertheimer
in Frankfurt
– most famous for his “Gesetze des Sehens”
• 3 editions: 1936, 1954, 1975
• a collection of phenomena from everyday perception and the fine arts, compelling
illustrations for the Gestalt point of view
• a nontechnical masterpiece in which he moves the reader toward a deeper experience,
and sometimes an altered conception, of the visual world
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Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007)
– studied with Wertheimer, Köhler, Lewin in Berlin
– emigrated to Italy (1933), England (1939), US (1940)
– got a position at New School for Social Research
– introduced Gestalt thinking in art and art theory
2nd generation (ctd.)
• Fritz Heider (1896-1988)
– worked with Wertheimer in Berlin
and with Koffka in the U.S.
– translated Kurt Lewin’s
“Grundzüge der topologischen Psychologie” (1936)
– best known for attribution theory
“The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations” (1958)
• Hans Wallach (1905-1998)
– 1934: PhD in Berlin with Wertheimer
“on the visually perceived direction of motion”
– 1936: escaped to U.S.
– long career at Swarthmore College
– famous students: Ulric Neisser, Irving Rock
Italian Gestalt psychology
Vittorio Benussi
(1878-1927)
• an ethnic Italian, born in Austro-Hungarian Trieste
(now part of Italy)
• the most important researcher of Alexius Meinong’s
Graz school of Gegenstandstheorie
• after the First World War, he decided to emigrate to Italy (speaking
German with an Italian accent and coming from a family with strong
anti-Austrian sentiments, he had felt alienated in Austria)
• this way, the impetus for Gestalt psychology entered Italy more or
less by accident
• unfortunately, he suffered the same fate among academics in Italy,
for his reputation had been won in the German language in German
periodicals
• in 1927 he committed suicide in Padova
Cesare Musatti
(1897-1989)
• born in Mira, in the Veneto region of Italy
• student of mathematics and philosophy at the University of Padua and
turned to psychology under the influence of Benussi
• he became Benussi’s assistant and, with his premature death, replaced
him in the chair of psychology
• during the fascist period, Musatti, an ethnic Jew, was forced to leave
Padua, but after the end of the war he became director of the
Psychological Institute at the University of Milan
• he is best known as the most important Italian psychoanalytic writer of
his generation and the editor of the Italian edition of the works of
Sigmund Freud
• he was also one of the premier perceptual researchers of Italy
– responsible for introducing the Berlin gestalt theory to Italy
– training important students in this tradition (Fabio Metelli, Gaetano Kanizsa)
Fabio Metelli
(1907–1987)
• born in Trieste (10 July 1908)
• graduated from the University of Padua
in 1929 with a thesis on the esthetics of Plato
• from 1929 to 1940, he was voluntary assistant to Musatti
• not being Jewish, he was not barred from professional
positions
• from 1940 to 1942, he worked for the National Council of
Research (Consiglio Nazionale di Ricerche) and was granted
the title docent in 1942
• in 1943, he directed the Psychological Institute in Padua
• after spending some time in Catania and Trieste, he was
named professor there in 1951
Gaetano Kanizsa
(1913–1993)
• born in Trieste (18 August 1913)
son of a Hungarian father and a Slovenian mother
• graduated at the University of Padua, with a thesis on Jaensch’s
theory of eidetic imagery, under Musatti’s supervision in 1938
• it was during this time that he came to know Musatti’s assistant,
Metelli, thus beginning a lifelong friendship
• being an ethnic Jew, Kanizsa entered the academic world exactly
when ethnic laws prohibited his obtaining any position
• after the war, as Metelli was installed in Padua, Kanizsa followed
Musatti to Milan and became his assistant
• in 1954, he was given the title of professor of psychology at Trieste
• his most famous work began to appear in the 1950s, when he
published his works on subjective contours, modes of color
appearance, and phenomenal transparency
Padua-Trieste school
• it was at this time that Koffka’s Principles of Gestalt psychology
was elevated to the level of ‘scripture’
• Wolfgang Metzger became the consistent, if predictable,
psychological ally of the Italians
• his orthodoxy was the standard against which the efforts of the
Italians could be judged
• Musatti and Metzger were said to tour the laboratories
together once a year in Padua and Trieste during the late 1950s
and early 1960s
• in Italy the chairmanship of the department or directorship
laboratory was a prestigious and powerful position
• Metelli oversaw Padua, and Kanizsa oversaw Trieste, each with
a great deal of power
Sources
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Ash, M. (1995). Gestalt psychology in German culture, 1890–1967: Holism and the quest for objectivity. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Boudewijnse, G. (1999). The rise and fall of the Graz school. Gestalt Theory, 21, 140-158.
Carini, L. (1970). A reassessment of Max Wertheimer’s contribution to psychological theory. Acta Psychologica, 32,
377-385.
Epstein, W. (1988). Has the time come to rehabilitate Gestalt theory? Philosophical Psychology, 50(1), 2-6.
Gibson, J. J. (1971). The legacies of Koffka’s principles. Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences, 7(1), 3-9.
Kanizsa, G. (1979). Organization in vision: Essays on Gestalt perception. New York: Praeger.
Koffka, K. (1915). Zur grundlegung der Wahrnehmungspsychologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit V. Benussi.
Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 73, 11-90.
Koffka, K. (1935). Principles of Gestalt psychology. New York: Harcourt- Brace.
Köhler, W. (1929). Gestalt psychology. New York: Liveright.
Luccio, R. (2003). The emergence of Prägnanz: Gaetano Kanizsa’s legacies. Axiomathes, 13, 365-387.
Metzger, W. (1975). Gesetze des Sehens (3rd ed.). Frankfurt, Germany: Verlag Waldemar Kramer. (An English
translation of the 1936 edition has been published as „Laws of seeing“ by MIT Press in 2006.)
Smith, B. (Ed.). (1988). Foundations of Gestalt theory. München: Philosophia Verlag.
Verstegen, I. (2000). Gestalt psychology in Italy. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 36, 31-42.
von Ehrenfels, C. (1890). Über Gestaltqualitäten. Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschafliche Philosophie, 14, 249-292.
Wertheimer, M. (1912). Experimentelle Studien über das Sehen von Bewegung. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 61,
161-265.
Wertheimer, M. (1923). Untersuchungen zur Lehre der Gestalt, II. Psychologische Forschung, 4, 301-350.
Wikipedia