Gestalt Psychology and Creativity

Gestalt is a German word that does not have a direct translation in English but can be described as a quality of wholeness, form, pattern, and configuration. A gestalt is an organized field, form quality, or underlying structure of a situation perceived as a subjective whole. Classical Gestalt psychology grew out of experiments in sensory phenomena, which led to a new way of understanding mental phenomena, emphasizing organismic and contextual variables. Gestalt psycho logists applied the concepts of perception to problem solving and creative thinking, and emphasized the role of insight in productive and creative thinking. Gestalt concepts have been applied or extended to the study of disciplines including perception, cognitive sciences, problem solving, creativity, psychology in art, musicology, linguistics, social psychology, psychotherapy, and even ...